In his introduction to Liberating the Limerick, Ernest Lefever, founding president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, says that many of the 230 "irresistible classics" in the book "reflect facets of truth and virtue wrapped in the garments of irony and caricature." Contrary to the widespread myth, these verses lay bare "the foibles of the human drama with wit and irony" and without slithering into the gutter. The book is enriched by fifteen New Yorker cartoons.