This is one of my favorite books, my mother bought it new way back in 1942 and I have been enjoying it since I was old enough to read. Chas. Addams was a master of under-stated humor. Readers will recognize some of his cartoon charecters as the basis for the "Addams Family". ( )

This is the first collection of Charles Addams' cartoons for the New Yorker, originally published in 1941. If you're looking for the Addams Family, there are only about a dozen of the first cartoons featuring them. But all the cartoons are full of Addam's inimitable macabre humor and unforgettable imagery.

The printing in this edition, and ancient Pocket Books paperback, is not the best, and signficant details are blurred out of some of the drawings, unfortunately. And as usual there were a few jokes I just couldn't figure out, whether because I missed the context or just didn't look at it sideways enough. But some of the humor is a bit dated - some of it in the way where you sigh for the good ol' nonexistent days when men wore fedoras and women wore furs. Some of it in the way where you go "Wow. Yeah, that's racist." But if you can look past the blackface cannibals, much of it is still a good read. ( )