The biography of the radio comic Fred Allen is a vision of comedy in the 20th century and of an individual remembered for his incisive wit and talent. Starting in vaudeville as the World’s Worst Juggler, graduating to the Broadway stage of variety shows and torch singers, Fred Allen became an American icon in the 1930s and 1940s. Drawing from Allen’s scripts, journals, letters and books, Robert Taylor has recreated that humour. Robert Taylor is the author of Saranac and is art critic and senior book critic for the Boston Globe .