Corey Ford wrote more than thirty books and five hundred articles and stories in his long and varied career, but his most significant work as a humorist was done from 1926 to 1931. His most famous works were his monthly parodies for Vanity Fair, published under the pen name of John Riddell, and, written under his own name, a series of articles, "The Making of a Magazine," for the first issues of the New Yorker and two parodies of travel books--Salt Water Taffy and Coconut Oil--the first of which became a best-seller. Although strictly speaking not a member of the Algonquin Round Table "vicious circle," he was well acquainted with most of those writers who were, including Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott, as well as with such important literary figures as William Faulkner, Theodore Dreiser, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. His parodies were popular both in this country and...