Inside Jokes by Matthew M. Hurley, Daniel C. Dennett, Reginald B. Adams Jr.

http://www.amazon.com/Inside-Jokes-Using-Humor-Reverse-Engineer/dp/026201582X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1307032679&sr=1-1 Humor isn’t just fun, these authors argue; it’s evolution’s mechanism for building a brain that handles open-ended thinking.

MIT Press, 2011, 359 p., $29.95.