The Savage Mirror: The Art of Contemporary Caricature (1992)

Unlike verbal jokes, good caricatures do not lose their punch after the first encounter. Thus this collection that spans the century contains many old and welcome friends, from George Grosz's work in the '20s to Philip Burke's portraits in the '80s and '90s. (Several of the pieces from the past three years were done for Entertainment Weekly.) The accompanying text in Steven Heller and Gail Anderson's The Savage Mirror: The Art of Contemporary Caricature explains the influences at work on artists (Art Deco, Art Brut, Neo-Expressionism), the cultural forces that determined their subject matter, and the editorial ideas driving their various distortions. A+