cover image Great Presidential Wit: A Collection of Humorous Anecdotes and Quotations

Great Presidential Wit: A Collection of Humorous Anecdotes and Quotations

Bob Dole. Scribner Book Company, $19.95 (240pp) ISBN 978-0-7432-0392-0

""After his perennial rival, Stephen A. Douglas, called him two-faced, Lincoln turned to his audience and drawled, `I leave it to you. If I had another face, do you think I would wear this one?'"" Lincoln's comeback is only one of many presidential quips, jokes, sarcasms, witticisms, self-deprecations and word-plays cited by Bob Dole in Great Presidential Wit: I Wish I Was in the Book. Convinced of the salubrity of humor in the Oval Office, Dole sets out to show that the most respected, fondly remembered and effectual presidents have been endowed with a funny bone, debunking the notion of the necessarily solemn face of leadership. (Jan.)