"The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" (1939) is Thurber's best-known short story. Mitty is a mild-mannered man who shuts out his nagging wife and other troubles by daydreaming about himself as hero.

Thurber's The Thurber Carnival (1945) is collection of over one hundred stories and drawings by Thurber and represents the best of his humorous work written during the 1930s and 1940s.

Remember Laughter: A Life of James Thurber (1994), by Neil A. Grauer, is the most accessible of the Thurber biographies. It includes photographs and a selection of Thurber's most famous drawings.

Robert Benchley's My Ten Years in a Quandary (1936) portrays common American men struggling with the frustrations of twentieth-century life.

America's Humor: From Poor Richard to Doonesbury (1978), by Walter Blair and Hamlin Hill, is a history of American humor.