{"product_id":"al-jaffees-mad-life-a-biography-isbn-9780061864483","title":"Al Jaffee's Mad Life: A Biography","description":"“One of the great cartoonists of our time.” –\u003cem\u003eNew Yorker \u003c\/em\u003ecartoonist Arnold Roth \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe remarkable story of one of America’s most prolific and beloved cartoonists, Al Jaffee, with dozens of original color illustrations. Jaffe’s career in cartooning stretches back to 1941—with early humor pieces for Timely Comics, a precursor to Marvel Comics—but the iconic artist remains best known for the brilliant Fold-In cartoons he invented at Bill Gaines’s \u003cem\u003eMad \u003c\/em\u003emagazine in 1964. The cerebral and sardonic illustrations have inspired generations of \u003cem\u003eMad \u003c\/em\u003ereaders—including Stephen Colbert, R. Crumb, Gary Larson and Charles Shultz—to embrace a firm and healthy irreverence towards the status quo. \u003cem\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/em\u003ecolumnist and bestselling author Mary-Lou Weisman (\u003cem\u003eMy Middle-Aged Baby Book\u003c\/em\u003e) helps Jaffe tell his remarkable story.\u003cbr\u003e | \u003cp\u003e Jaffee’s inventive work has enlivened the pages of \u003cem\u003eMAD\u003c\/em\u003e since 1955. To date he has pickled three generations of American kids in the brine of satire, and continues to bring millions of childhoods to untimely ends with the knowledge that parents are hypocrites, teachers are dummies, politicians are liars, and life isn’t fair.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e Jaffee’s work for \u003cem\u003eMAD\u003c\/em\u003e has made him a cultural icon, but the compelling and at times bizarre story of his life has yet to be told. A synopsis of Jaffee’s formative years alone reads like a comic strip of traumatic cliff-hangers with cartoons by Jaffee and captions by Freud. Six-year-old Jaffee was separated from his father, uprooted from his home in Savannah, Georgia, and transplanted by his mother to a shtetl in Lithuania, a nineteenth-century world of kerosene lamps, outhouses, physical abuse, and near starvation.  He would be rescued by his father, returned to America, taken yet again by his mother back to the shtetl, andonce again rescued by his father, even as Hitler was on the march.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e When he finally settled back in America as a twelve-year-old wearing cobbled shoes and speaking his native English with a Yiddish accent, schoolmates called him “greenhorn.” He struggled with challenges at least as great as those he had met in Europe. His luck changed, however, when he was chosen to be amember of the first class to attend New York City’s High School of Music and Art. There his artistic ability saved him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e He would go on to forge relationships with Stan Lee, Harvey Kurtzman, and Will Elder, launching a career that would bring him to \u003cem\u003eMAD\u003c\/em\u003e magazine. There he found himself at the forefront of a movement that would change the face of humor and cartooning in America.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e A cliff-hanger of a life deserves a page-turner of a biography, and that is what Mary-Lou Weisman and Al Jaffee have delivered.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“I’ve been privileged to know many brilliant cartoonists, but the incredibly creative, supremely talented Al Jaffee is right up there at the top of the list.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eStan Lee\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“When I am among other cartoonists talking about the giants in our field, one of the first names that comes to the conversation is Al Jaffee and we all agree, He is a cartoonists cartoonist!” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSergio Aragones\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“At last the inventor of the Mad Fold-In offers us a panoramic fold-out: what first looks like the genial bearded self-caricature seen in lots of Al Jaffee Mad cartoons opens up into a vast tableau of survival, trauma and family dysfunction that spans from Old World to New and from tears born of laughter to laughter born from tears. It’s an unnerving biography with a moving graphic novel hidden inside it.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eArt Spiegelman, author of MAUS\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Al Jaffee’s Mad Life lays bare in harrowing yet often riotous detail how a Southern boy, twice uprooted by his mother to Lithuanian shtetls on the eve of World War II, grew up to become a tireless satirist for some of America’s cheekier magazines.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Dey Street Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44889286607077,"sku":"NP9780061864483","price":27.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780061864483.jpg?v=1730230931","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/al-jaffees-mad-life-a-biography-isbn-9780061864483","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}