Commercials Books

An historical treasure trove with COLOR examples of an art that today has been supplanted, in large part, with cookie cutter hackwork. The authors' informed commentaries are to-the-point and invite further exploration. I found it to be an elegantly designed and useful resource book.

A handsome book of 270 book jackets clearly showing the very wide range of styles publishers used to sell their wares. All the covers are shown complete with the designer's name in most cases, none of them are angled or overlapped, thankfully! A lovely feature is the use of still life photos of the book and the jacket complete, many of them with tears and creases on the jackets, looking as if they have just been rescued from a second-hand bookstore.

These jackets are such a contrast to the covers shown in a book I recently reviewed, 'The Great American Paperback', a colorful collection of six hundred covers (annoyingly designed so that they nearly all overlapp each other) from the forties, fifties and sixties. These covers are extremely conservative in their design approach, a predictable painting with crude typography for the title. It was not until the mid-sixties that paperback publishers turned to eye-catching paintings and photography with intergrated typography.

In contrast the covers in 'Jackets Required' are bursting with creativity, the chapter on non-fiction has some particularly striking designs. The back of the book has a portfolio of six designers including my favorites, Alvin Lustig and Paul Rand. There is a designer and title index, someting that was sadly missing from 'The Great American Paperback.

Heller and Chwast have produced a super book that design students and fans of popular culture will enjoy for a long time.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

I've long been fascinated by the (to Westerners) strangenesses of Japanese culture and society, and I'm also interested in "life style" design, so I was particularly taken with this book. Each of the beautifully illustrated chapters deals with one aspect of the Japanese approach to the visual -- fashion, architecture, interiors, food and drink, transport, consumer products, housewares, communication and packaging, and transport -- and the author gives as much attention to the social psyhology behind Japanese traditions and interpretations as to the art and design itself, examining Japan's communitarian aspects and the tension between colorful individualism and finely developed herd instinct. A terrific book.

A worthy update on the world of Japanese style and design. Both pictures and text provide an insightful look into the Japan of the new millenium. The architecture, packaging, and fashion sections were of particular note. Highly recommended.

Colin McDowell's peek into the wild world of Jean Paul Gaultier is both long overdue and well worth the wait! From his earliest childhood memories to his 2000 couture show and all points inbetween, McDowell reveals all in the same manner Gaultier designs his collections--with wit, irreverence, and style! This lavishly illustrated book has pictures and sketches (sadly, not Gaultier's own) from his most famous collections, including some rare and unusual ones. Photo coverage starts in heavily from around the 1989 collections, but earlier eighties collections are glimpsed here and there throughout the book. McDowell punctuates with notable quotes and images of Gaultier's influences, from pin-up queens to Physique Pictorial, from the great couturiers to street fashion. Smartly written and solidly designed (it even has Gaultier's nautical stripes in the end caps!) this book is a MUST for all Gaultier fans and admirers. It explains, in vivid detail, how he became the fashion icon that he is today!

Although it took 25 years after Gaultier first started designing under his own name for someone to dedicate a book to him, it was well worth the wait. McDowell, as with his book on Galliano, does a lavish job on Gaultier's life and designs. The book is packed with runway photos and details about some of the collections. My only complaints about the book (and they are very minor complaints): McDowell goes into over-detail about Gaultier's life, especially up to 1976 when he first started designing his own label, making for slow reading for half of the book; a few of the photos are mislabelled with the wrong collection (mostly the couture photos); and although there are some great runway photos in the book, a lot of Gaultier's show-stopping designs in the past are not represented, and there aren't enough photos from men's collections. A great book though!

Wow talk about humbling... I too am an aviation photographer, however unlike the late Mr Adams I shoot with a modern Canon EOS system firing at 5 or more frames per second. Mr Adams was shooting large format single shot cameras in a different era and to say I am humbled is an understatement.. This amazing book with it's black and white photographs illustrates the art of aviation photography at it's best. It doesn't matter what you shoot if you love aviaton and superb photography then this amazing book should be on your list of must haves. About the only thing I could knock this book for is it's lack of at least some colour. But there again perhaps that might have cheapened it. Hell I have just finished reading it and I have already started reading it again. I could go on and on about what I see when I look in this book, the clarity, the composition, the timing, and the artistry of what he truly loved shows. For the works shown withing this book works of art. The author Tim Kershaw's narrative combined with Mr. Adam's own never finished autobiography brings to life a man who, I am very sorry that I never had a chance to meet.

JET AGE PHOTOGRAPHER: THE AVIATION PHOTOGRAPHY OF RUSSELL ADAMS tells of a photographer who not only shot the world's first jet aerobatic photo, but who continued to capture air-to-air photos of Britain's early jet fighters. His images appeared throughout newspapers overseas and home from the 1950s to the early 1960s: even today aviation press often carries them - but until now no single volume has gathered all his photos under one cover. JET AGE PHOTOGRAPHER does so with style: it pairs full-page black and white photos with background history necessary to understand and appreciate them. Plenty of detail makes for a splendid coverage indeed.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I do the same thing as the presious review when reading discworld books with his illistrations i always look forward to the moment in the book that is illistrated on the cover, and as the previous reviewer also find new things all the time, his work is beautifuly styled.

I never seen such a good (perfect?) match between a writer and a cover illustrator. Josh Kirby illustrated the atmosphere and inhabitants of the Discworld with such an amazing accuracy. I was usually disappointed by graphic interpretations of fantasy novels, it was never really what I have imagined. With Josh Kiby illustrations, I enjoyed going back and forth to the cover while reading the book, there is so many details in these drawings that you always find new things you didn't notice at the first look. Truly inspiring.

