Richard H. Minear

Before he was a beloved children's author, Dr Seuss was a political cartoon. Those are words to inspire terror, because we all no that there is no such thing as A Good Cartoon, and that in the infinite parade of Lesters, McCoys, Asays, and Ramirezes, There is Always More and it is Always Worse. Thank the almighty Bors that Seuss remains Seussian, even when dealing with various serious subjects like Hitler and WW2.

Really, there is nothing as delightfully Suessian as Hitler's dachsund powered show more war machine stalling in the Russian winter, or Benito Mussolini as a propped up, battered, relic addressing an empty square. Seuss goes after fascists overseas and at home, excoriating isolationists like Charles Limbaugh for abandoning the world to monsters, while at the same time demanding an all-out effort to win the war, by bringing Labor and African Americans into the war effort. The only sour note are the depictions of the Japanese. It's a shame that a man could produce a cartoon about driving out the bug of racial prejudice one week, and then show the Japanese as slant-eyed monkey devils the next. But that's why history is history. An essential book for adult lovers of Dr Seuss, political cartoon aficionados, and WW2 buffs. show less

As we sit on the brink of WWIII (or far in its depths according to some sources) reading this collection of Dr. Seuss's editorial cartoons from the WWII era is especially poignant. Written and illustrated during the mid-point of his career they come as no surprise , I'm sure, to any reader of his books with half a brain - tepid children's stories they are not (always) and his comics provide a medium for even more pointed jabs at the establishment, the status quo, and the general laziness in show more society. Unfortunately, hindsight may be 20/20, but we don't seem to have learned much... show less

From January 1941 to January 1943, Dr. Seuss drew hundreds of cartoons for PM, a left-wing New York daily paper. The style is familiar Dr. Seuss, but the subject is the war, and the content highly political. The book is divided into a few themes, with commentary at the beginning of each chapter, followed by a series of cartoons. Margin notes indicate which cartoons are referenced in the commentary. The format requires a lot of flipping back and forth between the words and the cartoons, but show more allows for greater visual impact by giving each cartoon its own page. Minear provides a good historical background for each cartoon, and ties them together in a continuous narrative. He explains all the elements in the cartoons, often pointing out details that I might have missed. Of course, that attention to detail sometimes leads to over-analysis, but overall the commentary is well balanced. I like this book both as WWII history and as an art collection. show less

The political comics of Theodor Geisel are presented in this book with enough background, commentary, and context to be really appreciated. The political points being promoted by each comic aren't always obvious, and Richard Minear's elaborations are as illuminating as they are concise.

He also doesn't sugar-coat or excuse the problems of Mr. Geisel's work, pointing out how Geisel addressed racism against Jewish and Black people while also being unselfconsciously racist against Japanese show more people (including Japanese-Americans).

I really enjoyed reading this book, and I learned much more about World War II (and especially domestic US politics at the time) from it than I had expected to. show less