Illustrated Books
-- Publishers Weekly, 3/28/2005
SHOTS: An American Photographer’s Journal 1967–1972
David Fenton. Earth Aware Editions, $29.95 paper (160p) ISBN 1-932771-50-6
The protest movements of the late ’60s and early ’70s have been documented countless times, but this collection of photos and text from Fenton, who was a young photojournalist (and idealist) in the thick of things, has a rare mix of labor of love and professionalism that makes the era feel fresh and accessible. Working for samizdat antiwar journals, as well as for the New York Times, Life and Newsweek, Fenton was a partisan, and it shows. Spread over 11½" × 10" pages, Fenton’s 80 b&w photos have an immediacy that stock images from the era lack, even when overexposed or slightly out of focus. Taken together, these shots of Abby Hoffman, Mohammad Ali, Janis Joplin, soldiers, Yippies, Black Panthers and many others work to lift the burden of cliché and restore a sense of engagement. Tom Hayden and Norman Mailer contribute a foreword and “commentary” respectively; Fenton wrote the introduction and explanatory intertext. In the ’80s, Fenton entered the system, founding the PR firm that bears his name and specializes in environmental issues, public health and human rights. (May)
STEINBERG AT THE NEW YORKER
Joel Smith. Abrams, $50 (240p) ISBN 0-8109-5901-1
Steinberg’s high-concept graphic art—epitomized by his oft-imitated cartoon map in which a Manhattan distended with self-importance shoves the continents of North America and Asia to the margins—is enchantingly showcased in this lavishly illustrated retrospective of his work for the New Yorker. Smith, a curator at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar and author of Edward Steichen: The Early Years, surveys six decades of Steinberg’s pieces, including all 89 New Yorker covers (in full color), cartoons, wartime sketches from overseas, evocative (but never literal-minded) illustrations for articles, and unpublished items from the artist’s portfolio. The material is arranged thematically, examining such recurring motifs as cats, pedestals and rubber-stamped figures and documenting the turn to visual metaphor in Steinberg’s later work, where symbolic graphic representations of sound, abstract relationships and existential conundrums replace the usual scenario-with-verbal-punch line cartoon setup. Smith’s pithy biographical essay situates Steinberg as a self-conscious modernist who helped develop a distinctive New Yorker visual style, one with “a wry, informal wit... attuned to the jittery optimism of the Atomic Age.” Steinberg’s cartoons usually made readers think before they laughed, and so will this splendid memorial to a 20th-century artistic landmark. (Apr.)
AMERICA’S BATTLEGROUNDS: Walk in the Footsteps of America’s Bravest
Richard Sauers. Reader’s Digest, $24.95 (168p) ISBN 0-7621-0582-8
Pitched as a history and as a guidebook, this thoughtfully put together tour through American war sites takes readers to territories that will be unfamiliar to many. Over five broad chapters, veteran military historian Sauers (Advance the Colors) begins with the American Revolution, hitting sites like the Fort Stanwix National Monument in Rome, N.Y., and Cowpens National Battlefield in Chesness, S.C., with copious color maps, period ephemera and illustrations included along the way. Chapters on the War of 1812, “The Expansion” (i.e., multiple wars with Native Americans) and the Civil War follow suit, with a chapter on “Memorials to Courage” covering foreign wars. The illustrations are a mix of overfamiliar and refreshingly arcane. The terrific sidebars offer a wealth of information on everything from bloody angle’s oak tree at Spotsylvania to the life of Sitting Bull. The layout is generic, but the content is anything but: punchy, fact-filled and never boring, Sauers’s panorama of American battle covers an enormous amount of ground. (Apr.)
THE CINEMA OF GEORGE LUCAS
Marcus Hearn. Abrams, $50 (240p) ISBN 0-8109-4968-7
The life and career of the one-man cinematic revolution that is George Lucas gets a lush visual treatment in Hearn’s frankly adoring and uncritical coffee-table book, though there’s plenty of smart text underpinning the artwork as well. The first two of the book’s eight chapters are best, covering Lucas’s childhood and student filmmaking days at USC, which culminated in the 1971 masterpiece THX 1138 and 1973’s iconic American Graffiti. Hearn deftly portrays this heady period in Lucas’s life, in which the director was furiously experimenting with the form and working inside the short-lived San Francisco filmmaking collective American Zoetrope with pals Francis Ford Coppola, master editor Walter Murch and legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler. This section is elaborately illustrated with photographs, publicity stills and script excerpts, and the photos of young Ron Howard, Richard Dreyfuss and Lucas himself will amuse fans. Once Hearn begins to delve into Lucas’s rise into the cinematic stratosphere with Star Wars, and the creation of his mini Hollywood in the Bay Area, however, the book fails. Hearn’s worshipful tone doesn’t allow him to satisfyingly explain how this long-haired rebel turned into the mini-mogul that he is today. Still, this is a crucial addition to the libraries of not just Star Wars aficionados but all lovers of modern cinema. (Mar.)
