Empire of Guns
Map: 1731 map of Birmingham by William Westley. The top of the map is orientated westwards. Wikimedia Commons
Crisis!
2019, Cover images: 19th-century political cartoons via Wikimedia Commons
Sonic Intimacy
Cover photo: Herbert Ponting, “Dog Chris, listening to the gramophone, Antarctica,” b&w original photograph, silver gelatin print, 117 x 93 mm, circa January 1911. National Library of New Zealand.
The Manhattan Project
Interior designer Bruce Lundquist loved that pigeon so much that he made it a section ornament repeated throughout the text, and made this one of the best-looking books of the season. Cover photograph: Helen Levitt, “New York, c. 1963 (man and pigeon on rooftop)” © Estate of Helen Levitt.Uncoated Rainbow paper
Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East
Cover photo: Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Soldiers quelling disturbance. (Approx. 1900–20). Matson Photograph Collection, Library of Congress.
Requiem for the Ego
Cover photo: Regin Hjertholm, Svein Ove Kirkhorn, Bjørn-Eivind Årtun. Part of the exhibition, “fly.”
Neoliberalism’s Demons
I’d originally given the eagle vulture’s wings. Unfortunately they just made it look like an unkempt eagle. Someone suggested bat wings. They were joking, but it was inspiration.Cover illustration: composite from iStock imagery
Taking Turns with the Earth
Fog over Erlauf valley and Danube, user “Uoaei1,” via Wikimedia Commons. Image cropped and reflected.
Fumo
Four covers for a book on Italians and smoking. I’d originally come up with an idea for a very narrow book, to suggest the shape of a cigarette—maybe 5-1/2″ x 9-1/4″. But it turned out the book had a number of tables and charts that wouldn’t have done well in that format. The book actually […]
Homer Economicus
Paying a license fee to portray Homer Simpson wasn’t in the budget. So the challenge was to refer to the character without portraying him. Cover images: iStockphoto
American Terror
Charles Deas. The Death-Struggle. 1840–45, oil on canvas. Collections of Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vermont.
Monsters By Trade
Ivan Larra Plaza, Barco negrero I. (c) 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VEGAP, Madrid.
Rob Ehle 