In this entertaining and provocative new work, Joel Schechter selectively surveys political satire covering a wide range of periods and events from Aristophanes to the present. His absorbing essays focus on the satire of Jonathan Swift, Charlie Chaplin, Will Rogers, Dario Fo, and the Guerrilla Girls, among others. Schechter argues that some politicians are as theatrical, if not as comic, as the plays, pamphlets, and films in which they are...