The Art of Ill Will: The Story of American Political Cartoons Book

The Art of Ill Will is a comprehensive history of American political cartooning, featuring over two hundred illustrations. From the colonial period to contemporary cartoonists like Pat Oliphant and Jimmy Margulies, Donald Dewey highlights these artists’ uncanny ability to encapsulate the essence of a situation and to steer the public mood with a single drawing and caption. Taking advantage of unlimited access to The Granger Collection, which holds thousands of the most significant works of Thomas Nast and the other early American cartoonists, The Art of Ill Will provides a survey of American history writ large, capturing the voice of the people — hopeful, angry, patriotic, frustrated — in times of peace and war, prosperity and depression.

Dewey tracks the cartoonist’s role as a jester with a serious brief. Ulysses S. Grant credited cartoonists with helping him win his election and was not the only president to feel that way; political bosses and even state legislatures have sought to ban cartoons when they endangered entrenched interests; General George Patton once promised to throw beloved wartime cartoonist Bill Mauldin in jail if he continued to “spread dissent.” (Mauldin later won the Pulitzer Prize.)

Despite the increasing threats they face as daily newspapers merge or vanish, cartoonists have given us some of our most memorable images, from Theodore Roosevelt’s pince-nez and mustache to Richard Nixon’s Pinocchio nose to Jimmy Carter’s Chiclet teeth. At a time when domestic and foreign political developments have made these artists more necessary than ever, The Art of Ill Will is a rich collection of the wickedly clever images that puncture pomposity and personalize American history.

Cartoonists include: Benjamin Franklin (whose “Join, or Die” was the first modern American political cartoon), the astoundingly prolific Thomas Nast, Puck magazine founder Joseph Keppler, Adalbert Volck, suffragist Laura Foster, Uncle Sam creator James Montgomery Flagg, Theodore Geisel departing from his Dr. Seuss persona to tackle World War II, Herbert “Herblock” Block (who so enraged Richard Nixon that the president canceled his subscription to the Washington Post), Daniel Fitzpatrick, Jules Feiffer, Paul Conrad, Gary Trudeau, and the controversial Ted Rall.

The New York Times - Elsa Dixler

…an afternoon with The Art of Ill Will is time well spent.