A book about books that deserves a spot in every bibliophile s collection. Kirkus Reviews
Praise for Cover:
In the past decade, Mr. Mendelsund has designed about 600 book jackets, ranging from a sober, sophisticated cover for Tolstoy's War and Peace to his whimsical Pop Art-like treatment of Kafka's novella Metamorphosis, to the hypnotic fluorescent swirls on Stieg Larsson's thriller The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. New York Times
Cover is foremost a visually enticing tour of some of the most important books of recent times, made even more memorable by Mendelsund's daring covers. Washington Post Praise for What We See When We Read:
A playful, illustrated treatise on how words give rise to mental images. Alexandra Alter, New York Times
Mendelsund, throughout this thought-provoking book, helps the lay reader contemplate text in ways you hadn't thought about previously. Los Angeles Times
A welcome and fascinating new book. New York Review of Books
Peter Mendelsund is the former art director at Alfred A. Knopf, the creative director of The Atlantic, and the author of a design monograph called Cover, as well as What We See When We Read, which has been translated into fourteen languages, and the novel Same Same. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Paris Review, and other magazines.
David J. Alworth is the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He teaches and writes about modern and contemporary literature, media, art, and design. He is the author of Site Reading: Fiction, Art, Social Form and his essays have appeared in Public Books and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as in various scholarly journals.
