This Land Was Made for You and Me (But Mostly Me): Billionaires in the Wild - Hardcover

BRUCE McCALL is a Canadian expat who began his working career in a commercial art studio, switched to journalism and then advertising, and began writing and painting humorous subjects in the Seventies, first with the National Lampoon, and then The New Yorker, where he has illustrated fifty covers. McCall has published six books, including a memoir about growing up Canadian. He lives in New York City.

DAVID LETTERMAN is an American television host, comedian, and film and television producer. He has been the host of The Late Show with David Letterman since 1982. The author lives in New York City / New York City.

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