Social Studies

Any book with a blurb that proclaims it "laugh-out-loud" funny is bound to disappoint, and Social Studies has the added disadvantage of being written, as another blurb declares, by the "funniest woman in America." This collection of essays by Fran Leibowitz, who is a kind of a cross between H.L. Mencken, Erma Bombeck, and Woody Allen, has not aged well. There is a clever piece about comedy as a commodity, but much of the rest will have the reader wondering what all the fuss was about 30-odd years ago.