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“Mr. Navasky’s wonderful book is a spirited homage to the art and craft of political caricature, a genre that has brought down the mightiest of the mighty—but one that has also landed its practitioners in prison, or even put them under threat of death.” —The Wall Street Journal

A lavishly illustrated, witty, and original look at the awesome power of the political cartoon throughout history to enrage, provoke, and amuse. As a former editor of The New York Times Magazine and the longtime editor of The Nation, Victor S. Navasky knows just how transformative—and incendiary—cartoons can be.

Navasky guides readers through some of the greatest cartoons ever created, including those by George Grosz, David Levine, Herblock, Honoré Daumier, and Ralph Steadman.  He recounts how cartoonists and caricaturists have been censored, threatened, incarcerated, and even murdered for their art, and asks what makes this art form so uniquely poised to affect us. Drawing on his own encounters with would-be censors, interviews with cartoonists, and historical archives across the globe, Navasky examines the political cartoon as both art and polemic over the centuries, brilliantly illuminating the true power of one of our most enduringly vital forms of artistic expression.