A nice history of Chicago’s famous improv comedy troupe. The book does a good job delving into Second City’s origins, calling up Chicago’s theater scene in the early 1950s as well as the acting “games” that inspired the group’s original approach.

From there, author (and longtime Second City creative director) Sheldon Patinkin takes us to the present day, pausing to catch up with famous alumni, notably the Murray-Belushi-Ramis core in Chicago and the Akroyd-Candy-Radner glory days in Toronto. There are tons of familiar faces in here, from Alan Arkin to Tina Fey, and it’s fun to see how they intersected with Second City (sometimes briefly) before moving on to other things.

The lifers have a presence as well, including original owner (and occasional director) Bernie Sahlins, producer Joyce Sloan and actor/director/madman Del Close. It may just be effective PR, but the book does have a nice familial feel, emphasizing the ties, and the occasional fights, that drew these disparate performers together.

The book is more a history than a humor collection; jokes and bits are interspersed throughout its pages, but it’s more a collection of memories. There’s often a lot going on–actors coming and going, new playhouses opening in different spots to try to make some money. The narrative sometimes seems reduced to just a sequence of events–“this happened, then this happened, etc.” But the performer profiles sprinkled throughout and the clear reverence for what the group accomplished offer a unifying thread.

Hardly a tell-all, this is still a good read for comedy fans interested in the institutional side of things. It probably helps to be a Chicagoan…or at least a Torontonian.

More humorous short stories from Simon Rich, who’s been on a roll lately in the New Yorker. I like his style, which involves calmly building on familiar tropes until they explode into the absurd. On the whole, this series is good–there aren’t many duds in the bunch. But there didn’t seem to be many standouts either, and I think that’s in part because of the theme Rich has chosen.

“The Last Girlfriend on Earth” is pretty much devoted to boy-girl pairings, with both participants in their twenties and the relationship either coming, building, or gone. There’s a lot of good humor to find in the topic, and Rich does, but the organizing principle for the collection doesn’t offer a lot of thematic range.

My favorite stories were ones that changed the setting or the rules somewhat. We have a great caveman love story with “I Love Girl,” and God deals with the pressure of creating the cosmos and maintaining a happy relationship in “Center of the Universe.” There’s also a surprisingly touching story about the age and retirement of a boy’s first condom in his wallet in “Unprotected.”

But while Rich tries not to stereotype, a lot of his stories capture a view of women as some unknowable “other,” weird and capricious. It’s a view that will feel familiar to many guys in their teens and early twenties (heck, maybe even older) as they try to figure out the mysteries of dating and love. But it feels limiting in many of the stories, and a couple, like “Scared Straight” and “The Girlfriend Repair Shop,” give a real whiff of the locker room.

But all in all, the stories are funny, and Rich doesn’t seem to want to make anyone look bad. I look forward to checking out another of his collections.

I’m reading King Richard III, and I had to laugh at this footnote in the intro to the New Cambridge Shakespeare.

“Probably the most famous story about Burbage [one of Shakespeare’s lead actors] also concerns “King Richard III.” On 13 March 1602, John Manningham wrote in his “Diary”: ‘Upon a tyme when Burbridge played Rich. 3 there was a citizen greue soe farr in liking with him, that before shee went from the play shee appointed him to come that night unto hir by the name of Ri: the 3. Shakespeare overhearing their conclusion went before, was intertained, and at his game ere Burbridge came. Then message being brought that Rich the 3.d was at the dore, Shakespeare caused returne to be made that William the Conqueror was before Rich. the 3.’”