I can’t believe I wrote this book. I spend my life making shit up for comedic effect and thought that granted me the ability to never again have to pull all-nighters with stacks of academic books in front of me, but I realized very quickly upon biting off this project that I’d need help from people smarter than me.
But I’m not doing a bullshit-ass bibliography like this is my dissertation. If anything, making a living in comedy allows me to not care if I get called before an academic tribunal for insufficiently cited sources. Come and get me, academic cancel culture! I will tell you the books I read and people I pestered repeatedly about this book. If I got any details wrong, it’s their fault and not mine at all. I truly did try to get everything right here historically, but I am positive I failed repeatedly, so please forgive me if there are any historical inaccuracies.
I read a shit-ton of books for this and so many were amazing. For the section on AA and recovery I attempted to read William White’s intimidating tome Slaying the Dragon: The History of Addiction Treatment and Recovery in America. I looked up AA literature like the shockingly well written Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers. AA World Services were very helpful in sending me a recording of one of my old AA talks. Of course I also reread the Big Book, AA’s central text, Alcoholics Anonymous.
In the rave section I was helped along by great documentaries like Pump Up the Volume: A History of House Music from British broadcaster Channel 4, What We Started on Netflix, and a super helpful email back from a legend, Mr. Marshall Jefferson. How giddy I was when he responded. (I’ve now cited two movies and an email, so I know the PhD isn’t coming through.)
Let’s get more serious:
I could not have written the Burning Man chapter without the help and support of my friend Brian Doherty and his incredible book This Is Burning Man, which in my mind is the seminal work on the subject. Alexi Borshart, Buck Down, and others helped me fact-check.
For the Judaism section, I just used Wikipedia. JK. But actually not JK; I did use it. My brother, the Rabbi David Kasher, was unfairly tasked with being my go-to source for every single question I had. When his wisdom failed me, I turned to Professor David Henkin from UC Berkeley’s history department. For my family history I owe a huge debt to my amazing tante, the poet Breindie Kasher, I love you. Also my cousin Mendel Horowitz was supremely helpful in untangling the family knot.
Deafness and interpreting were a deep dive into a history I knew but didn’t know as well as I thought. Shoshannah Stern helped so much, as did Professor Douglas Baynton, who fact-checked this section and was so kind, as I was a stranger to him. My mother was invaluable as she always is, and she dumped a stack of books on deafness so tall I thought I’d never get through any of them. I read A LOT. Katie Booth’s The Invention of Miracles shed light into the twisted mind of Alexander Graham Bell and his world. Oliver Sacks’s classic Seeing Voices was a delight to revisit and led me to the definitive book on the subject, Harlan Lane’s When the Mind Hears, which I loved and learned so much from. The history of the deaf community in Martha’s Vineyard was brought back in full color by the delightful book Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language by Nora Ellen Groce.
Comedy, the world I currently inhabit and make a living from, was so much fun to research thanks to Kliph Nesteroff, who is the absolute authority on the subject and who called me back whenever I had a question. His book The Comedians is required reading. Wayne Federman’s The History of Stand-Up is also a fun read and made so many things clear to me that I hadn’t understood before. He also pitched me titles for this book! What a guy! And he’s hilarious. Louis Katz let me run ideas by him even though he didn’t always agree with my conclusions. Joe Mande, Brent Weinbach, Andrew Michaan, and Nick Thune helped me figure out when things were too corny. I owe every comedian for inspiring me and making our history come alive in real time. It’s a great and awful time to make a living in comedy.
Other people I owe a thanks to are Ahamed Weinberg, who told me a joke I’d written in this text wasn’t offensive. It was later removed from the book by my editor, so I guess he was wrong. Guy Branum was generous with me when I needed a last-minute joke and I was stumped. John Rose and Truck Torrence offered feedback and friendship.
I am realizing that this section about sources is turning into an acknowledgments, so let’s just do that.