For the well-read cultural aficionado, The New Yorker is a Bible of sorts. The magazine serves as a weekly almanac of politics, world affairs, style and the arts. But the daunting length of most of the articles causes many college students (insert innocent face here) simply to look at the cover, read the cartoons and move on.

In his new book “Steinberg at The New Yorker,” author Joel Smith has not only compiled a vast collection of the covers, cartoons and drawings of one of The New Yorker’s most prolific and conceptual artists, Saul Steinberg, but also has assembled everyone’s favorite aspects of the magazine in a convenient format.

Steinberg, a native of Romania, started as a cartoonist for The New Yorker in 1941 after he emigrated from Italy. He continued to produce art — including 89 covers and more than 1,200 drawings — for the magazine until his death in 1999.

Steinberg is especially known for his geographical cartoons, in which he creates maps that tell stories in addition to demonstrating a variety of attitudes. For example, Steinberg’s often reprinted 1976 cover, “A View of the World from Ninth Avenue,” shows everything between the Hudson River and the Pacific Ocean as a vague mass of land, highlighting landmarks such as Nebraska, Chicago and Los Angeles — the classic Manhattan-centric New York outlook.

Smith, the Fisher Curator at the Francis Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, organizes a wide range of Steinberg’s illustrations by subject matter and common themes with headings such as “Action Writing,” which refers to Steinberg’s frequent use of dynamic, personified words and letters in his art, and “Reality Stamped Out,” a section about Steinberg’s use of the rubber stamp to explore conformism and the mass experience. Each section contains a short explanation of the art therein and Smith’s interpretation of Steinberg’s work.

One of the most fascinating sections chronicles Steinberg’s military service in World War II, with drawings of his experiences in China, India, North Africa and Italy. This was Steinberg’s first stint as a pictorial reporter, and, interestingly, the drawings depict not the violence and terror of war but largely the great amount of time soldiers spent waiting around.

The collection ends with a compilation of all 89 covers in order, a number of which were published posthumously.

Of course, the important thing is that having this book on your coffee table will make you look smart and sophisticated. A worthy goal, indeed.

— Anna Maltby