An all-star team of eighteen conservative writers offers a hilarious, insightful, sanctimony-free remix of William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues—without parental controls. The Seven Deadly Virtues sits down next to readers at the bar, buys them a drink, and an hour or three later, ushers them into the revival tent without them even realizing it.
 
The book’s contributors include Sonny Bunch, Christopher Buckley, David “Iowahawk” Burge, Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Graham, Mollie Hemingway, Rita Koganzon, Matt Labash, James Lileks, Rob Long, Larry Miller, P. J. O’Rourke, Joe Queenan, Christine Rosen, and Andrew Stiles. Jonathan V. Last, senior writer at the Weekly Standard, editor of the collection, is also a contributor. All eighteen essays in this book are appearing for the first time anywhere.
 
In the book’s opening essay, P. J. O’Rourke observes: “Virtue has by no means disappeared. It’s as much in public view as ever. But it’s been strung up by the heels. Virtue is upside down. Virtue is uncomfortable. Virtue looks ridiculous. All the change and the house keys are falling out of Virtue’s pants pockets.”
 
Here are the virtues everyone (including the book’s contributors) was taught in Sunday school but have totally forgotten about until this very moment.  In this sanctimony-free zone:
 
• Joe Queenan observes: “In essence, thrift is a virtue that resembles being very good at Mahjong. You’ve heard about people who can do it, but you’ve never actually met any of them.”
• P. J. O’Rourke notes: “Fortitude is quaint. We praise the greatest generation for having it, but they had aluminum siding, church on Sunday, and jobs that required them to wear neckties or nylons (but never at the same time). We don’t want those either.”
• Christine Rosen writes: “A fellowship grounded in sociality means enjoying the company of those with whom you actually share physical space rather than those with whom you regularly and enthusiastically exchange cat videos.”
• Rob Long offers his version of modern day justice: if you sleep late on the weekend, you are forced to wait thirty minutes in line at Costco.
• Jonah Goldberg offers: “There was a time when this desire-to-do-good-in-all-things was considered the only kind of integrity: ‘Angels are better than mortals. They’re always certain about what is right because, by definition, they’re doing God’s will.’ Gabriel knew when it was okay to remove a mattress tag and Sandalphon always tipped the correct amount.”
• Sonny Bunch dissects forbearance, observing that the fictional Two Minutes Hate of George Orwell’s 1984 is now actually a reality directed at living, breathing people. Thanks, in part, to the Internet, “Its targets are designated by a spontaneously created mob—one that, due to its hive-mind nature—is virtually impossible to call off.”
 
By the time readers have completed The Seven Deadly Virtues, they won’t even realize that they’ve just been catechized into an entirely different—and better—moral universe.

This volume of The Snobs of England and Punch's Prize Novelists is an addition to The Thackeray Edition collection, the first full-scale scholarly edition of William Makepeace Thackeray's works to appear in over seventy years, and the only one ever to be based on an examination of manuscripts and relevant printed texts. It is also a concrete attempt to put into practice a theory of scholarly editing that gives new insight into Thackeray's own compositional process. In The Snobs of England, a series of amusing satirical sketches, Thackeray provides a panoramic awareness of the many varieties of human folly, identifying snobbery not as a social attitude but as the unworthy admiration of foolish things. Punch's Prize Novelists presents a series of illustrated burlesque parodies of Thackeray's contemporary writers, including Edward Bulwer, Benjamin Disraeli, Mrs. Catherine Gore, G.P.R. James, Charles Lever, and James Fenimore Cooper. The works are edited here from a comparative study of all relevant documents: from the first published appearances to the last editions touched by the author.

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea

In a beautiful pea-green boat

They dined on mince, and slices of quince
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
 
The Owl and the Pussycat is only the most familiar of Edward Lear’s numerous nonsense verses, which have delighted millions worldwide for the last two centuries. Now his beloved verse and drawings are compiled here in a handsomely produced volume of classic material.

Leariana runs rampant in this enchanting treasury; readers encounter such indelible Lear creations as “snail mail,” while drawings of the Stripy Bird and images of the heroic and irrepressible Foss in heraldic poses are scattered throughout. Lear’s zany illustrations are reproduced here in their full vibrancy, and the goofily delightful art, including his illustrated nonsense alphabets, infuses Lear’s fanciful phrases and humorously incomprehensible limericks with their original liveliness and irresistible spirit.   Rarely has the powerful charm and timeless appeal of Edward Lear’s work been available in such a beautifully produced edition, and So Much Nonsense is a gift that will unleash the imaginations of young and old alike.

Thomas Inge and Ed Piacentino bring their knowledge of and fondness for this genre to a collection that reflects the considerable body of scholarship that has been published on its major figures and the place of the movement in American literary history. They breathe new life into the subject, gathering a new selection of texts and adding Twain—the only major American author to contribute to and emerge from the movement—as well as several recently identified humorists.