Larry grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, a place then so dull (“after you’ve been there three days, you can’t remember how long you’ve been there”) that tee ...read more
Larry grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, a place then so dull (“after you’ve been there three days, you can’t remember how long you’ve been there”) that teenagers were forced into self-entertainments ranging from popup performances in restaurants to throwing rocks at jumping cacti (Cylindropuntia fulgida) to watch them explode. After attending two fine public schools, Gonick received a BA summa cum laude (1967) and MA (1969) in math at Harvard. His mind blown by six months in India and the political upheavals of the time, Gonick abandoned grad school in ’72 to create his first comic strip, Boston Comix, in Boston After Dark (later The Boston Phoenix). In 1975-76, the Boston Globe made his Sunday half-pager, Yankee Almanack, a Bicentennial feature.
Gonick has written or coauthored: The Cartoon History of the Universe, a five-book, Harvey-Award-winning 1450-page graphic history of the world from the Big Bang to the first Iraq War; a series of Cartoon Guides to various topics in science and math, of which the latest is The Cartoon Guide to Biology, written in collaboration with Dave Wessner of Davidson College; the back-to-his-roots Hypercapitalism (coauthored by Tim Kasser); and several comic strips for grown-ups and kids. His History of the Telescope (with Bill Alschuler) is the only comic strip ever to appear in Science Magazine. He and his wife, the painter Lisa Goldschmid, live in San Francisco.
