Review of Humor 101

Reviews the book, Humor 101 by Mitch Earleywine (see record 2011-03367-000). In this book, the author tries to change peoples’ perceptions about humor research. Earleywine is both a psychologist and a stand-up comedian, and as such he is in a unique position to understand humor both from a scholarly point of view and also through the lens of someone who must be funny to succeed in his career as a comedian. Humor 101 sets out to cover humor research on topics that probably will be appealing to a wide audience that is not immersed in humor research but nonetheless is interested to know more about humor in a manner that is not too academic or abstract. In the reviewer's opinion, Humor 101 gives a good, albeit incomplete, overview of humor research with several important topics underrepresented or even ignored all together. This means that the book could serve as a good supplemental reading for a class on humor, or used as a complementary source for a class on a tangential topic. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)