Laughter has surprisingly little to do with jokes and funny stories.
With startling effect, laughter reveals why humans can talk and other apes cannot and leads to the discovery of the event essential for the evolution of human speech and language. Laughter is used as a powerful, uncensored probe into human social relationships, revealing that tickle is an important form of tactile communication, that women laugh more at men than vice-versa, that speakers laugh more than their audience, and that laughter is a social glue that draws group members into the fold. The first book to establish laughter as a topic of scientific worth, Laughter includes such esoterica as the history of holy laughter, operatic laughter, laugh records, laughing gas, canned laughter, and a description of the Tanganyikan laughter epidemic that immobilized an entire school district during 1962. This book will change forever the way you view laughter. Laughter is even stranger than you imagine.