Jokes and Targets

I recommend Jokes and Targets as a valuable scholarly study where thoughtul analysis is brought to bear on a wide variety of significant materials and the writing style is pleasantly engaging.

* Studies in American Humor *

Jokes and Targets deserves a wide readership among persons interested in humour as well as comparative and cultural sociology. Davies shows that cross-national comparison can produce good theory and rigorous analysis, without losing sight of cultural specificities.

* Sociology *

Christie Davies' Jokes and Targets is a well-written and well-researched book.

* H-France Review *

Jokes and Targets, being an excellent piece of scholarship, helps to further clarify why certain targets have become conventional and what are the rules that govern target choice.

* Folklore *

Jokes and Targets is well worth the price of admission. It is a valuable addition to Davies's existing and esteemed corpus of humor research.

* Cultural Analysis *

[J]okes and Targets is an important addition to Davies' significant previous research on various categories of verbal joke. . . [T]his book, like Davies' previous work, contains a valuable repertoire of jokes from important contemporary joke cycles. These important and sometimes hard-to-find examples will be a rich source for other scholars. Vol. 11.1 2013

* New Directions in Folklore *

Davies maintains a lively, provocative style—refreshing in a genre that is all too commonly soulless. . . . Highly recommended.

* Choice *

Christie Davies has a very good claim to be the scholar to consult on the universal phenomenon of the joke, with the added bonus that he offers plenty of hilarious examples.

* Journal of Contemporary Religion *

This is a serious book, clearly written (no sociological jargon from this sociologist!), about something that makes no political difference . . . but that is, after all, deeply embedded in us to the extent that we are social creatures.

* Chronicl