Above are three covers by realist illustrator James Bama, featuring his trademark grimy walls. Even more than walls, Bama loves the crossed leg pose, which he also used on his famous cover for Midnight Cowboy. Bama was born and raised in Manhattan, and you can see his keen eye for urban detail in these pieces, but interestingly, he moved to Wyoming and became a leading painter of western-themed art. In fact, he was inducted into the Illustrator’s Hall of Fame because of his western art. But we prefer the citified Bama. The realism and immediacy of his early paintings is unmatchable. These are three of the best examples.     

Midnight Cowboy was a very good book before it was a very good movie. It was written by James Leo Herlihy in 1966, and immediately hailed as a classic. Herlihy sort of faded from the writing scene over time, and died at age 66 after taking an overdose of sleeping pills, but Midnight Cowboy — shown here with art by the incomparable James Bama—stands as a major achievement in U.S. literature.