click to enlarge and enjoyThe year is 1959.The place is the Chicago Tribune.The image is from Arthur Radebaugh's syndicated futurist cartoonist strip, Closer Than We Think!The text accompanying the image (emphasis mine): Some unusual inventions for home entertainment and education will be yours in the future, such as the "television recorder" that RCA's David Sarnoff described recently. With this device, when a worthwhile program comes over the air while you are away from home, or even while you're watching it, you'll be able to preserve both the picture and sound on tape for replaying at any time. Westinghouse's Gwilym Price...
A Visual Feast: War-Era Food Posters at the National Agricultural Library
Poster by Alva Edwards. Louisiana Agricultural Extension Division, c.1917“I had the conviction that the poster must play a great part in the fight for public opinion. The printed word might not be read, people might not choose to attend meetings or to watch motion pictures, but the billboard was something that caught even the most indifferent eye.” -George Creel, Chairman of the Committee for Public Information, in his World War I memoir, How We Advertised America. When Beans Were Bullets, an exhibit of food and agricultural posters from World Wars I and II currently on view at the USDA’s National Agricultural...
The Book Executioner: Richard Minsky Exhibit at Yale
Freedom of Choice Three Poems of Love and Death by Lucie Brock-BroidoRichard Minsky, 200973" x 26" x 24" Exhibit press releaseRichard Minsky's website
A Place of Reading: Three Hundred Years of Reading in America
That's the title of the recently launched online exhibit from the American Antiquarian Society.Background:During the early colonial period, books were seen as rarefied objects, most prohibitively expensive, and some almost impossible to obtain no matter what the cost. In time, presses were established, trade improved, machines were invented, paper became affordable, and, finally, the price of books went down. But books were still cherished; they were read, saved, and handed down. By the early 1900s the vast majority of the American population—rich or poor, black or white, male or female—were readers. This is their story. The exhibit contains an image...
More is Not Merrier. The Polluting of the Online Book Marketplace
Colin Robinson, co-publisher of OR Books, has written a piece for the latest issue The Nation titled The Trouble With Amazon. In it he effectively laments the real and potential consequences for both the publisher and the reader in an Amazon-led book universe. Remember Amazon's early tagline "The Earth's Biggest Bookstore"? The tagline disappeared as Amazon branched out into product markets and today books comprise about 25% of their total revenue but their stranglehold on the book world seems only to be increasing. And as they continue on their quest to give, as Jeff Bezos told his shareholders, "the customers...