“When humor goes,” Erma Bombeck infamously wrote, “there goes civilization.”

That’s why the celebrated humorist would get a kick out of the essays in Laugh Out Loud: 40 Women Humorists Celebrate Then and Now … Before We Forget, a nostalgic, amusing look at life through the ages.  The book, published by prolific writer Allia Zobel Nolan in conjunction with the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop, was named one of the best indie humor books of 2019 by Independent Book Publishing Professionals.

One of the anthology’s contributors has written eight books. Others have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other national and regional publications. A few, like Fritzy Dean, an 82-year-old great grandmother, have never seen their work published in a book.

“The stories in this book reflect a philosophy (my mom) always believed: If you can’t make it better, you can laugh at it,” daughter Betsy Bombeck wrote in the preface.

Laugh Out Loud, available on Amazon and in the University of Dayton Bookstore, reminds us that laughter is serious business.