The Best of Fisher
28 years of Editorial Cartoons from Faubus to Clinton
George Fisher, with an Introduction by Ernest Dumas
270 Pages
978-1-55728-268-2 (cloth)
January 1993
$42.95
About
Here, with George Fisher at his very best, is a unique telling of the story of Arkansas and much of America from the time Orval Faubus first came to represent the state to the nation and the world until the year Bill Clinton assumed that role on a very different stage. Fisher’s cartoons have put into perspective much of what has occurred in Arkansas and a good deal of the United States From the 1970 to the early 1990s. These cartoons are also, let us hasten to say, a lot of fun, and sometimes deeply touching, as Fisher creates metaphors to give us new insights into the events that have filled our news magazines, television screens, and conversations.
Author
George Fisher began life in Searcy, Arkansas, and grew up at Beebe. He earned two Bronze Stars while serving in the European Theater of Operations during World War II and returned to Beebe with a young English wife, Rosemary Beryl Snook, whose nickname, “Snooky,” appeared hidden in all his cartoons published after 1976.
In 1946 Fisher became staff cartoonist for the West Memphis News. Three years later he moved to Little Rock and eventually established Fisher Art Service, a commercial graphics firm. In the early 1960s he arranged to do one cartoon a week for the North Little Rock Times. The Arkansas Gazette picked up the cartoons and in 1972 contracted for two cartoons each week. He was the Gazette’s chief editorial cartoonist from 1976 until the paper’s demise in 1991.
Praise
“For more than a generation, like a Greek chorus on the stage of Arkansas politics, George Fisher has periodically frozen the action to tell us what was going on. Some might have been more comfortable if he had chosen another career, but all of us would have been deprived of insight and humor we’ve sorely needed. George Fisher is one of Arkansas’ irreplaceable treasures.”
—Bill Clinton
“George fisher is without peer in the world of political cartoonist. . . .All Arkansas owe George a debt of gratitude for his unique and brilliant characterizations of life and politics.”
—Dale Bumpers