Sunday, December 4, 2011

Paperback 484: Up From Slavery / Booker T. Washington (Pocket Books 80)

Paperback 484: Pocket Books 80 (1st ptg, 1940)

Title: Up From Slavery
Author: Booker T. Washington
Cover artist: N/A

Yours for: $10


PB80.UpSlavery

Best things about this cover:
  • Is this a book about denim?
  • A good example of how deathly boring the packaging was on a lot of early paperbacks—and this is one of the earliest, Pocket Books having begun only a year earlier in 1939.
  • One thing this book does have going for it is its condition—a little Perma-gloss peeling, a little scuffing, but other than that, square and bright and barely (if ever) read.


PB80bc.UpSlavery

Best things about this back cover:
  • More aesthetic austerity measures
  • I sort of like this incarnation of the Pocket kangaroo—they're pushing the books-are-good-for-you angle here with the intellectual, bespectacled 'roo. Later incarnations will look younger, have better eyesight (the better to appreciate the more lurid covers)

Page 123~

From the first I have sought to impress the students with the idea that Tuskegee is not my institution, or that of the officers, but that it is their institution, and that they have as much interest in it as any of the trustees or instructors.

~RP

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Moving right along...

Deb said...

It's impossible to be snarky about a book that embodies so much of the early civil rights movement and spirit.

Please return to regular broadcasting (e.g., COLLEGE CONFIDENTIAL, SAM, etc.) ASAP.

Anonymous said...

If he skips the boring books in his collection, , it calls into question the whole integrity of the blog.

Rex Parker said...

Allow me to say, for the first time ever, "Thank you, Anonymous."

RP