Tony Auth's cartoons, seemingly simple and always direct, have influenced public opinion and politicians for more than 40 years. "Our job is not to amuse our readers," says Auth of a national artistic heritage of editorial cartooning that began with Benjamin Franklin in 1754. "Our mission is to stir them, inform and inflame them."

Auth was a fledgling artist from California in 1971 when The Philadelphia Inquirer flew him in for a weeklong job interview as the paper's editorial cartoonist, and thus began a Pulitzer Prize winning legacy of excellence that documents the changing political and cultural landscape of both the Philadelphia region and the world.

Now, for the first time, this retrospective book gathers together the full range of Tony Auth's cartoons on a wide variety of subjects. From Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama, from the energy crisis to the financial crisis, this collection includes cartoons that touched the lives of countless readers in our region and, through syndication, all over America.