Laughing All the Way; An incisively irreverent history of the modern world.

Byline: Jeffrey Wasserstrom (Wasserstrom is a history professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of the forthcoming "China's Brave New World--And Other Tales for Global Times.")

Larry Gonick, a polymath with a sense of the absurd, has mastered the art of producing graphic, pun-filled books that simultaneously entertain readers and educate them about the past. Publishers Weekly aptly described his multivolume "Cartoon History of the Universe" as "hilariously informative," and his "Cartoon History of the United States" took playful potshots at many patriotic conceits. Now Gonick has re-entered the historical fray with "The Cartoon History of the Modern World, Part 1: From Columbus to the U.S. Constitution" (259 pages. Collins), the first in a series devoted to tackling the complexities of our increasingly interconnected modern world.

In this volume, he demonstrates his usual combination of winning traits. He can be erudite, especially when treating the history of scientific subjects, such as the ideas of Galileo and Copernicus. He can be irreverent; he titles his chapter on Columbus "Visionary Bungler." And he can display a madcap sensibility. In a full-page image detailing the proto-globalization of the 1600s, driven by sea trade, he not only shows the expected galleons plying the oceans but also Santa Claus (perched at the North Pole chortling "OBOY! CHEAP TOYS!") and a flying saucer with space aliens. Gonick seems torn, in a charming way, between aspiring to be the next Carl Sagan and the Mel Brooks of comic books.

Gonick teases out the roots of globalization in chapters such as one called "Going Global," which primarily depicts Europe's 16th-century forays into trade and exploration. He skewers the conceits of European countries that presented themselves as speaking for "civilization" (even when their representatives were behaving savagely in Africa, Asia and the New World) and is equally caustic toward the framers of the U.S. Constitution, who ...