The National Lampoon, founded in 1969 by Harvard graduates and Harvard Lampoon writers Doug Kenney and Henry Beard, was a monthly humor magazine that trafficked in bawdy irreverence—challenging authority and taste, pushing buttons and boundaries, all the while redefining satire and the American comic landscape. While Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons are often cited as wellsprings of modern provocateur comedy, they are but branches on the National Lampoon family tree. The magazine’s caustic contributors included P.J. O’Rourke, Michael O’Donoghue, Tony Hendra, John Hughes, Al Jean, and Edward Gorey, and when its enterprising reach grew to include radio and live performance, Bill Murray, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Chevy Chase, Christopher Guest, and Harold Ramis joined the fray. In lively interviews and captivating archival footage, the history of the magazine’s heyday and demise is captured with apt indulgence and wit, revealing the antiheroes of the antiestablishment.  TM