American Laughter, American Fury offers a cultural history of early America that shows how humour among white men served to define and construct not only whiteness and masculinity but also American political culture and democracy more generally.

Eran Zelnik traces the emerging bonds of affinity that white male settlers in North America cultivated through their shared, transformative experience of mirth. This humour—a category that includes not only jokes but also play, riot, revelry, and mimicry—shaped the democratic and anti-elitist sensibilities of Americans. It also defined the borders of who could participate in politics, notably excluding those who were not white men. While this anti-authoritarian humour transformed the early United States into a country that abhorred elitism and class hierarchies, ultimately the story is one of democratisation gone awry: this same humour allowed white men to draw the borders of the new nation exclusively around themselves.

January 2025 | Hardback 352 pages | ISBN 9781421450605 | Price £54.00