I was surprised that there is such a wealth of information about jokes. About a fifth of the book is references and citations, because the author did his research before writing the book. And even with that, there was still so much that was subjective. For instance, there was a lot of discussion about punching down, where you make jokes that put down people in an inferior position. I agree with the overall position that even humor that may seem immoral is important and enjoyable. There were so many examples and different kinds of jokes, and I'll definitely be thinking about this book for a while as I make my sarcastic way through life. Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this.

I made it through about 1/3 of this book. I really wanted to like it and get into it, but I had a hard time seeing the through-line that kept me reading and learning. I love the concept of wisecracks and totally agree with the author that we do not often tell jokes. I just had a difficult time wanting to continue reading.

An ideal reader for this book might be someone who enjoys linguistics.

In Wisecracks by David Shoemaker we learn the difference between funny one liners wisecracks and put downs. He covers every kind of creation of joke there is and talks about the morality and in morality he also talks about jokes between friends and strangers. He talks about the morality of using jokes to degrade put down isolate ET see although I found there was a little repetitiveness to the book I do believe there was a benefit to his effort in where some may find this to be common sense there are those that will not. I don’t believe Mr. Schumaker left any group out when it comes to making people laugh with them and at them. this is a great book and one I definitely recommend. Because I must admit more than once I laughed while reading the book. I want to thank the university of Chicago press for my free art copy via NetGalley please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

David Shoemaker is a much-published philosopher and a Professor at the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell University, and in our modern reality of social media piling-on and cancel culture, he was interested in investigating what role humour (specifically wisecracks) plays in human interaction and whether there is something objectively valuable about this kind of “put down” humour that could speak back to the “prigs” with their efforts to silence others with a blanket “There’s nothing funny about ______” attitude. Wisecracks is the result of that investigation, and as Shoemaker is a fan of wisecracking humour himself, he entertainingly balances scholarship with snark and assembles what I found to be a compelling argument in favour of this type of joking around. This is exactly the sort of thing I like to read about, and it was well done.

I enjoyed this book. The subject matter is interesting with some strong opinions, not necessarily aimed to make the author popular. Some opinions are supported by facts, some are speculation. But Dr. Shoemaker is always clear when he is speculating, which I appreciated. I also appreciated that the book does not get bogged down in philosophical jargon; the writing is clear and concise and a background in philosophy is not required. One might think that a book on wisecracks would be funny, but this book generally isn’t and it isn’t meant to be, as far as I could tell. This is hardcore philosophy. But some of the cited jokes are funny and Shoemaker does have a good sense of humour, when he shares it. I also recommend reading the acknowledgements, which helped place the book in context. Thank you to Netgalley and University of Chicago Press for the digital review copy.