Zebra Derby
Home from the war, a veteran finds that his battles have only just begun in this zany and irreverent satire from the author of Rally Round the Flag, Boys!
Last seen gallivanting on a college campus in Barefoot Boy with Cheek, Asa Hearthrug traded in his varsity jacket for khaki and fought his way across the Pacific. Now he’s back in his hometown of Whistlestop, Minnesota, eager to share his war stories, but no one wants to listen—they’ve already seen the movies.
Postwar America is a brave new plastic world, and Asa’s girlfriend dreams of settling down in a house made entirely of the synthetic material. To help make Lodestone La Toole’s fantasy a reality, Asa seeks his fortune in vitamin-infused cookie cutters, junkyard fan lamps, airplane fishing trips, and mobile culture emporiums. A failed capitalist, he flirts with communism but decides to rededicate himself to college instead. If only his professors didn’t expect every veteran to be a window-busting, wall-chewing, bloodthirsty maniac, he might actually get some studying done.
Max Shulman
Max Shulman (1919–1988) was an American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and short story writer best known as the author of Rally Round the Flag, Boys! (1957), The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1951), and the popular television series of the same name. The son of Russian immigrants, Shulman was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and attended the University of Minnesota, where he wrote a celebrated column for the campus newspaper and edited the humor magazine. His bestselling debut novel, Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1943), was followed by two books written while he served in the Army during World War II: The Feather Merchants (1944) and The Zebra Derby (1946). The Tender Trap (1954), a Broadway play cowritten with Robert Paul Smith, was adapted into a movie starring Frank Sinatra and Debbie Reynolds. His acclaimed novel Rally Round the Flag, Boys! became a film starring Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Shulman’s other books include Sleep till Noon (1950), a hilarious reinvention of the rags-to-riches tale; I Was a Teenage Dwarf (1959), which chronicles the further adventures of Dobie Gillis; Anyone Got a Match? (1964), a prescient satire of the tobacco, television, and food industries; and Potatoes Are Cheaper (1971), the tale of a romantic Jewish college student in depression-era St. Paul. His movies include The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (with Debbie Reynolds and Bob Fosse) and House Calls (with Walter Mathau and Glenda Jackson). One of America’s premier humorists, he greatly influenced the comedy of Woody Allen and Bob Newhart, among many others.
