"What's So Funny?: A Cartoonist's Memoir" by David Sipress

From David Sipress' web page. 

David Sipress, a dreamer and obsessive drawer living with his Upper West Side family in the age of JFK and Sputnik, goes hazy when it comes to the ceaselessly imparted lessons-on-life from his meticulous, secretive father and the angsty expectations of his migraine-prone mother. 

Sipress paints his hapless place in the family, from the time he is tricked by his unreliable older sister into rocketing his pet turtle out his twelfth-floor bedroom window, to the moment he walks away from a Harvard PhD program in Russian history to begin his life as a professional cartoonist. 

This poignant, compelling family story is also a meditation on creativity and the art of cartooning, and Sipress’s cartoons appear throughout What's so funny? with spot-on precision, inducing delightful Aha moments in answer to the perennial question aimed at cartoonists: Where do you get your ideas?

What's So Funny?: A Cartoonist's Memoir
David Sipress

Harper Collins Publishers

$22.39 US