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In the early 1960s a new style of situation comedy took over primetime as Bewitched, Gilligan’s Island, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., I Dream of Jeannie, My Favorite Martian, and other “Outsider Sitcoms” featuring alien characters disrupting their TV environments shot to the top of the ratings. Departing from a critical approach that understands these series as reflections of the decade’s many social disruptions, The Castaways reveals the programs as emotional responses by their creators to a more personal upheaval: their loss of influence in the broadcast industry. As network executives turned increasingly to audience research, independent producers felt the ability that had been most crucial to their success in broadcasting was being devalued: gut creative intuition. Drawing on memoirs, show treatments, and other original documents, The Castaways uncovers how leading characters on the programs served as emotional proxies for their creators’ fears of industry irrelevance as they were cast out from the corporate halls of power where their series’—and personal—fates were decided.

Why did Barack Obama court Jon Stewart and trade jokes with Stephen Colbert during the campaign of 2008? Why did Sarah Palin forgo the opportunity to earn votes on the Sunday morning political talk shows but embrace the chance to get laughs on Saturday Night Live? The Dance of the Comedians examines the history behind these questions—the merry, mocking, and highly contested anarchies of standup political comedy that have locked humorists, presidents, and their fellow Americans in an improvisational three-way “dance” since the early years of the American republic. 

Peter M. Robinson shows how the performance of political humor developed as a celebration of democracy and an expression of political power, protest, and commercial profit. He places special significance on the middle half of the twentieth century, when presidents and comedians alike—from Calvin Coolidge to Ronald Reagan, from Will Rogers to Saturday Night Live's “Not Ready for Prime Time Players”—developed modern understandings of the power of laughter to affect popular opinion and political agendas, only to find the American audience increasingly willing and able to get in on the act. These years put the long-standing traditions of presidential deference profoundly in play as all three parties to American political humor—the people, the presidents, and the comedy professionals—negotiated their way between reverence for the office of the presidency and ridicule of its occupants. 

Although the focus is on humor, The Dance of the Comedians illuminates the process by which Americans have come to recognize that the performance of political comedy has serious and profound consequences for those on all sides of the punch line.

The dramatic story of the fights and compromises that shaped an Irish community

Disdained by many Yankee residents as Catholic lowlifes, the growing Irish population of the Lowell, Massachusetts, “paddy camps” in the nineteenth century proved a tempting source of cheap labor for local mill owners, who took advantage of the immigrants’ proximity to exploit them to the fullest. Displaced by their cheaper labor, other workers blamed the Irish for job losses and added to their plight through repression and segregation.

Now in paperback and featuring a new preface, Brian C. Mitchell’s The Paddy Camps demonstrates how the Irish community in Lowell overcame adversity to develop strong religious institutions, an increased political presence, and a sense of common traditions.