You can’t dig into Josh Karp’s A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever without feeling wistful for a time when a ship of literate fools could take on mainstream pieties with such swagger and deep-cutting inspiration. Sure, we have The Onion and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report—all doable in some degree thanks to ground broken by the Lampoon—but it just doesn’t feel the same. This bio of comic genius Doug Kenney is a 20-years-later companion to Tony Hendra’s Going Too Far, a sweeping history of boomer humor, which you should also read.