No Poems or Around the World Backwards & Sideways

Illustrated by Gluyas Williams. Ex library has numbers painted on the spine and residue inside back cover where library pocket was removed. Brown cloth exteriors with illustration in gray. The cloth is worn along the edges and at the top of the spine. Board showing a little at corners. Some soiling to the exteriors of binding. Page edges a little soiled. Binding a bit loose, book lies flat when open. Interior pages still mostly clean with a few bits of soiling here and there in the margins from handling. Page 131 has a small tear. 5" X 7.5" X 1.5" 12.5cm X 18XM X 4CM Robert Benchley was an American humorist who wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, New Yorker, and Vanity Fair and relies heavily on puns and wordplay and the common man commenting on the absurdities of life. This volume covers a wide range of subjects from around the world including "The Eel-Snooper" on the discovery of where eels breed (a long running scientific mystery 'til then) "More Work Ahead" on the construction of the Hoover Dam and "The Noon Telephone Operator" on trouble with telephone operators. This is a book from the 1930s and some of the pieces on other countries have not aged particularly well. See the photograph of the frontpiece with how African are depicted and this falls firmly in the category of "a product of its time". Many of the more general pieces still hold up well such as "The Truth About Thunderstorms" and the author being old enough now to admit he's scared of them. The illustrator Gluyas Williams also worked on the Harvard Lampoon and the New Yorker as well and his work also appeared in syndicated newspaper strips, Life, Collier's, and Century.