The title page tells us that this small work of 169 12mo. pages is introduced by Robert Tyson, that the author wishes to preserve his anonymity “in order to dispel any impression that this book is intended to publicize his private practice,” and that “the psychiatrist looks at life and pronounces it part dog, part alligator.”

He soon tells us the secret of “how to get the most out of this book”: “Hold the board covers with the left hand, grasp the pages firmly with the right hand, and pull.” We tried it, but the binders did too good a job and we were unsuccessful, so we carried on with the author's uphill “struggle from shoe-string to log cabin and the early days in Manhattan,” and a lot of clever and entertaining nonsense. Not quite as witty as Thurber, but with somewhat of the same general pattern and more sustained.