The Story of A Family

Covering nine generations of a family originally active in the American revolution and the early building of America, The Story of a Family tracks the lives throughout the 19th and 20th centuries of a family noted for unusual strength of character and a knack for telling funny stories. An original feature of the book is the author’s use of family life to probe the nature of humor. He shows how the distinctive American humor exemplified by Mark Twain and modern humorists such as James Thurber and Garrison Keillor rose out of the difference between the Old World and the New World and the new dream of liberation that the America revolution originally released throughout the world. A psychologist, historian, and evolution theorist as well as the author of the award-winning The Healing of a Nation, author David Loye also shows how contrary to the widespread impression of humor as something of no great importance in life, more generally it arises both as a way of transcending tragedy and advancing human evolution.