What makes the American public pay attention to a comedian? For Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks, a premature death helped a lot. While both had successful careers, they didn't become legends until they were gone. Billy Connolly, on the other hand, is wildly popular in Britain, but people on this side of the pond generally know him as the guy who took over for Howard Hessman on the sitcom "Head of the Class." Three new books find the comedians at different stages of legend.

Bruce's legacy has been analyzed and canonized by everyone from scholars to rock bands, and the man himself portrayed as everything from a free-speech advocate to a reprehensible deviant. "The Trials of Lenny Bruce" by Ronald K. L. Collins and David M. Skover doesn't back away from either assessment, though it is most concerned with the former. As the title suggests, the book uses Bruce's legal troubles to frame his life story. Considering that he was so obsessed with his constant obscenity trials that he used to read from court transcripts in his act, it is surprising that no one has thought to document Bruce's life this way.

Both biography and legal history, the book cites the opinions of Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. and the Roth v. United States case as the groundwork that led to Bruce's numerous prosecutions. For every interview with George Carlin or Margaret Cho on Bruce's influence on comedy, there are at least as many accounts of legal battles.

The included CD gives a much better sense of what was so shocking about Bruce's routines and why he was prosecuted for them. His riffs on Jackie Kennedy, the Jews and Christ, and especially sex are still dangerous, and many are still unprintable in many places. The result is a clear portrait of how Bruce helped define limits not only for comedy, but for free speech in general.

Connolly, on the other hand, is a legend in waiting, at least in the States. Although he maintains a high profile with bit parts in films like "White Oleander," most of his history as a folk singer turned stand-up comic will be new to US readers. "Billy," written by his wife, Pamela Stephenson, is an account of Connolly's life, from his childhood in Scottish tenements to his sold-out stand-up tours and later roles in film and theater.

While fewer people will have better access to their subject (Stephenson, a former comedian who became a clinical psychologist, recounts hours spent quizzing Connolly at home), this closeness also leads her to create a very sympathetic view of Connolly that sometimes feels incomplete. She details Connolly's sexual abuse at the hands of his father, but spends only one paragraph on the sexual confusion he worked through later in life.

Stephenson assumes the role of psychologist throughout the book. She labels Connolly a child victim of attention deficit disorder, which helped separate him from his peers at school and accentuated the fact that he is "a poet and a dreamer." While analyses like these sometimes intrude upon the narrative, they offer a unique insight into Connolly's life.

Stephenson manages to capture Connolly's charm, if not his comic spirit. There is little in his background to suggest that Connolly would become a unique comic performer, capable of engaging an audience for hours at a time just by talking off the top of his head. Connolly is much more a storyteller than a joke writer, and many of his performances can weave from a diatribe about a president to a guy trapped in the landing gear of a plane without ever fully resolving either riff. The book can only hint at the scope of such a performance, but tries admirably.

Even with its flaws, "Billy" tells a story worth reading about a comedian worth seeking out.

Hicks is a legend currently building steam. Every couple of years, he works his way into the zeitgeist when Rykodisc releases something from the vaults, and bands like Tool and Radiohead drop his name into their liner notes. "American Scream" by former Time Out reporter Cynthia True is the first book of several attempted Hicks biographies to make it to the shelves. Hicks fans, many of whom discovered his comedy long after he succumbed to pancreatic cancer in 1994, have been longing for such a book to help flesh out their knowledge of him. "Scream" is a great start.

The book takes a basic approach to Hicks's life, starting with his younger years as a teenager sneaking out to comedy clubs to fulfill his dream of being a comedian like Woody Allen, and ending with his struggle with cancer and ultimate death. It's the beginning and end that make this story interesting. Hicks fans will be familiar with his rise as a successful comedian, his frustration with audiences, and the shot at a breakthrough that never quite came.

All of that is plain to see on the recordings of his work. For these middle years, True lets Hicks's act speak for itself, showing the nights he spent in small towns railing against corporate rock, the Gulf War, and government hypocrisy.

But what really makes the book worth reading is how Hicks got that way and how he fought at the end to protect it, both in the clubs he had learned to hate and in his personal life. In these instances, Hicks is less icon and more human being, his struggles less political and somehow more profound.