A collection of 100 postcards, each featuring a different jacket from Pelican Books, Penguin's iconic non-fiction series. Covering subjects from socialism to sex, psychoanalysis to atomic physics, and written by great thinkers ranging from Sigmund Freud to Martin Luther King, Pelican brought accessible, intelligent books to a generation, making knowledge everybody's property. In 1936 Allen Lane, the founder of Penguin, overheard a woman at a King's Cross Station bookstall asking for 'one of those Pelican books'. She meant Penguin, but Lane, concerned a rival might snatch up the name, decided to launch a new range of non-fiction books. Pelican was born. Allen Lane said he 'believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price, and staked everything on it'. The gamble paid off. Customers queued in the streets for the first Pelican, George Bernard Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, which sold a million copies in six weeks. In the years to come Pelican Books - including H. G. Wells's A Short History of the World, Freud's Psychopathology of Everyday Life and J. K. Galbraith's The Affluent Society, as well as guides to everything from jazz to witchcraft, guerrilla warfare to smashing atoms - would educate a generation. They became, in Lane's words, 'the true everyman's library for the twentieth century'. ury'.

A collection of 100 postcards, each featuring a different and iconic Penguin book jacket. From classics to crime, here are over seventy years of quintessentially British design in one box. In 1935 Allen Lane stood on a platform at Exeter railway station, looking for a good book for the journey to London. His disappointment at the poor range of paperbacks on offer led him to found Penguin Books. The quality paperback had arrived. Declaring that 'good design is no more expensive than bad', Lane was adamant that his Penguin paperbacks should cost no more than a packet of cigarettes, but that they should always look distinctive. Ever since then, from their original - now world-famous - look featuring three bold horizontal stripes, through many different stylish, inventive and iconic cover designs, Penguin's paperback jackets have been a constantly evolving part of Britain's culture. And whether they're for classics, crime, reference or prize-winning novels, they still follow Allen Lane's original design mantra. Sometimes, you definitely should judge a book by its cover.

From the first Rose Carnival in 1864, to the Great Earthquake in 1906, and the building of Highway 101, this book documents the history of Santa Rosa, illuminated in over 200 vintage postcards. Included are postcards of Luther Burbank, horticulturalist and local hero, as well as many views of Fourth Street as it changed and grew with the town.

"�highly recommended for architecture, photography, and history collections everywhere." --Library Journal "McCaffety knows how to capture the fleeting beauty of a moment." --Times Picayune For many, the French Quarter is New Orleans, yet how much do they really know about the Vieux Carr�? Truman Capote wrote, "Of all secret cities, New Orleans . . . is the most secretive. . . . [Its] architecture deliberately concocted to camouflage, to mask, as at a Mardi Gras Ball, the lives of those born to live among these protective edifices." Through striking photographs and polished prose, The Majesty of the French Quarter opens the locked door and invites readers to discover a multitude of hidden marvels. Among the discovered gems is the 1828 Bourbon Street mansion of Lindy Boggs, U. S. ambassador to the Vatican and former congresswoman. Pictured are many such homes' secret, overgrown gardens where, noted Capote, "mimosa and camellias contrast color, and lazing lizards, flicking their forked tongues, race along palm fronds." Also featured are rare glimpses of the antique-filled and artfully decorated interiors of some of the Quarter's most majestic homes, including that of New Orleans novelist Julie Smith. While this series has examined New Orleans as a whole and the city's Garden District in particular, the French Quarter has quietly kept her secrets to herself-until now.

A far cry from her wistful and introspective fiction, Woolf's essays on literature read as lively, droll, and conversational. These essays focus on famous literary figures as well as the craft of fiction; written in confident but inviting prose designed specifically for what Woolf called the common reader, they interweave biography, wit, social commentary, and literary analysis. Woolf typically seems disinterested in offering definitive arguments or reaching grand conclusions. She instead concerns herself with viewing a given writer or topic from several interpretive angles so that she might reveal as much about her subject as she can in a single essay, to a broad audience consisting of non-academic readers. Favorite essays included "Notes on an Elizabethan Play," "Modern Fiction," "Outlines," and "How it Strikes a Contemporary." (Michael)

The fairy tale lives again in this book of forty new stories by some of the biggest names in contemporary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and magical realism. Neil Gaiman, “Orange” Aimee Bender, “The Color Master” Joyce Carol Oates, “Blue-bearded Lover” Michael Cunningham, “The Wild Swans” These and more than thirty other stories by Francine Prose, Kelly Link, Jim Shepard, Lydia Millet, and many other extraordinary writers make up this thrilling celebration of fairy tales—the ultimate literary costume party. Spinning houses and talking birds. Whispered secrets and borrowed hope. Here are new stories sewn from old skins, gathered by visionary editor Kate Bernheimer and inspired by everything from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” and “The Little Match Girl” to Charles Perrault’s “Bluebeard” and “Cinderella” to the Brothers Grimm’s “Hansel and Gretel” and “Rumpelstiltskin” to fairy tales by Goethe and Calvino and from China, Japan, Vietnam, Russia, Norway, and Mexico. Fairy tales are our oldest literary tradition, and yet they chart the imaginative frontiers of the twenty-first century as powerfully as they evoke our earliest encounters with literature. This exhilarating collection restores their place in the literary canon.

New Orleans in Golden Age Postcards showcases over three hundred vintage postcard images of the city, printed in glorious color. From popular tourist attractions, restaurants, and grand hotels to local businesses, banks, churches, neighborhoods, civic buildings, and parks, the book not only celebrates these cards’ visual beauty but also considers their historic value. After providing an overview of the history of postcards in New Orleans, Matthew Griffis expertly arranges and describes the postcards by subject or theme. Focusing on the period from 1900 to 1920, the book is the first to offer information about the cards’ many publishers. More than a century ago, people sent postcards like we make phone calls today. Many also collected postcards, even trading them in groups or clubs. Adorned with colorized views of urban and rural landscapes, postcards offered people a chance to own images of places they lived, visited, or merely dreamed of visiting. Today, these relics remain one of the richest visual records of the last century as they offer a glimpse at the ways a city represented itself. They now appear regularly in art exhibits, blogs, and research collections. Many of the cards in this book have not been widely seen in well over a century, and many of the places and traditions they depict have long since vanished.

This book will serve generations to come as the definitive book on buying and collecting the beautiful, 1930s to 1950s era large letter linen postcards. Over 2,300 large letter postcards are documented, with a carefully researched value for each card. This will assist dealers to fairly price their postcards and protect the collector from overpaying. There is a detailed history of the postcards and information about the designers and manufacturers. Graphic artists will find inspiration for new approaches to art and advertising. A wide assortment of colorful cards was selected to be shown big, making this a wonderful coffee table book, with crossover appeal in collecting, advertising, graphic design, historical research, and arts and crafts.