“[Karp has] written an essential American excavation of comedy that is, of itself, very, very, very, very, very, very funny.” —Bill Zehme, author, Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman

“A must-read for the curious, comedy aficionados, and subversively shy teenagers everywhere.” —Mark McKinney, actor, Kids in the Hall

“The definitive behind-the-scenes account of the man and publication that all but defined the comedy zeitgeist of the last 35 years.” —Rob Siegel, former editor, The Onion

“This book is as close as I’ll come to meeting Doug Kenney. It’s close enough.” —Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller

“The definitive profile of Kenney’s brilliant comic mind and his too-short life.” —Richard Roeper, film critic, Chicago Sun-Times

“Screenwriter Kenney (Animal House; Caddyshack), co-founder of National Lampoon, was one of the gifted gagsters who ignited the 1970s revolution in American humor. Journalist Karp (Playboy; Premiere) delivers an iridescent, polychromatic portrait of the humorist, framed within an amusing anecdotal history of National Lampoon. To chart the magazine’s rise and fall, Karp conducted 150 interviews, mapping every avenue of business decisions, feuds, romances, cocaine use and bizarre pranks. It all began at Harvard, where wild wit Kenney and misanthropic Henry Beard became “symbiotic creative forces,” revitalizing the Harvard Lampoon. When they teamed with publisher Matty Simmons, National Lampoon was born in 1970, filling the “gigantic void” between the New Yorker and Mad. Success led to heightened hilarity as the brand expanded with posters, products, theatrical productions and recordings. The 1973 National Lampoon Radio Hour cast resurfaced in 1975 on Saturday Night Live, but the anarchic Animal House in 1978 catapulted Kenney to Hollywood—as Karp writes, “He had transformed himself from nerd to preppy to hippie and now to unassuming millionaire artiste.” - PW“

From Booklist

“When Doug Kenney, Henry Beard, and a handful of other Harvard Lampoonalums launched National Lampoon, one of their dreams was to create a long-lived American humor magazine to match Britain’s venerable Punch. But for a few ill-advised business and creative decisions, they might have succeeded. Instead NL first transformed early-1970s anti-authoritarianism into lively, intelligent humor, then devolved into a formulaic, low-brow, mildly reactionary rag with a predilection for T&A and body–function jokes. Kenney shepherded NL through its first years, writing first-rate satire, before stumbling through a series of personal crises ended by a mysterious, perhaps suicidal, fall to his death in Hawaii in 1980. Both Karp’s well-researched analysis of why NL succeeded, shuddered, and ultimately crashed and his biography of Kenney are compelling, and the latter is also mysterious. Early success in the magazine world and later in Hollywood (Kenney had a hand in Animal House and Caddyshack) only seemed to make Kenney more miserable. Karp’s account of Kenney’s death is as moving as the excerpts from excellent NL articles are hilarious.” - Jack Helbig