Before The Simpsons, SNL and social media memes, there was MAD. Launched by Harvey Kurtzmann in 1952, it gleefully thumbed its nose at all the postwar pieties, unfazed by lawsuits or FBI ire. The MAD Files features essays on the most subversive magazine ever to be sold on US newsstands, with contributors including Adam Gopnik, Roz Chast and Art Spiegelman, who writes “I couldn’t learn much about America from my refugee immigrant parents – but I learned all about it from MAD.” Editor David Mikics joins Liel Leibovitz, whose High Holy MAD essay delves into the Jewishness behind its hugely influential humour.
An event from Jewish Book Week 2025.
