 Early television design rejected as a little too hypnotic. 
We're doing a double on artist Mitchell Hooks with this cover for Gene Stackelberg's thriller Double Agent. Hooks was working this time for Popular Library, also in 1959 (we neglected to put the copyright in yesterday's post). CIA agent is accused of treason and can only clear his name with the help of the sister of a known informer. Gene Stackelberg was a pseudonym for Ouida Adams, a female writer who doubtless chose her pen name because it sounds so dry and serious, and likely because readers would be prejudiced against a female espionage author. As far as we can tell this was her only foray into fiction.
 Underneath her cool exterior lies a completely different woman. 
Paula is another southern sin novel—i.e. set in a decadent, overheated south where sex and greed combine to produce deadly results. This one follows an oil worker who goes to work for an impotent millionaire and his young hottie of a wife—the eponymous Paula. Hero gets hottie pregnant and murder must follow, but it’s after the killing that things really begin to fall apart, and in unpredictable ways. You know the basic idea because you read it in James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. Though the cover art from Mitchell Hooks doesn’t specifically evoke a southern mood, it’s really quite nice, especially how the robe is rendered in a style that verges on calligraphy, complimenting the edges of the mirror, and how the reflection in the glass is red, revealing the fiery intensity beneath Paula's cool exterior. Nice touch. You can see a couple more Hooks pieces here and here.
 They say there are victors and losers in life, but what if you’re both? 
David Mark’s 1959 thriller Long Shot, originally published as The Long Chance in 1955, is a look at the life of a compulsive gambler. He picks winning horses, losing horses, marries Ruth, beds Katy and Carol, picks winning horses, picks many more losing horses, and eventually resorts to lies, cheating, theft, and so forth. To understand what the novel is about all you really need to know is the lead character’s doubly predictive name—Evan Victor Loeser. The excellent art here is by Mitchell Hooks.
 Jack Kerouac writes about the road ahead. 
Jack Kerouac gets a GGA style cover by Mitchell Hooks for the short, semi-autobiographical (of course) novel Maggie Cassidy. It’s a tale of high school into college, as well as love sought and lost, but you can always count on Kerouac to subvert conventionality. Maybe it isn’t his best, but it has those sparks and flashes of his unique style. The book was first published in 1959 by Avon, and this edition from the British imprint Panther appeared in 1960.
 Vintage literature reminds us that murder, deceit, betrayal, lust and greed know no boundaries. 
There’s a saying that the world is a book and those who don’t travel read only one page. But on the other hand, if you stay home the danger and mayhem at least happen in your own language. Which is the better course? Pulp authors seem to think it’s the latter. Above and below are twenty-one vintage bookcovers for fiction set in various cities around the globe. The writing spans genres such as romance, sleaze, horror, and espionage, and the art is by Mitchell Hooks, Barye Phillips, Robert McGinnis, et. al. Thanks to all the original uploaders.
                   
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1937—The Hindenburg Explodes
In the U.S, at Lakehurst, New Jersey, the German zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg catches fire and is incinerated within a minute while attempting to dock in windy conditions after a trans-Atlantic crossing. The disaster, which kills thirty-six people, becomes the subject of spectacular newsreel coverage, photographs, and most famously, Herbert Morrison's recorded radio eyewitness report from the landing field. But for all the witnesses and speculation, the actual cause of the fire remains unknown. 1921—Chanel No. 5 Debuts
Gabrielle Bonheur "Coco" Chanel, the pioneering French fashion designer whose modernist philosophy, menswear-inspired styles, and pursuit of expensive simplicity made her an important figure in 20th-century fashion, introduces the perfume Chanel No. 5, which to this day remains one of the world's most legendary and best selling fragrances. 1961—First American Reaches Space
Three weeks after Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly into space, U.S. astronaut Alan Shepard completes a sub-orbit of fifteen minutes, returns to Earth, and is rescued from his Mercury 3 capsule in the Atlantic Ocean. Shepard made several more trips into space, even commanding a mission at age 47, and was eventually awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor. 1953—Hemingway Wins Pulitzer
American author Ernest Hemingway, who had already written such literary classics as The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novella The Old Man and the Sea, the story of an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream. 1970—Mass Shooting at Kent State
In the U.S., Ohio National Guard troops, who had been sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, open fire on a group of unarmed students, killing four and wounding nine. Some of the students had been protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia, but others had been walking nearby or observing from a distance. The incident triggered a mass protest of four million college students nationwide, and eight of the guardsmen were indicted by a grand jury, but charges against all of them were eventually dismissed.
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