For four decades, Ogden Nash was among the most perceptive and valuable chroniclers of life in twentieth-century America, a social observer of the sharpest insight, whose humor, sanity and cheerful cynicism appealed to countless numbers of people of all ages. The Old Dog Barks Backwards is a posthumouse collection of seventy-seven Nash verses, many of which have been published in magazines, but none of which has ever appeared in book form. There is no basic theme to them -- the verses range in their subject matter as widely as did Nash's interests, which were very wide indeed.