The Essential George Booth (The Essential Cartoonists Library)

This collection of work from New Yorker cartoonist George Booth is an absolute hoot. His drawings are insanely, gloriously cluttered. Motors, old tires, and hundreds of cats tumble out of corners and spread as far as the eye can see. Missouri native Booth tends toward affectionate bits of Americana: people living in a perpetual state of yard sale, a beleaguered husband doing slow burns behind his newspaper, and a particularly enthusiastic amateur band. Booth's characters exhibit a truly wonderful can-do spirit that flies in the face of logic--one cannot help but root for Mr. Pudney and his scheme to breed small horses as household pets. Interviews with Booth are dispersed throughout the book, giving a nice glimpse of the mind behind the work, but his laugh-out-loud cartoons more than stand on their own. --Ali Davis