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Richard Zoglin
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BIOGRAPHY

Contributing editor, Time Magazine. Author of Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America, and Hope: Entertainer of the Century.

Primary Contributions (1)
Bob Hope with the USO
Stand-up comedy, comedy that generally is delivered by a solo performer speaking directly to the audience in some semblance of a spontaneous manner. Stand-up, at least in the form it is known today, is a fairly recent entertainment phenomenon. In the United States, where it developed first and…
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Publications (2)
Hope: Entertainer of the Century
Hope: Entertainer of the Century (November 2014)
By Richard Zoglin
“Revelatory…fascinating” (The New York Times): The first definitive biography of Bob Hope, featuring exclusive and extensive reporting that makes the persuasive case that he was the most important entertainer of the twentieth century.With his topical jokes and his all-American, brash-but-cowardly screen character, Bob Hope was the only entertainer to achieve top-rated success in every major mass-entertainment medium of the century, from vaudeville in the 1920s all the way to television...
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Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America
Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-up in the 1970s Changed America (January 2008)
By Richard Zoglin
What Peter Biskind did for filmmaking, Time magazine critic Richard Zoglin does for comedy in this meticulously researched and hilariously readable account of stand-up comedy in the 1970s. In the rock-and-roll 1970s, a new breed of comic, inspired by the fearless Lenny Bruce, made telling jokes an art form. Innovative comedians like George Carlin, Richard Pryor, and Robert Klein, and, later, Steve Martin, Albert Brooks, Robin Williams, and Andy Kaufman, tore through the country...
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