Burt Kearns’s “Shemp!”

As we have been reminded yet again, America can be a cold-hearted and vaguely moronic place. But let the optimistically inclined remember that, along with contemporary political disasters, these very qualities can lead to occasional glories—none more cold-hearted and moronic than the endlessly fabulous Three Stooges.

Even the lowliest bumpkin can celebrate Larry, Moe, and Curly. But Stooge cognoscenti have long bowed to those alternate Stooges who, at various points in the group’s history, emerged from the bullpen. Of those players, perhaps none has been as beloved as the singularly odd Shemp Howard, older brother of Moe and Curly. Lowbrow Reader subscribers read Drew Friedman and M. Sweeney Lawless’s odes to Shemp back in issue #10. Now, the Stooge receives a graceful, full-blown biography in the form of Shemp!, by the sharp-eyed author Burt Kearns, featuring a foreword by (him again!) Friedman. Thorough, engaged, and loving, the book explores a long-gone entertainment ecosystem through an unlikely hero. To read it is to love Saint Shemp even more than before.

So perk up and turn this autumn around! Run to a real (or, if you must, virtual) bookstore and pick up Shemp! today. For if Abraham Lincoln can be the subject of more than 15,000 books, Shemp Howard certainly deserves at least this one, right?