Library of America special publication

Introduction / David Mikics -- Growing up MAD / Mary Fleener -- The golden age is twelve dept / Ivan Cohen -- Stark raving MAD / Geoffrey O'Brien -- A MAD childhood / Roz Chast -- The world according to MAD Magazine / Tim Kreider -- H. Kurtzman / Peter Kuper -- Cahiers du CinéMAD / Grady Hendrix -- MAD and me / R. Crumb -- MAD love / Art Spiegelman -- Preface to Gaines / Frank Jacobs -- What a load of craft! / R. Sikoryak -- High holy MAD / Liel Leibovitz -- Reverse immigrant / Mary-Lou Weisman -- Jaffee in Yiddish / Leah Garrett -- MADness in Anatolia / Michael Benson -- Brueghel of the Bronx / Daniel Bronstein --MAD's Jewish America / Nathan Abrams -- With a little bit of ecch: MAD and the movie musical / David Hajdu -- MAD and the insurrectionists / Clifford Thompson -- "Spy vs Spy" vs. Prohías / Bonnie Altucher -- Mind the gap / Sarah Boxer -- Normal / Max Andersson -- MAD, the '50s, and the '60s: a (slightly) dissident view / Adam Gopnik -- The "obscure and awesome" women cartoonists of MAD / Rachel Shteir -- To Antarctica and back / Chris Ware -- Here we go with our own execrable simulacrum: MAD fold-in / Jonathan Lethem and Mark Allen

A mainstay of countless American childhoods, MAD magazine exploded onto the scene in the 1950s and gleefully thumbed its nose at all the postwar pieties. MAD became the zaniest, most subversive satire magazine ever to be sold on America's newsstands, anticipating the spirit of underground comix and 'zines and influencing humor writing in movies, television, and the internet to this day. Edited by David Mikics, The MAD Files celebrates the magazine's impact and the legacy of the Usual Gang of Idiots who transformed puerile punchlines and merciless mockery into an art form. 26 essays and comics present a varied, perceptive, and often very funny account of MAD's significance, ranging from the cultural to the aesthetic to the personal