Despite a lull in his career, George Carlin (born 1937) has secured his reputation as one of America's greatest comedians. He has performed regularly on television with the likes of Ed Sullivan, Tom Jones, Steve Allen, Jackie Gleason, and Carol Burnett, worked the major nightclub circuit, and starred in a Fox television sitcom, The George Carlin Show.

In the late-1960s, Carlin drifted into his thirties, dissatisfied and uninspired with comedy. Even Carlin's promotional literature admits: "[B]ecause of the influence television was having on his career, Carlin's material grew bland and safe. The rebellious, anti-establishment tone of some of his earlier routines had disappeared."

Anyone who has seen a Carlin performance knows his comedy turns on biting brilliance. As Richard Zoglin of Time noted about the funnyman's early days, "Carlin's unctuous radio deejays, TV newscasters and commercial pitchmen were not simple parodies: he used them to satirize a...