CARTOONS OF THE ROARING TWENTIES: Volume 1,...

CARTOONS OF THE ROARING TWENTIES: Volume 1, edited by R. C. Harvey (Fantagraphics Books: $8.95). This first collection of drawings taken from the original Life magazine between January, 1920, and December, 1922, documents an era when the art of cartooning blossomed in America like a madcap flower. Some of the jokes about Prohibition, Sunday blue laws and women smoking seem dated, but the cartoons themselves remain fresh because the level of drawing is so high. Few artists working today can match the elegant, graphic austerity of Gluyas Williams, the wonderfully lumpy style of T. S. Sullivant or the sheer pen-and-ink virtuosity of Charles Dana Gibson. Students of cartooning and anyone interested in the history of American mores will enjoy this very funny book.