Beautiful Evidence

Edward Tufte's newest book is out.



I've heard Tufte speak, and I've been through all the books, and I'm not quite sure what all the fuss is about. His fans are almost cultish in their devotion to him, but I find his demeanor and writing to be, well, pretty flatulent.

And oh yeah: like the cover? Prints of it can be yours for only $500. Yeesh.

New Will Self Book, US vs. UK

When I saw the American cover, I was sort of intrigued. It's hard to tell exactly what's going on -- sort of like it's hard to read the cover of The Attack.



But then I saw this (the UK version) and I pretty much stopped caring about the other one. This, I love.

Alentejo Blue

Anyone seen this is the bookstore? It looks beautiful; heck, it looks like it *feels* beautiful.

Toby Young books

And hopefully, one day the design trilogy will be completed with an ashtray...

The Girls Who Went Away

I saw this at the bookstore the other day; it's fantastic. Evan Gaffney, I think, who does some really great work. The type, the photos, the crops...everything works.

The Good Fight

Some things should be caught as bad ideas in the planning stage. A donkey in armor would count as one of those things.

Memoirs, Biographies, etc.

The design of covers of memoirs and biographies usually bore me to tears. To wit:



I couldn't care less if this is evocative of the time and place from which Harper Lee wrote and lived; I'm bored.

Compare to the new Anderson Cooper memoir, designed by Chip Kidd:



Kidd was recently blogging over at powells.com; check out what he says about this jacket.

Holy Friggin' Typo!

You probably need to click on the image and look at the large version to see this:

"One of Roth's most powerful novel's ever..."

Ouch!

Unspeak

So the Senate shoots down the same-sex marriage ban (although the seemingly partisan 49-48 vote is disheartening), and Ann Coulter's new book is #4 on Amazon (insert your own puking sound here). Regardless of what you think about these events -- be you righty or lefty -- this sounds like a must-read for anyone who is interested in the manufacturing of opinion:

...in "Unspeak," journalist Steven Poole makes a compelling case for the value of literary rigor as a tool for cutting through political cant." (Full review at SFGate.com)

Re the design: it's clear what the reversed "E" is meant to suggest. Is it too restrained? Would you have done more, typographically-speaking?

Terrorist Redux

I've decided to repost this cover, as this book is getting a whole bunch of press.

The review in the NY Times is pretty brutal. I'll dig around to see what others are saying.

Re the cover: I liked it when I first posted it April, and I like it even more now. What do *you* think? Here's the original post:

Ripped from the headlines doesn't begin to describe Updike's latest, a by-the-numbers novelization of the last five years' news reports on the dangers of home-grown terror that packs a gut punch.

"Home-grown terror;" thus the unreadability of the figure on the cover. Just what does a terrorist look like? Remember, they used to look like this (photo via Wikipedia):