As an editor at Ballantine during the 1950s and 1960s, Bernard Shir-Cliff handled the Zacherley anthologies, the paperback of Hunter Thompson's "", Harvey Kurtzman's "The Mad Reader" and other early "Mad" paperbacks. He made four contributions to "Mad" and other magazines edited by Kurtzman. In 1956, Shir-Cliff edited a humor anthology, "The Wild Reader", for Ballantine, including essays, poems and satirical pieces by Robert Benchley, Art Buchwald, Tom Lehrer, John Lardner, Shepherd Mead, Ogden Nash, S. J. Perelman, Frank Sullivan, James Thurber and others. The 154-page paperback was illustrated with cartoons by Kelly Freas who also did the front cover.