The world of James Thurber is splendidly sampled in these thirty stories, sketches, and articles that range from the wildest comedy to the serious business of murder. Animal courtship, maids, Macbeth, baseball, sailing, marriage—all fall within Thurber's scope of wit and humor.
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James Thurber (1894–1961), one of the outstanding American humorists and cartoonists of the twentieth century, was born in Columbus, Ohio, and launched his professional writing career as a reporter for the Columbus Dispatch in 1920. He began writing for the New Yorker in 1927 after his friend and fellow writer E. B. White got him a job at the magazine. Though hampered by failing eyesight, Thurber wrote nearly forty books, including collections of essays, short stories, fables, and children’s stories. He won a Tony Award for his popular Broadway play, A Thurber Carnival. Both that story and My Life and Hard Times have appeared in countless editions and dozens of languages throughout the world.
John Cullum is a versatile narrator and an award-winning actor of stage, television, and film. On stage, he won two Tony Awards for best actor in a musical for Shenandoah and On the Twentieth Century and won a Theatre World Award for his role in On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. He has been a regular on television series, including Northern Exposure, for which he won an award for best supporting actor. His film acting includes Inherit the Wind with George C. Scott and Jack Lemmon and Held Up with Jamie Foxx. He also starred in and wrote the screenplay for The Secret Life of Algernon. He has narrated audiobooks by a wide spectrum of authors and lent his voice to three of Ken Burns’ documentaries. In 2007, he was named to the Theater hall of Fame.