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USER: INFOTECHNODEMO by Peter Lunenfeld
This is a colorful collection of critical essays looking at art, video games, book design, “techno-masturbation,” and “life-extension diets,” among other subjects. “Readers will have to determine for themselves if this range is symptomatic of pluralism or promiscuity,” writes Lunenfeld in the introduction (“Utilities, Not Manifestos”). “The point is to make visible the patterns and repetitions of our moment that link nanotechnology to electronic music, artist/archivist Harry Smith to architect/superstar Rem Koolhaas, and Pontiacs to open source software. My writings reflect an obsession with doing theory and criticism in real time, which is akin to holding mercury in my fingers. But, like mercury, some of this stuff is toxic, and I’d be as happy never thinking about it again. I’m not saying that paintings = industrial design = The Matrix = web porn, just that all of these and more exist in the same lives— mine, hers, theirs, perhaps yours. User’s essays batter themselves against that overwhelming diversity which for lack of a better name we call the present … For the utilities in User to function as criticism, they should be read with the knowledge that while produced within the synergized environments they describe, they point towards the future’s very different present.” User is filled with attention-getting graphics and insightful commentary—a favorite thread discussing the ongoing trend of “Pissing Calvins” —you know, the comic strip characterturned- vehicle sticker? He’s now evolved to piss on just about everything, from Fords to Chevys, to exes to terrorists. In fact, writes Lunenfeld in his “Urine Nation” chapter, “If you have something you wish to communicate in Pissing Calvin language, just log onto customvehiclegraphics.com and ‘personalize’ your Calvin pissing on ‘a particular person, mood, attitude, sports event, business, or situation.’” Long live Pissing Calvin—now you can rejoice that there is a site that allows us all to preserve this all-important vehicle sticker forever.
$25.95, softcover, 171 pages, The MIT Press

CIPE PINELES: TWO REMEMBRANCES by Estelle Ellis and Carol Burtin Fripp
Graphic Design Archives Chapbook Series: Two—Cipe Pineles: Two Remembrances is the second in a series of graphic design chapbooks. The first in the series was on Lester Beall (Lester Beall: Space, Time & Content; RIT Graphic Design Chapbook Series 1 by R. Roger Remington).

Cipe Pineles contains two anecdotal essays of Pineles’ impact on the authors. Fripp was the stepdaughter-turned-adopted daughter of Pineles, and her memoir, “A Great Heart,” focuses more on Pineles’ personality—her doting manner, her charismatic personality, her high standards, her childlike discovery of a favorite food or commercial product, and her giving nature. Ellis’ memoir, “Pioneer in an Historic Time of Change,” takes a more professional viewpoint, as the two women worked together on Seventeen (1947–1950) and Charm (later merged with Glamour, 1950–1959). “Looking back, we were pioneers in an historic time of social, economic, and cultural change,” writes Ellis. She continues in an echo of the previous memoir by Fripp noting all the everyday objects that caught Pineles’ eye and cultivated her designs—“Cipe opened our eyes to a world of disparate and wonderful things: shocking pink envelopes, pharmaceutical glass and pottery, Floris soap, English watering cans, rose-garlanded porcelain cats, leather bound diaries, white knob dressmaker pins, Limoges china … .” It is apparent from both essays that Pineles was a woman who found artistic merit in everything around her.

RIT has about 20 important primary source archives on 20th century designers, hence the chapbook series will continue. To see RIT’s list of designer collections, visit http:// wally.rit.edu/depts/ref/speccoll/#design.
$15.99, softcover, 44 pages, RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press

SREBRENICA: GENOCIDE AT THE HEART OF EUROPE by Tarik Samarah
Taking readers on a tour of the horrors of the massacres of the Bosnian people from the town of Srebrenica, this book sets out to inform us all of the atrocities set upon the numerous innocent people whose lives were taken so viciously by the Serbian government. With stunning photography by Tarik Samarah and art direction by Amer Mrzˆljak, Srebrenica is a detailed look into the torturing and killing of the Bosniacs of Srebrenica. Often forgotten or ignored by the rest of the world, the widespread slaughter of victims struggling to find safety and solace is depicted in a thorough written account as well as a collection of startling photographs—the latter serving as a reminder for everyone turning a blind eye to this atrocity.
$50, hardcover, 148 pages, Synopsis D.O.O. and the Federal Ministry of Culture and Sports, Bosnia and Herzegovina

THE WORLD ON SUNDAY by Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentano
Husband-and-wife team Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentano painstakingly gathered the materials for this book through the establishment of their nonprofit organization, the American Newspaper Repository. They formed the nonprofit because, in the midst of writing a book about the literary losses attributable to microfilm, Baker became alarmed at the deteriorating status of older American newspapers. Amazingly, the British had better-preserved collections than the U.S., thanks to their longstanding habit of bookbinding. “Almost every American library that could afford to swapped a new plastic copy [microfilm] for the heavy, space-consuming woodpulp original—even two of the greatest, the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library,” explains Baker in his introduction. So, gathering newspapers mostly from British libraries, the pair began to pore over their newly acquired stockroom of periodicals and found themselves “paging with wonderment through Pulitzer’s almost-lost World,” notes Baker.

The birth of and reasoning behind this rare collection of World imagery is passionately and clearly accounted in Baker’s introduction: “Over several months, Margaret went through every World volume from 1898 to 1911, the year of Pulitzer’s death. … She found scenic wonders and oddities everywhere, marking them with strips of paper, but especially in the Sunday issues, where the World’s editors and illustrators and writers were obviously having a fantastic time—cackling to themselves, we imagined, as every week they published another vaudeville revue of urban urges and preoccupations. The world should know about the World, we felt. … The World’s innovations in page design, in color ‘electrogravure’ printing, in puzzles and children’s illustration, in teasingly elaborate charts, and in swervy, swoopy typography are everywhere evident to a modern eye; perhaps it’s time to take a preliminary step toward restoring the Sunday paper to its rightful place in the history of American vernacular art.”

The World on Sunday’s reproductions of the World’s sensationalistic, often muckraking journalism, along with its fantastic, colorful art, not only provide a view into the culture and society of the turn of the 20th century, but also into the graphic style of the age in the form of caricatures, cartoons, drawings, fashion, scientific, and portrait illustrations, hand-lettering, halftone photographs, maps, and more. Baker’s introduction provides insight into the work involved in gathering these examples of the journalism of the Gilded Age, while Brentano contributes detailed commentary on each piece included. An interesting read, to say the least, for literary buffs and graphic artists alike.
$50, hardcover, 132 pages, Bulfinch Press