The Odd Fellows Building was suggested by Black newspaper editor Benjamin J. Davis (1870-1945), designed by white Atlanta architect William A. Edwards (1866-1939) and built by Robert E. Pharrow, owner of an African-American construction company. Despite the Jim Crow era, the two men, Black and white, worked side by side toward completing the structure.
Sister machinist unions, San Francisco's Lodge 68 of the International Association of Machinists and Oakland's Local 1304 of the CIO's Steel Workers Organizing Committee (which left the IAM over a wildcat strike in 1936), had a national reputation for militancy; Lodge 68 had more strikes during World War II than all other Bay Area unions combined. Along with Local 1304, they accrued this strike record in open defiance of the National War Labor Board, who were backed by the FBI, the Office of Economic Stabilization in the White House, a Navy Vice-Admiral, the War Manpower Commission, the collective bosses, who in turn were supported by the CIO, ILWU, and Communist Party.
12 . 10 . 20
Among the many gifted designers now at work in the publishing industry, Peter Mendelsund is one of my favorites. To my shame, I can’t remember the first time I saw an intriguing cover, turned to the back flap to see whose work it was, and found Mendelsund’s name, but by now I have a slew of books he’s designed, including his splendid series of Kafka and Calvino paperbacks. (He’s also a fine writer. Talent is unevenly distributed.)
In
The Look of the Book: Jackets, Covers, and Art at the Edges of Literature, published this fall by Ten Speed Press, Mendelsund collaborates with David J. Alworth, a scholar specializing in literature, media studies, and cultural history (deeply conversant, for instance, with the work of Bruno Latour: a red flag for me, but catnip for some) to examine the process and history of book cover design. In one way,