The Great American Paperback
(2001 - Collectors Press)

(by Richard A. Lupoff) A big 320-page book, about twice as big as we think optimal, with 200 pages featuring colorful paperback covers. Most of them are gatherings of three or more covers, frequently laid out as slightly overlapping themselves - however, there are 23 pages that each showcase one cover without the clutter of neighbors. Note that most of the 23 are the chapter openers that are presenting a book cover without its main title, but rather the particular chapter's heading. All of the covers are captioned with the book title, author, publishing company & release year, along with an infobit about it. The artist of a cover image is credited, if known, and many times an identification based on style & comparative appearance is hazarded. 93 of the pages are the author's text regarding the biggest of the paperback publishers, the people who headed them and their product. There's a helpful two-page glossary assisting with the abbreviations & technical jargon that has developed in that industry and the collectors' milieu that has grown up around it. I don't know what to say about the index. Such a feature would have been immensely valuable in regards to this tome, chockfull as it is with book titles, as well as the names of authors, artists and the movers-&-shakers in the paperback publishing business, but it appears that the index had to be held to a single page or something, because what we have here seems slight and not very helpful. The relatively few artists that got 'well-presented' in this volume are: James Avati**, Thomas Hart Benton, Earle K. Bergey (2), Gerald Gregg, Lawrence Hoffman, Robert Jonas, Robert Maguire*, Earl Mayan, Frank McCarthy**, Stanley Meltzoff, Norman Saunders**, Shayn, Robert Stanley, Ed Valigursky, and UNKNOWN (7).