Persuasive Images: Posters of War and Revolution from the Hoover Institution Archives

Reproducing 317 posters in the Hoover Institution's collection from the Soviet Union, western and central Europe and the United States, this punchy survey focuses on the two world wars, but also traces events and styles from the Belle Epoque to postwar Europe. Among the book's interesting revelations: during WW I, American and British posters used images of atrocity far more frequently than did German posters, while Russia and Germany were the principal exploiters of atrocity propaganda in WW II. American visual responses to the Second World War ranged from Ben Shahn's sophisticated attack on Nazi brutality to crude, racist caricatures of Japanese. Post-1945 posters include graphics protesting Stalinist repression, nuclear arms, German remilitatization and U.S. intervention in Vietnam. In their thoughtful narrative, Peter Paret (a Princeton historian), Lewis (an art historian at the College of Wooster in Ohio) and Paul Paret (a graduate student in art history) consider posters both as works of applied art and as agents of persuasion and control. History Book Club selection. (Oct.)