This Land Was Made for You and Me (But Mostly Me): Billionaires in the Wild
Author and illustrator McCall teams up with late-night host Letterman for this brilliant parody of the lifestyle of the One Percent, the richest of the American rich. It’s a guide to their lavish vacation getaways: Midas Upwith’s Montana hunting lodge with an indoor landing strip; Scab Hitler’s shark-shaped, underwater artist’s studio; the remote mountain retreat of Skip and Irmtraud Bastinado (“he owns oil-rich Abu Dhabi, she collects chocolate-covered Fabergé eggs”) that’s accessible only by a massive catapult; F. F. Formica’s ranch house with its mile-long fireplace; Styrofoam billionaire Claude Ste. Nervous’ artificial iceberg. The text is witty, and McCall’s illustrations are beautifully executed, reminiscent of 1930s- and ’40s-style “world of the future” art from magazines like Mechanix Illustrated and Astounding Science Fiction. Paralleling the text, the illustrations have their own visual humor (the polar-bear rug on the floor of Ste. Nervous’ motorized iceberg). Readers who enjoy a good parody—especially something in the vein of Items from Our Catalogue, the 1982 spoof of the L. L. Bean catalog—will find much to laugh at here. --David Pitt