Ralph Steadman's "gruesome pen-and-ink figures make Francis Bacon's paintings look like society portraits," wrote Michael Dirda in the Washington Post. David Streitfeld, also writing in the Washington Post, had a similar take on the British illustrator and author: "The world, it seems, disgusted Steadman, and so he made it look disgusting. He had the zeal of a social reformer, fearlessly wielding his brush to highlight hypocrisy and injustice." In so doing, Steadman, author and artist of a diverse array of books, nearly all of them humorous in some vein, developed a very idiosyncratic style.

Beginning his career as a political cartoonist in his native England, Steadman made a name for himself skewering American culture in the 1970s, and has written and illustrated numerous books for children. Steadman's visual imagery was described by one critic as "a crescendo of angry screams demanding reason and of almost apoplectic howls protesting...