The Great American Paperback: An Illustrated Tribute to Legends of the Book

Front Cover
Collectors Press, 2001 - Art - 319 pages
Few realized in 1938 that a revolution was about to take place. A little book appeared in drugstores and on newsstands that would fit into the jacket pocket of an ordinary person. There was no real binding, no dust jacket, just a colorful, laminated cover. It was an experiment, and the pocket book was born. From the glittering images of square-jawed cowboys to the gritty slum-dwellers of social realism, "The Great American Paperback" is a bountiful museum of over 600 brilliant covers, each of them a miniature gem, evocative of the fashions and attitudes of its era. This book is destined to become a classic among librarians, graphic designers, and bibliophiles alike.

Contents

Before the Beginning
6
Gertrude the Kangaroo
20
A Library for Americans
46
Books are Weapons
70
The Home Front
82
Brave New World
138
A Medal for Captain Billy
164
You Take the High Road
186
Minor League Stars
226
Under the Counter
278
Where Do We Go From Here?
302
Acknowledgements
314
Index 320
Copyright

About the author (2001)

Richard Allen Lupoff was born on February 21, 1935 in Brooklyn, New York. He studied at the University of Miami. His main work was in science fiction and mystery, but he also wrote humor and satire, nonfiction and reviews. He also edited science-fantasy anthologies. He was best known for co-editing fanzine XERO, which won a Hugo Award in 1963, with his wife Pat Lupoff and Bhob Stewart. In his early career he worked as a technical writer. His first book was a biography published in 1965, Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure. In 1967, he began publishing fiction works, One Million Centuries was the first. Some of his other works include Sacred Locomotive Flies (1971), Sword of the Demon (1977), The Triune Man (1976), Space War Blues (1978), Into the Aether (1974), the Twin Planet series, Circumpolar! (1987), and the Sun's End series, Sun's End (1984), and Galaxy's End (1988). He sometimes wrote under the pseudonyms, using Addison E. Steele for Buck Rogers tie-ins, and Ova Hamlet for parodies of famous science fiction authors. Richard Lupoff died on October 22, 2020 in California. He was 85.

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