G. B. Trudeau

"It all started a few years ago with Vietnamization and protective reaction, and B.D., the charismatic quarterback from Garry Trudeau's syndicated comic strip Doonesbury, had it all figured out back then. He tells fellow ROTC man Bernie, no matter how seemingly incompetent our Chief Executive appears to be, he is actually far more crafty than we could possibly imagine. Before you know this thesis, read it. And while you're at it, check out Mark Slackmeyer, erstwhile student radical, and Arnie, the genteel and erudite bricklayer from the Ozarks, and see why the Doonesbury people populate one of the most popular cartoon strips in America."--Page 4 of cover

The President is a Lot Smarter Than You Think

Relates the experiences of Uncle Duke when he becomes America's envoy to China and follows Virginia Slade's campaign for a Congressional seat from California.

An Especially Tricky People

Wouldn't a Gremlin Have Been More Sensible?

"An instant biography of the Great Gonzo, John Connally's seminar on Free Enterprise Seminar Training, and Mike Doonesbury's support for the Anderson presidential campaign are included among this collection." -- Amazon.com

He's Never Heard of You, Either

Trudeau-esque newsbreaks involve the poignant Son of Arnold and Mary Leiberman, the self-anchored Roland Burton Hedley, Jr., muckraker Joanie Caucus, apricot farmer Uncle Duke, and other media freaks

"Any Grooming Hints for Your Fans, Rollie?"

This collection of Doonesbury begins with the long-awaited, never-expected marriage of Honey and Duke: hardly the social event of the season, it takes place in the American Embassy in Beijing and involves a groom who is only in it for the money--the $1 million offered by Donald Trump for the rescue of Ms. Huan, China's "No. 1 hooligan." The plot thickens...and thickens. Bad enough that eight friends are all cramped out in Mike and J.J.'s living room. When even Mr. Butts starts bringing home houseguests (like his old pals Mr. Jay and Mr. Caffeine) it's time for Mr. Doonesbury to see a psychiatrist. We meet the Divine Miss N, a pack of nicotine gum whose affair with William Bennett supplies him with 40 mgs a day. Buttsy clarifies the issue. "C'mon Billy Boy, wake up and smell the smoke! We have a drug czar who's a drug addict." You're Smokin' Now, Mr. Butts! is primo Trudeau--provocative, inimitable, and indispensable reading.

A Doonesbury Book

You're Smokin' Now, Mr. Butts!

Twenty-Five Years of Doonesbury

Flashbacks: Twenty-Five Years of Doonesbury

A third "Doonesbury" anthology offers an entertaining collection of Trudeau's political commentary, social satire, and philosophical wit

Notes from Underfoot, 1978-1980

The People's Doonesbury

Trudeau's outspoken cast of wise innocents make their ways through the mid-1970s--Joanie Caucus in Washington, Uncle Duke in Samoa and Peking, and Rick Redfern, Jimmy Thudpucker, and friends wherever

Doonesbury's Greatest Hits

A collection of the Doonesbury strips from a seven month period that chronicle the wounding of B.D. in Iraq and his experiences along the road to rehabilitation.

One Step at a Time

The Long Road Home

The Thrill is Gone, Bernie

This breathtaking volume boldly, cheerfully, and blankly stares back across the stunningly mellow life and times of Zonker Harris. From his Californian-American roots to his legendary status as surfer, nanny, and former sun god, his career trajectory has unfailingly carried him ever deeper into the homegrown heart of the American daydream. A puddle-plumbing denizen of Walden Commune, Harris spent his formative years as a bodaciously freaked-out college student. His innovative decoding of the rites and rituals of the burgeoning counterculture put him on the cover of Time. Forced by a strategic oversight to graduate from college, Harris blazed a path to glory on the pro tanning circuit. His triumph in the George Hamilton Cocoa-Butter Open set a high watermark for the sport. Family values led Harris to devote considerable time to helping his stunned parents refill their empty nest. Extended-family values propelled him into a career as a professional nanny, in which capacity he has indeed taught the children well--especially Sam, who was surfing the long board while still in diapers. Later, leveraging his political cluelessness, Zonker served on the disastrous Duke2000 presidential campaign. A devoted foot soldier in the war against AIDS suffering, Zonk is held in high regard among SoCal's medical marijuana community for the efficacious potency of his magic brownies. Unfazed by worldly success, he remains a true and gentle freak. After all, he humbly notes, I am but one dude.

