The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker

What could be better than a gigantic 656-page collection of 2,004 (get it?) of the best cartoons published in the New Yorker over the last 80 years? Perhaps a double CD set with all 68,647 cartoons ever published in the magazine-complete with a nifty search function that allows readers to search for cartoons by year of publication or by cartoonist's name. This improbably large offering is a bonanza of wry Manhattan-centric comic commentary on urban life and much else in American culture over the years. There's Peter Arno's 1948 ink-and-wash cartoon of a mildly concerned matron, book in hand, asking her newspaper-reading husband, "Is there a Mrs. Kinsey?" Or Peter Steiner's now famous cartoon drawing of two dogs chatting in front of a computer. "On the Internet," says one canine to the other, "nobody knows you're a dog." The book offers an introduction by New Yorker editor David Remnick and short essays introducing each decade-which readers may want to read after perusing the cartoons first-by such New Yorker luminaries as Roger Angell, Lillian Ross and John Updike.