When the Atlantic Monthly celebrated its 150th anniversary by publishing excerpts from the best writing ever to appear in the magazine, in the category of the humorous essay it chose only four pieces: one by Mark Twain, one by James Thurber, one by Kurt Vonnegut, and Ian Frazier’s 1997 essay “Lamentations of the Father,” the title piece of this new collection of essays featuring 32 additional humor pieces written during the past 13 years. A frequent contributor to the New Yorker, Ian Frazier is a past winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor.