Trudeau & Doonesbury

“Garry Trudeau, the most perceptive and delightful social satirist of our times, chronicled and defined a generation. In this well-reported and -researched book, Joshua Kendall helps us understand the roots of his humor and insight.”

—Walter Isaacson

“Through Doonesbury, Garry Trudeau emerged as one of the most sophisticated and insightful explainers of our generation’s vision of America. This excellent biography describes Garry as he was when I hung out with him as a teenager, and when I reconnected with him decades later. Kendall's finely wrought portrait will introduce the rest of America to the funny and kind truth-teller whom I have been proud to call a friend for over sixty years.”

—Howard Dean

“Garry Trudeau, one of the essential voices of his generation, is now the subject of an essential biography. Joshua Kendall tells the story with everything his subject brought to his own comic art: style, wit, passion, intelligence, and deep reporting. No joke: This is a first-rate work, every bit as smart as it is entertaining.”

—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life

“The nation's first investigative cartoonist, Garry Trudeau has been both breaking stories and getting Americans to laugh at themselves for over half a century. In this fast-paced, engaging narrative, Joshua Kendall traces the arc of Trudeau's exemplary career. Kendall's entertaining book will provide readers with both a deeper understanding of recent American history and many smiles.”

—Tom Brokaw, anchor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004 and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller

“Joshua Kendall has written an intimate life of Garry Trudeau that doubles as a history of modern media. Tracing Trudeau’s path from campus upstart to Pulitzer Prize–winning pioneer, Kendall shows how he reinvented not just the comics page but political journalism itself. With the rigor of a historian and the joy of a fan, Kendall makes a persuasive case that satire, done right, is a public service. This is cultural history with a cartoonist’s timing: brisk, funny, and unexpectedly moving. Doonesbury doesn’t just skewer the powerful; it keeps faith with readers who crave the truth—and a laugh.”

—Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling novelist

“An exemplary biography, not just of a single American genius, but of the part of the baby boom generation that never stopped struggling to make the world better than they found it.”

—Rick Perlstein, New York Times bestselling author of Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge

“In Trudeau and Doonesbury, Joshua Kendall offers a compelling biography of one of our nation’s greatest journalists, a man who can distill an essay’s worth of analysis, critique, and satire into a four-panel comic strip. Kendall explores Garry Trudeau’s entire life, from his early comics at Yale—where he satirized his fellow student George W. Bush—to his nationwide fame. His outstanding book helps us understand how Trudeau became a spokesman for our generation, someone who spoke truth to power while compelling us to laugh along at life’s many absurdities.”

—Henry Louis Gates Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor, Harvard University