Completely Mad, a diligent history of Mad magazine (by Maria Reidelbach, Little, Brown), is more than pop culture. It's literary and political history. Without Mad and the Goon Show, Canadians of baby-boomer age might have grown up innocent of biting satire. And where else could you get open material about sex, drugs and corruption in 196? Decorated with sidebars galore, including cartoons (M*U*S*H, Mad's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, One Busy Day in a Highway Restaurant), reproductions of all the covers and even those goofy Mad marginalia, this book is un-put-downable: biographies of the Usual Gang of Idiots, the origin of Alfred E. Neuman (no, Mad didn't make him up), and the story of how the Comics Code Authority forced William Gaines, Mad's publisher, to delete "obscene" drops of sweat from a black astronaut's brow in an early adventure cartoon.