"There is every reason to believe that Victoria Bricker's monograph will become a classic in its niche of Mesoamerican studies. It is at once an application, based on the author's own fieldwork in three Tzotzil-speaking Indian communities in Chiapas, Mexico, of the much-lauded . middle range of generalization in the tradition of controlled comparison; a comprehensive survey of ritual humor in Mesoamerican ethnohistoric documents; and, finally, a broad comparative overview of ritual humor throughout modern Mesoamerica and the United States Southwest.".