134: Collier’s Af/Am Library, Part I
January 21, 2013
While collecting books from the African Writers Series published by Heinemann (I’ll be featuring those books in a future post), I stumbled upon a small series of African novels produced…
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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 
133: Tricontinental Press, Part II
January 14, 2013
I guess did this a little backwards. I focused on the later published books last week, and now here is Puerto Rico: Analysis of a Plebiscite, as far as I…
132: Tricontinental Press, part I
January 7, 2013
As I’ve written about elsewhere, my Celebrate People’s History poster series is in part inspired by the down-and-dirty poster printing of 1960s and 70s Third World liberation movements. In many…
131: Pilot Bails Out
December 31, 2012
About a month ago my friend Cindy and I went to go see the jaw-dropping remake of Red Dawn (and that’s an entirely different story—wow, what an amazingly delusional Tea…
130: Anarchy (2nd Series), part VII
December 24, 2012
This week is the last installment of covers from the second series of Anarchy magazine from London, which ran for 38 issues from 1971 to 1985 (see the previous entries…
129: Anarchy (2nd Series), part VI
December 17, 2012
Welcome back to part six of my focus on the second series of the UK magazine Anarchy. Last week we looked at a series of covers done largely by anarchist…
128: Anarchy (2nd Series), part V
December 10, 2012
This week we’ve got some great covers! To the right is Anarchy #21. I actually should have included this issue—and the next one, #22—with last weeks entry, as it fits…
127: Anarchy (2nd Series), part IV
December 3, 2012
With issue 15 Anarchy goes through another facelift. For this, and the next three issues, we’ve got a straight sans serif masthead in white on a fading, dark to light,…
126: Anarchy (2nd Series), part III
November 26, 2012
With issue #10, Anarchy comes into it’s own, settling into a fixed masthead and confident enough to continue to eschew the traditional anarchist red and black and experiment with deep…
125: Anarchy (2nd Series), part II
November 19, 2012
Welcome back to part two of our tour through the second series of the UK Anarchy magazine. Click HERE to see last week’s entry. Let’s pick up where we left…
124: Anarchy (2nd Series), Part I
November 12, 2012
In Signal:01, Alec Dunn and I ran an interview with Rufus Segar, the graphic designer who did the vast majority of the covers for the British monthly journal Anarchy. Not…
123: Up From Slavery
November 5, 2012
On my recent trip to whirlwind tour of the Midwest (or at least Chicago, Grand Rapids, and Milwaukee) I’ve been hitting up all the used bookstores I can find, looking…
122: The Burden of Choice
October 8, 2012
Here’s another great find from the foreign language table at a regional bookfair, this one in Poughkeepsie, NY. I was immediately attracted to the book because of the nicely embossed…
121: Three Czech Books
October 1, 2012
In early Summer I went with friends from Book Thug Nation to a regional book sale in Pennsylvania. The sale was awesome, thousands and thousands of books packed into a…
120: Penguin African Library, part X
September 24, 2012
For the final installment of book covers from the Penguin African Library (see the first nine posts HERE), I’m going to take a look at the other books on Africa…
119: Penguin African Library, part IX
September 17, 2012
This is the 9th part of my series on the covers of the Penguin African Library and associated titles, and the second part on the covers of series editor Ronald…
118: Penguin African Library, part VIII
September 10, 2012
I had been collecting the Penguin African Library books for awhile when I stumbled upon this copy of Into Exile at the local, and very cool, Brooklyn used book shop…
117: Penguin African Library, part VII
September 3, 2012
The Penguin African Library (see HERE for earlier cover posts) was the brain child of Ronald Segal, a Jewish South African who grew to despise the Apartheid system and organize…
116: Penguin African Library, part VI
August 27, 2012
So over the past five weeks I’ve gone through the entire Penguin African Library (PAL), proper, but there is so much more to look at! There was actually a predecessor…
115: Penguin African Library, part V
August 20, 2012
Welcome to the fifth week of covers from the Penguin African Library (PAL). If you find yourself a bit lost trying to follow some of this, it might make sense…