I recommend Jokes and Targets as a valuable scholarly study where thoughtul analysis is brought to bear on a wide variety of significant materials and the writing style is pleasantly engaging.
* Studies in American Humor *
Jokes and Targets deserves a wide readership among persons interested in humour as well as comparative and cultural sociology. Davies shows that cross-national comparison can produce good theory and rigorous analysis, without losing sight of cultural specificities.
* Sociology *
Christie Davies' Jokes and Targets is a well-written and well-researched book.
* H-France Review *
Jokes and Targets, being an excellent piece of scholarship, helps to further clarify why certain targets have become conventional and what are the rules that govern target choice.
* Folklore *
Jokes and Targets is well worth the price of admission. It is a valuable addition to Davies's existing and esteemed corpus of humor research.
* Cultural Analysis *
[J]okes and Targets is an important addition to Davies' significant previous research on various categories of verbal joke. . . [T]his book, like Davies' previous work, contains a valuable repertoire of jokes from important contemporary joke cycles. These important and sometimes hard-to-find examples will be a rich source for other scholars. Vol. 11.1 2013
* New Directions in Folklore *
Davies maintains a lively, provocative style-refreshing in a genre that is all too commonly soulless. . . . Highly recommended.
* Choice *
Christie Davies has a very good claim to be the scholar to consult on the universal phenomenon of the joke, with the added bonus that he offers plenty of hilarious examples.
* Journal of Contemporary Religion *
This is a serious book, clearly written (no sociological jargon from this sociologist!), about something that makes no political difference . . . but that is, after all, deeply embedded in us to the extent that we are social creatures.
* Chronicles *
