A fresh and fascinating look at World War II, surely the greatest conflict of the last century. The three editors and one graphic designer spent three years sifting through data to create fifty-three topics (divided into four chapters) about those extraordinary years, now eight decades ago. What I found particularly interesting was the scope of the book, this isn't just about the war years because the first chapter deals in detail with political, economic and social events that created the conflict and the last chapter considers various subjects like civilian and military losses in Germany and Russia, the Holocaust, concentration camps, Nazi collaborators, Manhattan project, dawn of the Cold War.
Chapter two (Arms and armed forces) and chapter three (Battles and campaigns) get down to explaining the actual events, who was involved and what they used. Some of the detail here is quite revealing, for example page sixty-one has a diagram showing the types of tank armour: five and the six types of shell fired by various tanks. The battles and campaigns chapter looks at significant set-pieces for example D-Day, Stalingrad, the battle of Britain, Barbarossa, the fall of France, Pearl Harbour, the desert war, conquest of the Pacific, Japan: the final days.
The strength of the book, is of course, its visual look. The layout is perfect as are the superb graphics and I find it surprising that the only credit for these is Nicolas Guillerat. This has the advantage of creating a uniform feel for the pages throughout the book. Each spread has one subject though a few run over to another spread, with a several hundred word essay, this fortunately isn't dry academic text but written in a conversational style (nicely translated from the French by Lorna Dale) which ties into the several graphics on the spreads. For those who want to know more the sources for all the information are at the bottom of each page.
I've been dipping into various pages of the book (it's not presented as a continuous read) and always come across some intriguing detail graphically explained that I wasn't aware of. It really is a fresh way of looking at World War II.
I first came across Carl Evers (1907--2000) amazing visual style when the Philadelphia Electric Company ran a marketing campaign in 1960 and 61 with ads in consumer weeklies that used his paintings. (You can see these ad paintings here: https://westread.blogspot.com/2011/12/illustrations-from-past-decades-part-3.html .) Only a few could be called maritime as they featured industrial docks others were incredibly detailed pictures of city and suburban life. None of the paintings were signed so I was aware of Carl Evers art but not his name.
This landscape paperback was published in 1975 and I found a good copy recently for next to nothing. There are forty-four paintings with a mix of sailing boats (old and new) warships, cruise liners and tugboats. Of course what stands out is the totally convincing sea, whether it's a calm day or choppy waters Evers has a knack of making it look so real, perhaps it's the foam or the wave's whitecaps that capture the viewer's imagination. The last page has four black and white sketches which clearly show what a brilliant draughtsman Evers was.
What is missing from the book is any description of how Evers worked, what make of paints and brushes did he use, original roughs for these paintings, their size et cetera. However it's well worth searching out a copy if you want to see the master of maritime art.
I think the only reason to buy these two boxed (and heavy)books is if you want to read ad copy. These are large titles with ads probably the same size as they appeared in consumer weeklies and monthlies decades ago. Taschen have already published 'All-American ads 50s', a 928 page chunky title with probably more than two thousand ads over ten chapters, the same applies to the 60s version with 960 pages. Those books though are not so big as these two 'Mid-century ads' titles.
Considering the ads have been scanned from the real thing I thought the reproduction was pretty impressive (the matt art paper helps too) and there are vague themes that run through both books: auto ads; drink; cigarettes; fashion; beauty; travel; furniture; appliances; medical and more. The first thirty or so pages in both books have a three language illustrated essay by Steve Heller.
Apart from being able to read the best copy Mad Men could offer I found it interesting to watch the change of illustrations prevalent in fifties ads merging into all photo ads in the sixties.
I think the 'All-American ads' series titles are better value and worth mentioning that they cover ads from each decade up to the 1990s.
*White Anglo-Saxon Protestant
