The Essential Charles Barsotti (The Essential Cartoonists Library)

Cartoonists are finally getting their due. Compiled and edited by Lee Lorenz, former art editor of The New Yorker and an acclaimed cartoonist in his own right, The Essential Cartoonists library is a celebration of this unique visual art form. Each volume focuses on one truly outstanding artist and features approximately 150 of the artist's best cartoons, as well as insight into background, influences, inspirations, working habits, and more. Launching the series: The Essential George Booth and The Essential Charles Barsotti. Charles Barsotti is also a 30-year veteran of The New Yorker, and in Barsotti Lorenz presents an overview of this signature cartoonist whose rounded, elegant, sparsely detailed style evokes both the traditional world of a Thurber and the contemporary sensibility of a Roz Chast. With his simple repertory--including a nameless but lovable pooch and a monarch whose kingdom consists of a guard and a telephone--Barsotti manages to miraculously dissipate the clouds in people's minds with his unexpected humor.

Charles Barsotti is a thirty-year contributor to The New Yorker. A compulsive doodler in his youth, his early inspirations came from the Sunday comics and the weekly magazines that his parents subscribed to, one of which - The Saturday Evening Post - published his first cartoons in the 1960s. In 1969, when the Post sank, Barsotti (along with George Booth) was hauled aboard The New Yorker by William Shawn. He has also written and illustrated books, created ad campaigns and comic strips, and worked for magazines as diverse as Punch, Playboy, Barron's, and Texas Monthly. Mr. Barsotti lives in Kansas City, Missouri, with his wife, Rae.

Lee Lorenz, an acclaimed cartoonist, was art editor of The New Yorker from 1973 through 1993. Mr. Lorenz and his family live in western Connecticut.