Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: The Great American Paperback : An Illustrated Tribute to Legends of the Book by Richard A. Lupoff ISBN: 1888054506 Publisher: Collectors Press Pub. Date: 24 July, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $60.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.44
Rating: 5
Summary: JUST GREAT!
Comment: I received "The Great American Paperback" as a Christmas gift and hardly a week goes by that I don't dip into it. It's an overwhelmingly great book about a fascinating era of American publishing. Lupoff covers artists and writers well-known and unknown. There's a surprise on every page and visual treasure upon treasure. The text is equally interesting as Lupoff tells the stories behind the publishers, but it's clearly the book covers themselves that take center stage here. The layout (which sometimes presents covers slightly overlapping other covers) might have been improved, but overall the images are bright, sharp and big. Very few thumbnail views here. I for one hope we'll one day get to see a "Great American Paperback Volume 2" because as good as this one is, there's enough stuff out there to easily fill a second volume. Buy this book without reservation. If you have any love of Americana in general and pulp/paperbacks in particular, you'll fall in love with this book.
Rating: 3
Summary: Covers the market badly.
Comment: Richard Lupoff's colorful book is rather stunning at first glance but the more I look at it the more I see serious flaws.
The presentation is too overwhelming. Several colors are used for the background of the pages and these mostly overpower the covers. These strong colors mean that some pages have white text which becomes tiring to read, especially tiny capital letter caption type.
The overlapping of nearly all the covers was really annoying, in some cases one cover obscures just too much of another cover. A similar book, 'Jackets Required' by Steven Heller and Seymour Chwast has 270 covers (thankfully printed on white paper) none of which overlap and it is lovely to look at.
As far as I can see there is no meaningful sequence to the covers, they are not shown by genre, year of pulication, artist or publisher.
The index is weak. This is a book collectors will use and I would expect an index to the 600 covers shown, possibly even an artist index too. I wonder if the lack of an index is because at least a third of the pages have no number! The longest run I found was seven pages (58-64) but mostly it is runs of three or four pages through the book.
Another reviewer has noted how disappointing this book was, I agree, not because of what Lupoff has to say but because of the poor design. The author probably had nothing to do with this. I still prefer 'Paperbacks USA' by Piet Schruders, a fascinating graphic history of the paperback, Lupoff says it ''is a landmark of paperback scholarship...''.
Rating: 5
Summary: Elegant Garbage
Comment: One big, big book and as beautiful an edition as possible, here are covers from countless paperbacks: an illustrator's dream reference book and for collectors of old paperbacks, a goldmine of great junk. OK, so there ARE features by noted writers: I loved the detective covers and the trash!
These were the days of GREAT design, and you don't have to be a snooty art director to love this stuff.
Very, very cool!!!
 |
Title: The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines by Peter Haining ISBN: 1556523890 Publisher: Chicago Review Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
 |
Title: Front Cover: Great Book Jackets and Cover Design by Alan Powers ISBN: 1840004215 Publisher: Mitchell Beazley Pub. Date: 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
 |
Title: Bad Girls of Pulp Fiction by Thomas Campbell, Nancy Armstrong, Jason Rekulak, Running Press ISBN: 0762412569 Publisher: Running Press Pub. Date: 2002 List Price(USD): $4.95 |
 |
Title: Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines by Frank M. Robinson, Lawrence Davidson, Ann Bennett ISBN: 1888054123 Publisher: Collectors Press Pub. Date: 19 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
 |
Title: Paperback Covers of Robert McGinnis by Art Scott, Wallace, Dr Maynard, Richard S. Prather, Robert McGinnis ISBN: 096667765X Publisher: Pond Press Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
