I Love It When You Talk Retro

Design by Jason Ramirez

Earlier today, Kottke.org guest editor Ainsley Drew linked to the most excellent Schott's Vocab: A Miscellany of Modern Words & Phrases. But for every neologism like recession beard, there's a retroterm like scuttlebutt. I can't wait to read this book. And yeah, the cover is OK too ;-)


Read Jacket Copy's interview with the author, and buy this book from Amazon.com

Don't Look Here. Look Over There.

Henry Sene Yee talks about the best book cover of 2009. Go. Now.

Two from Harper Perennial's Modern Thought Series

Designs by Gregg Kulick

A fairly new edition (2008) of Heidegger's Being and Time, and the first design that strives to remind us this landmark work of philosophy was written in 1927.


And since it's been a really long time since I've read any philosophy seriously, I asked a professor buddy of mine what he thought of the big red X on the Wittgenstein cover. He offered two possible interpretations:

1. "There's the post-modern sense of undecidability with the X."

2. "It could be a variable (Wittgenstein will put you to sleep in X minutes)."

Ha! (More analysis / suggestions in the comments.)

Either way, philosophy didn't look this good when I was a student.

All the Sad Young Literary Men, U.S. paperback

Design by Susan Dean
Illus. by Jamie Todd

The 2008 hardcover design by The Heads of State was one of my favorite covers last year, but the paperback design for All the Sad Young Literary Men doesn't disappoint: we get to see the obsessions of the three main characters -- writing, history, women -- and the winding and ultimately distracting paths they wander between them. (Nice use of New Yorker Bold too; does any typeface say "literary" more than that?)


Buy this book from Amazon.com
UPDATE: You asked for 'em. Here are the UK editions:

Paperback:


Hardcover:

A Tolerable Anarchy

Designer credit to come

At first glance ironic, until you notice the upside-down subtitle, at which point it becomes, um, tolerably anarchic. Love it.

Atmospheric Disturbances, paperback

Design by Henry Sene Yee

UPDATE: Henry talks about this cover over at his blog.

I haven't seen this in person yet -- it will be released in late April -- but the more I look at this, the more I like it.


Clearly the eyes belong to the same person, but the way they're offset suggests that something odd's going on, which is in fact the case: psychiatrist Leo Liebenstein believes that his wife has been replaced by a doppelganger. This psychic disruption is not the only thing hinted at by the intersecting concentric circles; there's a meteorologist who figures in the plot (as the title suggests).

Henry Sene Yee was nice enough to provide the design credit for this, but I forgot to ask him if those circles are die-cuts. If so, I'm dying to know what's underneath.

UPDATE: Since it's been mentioned several times in the comments, here's the US hardcover (first image below; design and illustration by Billie Jean). And someone sent in the Canadian cover as well (second image):

The Great Gamble, The Hidden War, The Same Photo

Sure as heck isn't the first time the same photo has been used on two book covers, but this just can't be good. The Great Gamble is from 2009; The Hidden War from 2001.

The Europa Editions Aesthetic

All Europa Editions don't look like this, but a good number of them do. I have always liked the simple starkness of these (and others; here's their Web site), but I don't imagine they're everyone's cup of tea. So...are they yours?

George Steiner at the New Yorker

(My Unwritten Books designed by Rodrigo Corral; assuming the same for At the New Yorker)

We looked at My Unwritten Books last year (original post here); here's another similar minimalist design for At The New Yorker. Proof positive that really strong ideas can come in simple packages.

Friday Miscellany, March 6

/1/ It's a bird! It's a plane! It's porn!

Author Craig Yoe wrote in to tell me about his new book Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster. Paraphrasing Craig, "After selling the rights to Superman for $130, Shuster then did S&M porn for under-the-counter booklets called "Nights of Horror," sold in Times Square in the early fifties." More here, including some NSFW images. Buy this book from Amazon.com

/2/ Fantastic new book design blog

Designer Kimberly Glyder shows comps that didn't get published. Via another goodie, The Book Cover Archive blog.

/3/ BBC Radio Adapts JG Ballard's Drowned World.