Review: Adrian Nicole LeBlanc on “the Original Queens of Stand-Up”

Surprise is an essential tool of stand-up comedy.  Its masters know how to use it to get an audience quickly up to the speed of the “conversation” they want to have—a connection limited less by their gifts than by the particular historical moment and the willing engagement of the crowd. The trailblazers featured in Shawn Levy’s new book In on the Joke: …