# Book identification - humor book (Sam Levenson-like) from 1965-1975 probably **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [July 13, 2025, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826 "2025-07-13T23:05:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2025, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/1 "2025-07-13T23:05:25Z")
In the 1980s, there was a library that had some non-library books in a lounge (they were not in “the system,” they were just there for browsing while relaxing or taking away if you wanted). One of them was a humor book by an American Jewish author (rather like [Sam Levenson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Levenson). I judge the period it was written as the mid-60s through the mid-70s because the humor talked about “kids these days in college” - meaning hippies. The only bit I remember specifically was chapter about “The Tsuris\* Factor” (or “Tsuris Coefficient” - something like that) - the way that kids could establish their countercultural bonafides - with the winning play being “My parents were smeared by McCarthy” (or “smeared by the House Committee” - something like that). Anyone have a clue as to what the book was? “Tsuris” = “trouble or woe” (Yiddish) ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/2 "2025-07-14T00:14:10Z")
The Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten? > **[The Joys of Yiddish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Joys_of_Yiddish)** > > The Joys of Yiddish is a book containing a lexicon of common words and phrases of Yinglish—i.e., words originating in the Yiddish language that had become known to speakers of American English due to the influence of American Ashkenazi Jews. It was originally published in 1968 and written by Leo Rosten. > The book distinguished itself by how it explained the meaning of the Yiddish words and phrases: almost every entry was illustrated by a joke. This made the book not only a useful reference, b... ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/3 "2025-07-14T00:17:43Z")
Maybe - wish I could find a relevant excerpt online ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e4f/32.png) [@Digital\_is\_the\_new\_Analog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_is_the_new_Analog)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/4 "2025-07-14T00:57:58Z")
There is a little bit at > **[The joys of Yiddish : a relaxed lexicon of Yiddish, Hebrew and Yinglish words...](https://archive.org/details/joysofyiddish00pock/mode/2up)** and presumably more if you have an account there. I don’t have one so I can’t say if it has anything relevant to what you remember. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/5 "2025-07-14T01:34:30Z")
Thank you. I’ll give it a look, but this book seems a little too focused on actual information about Yiddish than the more freeform humor I half remember ---
**Author:** ![Peanuthead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peanuthead/32/360_2.png) [@Peanuthead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peanuthead)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/6 "2025-07-14T01:35:51Z")
Maybe something by Art Buchwald? ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/7 "2025-07-14T01:36:28Z")
Could be. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/8 "2025-07-14T01:56:14Z")
I looked through the Leo Rosten book on Internet Archive and it looks like a dictionary. If you do a search for tsuris on Internet Archive, hundreds of hits come up. You don’t need an account to search, but it’s very easy to create one. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/9 "2025-07-14T03:11:01Z")
All the books of humorous essays (we need a better word for them) in that era had a piece on college students and half of them were written by Jews. Only slight hyperbole there. Something about the phrasing makes me think of Calvin Trillin, but his kids weren’t old enough to go to college back then. He could have been writing about others, I suppose. Nothing else is ringing any bell. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/10 "2025-07-14T05:09:18Z")
I’ve read it, and probably still have it somewhere. There are lots of jokes in it, but I don’t remember him complaining about college students. There were tons of humor books that did - but none that I remember reading. ---
**Author:** ![XOldiesJock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/ec9cab/32.png) [@XOldiesJock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XOldiesJock)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/11 "2025-07-14T17:49:49Z")
There was a Jewish newspaper publisher and writer I recall my father liking particularly named Harry Golden. He was quite prolific from the 1940s up until his death in 1981. Many of his books were satirical, sometimes nostalgic and oftentimes political. Could he be the author of the book you found? From Wikipedia: _Calvin Trillin devised the Harry Golden Rule, which states that “in present-day America it’s very difficult, when commenting on events of the day, to invent something so bizarre that it might not actually come to pass while your piece is still on the presses.”_ ---
**Author:** ![De\_La\_Rue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@De\_La\_Rue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/De_La_Rue)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/12 "2025-07-14T21:14:21Z")
My first thought was _How to be a Jewish Mother_ or something else by [the same author](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Greenburg), but a search of the text at [the Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/howtobejewishmot1965gree/mode/2up) doesn’t have any results for “smeared”, “McCarthy”/“committee”, or “tsuris”. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/13 "2025-07-14T22:22:04Z")
Thanks guys. I’ll come back if I remember any other clues. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/14 "2025-07-14T22:26:12Z")
My parents had a joke book by [Harry Hershfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Hershfield). That sounds vaguely like what you’re looking for. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2025, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/15 "2025-07-14T23:42:20Z")
I checked my books by Harry Golden and didn’t see anything similar in a scan. However, I don’t have some of his later books and I found a source that said he really didn’t like student radicals. Nevertheless, no search on Golden and tsuris comes up with anything. Same with Dan Greenburg, though none of his books seem like good candidates. He raises a question. Was this book a collection by a single author or an anthology of humor? Greenburg, e.g., was included in many Playboy humor anthologies, which weren’t exclusively about sex. I have 300+ humor anthologies, so that could be a slog. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/16 "2025-07-15T00:03:46Z")
If I recall correctly it was a single author, and the humor was fairly gentle ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2025, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/book-identification-humor-book-sam-levenson-like-from-1965-1975-probably/1020826/17 "2025-07-15T02:09:32Z")
Gentle or gentile? 😆