The Big Book of Zonker

Dude

Presents selections from the Doonesbury cartoons from Zonker Harris's formative years as a freaked-out college student to his legendary status as a surfer, nanny, and former sun god.

The fourth volume of this retrospective anthology covers the Pulitzer prize-winning cartoon strip from 2000 to 2010. On October 26, 1970, G.B. Trudeau introduced the world to a college jock named B.D. and his inept and geeky roommate, Mike Doonesbury. Fourteen thousand strips later, Doonesbury has become one of the most beloved and acclaimed comic strips in history. Over the years, the world of Doonesbury grew uniquely vast, sustained by an intricately woven web of relationships—over forty major characters spanning three generations. The complete 40: A Doonesbury Anthology presents more than 1,800 comic strips that chart key adventures and cast connections over the last four decades. Dropped in throughout this rolling narrative are twenty detailed essays in which Trudeau contemplates his characters, including portraits of core characters such as Duke and Honey, Zonker, Joanie, and Rev. Sloan, as well as more recent additions, such as Zipper, Alex, and Toggle. Trudeau also includes an annotated diagram that maps the mind-boggling matrix of character relationships. This fourth volume of the four-volume e-book edition of 40 covers the years 2000 to 2010 for the celebrated cartoon strip.

40: A Doonesbury Retrospective, 2000 to 2010

In Welcome to the Nerd Farm!: A Doonesbury Book life comes full circle as another Doonesbury Gen Nexer heads for college. With Zipper way-too-deeply embedded at Walden (America's number-one safety school) Alex boldly opts for MIT, the nerdfarm, where 30-hour study binges are de rigueur. Daily 911 calls home and a sense of doom (Just get some duct tape, roll me up in my bedspread, and ship me home . . .) give way as Gal Doonesbury finds fellowship among the similarly exhausted: No nerd left behind, explains roomie Drew, as they co-brainstorm their way through finals. The indomitable Granny D struggles with a life change as well; the move from sunny Oklahoma to live with Mike and Kim in saturated, caffeinated Seattle leaves her distinctly unbuzzed. Then there's the on-air unraveling of Mark and Chase's marriage (I'm tired of living with a Nazi!), with Joanie handling the technicalities of dissolving a legally nonexistent union. Equally traumatic is Uncle Duke's change of status, emerging from a months-long stupor to find himself pulling down six figures as a K Street lobbyist-and reregistering as a Democrat. Also shifting kin groups is B.D., who reluctantly joins PTSD group therapy, where Dex, Kurt, and Jason call him on much-needed 'tude adjustments. But there are signs of improvement: I didn't explode! he exults, after finding Zipper living in his office. That homeless yet ebulliently overoptimistic undergrad is deeply smitten with Alex, but is dangerously far ahead of her--picking out their future tabloid nickname before she even knows they're an item. Understandably, her considerable attention is focused elsewhere--on surviving MIT's killer grind and on the Battle of the Bots, a high-tech smackdown where she unleashes Alfie, an impudent, high-end hoverbot. Bring it, techgirl.

Welcome to the Nerd Farm!

