Daily Book Graphics #1303

©1962

Birds and "Birds" / NSFW Thrift Store Treasure

In all my days of thrifting for books I have never come across anything like this. I was sifting through 50 cent books at a thrift store in the suburbs and I spotted a copy of the Golden Guide to Birds, I already own the book and blogged it in DBG #158. When I picked it up I noticed something in between the Eastern Kingbird and the Great Crested Flycatcher. It turned out to be eight photographs of three different women posing in various states of undress. They appear to have been taken in the 1960s although some could be earlier. I wonder how they ended up there, did a husband hide them in a book that he thought his wife would never take off the shelf? Did he put them in a book about birds because in British slang "birds" can mean women? I suppose we will never know.

Hopefully I made this image small enough that no one will be able to recognize their grandmother.

Sorry, I have to protect the identities of these ladies.

Daily Book Graphics #196 / Architecture

©1969

Daily Book Graphics #158 / Birds

This is a classic Golden Guide. Birds was originally published in 1949, this one has 1956 as the latest copyright date, but judging from the cover design, I think this was actually published in the 60s or 70s. One of the hallmarks of Golden Guide illustration is that they usually depict animals with some element of the environment in which they are found.

Daily Book Graphics #139 / Sports Cars

The dangers of drifting

As a collector of Golden Guides, I was pretty thrilled to find the Golden Guide to Sports Cars at the the flea market last week. I new of it, but had never actually seen it. It was published in 1966 and updated in 1968. It is a bit of a weird subject for Golden Guides, it seems like it would be out of date as soon as it appeared. This is my favorite era for cars so I really like these illustrations. Although it would be nice to see the sports cars in their native environments like the Golden Guides do for mammals or birds. The one thing that bothers me is that the black block of right justified text in the upper left seems like it should be aligned with the bottom of "Sports," it's 1/8 of an inch too high for no reason.

Daily Book Graphics #66 / Fungus

Mushrooms (and fungus in general) are interesting in many strange ways, I often think I should try to learn more about them.

I blogged about this large Puffball here.

From the Projects Library #5 / Tree of Life #1

Evolutionary trees are one of my favorite kinds of natural history graphics. I think I will start compiling them on this blog as a sub-division of my "From the Projects Library" feature. This one is from a first addition Golden Guide, Mammals: A Guide to Familiar American Species, 1955. I really like that the human is wearing a suit.

From the Projects Library #4

This illustration of migration flyways appears as the endpapers in Golden Press' The Bird Watcher's Guide, 1961.

Golden Period for Golden Guide Cover Design

I have a lot more to say about Golden Guides both inside and outside but that will have to wait. I have a Flickr set of selected book covers from my collection here.