Bill Nye

Bill Nye was the pen name of Edgar Wilson Nye, the nineteenth-century American humorist and journalist, not the later science educator who shares that name. Comic History of the United States presents American history through comic exaggeration, mock solemnity, and Frederick Burr Opper's energetic illustrations. The work first appeared in 1894 through J. B. Lippincott, with later Chicago editions from Thompson & Thomas circulating under closely related cover and title-page forms. Nye's preface explains his playful method: facts provide a framework, while humor supplies the clothing. That approach grew from his newspaper career and the national reputation he built after founding and editing the Laramie Boomerang in Wyoming Territory. Opper's contribution is substantial, since the cartoons continually answer and extend Nye's prose rather than merely decorating it. For modern readers, Comic History of the United States is best read as historical satire, carrying both the wit and assumptions of its era, and as a collaboration between a humorist and cartoon illustrator.