Why does a Roz Chast cartoon make you chortle before you've even read it? Because you recognize that frumpy suburban housewife in the set of Bad Mom playing cards ("Promised to take daughter to the mall after school—and then didn't"); the schlubby, clueless husband sprawled on the couch and thinking, Birth, bed, bath, beer, bankruptcy, bunions, bifocals, balding, and beyond; the dorky kids at Camp Mandatory Fun! For nearly 30 years, Chast has been publishing her pointed, mercilessly accurate commentary on modern life in the pages of The New Yorker, and now comes Theories of Everything: Selected, Collected, & Health-Inspected Cartoons, 1978–2006 (Bloomsbury), by Roz Chast, heralded by New Yorker editor David Remnick, who calls Chast his resident genius. A book for the wry at heart.