As James Thurber writes in his preface, "This book contains a selection of the stories and drawings the old boy did in his prime, a period which extended roughly from the year Lindbergh flew the Atlantic to the day coffee was rationed.  He presents this to his readers with his sincere best wishes for a happy new world."  The Thurber Carnival, which the Saturday Review called "one of the absolutely essential books of our time," was a phenomenal bestseller when it was first published in 1945.  The omnibus, virtually all of which first appeared in The New Yorker, draws from such Thurber classics as My World and Welcome to It, My Life and Hard Times, Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated, The Owl in the Attic, The Seal in the Bedroom, and Men, Women and Dogs.  "It is time that we stopped thinking of James Thurber as a mere funny man for sophisticates and recognized him as an authentic American genius," wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer.  "Mr. Thurber belongs in the great line of American humorists which includes Mark Twain and Ring Lardner."