George Lois was the genius graphic designer responsible for the legendary series of covers of Esquire magazine that were an icon-shattering and icon-defining commentary on the '60s. This collection of the best of those covers includes short anecdotes by Lois, but the chief interest is in the pictures he created. His covers were generally poster-like and free of excess words, and yet these pictures say plenty. The list of subjects is stellar: Marilyn Monroe, Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, Andy Warhol, Germaine Greer, and Richard Nixon. Sometimes the picture is a tease for the story within, sometimes it subverts it (as in the cover of a hangdog Roy Cohn with a ridiculous halo that accompanied a self-justifying piece written by Cohn). Only one of the covers reproduced here, a nude shot of Jack Nicholson, was cut before press time.

The hectic cultural and political upheavals occurring in the 1960s marked a divide between the relatively stable cultural environment of the previous decade and what is now regarded as the golden age of pop music and youth culture. The flourishing of alternative cultures in the latter part of the decade laid many of the foundations of later trends and subcultures. And this influence is nowhere more apparent than in record packaging, with classic graphic design and layouts reappearing again and again. ‘Classic Album Covers of the 60s’ is a collection of over 200 of the very best (and in some cases) worst that designers had to offer throughout the decade. Representative designs from each period are illustrated in full colour, taking the reader on a journey from the wholesome joviality of the 'Very Merry Macs' and 'Muscle Beach Party', through stylish and understated jazz cover designs, to the best psychedelic designs of the late 60s such as the Beatles’ "Sgt Pepper" and the Incredible String Band’s "The 5000 Spirits". The changing style of album cover design illustrated in ‘Classic Album Covers of the 60s’ provides a fascinating reflection of changing cultural trends during a decade whose ideas and artistic expressions sought to break the prevailing rules and, so doing, laid the foundations for cover design today.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year From the National Book Award winner, a masterful history of the decade whose conflicts shattered America’s postwar order and divide us still. On July 4, 1961, the rising middle-class families of a Chicago neighborhood gathered before their flag-bedecked houses, a confident vision of the American Dream. That vision was shattered over the following decade, its inequities at home and arrogance abroad challenged by powerful civil rights and antiwar movements. Assassinations, social violence, and the blowback of a “silent majority” shredded the American fabric. Covering the late 1950s through the early 1970s, The Shattering focuses on the period’s fierce conflicts over race, sex, and war. The civil rights movement develops from the grassroots activism of Montgomery and the sit-ins, through the violence of Birmingham and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the frustrations of King’s Chicago campaign, a rising Black nationalism, and the Nixon-era politics of busing and the Supreme Court. The Vietnam war unfolds as Cold War policy, high-stakes politics buffeted by powerful popular movements, and searing in-country experience. Americans’ challenges to government regulation of sexuality yield landmark decisions on privacy rights, gay rights, contraception, and abortion. Kevin Boyle captures the inspiring and brutal events of this passionate time with a remarkable empathy that restores the humanity of those making this history. Often they are everyday people like Elizabeth Eckford, enduring a hostile crowd outside her newly integrated high school in Little Rock, or Estelle Griswold, welcoming her arrest for dispensing birth control information in a Connecticut town. Political leaders also emerge in revealing detail: we track Richard Nixon’s inheritances from Eisenhower and his debt to George Wallace, who forged a message of racism mixed with blue-collar grievance that Nixon imported into Republicanism. The Shattering illuminates currents that still run through our politics. It is a history for our times.

The hectic cultural and political upheavals occurring in the 1960s marked a divide between the relatively stable cultural environment of the previous decade and what is now regarded as the golden age of pop music and youth culture. Flourishing alternative cultures in the latter part of the decade laid many of the foundations of later trends and subcultures and this influence is nowhere more apparent than in record packaging, with classic graphic design and layouts reappearing again and again. This newly reformatted edition of Classic Album Covers of the 60s is a collection of over 200 of the very best (and in some cases worst) that designers had to offer throughout the decade. Representative designs from each period are illustrated in full colour, taking the reader on a journey from the wholesome joviality of the Very Merry Macs and Muscle Beach Party, through stylish and understated jazz cover designs, to the best psychedelic designs of the late 60s such as the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper and the Incredible String Band’s The 5000 Spirits. The changing style of album cover design illustrated in Classic Album Covers of the 60s provides a fascinating reflection of changing cultural trends during a decade whose ideas and artistic expressions sought to break the prevailing rules and, so doing, laid the foundations for cover design today.