New York Times Bestseller : The US Army invades a small Connecticut town in this Cold War comedy classic.Harry Bannerman drinks his nightly bourbon on the train from New York City to Putnam's Landing, Connecticut. A typical commuter, he has a bald spot, a house, two mortgages, three children, and a wife who is a committed soccer mom and pillar of the community. Harry just wants to curl up on the couch with Grace when he ge...

A rags-to-riches tale so outrageously hysterical it could have only come from the marvelous mind of Max Shulman, bestselling author of The Many Loves of Dobie GillisA sensitive boy growing up in a bad neighborhood, Harry Riddle doesn't fit in with the kids who hold up gas stations, steal purses, and drop safes on policemen. He prefers to contemplate the American dream and his father's advice for achieving it: "Get rich, boy. Then sleep till noon and screw '...

Riotous tales of the college playboy-next-door —the basis for the iconic television show. "Shulman's creation was born a sitcom hero" (The A.V. Club).Including stories first published in Cosmopolitan and the Saturday Evening Post, this bestselling collection follows the romantic escapades of Max Shulman's famed collegiate Don Juan. Like most undergraduates, Dobie Gillis is a bit scattered—sometimes he's as quick as a whip, other t...

This hysterical follow-up to The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis details the lifelong pursuits of the pint-sized Don JuanEach chapter—straight from the diaries of Dobie Gillis—is a true experience from our hero's life between the ages of thirteen to thirty. All the experiences are about girls, because that's what Dobie's life is about: girls.In "Girls: Their Cause and Cure," Dobie is a sixth-grader with the serious issue of being shorter than every girl ...

The raucous and randy adventures of a stateside soldier during World War IISergeant Dan Miller wanted to be a flying ace, but the air force grounded him for poor vision. To make matters worse, when the myopic Miller travels home to Minneapolis on furlough, he finds the local "feather merchants"—aka civilians—breaking all the wartime rules. They're guzzling black-market gas, hoarding rationed food, and listening to suspiciously expensive radios. But the most troublin...

Big tobacco meets the boob tube in this incendiary satire from the bestselling author of The Many Loves of Dobie GillisJefferson Tatum is a self-made man. Founder of Tatum Cigarette Company, he wrote the brand's advertising jingle—"Tatums smoke mild like an innocent child"—and has been bringing home big money—and hunting huge bears—ever since. But this year his tobacco sales are down 3 percent thanks to the surgeon general's cancer warnings. To make matters...

Home from the war, a veteran finds that his battles have only just begun in this zany and irreverent satire from the author of Rally Round the Flag, Boys!Last seen gallivanting on a college campus in Barefoot Boy with Cheek, Asa Hearthrug traded in his varsity jacket for khaki and fought his way across the Pacific. Now he's back in his hometown of Whistlestop, Minnesota, eager to share his war stories, but no one wants to listen—they've already see...

A Jewish freshman searches for love and money at the University of Minnesota in this raucous satire from the author of The Many Loves of Dobie GillisIt's the middle of the Great Depression and Morris Katz and his cousin Albert are broke. The self-declared "best humpers in St. Paul," they haven't quite figured out how to make their talents pay. But that's all about to change when they head off to college on a mission from Morris's mother to find rich, unattr...

A wild and witty satire of American college life from the author of The Many Loves of Dobie GillisOn his first day of college, farm boy Asa Hearthrug enthusiastically jumps out of bed—and discovers that his pajama pants are caught in the bedsprings. He learns that his dog has died, and his father, in an effort to soften the blow, tells an absurd story about a female bullfighter. Next, the freshman pays a visit to his high school sweetheart to say a heartfel...

The American Pipe Dream examines the many iterations of addiction as it was performed over the first half of the twentieth century, working from a massive archive of previously ignored material. Because the stage-addict became the primary way the U.S. public learned about addiction and drug use, Shulman argues that performance was essential in creating the addict in America’s cultural imagination. He demonstrates how modern-day perceptions of addiction and of the addict emerge fro...

The American Progressive Era, which spanned from the 1880s to the 1920s, is generally regarded as a dynamic period of political reform and social activism. In Performing the Progressive Era, editors Max Shulman and Chris Westgate bring together top scholars in nineteenth- and twentieth-century theatre studies to examine the burst of diverse performance venues and styles of the time, revealing how they shaped national narratives surrounding immigration and urban life. Contributors ...

Theatre has long been an art form of subterfuge and concealment. Working in the Wings: New Perspectives on Theatre History and Labor, edited by Elizabeth A. Osborne and Christine Woodworth, brings attention to what goes on behind the scenes, challenging, and revising our understanding of work, theatre, and history.Essays consider a range of historic moments and geographic locations—from African Americans’ performance of the cakewalk in Florida’s resort hotels during the Gi...