One might wonder what The New Yorker -- a magazine world famous for its essays, fiction, and humor -- has to say about money. This is not The Wall Street Journal, after all. But as Malcolm Gladwell, a regular contributor to the prestigious publication, writes, “What on earth does The New Yorker think about when it thinks about money? The short answer is that we make jokes about it.”

So Gladwell states in his introduction to On the Money: The Economy in Cartoons, 1925 - 2009 (Andres McMeel Publishing, LLC), more than a generation of hilarious single-panel efforts lambasting society’s most ambivalent subject. History buffs will nudge elbows with the cyclical spiking economies of days gone by, while the chronologically unaware will discover just how little has changed in 84 years. Nine different decades span nearly 300 pages, covering the magazine’s entire financial history inwhat is easily the most comprehensive published volume to date. Compiled by current New Yorker cartoon editor Robert Mankoff, On the Money is a sobering and hilarious anthology that demonstrates all of the magazine’s characteristic quality and welcomes anyone who’s ever made, spent, or lost a dollar in our economy. (www.andrewsmcmeel.com)