174: Zamyatin’s We, part I
March 24, 2014
I’m slightly embarrassed that I only read Yevgeny Zamyatin’s (Eugene Zamiatin) We for the first time about two months ago. Not embarrassed because it’s something everyone should read, but embarrassed…
Channel
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 
173: Cambridge Africa
February 24, 2014
Just a quick look today at a couple of 1960s academic history books about Africa. I found these on the cheap at the great West Philly bookstore A House…
172: Amilcar Cabral, part III
February 3, 2014
Although much respected, Amilcar Cabral didn’t actually write that much beyond speeches and lectures. But there is a large body of literature about Cabral, and the struggle in Portuguese Guinea….
171: Amilcar Cabral, part II
January 27, 2014
Last week I looked at the covers of books by African revolutionary and theorist Amilcar Cabral that were in English. This week lets take a peek at his books published…
170: Amilcar Cabral, part I
January 20, 2014
I was introduced to Amilcar Cabral when I was in college. His name popped up along with other African and Caribbean revolutionaries I was reading like Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney,…
169: Seven Seas, part VI
January 13, 2014
Continuing with my cleaning up and filling in the gaps in old posts, here’s nine more covers from the East German, English-language publisher Seven Seas. You can check out the…
168: Collier’s Af/Am Library, part IV
January 6, 2014
I had originally hoped that once I posted a series of covers here on the blog, I’d be able to move on to new book explorations. But that’s not the…
167: Pluto Workers’ Handbooks
December 30, 2013
Back in 1974, someone smart at the British radical, socialist press Pluto decided to publish the first of a series of Workers’ Handbooks. The Hazards of Work: How to Fight…
166: Short Stories from Puerto Rico
December 16, 2013
Here is another gem unearthed at Brooklyn’s best bookstore, Book Thug Nation. The title is a bit contested, as the cover says it’s Short Stories from Puerto Rico, and the…
165: The Wood Grouse
December 9, 2013
This week I’ve got another quirky book to share, but we’ll be jumping from East Germany to Laos. I found this small, cheaply produced book—The Wood Grouse—in Portland, OR. It…
164: DDR Mini Poster Books, part III
December 2, 2013
This week is the final in a series of posts about mini-East German poster books (see HERE and HERE). This week’s book, Plakate zum Ersten Mai (Posters for May Day)…
163: DDR Mini Poster Books, part II
November 25, 2013
This weeks book is the second in a series of mini-poster publication produced in the DDR, or former East Germany. Last week we looked at a book about posters celebrating…
162: DDR Mini Poster Books, part I
November 18, 2013
When I first traveled to Berlin back in 2007, doing research for Signal with Alec Dunn, we spent a lot of time haunting bookstores. Being a book junkie, there’s little…
161: The Labor Spy Racket
November 11, 2013
Over the past two years I’ve been stumbling across old, early paperbacks published in the 1930s by Modern Age Books in New York. They seem like a lefty publisher in…
160: Modern Arabic Writing, part I
November 4, 2013
In the late 2000s, in the basement of the Caliban Bookshop in Pittsburgh, I found a handsome paperback edition of Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun. It was the first…
159: Bogle L’Ouverture, part II
October 28, 2013
After Walter Rodney and Andrew Salkey, the most important author Bogle-L’Overture published was the Jamaican-born but London-based street poet Linton Kwesi Johnson. Kwesi Johnson become a popular voice of the…
158: Bogle L’Ouverture, part I
October 21, 2013
I first encountered Bogle-L’Overture Publications almost twenty years ago. Outside of Boston their is a strange bookstore called the New England Mobile Bookfair. Neither mobile nor a book fair, it…
157: Gorey, Part III
September 30, 2013
For this final week of Edward Gorey covers, I’ve pulled together all the stragglers I could find, covers he did that are later or not for Doubleday Anchor. The Rilke…
156: Gorey, Part II
September 23, 2013
Last week I looked at a chunk of Anchor Doubleday paperbacks from the 1950s and 60s with covers by Edward Gorey. You can see them and read it HERE. Last…
155: Gorey, Part I
September 16, 2013
One of the great things about working at a bookstore is you start to notice more and more quirky little things about books, stuff that only the week before passed…