Mr Legman's analytic study of erotic humour is based on thirty years of collecting and research in America and elsewhere. In Volumes 1 and 2 of Rationale of the Dirty Joke over 2,000 jokes and folk-tales are presented and commented on as being most typical and significant. They are transcribed in all their innocent unexpurgaiety, linked by Mr. Legman's witty, wide-ranging historical and socio-analytic discussion of what these jokes mean to the people who tell them, and to those who listen and laugh.

In each volume, the jokes and stories are arranged logically by subjects. As well as being unsurpassed compendiums of uproarious humour, the two volumes of Rationale of the Dirty Joke offer the reader many acute insights into the often hidden real nature of both sex and laughter.