These books were my birthday present to myself, and I can't imagine a better gift! They are GORGEOUS and huge, with full-page photos (some in color) on heavy paper, and text for each spread. The architecture is inspired, and, as always, Shulman's photographs capture the spirit, innovation, and excitement of the times. Too bad such individualism has given way to cookie-cutter McMansions and, with few exceptions, lackluster design seen everywhere in today's architecture.

The only criticism I have of these books is that, as with most mid century architectural tomes, most of the photos in the book are from locations in California by architects we've already heard of. I would like to see photos of buildings in other parts of the country by lesser known, but equally inspired, architects.

Finally, I hope that, with the abundance of photos in Shulman's archive, this Modernism Rediscovered series continues with more books in the future. I know that I will be first in line to buy future volumes if they are as well done as the original Modernism Rediscovered book and these three follow-up books.

A fittingly huge tribute to the man who captured Modernism in western America and especially in California. I thought the beauty of these three large books (check out the weight and dimensions in the Product Details section) was the way they are organized: historically using Shulman's own job reference numbers. Obviously there is not going to be a photo of every commission because a lot of his time was spent on what he calls 'bread and butter work'. So book 1 starts with #0003 in 1939 with Gregory Ain's Scheyer residence in LA and book 3 ends in 1981 with #5976 Augustin Hernandez's studio in Mexico City. Although Shulman is working again, with German photographer Juergen Nogai, the contents of the three books are based on the 250,000 negatives he presented to the Getty Research Institute upon retiring in 2004.

I get the impression looking through the pages that there maybe more interior photos than exteriors but what a visual treat these interiors are. In photo after photo, there is a sense of spaciousness so typical of most modernist houses and many of the shots show how rooms extend into other living areas.

The interiors from the Forties to the late Seventies also yield a fascinating opportunity to study the furniture and fittings the owners thought would work well in a modern home. Owing to the large page size some of these domestic interior photos are twenty-three inches wide on a spread so the detail is amazing. Another interesting point about a Shulman photo is the addition of people in his work. Apparently frowned upon at the time by architects but he took the view that it was an opportunity to reduce the purity (and possibly elitism) of Modernism in a domestic setting.

Among all the great home photos commercial work covers corporate headquarters of large companies, schools, research facilities, banks, retail units and restaurants. The same sense of space and depth comes across in these images and I think you'll come to the same conclusion as I did about Shulman's photography: that he always managed to frame his compositions to captured the spatial essence of a building.

The production of the three books is exemplary as you would expect from Taschen. The hundreds of photos are printed on quality paper with a 200dpi screen and presented in an elegant but simple layout. Each featured commission has between one and six photos with a short piece of background copy. All of this is a wonderful tribute to a remarkable architectural photographer. I know I'll be enjoying these three books for a long, long time.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Very good - more information on the engines would have been good but the book is still a good buy

This is a truly supurb book. As it says, it covers the Junkers company from 1913 to 1945. And it covers it completely. It starts with the J1 and goes to the J2, and the J3 and so on through every plane the put into production, and every prototype plane they built, and it appears just about every plane they even thought about. Of course planes like the Ju-52 (the three motored Tante Ju that was basically the C-47 of Germany), the Ju-87 Stuka, and the Ju-88 (in about a dozen versions) are given more pictures, more pages than planes that never got off the drawing board.

In addition, Junkers also built engines (Did any other airframe manufacturer also build engines?), not the least of which were the Jumo 211 used in the ME-109, and the 109 series of turbojets used in the ME-262 and the Arado 234.

This book is exhaustively researched. Where could they have possibly have gotten all these photographs of rare aircraft, including almost every type of plane built, a listing of every known surviving plane, even comments on what happened to the follow on designs of advanced engines that were continued by the French, Czechs, and Soviets.

The book is beautifully printed (in Spain) on coated paper so that the photographs show up very well. This will be the hands down definitive book on the Junkers, probably for all time.

Congratulations for such a fascinating body of work

This volume of CWA features the best work by the Mexico City based firm headed by Arq. Alberto Kalach and Arq. Daniel Alvarez. Work included dates from 1983 to 1998 (the duration of their partnership),includes housing, residential buildings, schools, a subway station and others. All projects carry a tectonic discourse, and they stand out distinctively as "Kalach and Alvarez" within the cityscape. The designs and material treatments are extraordinary and compare to the best in the contemporary international architectural scene.

The foreword by Gonzalez de Leon and introduction by Betsky are both well written and insightful, especially to those not familiar with Mexican contemporary life and architecture. Very good book, belongs in every architects library.

Look also for more recent titles on their work (by separate)after 1998.

A veritable microcosm of financial and economic history, this book details the rise of the acceptance house of Kleinwort and the private banking house of Benson from humble beginnings in Germany and the UK and how their destinies intertwined in the 1960s after their amalgamation. As described by Wake in this highly colorful, anecdote-filled book, the metaphor of merchant banking's three-legged stool-one leg for corporate finance, one leg for private banking and investments, and one leg for wholesale banking-was a particularly compelling argument in favor of the Kleinwort-Benson merger, which eventually led to the creation of an investment banking powerhouse. "Kleinwort Benson" will enthrall those who are interested in how the formerly genteel world of merchant banking, wherein client poaching was an unforgivable transgression and bankers kept banker's hours, was transformed into the extirpative business it is today.

This book is fantastic. Almost every page shows a new set of photos with an equal amount of interesting facts. It is hard to find Knoll Design reference books. It is impossible to find one better than this.

This book is fantastic. Almost every page shows a new set of photos with an equal amount of interesting facts. It is hard to find knoll design refrence books. It is imposable to find one better than this.