Beginning with B. D., the hard-helmet Jock, and on through Joanie Caucus, the feminist; Zonker Harris, the hippie; Mark Slackmeyer, campus radical—not to mention Michael Doonesbury himself, who is Charlie Brown's older brother kicked out into the world—Mr. Trudeau steadily evolved into a first-rate political satirist of contemporary immorals and unmanners. This progress is admirably charted in "The Doonesbury Chronicles," a collection of 572 of what Mr. Trudeau considers his best strips. They culminate in Watergate, and these are the most slashing, but reading the whole of Mr. Trudeau's work one comes to see him as a satirist who gentles his barbs with a laugh or a "what-can-you-do?" shrug, and who is always held back by a sense of the humanity of even his targets. (p. 7)

Richard R. Lingeman, in The New York Times Book Review (© 1975 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), December 7, 1975.