Mike's summer daydream may be the only place we'll ever hear a thorough mea culpa from Dubya. But while mistakes have been made, lessons have been learned, even in the White House, where the Abramoff scandal inspires an official Ethics Refresher Course: "Right, good. Wrong, bad." The president seeks to clarify: "Invasions are still okay, though. Right?" And through these troubled times, how does 43 sleep at night? Alas, not well. "It's the stem cells. I hear their cries." Heckuva job. Roland's ubiquitous epaulets have recently come home from Rummyworld, "that vast, tumultuous terrorist theme park that used to be known as Iraq." At its chaotic outer edges, in al-Amok, Proconsul Duke survives numerous assassination attempts and the alleged courting of his sidekick by Iraqi suitors. But the serious new action is in New Orleans ("Looting, graft, profiteering -- it's all about the skill set, Honey") and Team Duke, like Halliburton, embarks for the Golf Coast, and sets up a command post on a FEMA-provided cruise ship. Elsewhere on the home front a fully-prostheticized B.D. is increasingly ambulatory, yet finds the struggle to reclaim his mind and emotions is by far the harder part of his journey. The collateral casualty count continues to rise as Zonker is forced to make a traumatic foray into the job market. The option-aware Alex launches an ambitious seven-school college tour, including Walden, where she is clued to her father's unbuttoned-down past. "You were a communist?" "That communard!" When campus total-insiders Jeff and Zip give her the ultimate tour, both are smitten by gal Doonesbury's formidable charms: "So how hot is she?" "Easy, Dude, that's my future wife."

Heckuva Job, Bushie!

This anthology from the acclaimed comic strip delves into the weirdness of America as it enters the twenty-first century, dot com, Dubya, and all. Even challenging George “Dubya” Bush to a “pronunciation bee” can't save Uncle Duke's weird horse race for the White House. In the end, the former Ambassador passes out in a snowbank while the Cheney Administration kicks into high gear. Predictablistically, the new presidential syntax isn't the only thing that's tortured and strange. Take myvulture.com, an Internet company born and born-again, worth $1 million or $500, depending on whether you ask the CEO or his mother; or look at Joanie Caucus as the turnover in Washington casts her career into play, if not into midlife crisis; or consider J.J. and Zeke, whose pay-per-view, online wedding yields mucho buzz but zero bucks—just like the rest of the Net. Yes, it's a Dubya Dubya Dubya world. Doonesbury just downloads it.

The Revolt of the English Majors

No rogue regime ever needed its evildoing professionally reframed more urgently than Greater Berzerkistan, whose president-for-life Trff Bmzklfrpz (pronounced "Ptklm") needs to spin a recent round of ethnic cleansing. Fortunately, the pariah state (and its 50-hole golf course, built overnight by Kurds and Jews) borders Iran, a fact that K Street uberlobbyist Duke is retained to parlay into a major U.S. arms package. Meanwhile, across town, the crumbling of the newspaper industry crushes Rick Redfern's hope of continuing employment. After 35 years at the Washington Post, he is ejected into the blogosphere, where his prose now battles it out with that of 1,186,783,465 rivals, including Roland Hedley, who takes the art of Twittering to a new self-reverential low. Truly, everyone in Doonesburyland is struggling to adapt. While white Washington insiders scramble to acquire some African American friends, longtime black conservative Clyde schemes to score Obama's Blackberry number, Clinton-era Dems are forced to attend the president-elect's "No Drama School," and Jimmy Thudpucker once again reboots his career--this time as a cell phone ring-tone artist. No one ever said change was pretty.

Tee Time in Berzerkistan

Collection of previously published comic strips.

The Life and Times of Doonesbury's Uncle Duke

Action Figure!

“In a class by itself.” —Jules Feiffer on Doonesbury This all-color volume celebrates the marriage of Alex and Toggle, an event which optimistically confirms that life, like Doonesbury, rolls on. Indeed, how remarkable that the strip has so embraced and occupied its era that three generations of one family have married within its panels. Gathering their kith and kin around them at Walden, the wise but wounded soldier-artist and the brilliant but insecure techhead make a promising team for the years ahead, well-rounded yet squared away. Doonesbury’s fifth decade finds the largest rep company in the history of comic strips fully and widely engaged. Like so many flesh-and-blood fellow citizens, key characters now struggle with dramatic career change and job stress. And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to reverberate through the lives of others, as the strip illuminates their experiences with an attentiveness unparalleled in popular culture. Amid the relentless unfolding of unexpected storylines, the strip’s second and third generation characters increasingly take center stage, and the youngest regular, Sam, comes of age—literally in the blink of an eye—as the newlyweds prepare to welcome twins. It never ends, and how lucky for readers. “Most comic strips run out of creative energy after their initial inspiration,” notes Garry Wills. “Trudeau has just kept improving, year after year.”

G. B. Trudeau

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