Front Page: Covers of the Twentieth-Century

Rating:
Summary: Newsstand favorites
Review: I have read reviews of this book in the media suggesting it is a history of the twentieth century through magazine covers. I don't see it like that, rather a visual history in two chapters, of twenty-eight leading consumer magazines from Europe and the USA. The first chapter covers the twenty-eight titles with a good choice of covers and text explaining the history of each one. Playboy and Esquire mix it with Fortune (eleven super designed covers) Stern and Punch for instance.

The second chapter called Trends is the one that I think readers will find the most interesting. It looks at styles and techniques of cover design and finally at people on the front page. Some of these covers could be considered historical as they feature politicians like Churchill, Stalin, Hitler and Charles De Gaulle, or celebrities like Marlene Dietrich, Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe (shown on a spread with forty-eight) or Sophia Loren.

Magazine folk will enjoy this well designed book because of all the covers. I can recommend another book, 'Cover Story' (ISBN 0811808165) which has two hundred American titles from 1900 to 1950 in a beautifully designed paperback. Perhaps the definitive book on the subject is the sumptuous 'Great Magazine Covers of the World' by Patricia Frantz Kery, out of print but worth looking for because it has five hundred covers from twenty countries, in a word, stunning.