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Category: Books (page 6 of 6)

Illustrations from Works by William Bruce Leffingwell

Hunting season is quickly approaching and I spent part of this afternoon reading up on upland hunting.  I naturally got distracted by reading up on bird dogs instead, which then led me to a series of books by the author William Bruce Leffingwell.   The books which are available to read online, were written in the late 1800’s and covered a wide range of topics in hunting, fishing, and sportsmanship.  It’s interesting to see that basic field techniques and tricks that we learned as kids from our fathers seem to be mostly the same as they were for our great great grandfathers.  Included in the books were also a number of great illustrations.

leffingwell_hunting_11

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Shoe Fitting Manual for the Military

A Manual on Foot Care and Shoe Fitting for Officers of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, from 1920. Read the entire thing online if you want to: http://books.google.com/books?id=3QuFX-gCuewC

foot_shoe_fitting_14
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Brooklyn Gang

The book is not easily available, but I found that you can check out some of the pictures taken by Bruce Davidson of a young group of kids in the 1950’s on magnumphoto.com.

Bruce Davidson Brooklyn Gangs

From wikipedia:

Bruce Davidson’s 1959 project Brooklyn Gang is an intimate photographic study of a rebellious Brooklyn teenage gang, who called themselves The Jokers. Davidson was able to document their candid manifestations of worry, energy, enthusiasm, anger, and occasional sadness. The gang seemed to exist in their own secluded world, meandering from Coney Island to diners and taxicabs, anxiously moving forward with an unknown future and unknown goals. Some of them were even thoroughly troubled: one member died from a heroin overdose a few years after Davidson left them. Not only is Davidson’s work a sincere portrayal of troubled teenagers coming of age, but it also acts as a documentation of teenage life during 1950s, exposing the emotional climate of that time period and exposing the dark side of a supposedly innocent time period.

Tom Kundig – Houses

I came across this book recently featuring a few homes designed by local architect Tom Kundig. I usually tend to dislike these sorts of books, but this one is actually pretty good.

Kundig Houses - 1
He’s has been getting lots of press lately on a number of different projects including the Outpost and the 1111 Pike condos.

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Old Plane Manuals

From back when manuals were actually easy to read…

Old Airplane Manuals - Covers
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Generations of Style

While organzing a few stacks of books I had lying around, I came across one I had forgotten about – “Generations of Style”, by John William Cooke.   It’s all about the history of Brooks Brothers.  I’m not sure if they’re still produced, but they seem to show up on ebay with some regularity at good prices.  Scans to come later.

Brooks Brothers - Generations of Style book

Esquire Big Black Book – Spring 2009

Unless you want to read about tan lines and how to pick the perfect white t-shirt, I’d advise you to save your 10 dollars.  They did a very poor job with this edition and even old ads were recycled.

Esquire Big Black Book - Spring 2009 edition

Esquire Big Black Book - Spring 2009 edition

The image is from Cold Track Days flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/coldtrackdays/

The Playboy Cartoon Album, circa 1959

While browsing a local bookstore this afternoon, I came across an interesting book with a collection of cartoons found in early Playboy magazines.  It was published in 1959.

The Playboy Cartoon Album, 1959

The Playboy Cartoon Album, 1959

Some excerpts from the forward written by Hugh Hefner:

Peter Arno, of The New Yorker, has been mistakenly credited with the creation of the one-line cartoon caption and if, in fact, this wonderful form of graphic wit is somewhat older than the early Twenties, when TNY first saw the light of day, it’s real popularity can be traced from when, and Arno and his fellow New Yorker cartoonists are most responsible for that.  Before them, cartoons were more to be illustrated jokes with captions two, four, or more lines long (of the He: She: He: She: variety) and usually a very dull business, with the drawings quite incidental and often unnecessary to the humor.  The New Yorker changed all that.  The drawing became the thing and a single, pointed caption (and sometimes no caption at all) was all that was needed to tell the story…

… A magazine says a good deal about itself in the cartoons it publishes.  You’ll find no drawings about Mom’s new hat, Junior’s report card or balancing the family budget here, for Playboy is a magazine for the young, urban male.  The cartoons, therefore, are urbane, sophisticated and quite masculine in viewpoint – a refreshing change, we think, from the female-dominated Togetherness stressed by so many publications today.  Playboy is edited to entertain, so most of the cartoons are about the fun and frolicsome side of life…”

From skimming through the pages, you can see that sexual humor has not changed much at all in the past 50 years.  I’ll post a few scans sometime soon.

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