On Humour

Humor is a fascinating, beautifully written and humorous book about what humour can tell us about our human nature.

From antiquity to modernity and drawing on the work of a wide range of authors, notably Swift, Sterne, Shaftesbury, Bergson, Beckett and Freud, Humor turns the comic inside out and reveals a delicious insight into what we find funny. Humor answers questions such as: "Why do comedians suffer from depression", "Why do we laugh so much at animals" and "What goes on in racist and sexist humour".

Humor will not only appeal to readers from a range of disciplines such as philosophy, theology, literary studies, psychoanalysis, history and anthropology, but will also appeal greatly to anyone with a sense of humour - all of us, I hope.