234: Ben Shahn, part III
April 11, 2016
This week is the third installment of my Judging Books by Their Covers posts on the design work of Ben Shahn. For more on Shahn, and to see the other…
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Judging Books by Their Covers
Judging Books by Their Covers is Josh MacPhee's ongoing series of writings and image collections of book covers. Although sometimes they feel marginal today, books have been a primary form of information and cultural exchange for almost 400 years. Book covers are often a person's first contact with the ideas inside, and in the hustle and bustle of contemporary life, cover designs are even more likely to shape the opinions of those that pick them up since many of us are too busy to ever read the entirety of the books. Judging Books by Their Covers largely focuses on—but is not exclusive to—the book covers and design coming out of the Left.
Josh is always looking for more book covers to feature. If you've got some gems he missed, or have ideas, drop him an email at josh (at) justseeds.org 
233: Ben Shahn, part II
March 28, 2016
Welcome to the second week of my Ben Shahn book cover posts. You can check out week one, my stroll through the covers Shahn designed in the 1950s and 60s…
232: Ben Shahn, part I
March 21, 2016
Ben Shahn is one of the artists most influential to many members of Justseeds. He was a Lithuanian immigrant who apprenticed as a lithographer before becoming a master of multiple…
231: Insurgency 1971
February 29, 2016
Last month I got to give a talk at the Maine College of Art in Portland, which was great in and of itself, and had the added bonus of giving…
230: Small Press Africa, part VI
February 22, 2016
This week I’m going to close out my sub-series on Small Press Africa with sixteen books from Southern Africa. I hope people have enjoyed checking these books out as much…
229: Small Press Africa, part V
February 15, 2016
This week we’re still in East Africa, with a focus on the dual publishers East African Literature Bureau and Kenya Literature Bureau. In an interesting turn, the Kenya Literature Bureau…
228: Small Press Africa, part IV
February 8, 2016
The undisputed center of publishing in East Africa is Nairobi, the capital of Kenya. Kenya is home to the majority of the regions presses, and was a key center for…
227: Small Press Africa, part III
January 11, 2016
This week is a continuation of my series on African small press books (see HERE and HERE for the earlier installs), with a focus in on one Nigerian volume. The…
226: Small Press Africa, part II
January 4, 2016
Last install (here) I shared five covers from books published by small African presses. Turns out my collection is a little bigger than I thought, with way more books than…
225: Small Press Africa, part I
December 21, 2015
One of the things I’ve always got an eye out for are books published on small presses in Africa. It’s shocking how little about Africa makes into mainstream U.S. consciousness…
224: Diane & Leo Dillon
December 7, 2015
Much of what I focus on in these Judging Books blog posts is cover design that is quite rare, either because the politics are marginal (anarchism! communism! socialism! oh my!),…
223: Power and Revolution
November 30, 2015
Found this rare and fascinating little paperback on a book adventure Monica and I went on for my birthday last year. Tahsin Abdul Hai’s Power and Revolution: From the Impetus…
222: Pluto Crime
November 16, 2015
You wouldn’t necessarily know it from the books I’m usually discussing here, but a solid half or more of my reading intake is genre fiction, sci-fi and especially crime novels….
221: The Iron Heel
November 9, 2015
Welcome to the second installment in my sub-series of book covers from early utopian/distopian novels. Back in March of 2014 I took a look at the covers of Yevgeny Zamyatin’s…
220: Buchi Emecheta
November 2, 2015
For this week’s post I thought we could stay in Africa, but focus on an author instead of a publisher. Or maybe a combination of the two. One of the…
219: Éditions CLE
October 26, 2015
First, welcome to my new Judging Books by Their Covers blog channel on Justseeds.org! I’m really excited to relaunch the series on our new site, which not only looks 200%…
218: This—is Grenada
June 8, 2015
No in-depth analysis this week, but a peek at one really cool book, inside and out. Frances Kay’s This—is Grenada is a beautiful self-published travel book from 1966. After skimming…
217: A Little Bit o’ Lenin
June 1, 2015
First off, we’ve been hard at work on a brand new Justseeds website, which will vastly transform the experience of both the posting and reading of blog entries like these….
216: Artia Pocket Books
April 27, 2015
Back in 2012 I slide an eye-catching spine off the shelf at a bookstore in Boston and. It was an edition of Arnošt Lustig’s Diamonds in the Night I had…
215: AK Press
March 29, 2015
Today I veer off from my regularly scheduled posting. 2015 is the 25 year anniversary of AK Press, one of the longest (maybe the longest?) running anarchist presses in the…