Charles Schulz drew Peanuts for fifty years, nearly eighteen thousand strips, alone, without an assistant. It is one of the most remarkable sustained creative efforts in any medium, and it's about children being quietly sad.

Charlie Brown never wins. The kite gets eaten, the ball gets pulled away, the team loses. Schulz was open about drawing from his own melancholy, and the strip's willingness to sit in disappointment without resolving it is why adults kept reading a comic about eight-year-olds.

Snoopy is the counterweight and the reason it became a global brand. A beagle with a rich internal life - World War I flying ace, novelist, dancer - who never speaks and does whatever he likes on the roof of his own house.

The animated specials, with Vince Guaraldi's jazz piano, gave the whole thing its second identity.

This collection covers Snoopy, Charlie Brown and Woodstock.