The 1980 edition of the Best Editorial Cartoons of the Year series, which has been banned by government authorities at the 1979 Moscow international Book Fair, contains the best works of some 130 leading editorial cartoonists from the United States and Canada and focuses on the 25 major news stories of the year.
Published each year since 1972, the 1980 edition features a foreword by Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York who analyzes the reluctance of the Soviet Union to allow its citizens to read such works.
If there be no other value to this new compilation of America's best editorial cartoons, he writes, let the reader examine it closely to learn precisely what it is that makes the government of a presumed superpower tremble.
He observes that, as the Soviets apparently have discovered, there are few things more subversive than humor.
Included among the news stories covered by the cartoonistsï ¿ ½ works are the holding of American hostages in Iran, the oil crisis, inflation, Supreme Court decisions, and the idiosyncracies of politicians everywhere.