What do Franklin Roosevelt, Dr. Seuss, the U.S. Navy, and Mr. Magoo have in common? They are all part of the surprising story of the pioneering cartoon studio UPA (United Productions of America). Throughout the 1950s, a group of artists ran a business that broke all the rules, pushing animated films beyond the fluffy fantasy of the Walt Disney Studio and the crash-bang anarchy of Warner Bros. Instead, UPA’s films were innovative and graphically bold—the cartoon equivalent to modern art. When Magoo Flew is the first book-length study to chronicle the complete story of this unique American enterprise. The book features cameo appearances by Aldous Huxley, James Thurber, Orson Welles, Judy Garland, Robert Goulet, Jim Backus, Eddie Albert, and Woody Allen, as well as a select filmography of the best of UPA. Ebook Edition Note: The ebook has three images redacted: figures 1, 2, and 51.

Who but Russell Hoban could weave a tale of life’s pleasures and pain around a candy pig? And who but Quentin Blake could make the most poignant of stories so lighthearted and delightful? In this episodic picture book by an inimitable author-illustrator duo, a fantastic chain of events is triggered by the unacknowledged fall of a marzipan pig behind the sofa. We meet in quick succession a heartsick mouse, a lonely grandfather clock, an owl in love with a taxi meter, a worker bee, a fading hibiscus flower, a mouse who greets the dawn dancing, and finally a boy who guesses at the true relations between things. Appealing to the unsentimental yet sensitive nature of children, The Marzipan Pig is exquisitely attuned to the bittersweet wonder of life and to the sentience of all beings.

In Cartoon Vision Dan Bashara examines American animation alongside the modern design boom of the postwar era. Focusing especially on United Productions of America (UPA), a studio whose graphic, abstract style defined the postwar period, Bashara considers animation akin to a laboratory, exploring new models of vision and space alongside theorists and practitioners in other fields. The links—theoretical, historical, and aesthetic—between animators, architects, designers, artists, and filmmakers reveal a specific midcentury modernism that rigorously reimagined the senses. Cartoon Vision invokes the American Bauhaus legacy of László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes and advocates for animation’s pivotal role in a utopian design project of retraining the public’s vision to better apprehend a rapidly changing modern world.

Between the classic films of Walt Disney in the 1940s and the televised cartoon revolution of the 1960s was a critical period in the history of animation. Amid Amidi, of the influential Animation Blast magazine and CartoonBrew blog, charts the evolution of the modern style in animation, which largely discarded the "lifelike" aesthetic for a more graphic and often abstract approach. Abundantly found in commercials, industrial and educational films, fair and expo infotainment, and more, this quickly popular cartoon modernism shared much with the painting and graphic design movements of the era. Showcasing hundreds of rare and forgotten sketches, model boards, cels, and film stills, Cartoon Modern is a thoroughly researched, eye-popping, and delightful account of a vital decade of animation design.

Funnybooks is the story of the most popular American comic books of the 1940s and 1950s, those published under the Dell label. For a time, “Dell Comics Are Good Comics” was more than a slogan—it was a simple statement of fact. Many of the stories written and drawn by people like Carl Barks (Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge), John Stanley (Little Lulu), and Walt Kelly (Pogo) repay reading and rereading by educated adults even today, decades after they were published as disposable entertainment for children. Such triumphs were improbable, to say the least, because midcentury comics were so widely dismissed as trash by angry parents, indignant librarians, and even many of the people who published them. It was all but miraculous that a few great cartoonists were able to look past that nearly universal scorn and grasp the artistic potential of their medium. With clarity and enthusiasm, Barrier explains what made the best stories in the Dell comic books so special. He deftly turns a complex and detailed history into an expressive narrative sure to appeal to an audience beyond scholars and historians.

Remember when our alphabet agencies--CIA, DIA, NSA, FBI--were actually competent? Are you sure? Maybe they were just better at burying their mistakes...

Named by Newsweek magazine to its list of "Fifty Books for Our Time." For sixteen years William Whyte walked the streets of New York and other major cities. With a group of young observers, camera and notebook in hand, he conducted pioneering studies of street life, pedestrian behavior, and city dynamics. City: Rediscovering the Center is the result of that research, a humane, often amusing view of what is staggeringly obvious about the urban environment but seemingly invisible to those responsible for planning it. Whyte uses time-lapse photography to chart the anatomy of metropolitan congestion. Why is traffic so badly distributed on city streets? Why do New Yorkers walk so fast—and jaywalk so incorrigibly? Why aren't there more collisions on the busiest walkways? Why do people who stop to talk gravitate to the center of the pedestrian traffic stream? Why do places designed primarily for security actually worsen it? Why are public restrooms disappearing? "The city is full of vexations," Whyte avers: "Steps too steep; doors too tough to open; ledges you cannot sit on. . . . It is difficult to design an urban space so maladroitly that people will not use it, but there are many such spaces." Yet Whyte finds encouragement in the widespread rediscovery of the city center. The future is not in the suburbs, he believes, but in that center. Like a Greek agora, the city must reassert its most ancient function as a place where people come together face-to-face.