Howling Mad

by William M. Gaines (Editor)

The Mad Celebrity Primer, Spy vs Spy, Blue Chips Off the Old Block, If Corporations Ran Their Own Summer Camps, Don Martin - in a Doctor's Office, Summer Replacements in Everyday Life, If the U.S Government Bought Like the Public Buys, and that's not even half-way through the book. It's full of the best of Mad.

Genres: Comedy, Humor

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

Reviews

[Serena · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is pretty amazing how well the satire in this book has held since it was originally published in 1962.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

My brother had a selection of Mad paperbacks, of which this 1974 reprint edition was one. I tried reading the paperbacks, but was just far too young to get most of the humor. I did enjoy looking for the hidden extras in the art frames, which could include nudes, bizarre graffiti or signs such as "We sell contact lenses with frames."

Although most of this paperback consists of magazine selections from 1963, some stuff from 1967 was added. It's really quaint to see things like transistor radios, Metrical, a very young Mickey Rooney and EVERYBODY SMOKING. It was also a little sobering to see crooked Union organizers, jokes about JFK before he died, and the Strohmann baker icon twisted only the slightest bit to sell better bombs.

Unfortunately, my brother got rid of his Mad paperbacks before I was old enough to understand them. I've been reading a lot of very serious books lately, so I wondered if I could find any Mad paperbacks on the Internet Archive ... and lo, this appeared.

[FranklinTV · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think these were a way for MAD to republish stuff from the 50s and 60s in the 70s. So, to a young teen, a lot of the cultural references didn't (and some still don't) make sense. Still, some amusing stuff but nothing memorable.

[Jason Vedder]

Couldn't find the exact edition I read. Seems to have been published in 74 with most of the content from 62 and 64. It has Nueman as a werewolf on the cover. Content is nothing special