Sherwin Beach Press ~ Illinois

Within the Context of No Context
By George W.S. Trow and Illustrations by Howard Coale 1992. Edition of 200
Black Japanese rayon cloth boards. Paper title label. 6 x 9.5" with 110 pages. Set in Centaur and Arrighi and printed on Rives Johannot by Jennifer Hughes. Illustrations by Howard Coale printed from photopolymer plates made from his original pen & ink drawings. Binding by Trisha Hammer. End papers of Fabriano del Sarto with a television-shaped deboss on the cover which holds a miniature print of a fedora. Published originally in the New Yorker in 1978, explores the role of television in American life, proffering a bleak vision that seems more and more accurate with the passage of time; a new introduction has been added by the author for this edition. In style the text is unusual—some might say poetic. It concludes with a reminiscence of the author’s days as an aide in the office of protocol at the New York World’s Fair of 1964/65. The author, George W. S. Trow, was for many years a staff writer at the New Yorker. Little, Brown published Context as a trade book in 1981 [including an additional essay about Ahmet Ertegun, which is not reprinted here]. This edition adds four interpretive drawings by artist Howard Coale.
$340

The Essence of Beeing
By Michael Lenehan. This is an account of two beekeepers: one who has hives on the roof of his apartment building in the city, and one who keeps bees on his farm in the country. In the process of describing the beekeepers and their work, the book tells a great deal of what is known about bees and honey. Alice Brown-Wagner has illustrated the text with drawings of the tools of beekeeping. Small drawings of bees by Albert Richardson are scattered throughout the text pages. Hand set in Cooper Oldstyle. The book has a dust jacket of blind-embossed (in a honeycomb pattern) Roma Raffaello. Edition of 200. 45 pages, 9-1/4 by 12 inches.
$300

The Innocents Abroad
By Mark Twain. "Being an Account of the Steamship Quaker City's 1867 Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land; with Descriptions of Countries, Nations, Incidents and Adventures, as They Appeared to the Author." With cartoon illustrations by Heather McAdams who was sent by the publisher in the Summer of 1995 to retrace the authors steps and "report on the present state of tourism." In one of his most exuberant nonfiction works, Twain wrote, "The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language." The companion themes which fill these pages -- the shallowness of the sites to be visited and the visitors -- are as well revealed in McAdams' new cartoons as in the master satirist's words. Text follows a first edition copy in the possession of Northwestern University Library. Letterpress from Monotype Bell on Johannot paper. Twenty pages of illustrations. The two-volume set is handbound between red cloth covered boards with exposed spine sewing and housed in a black and white linen-covered case wrapper with black leather straps and brass studs, intended to suggest a portmanteau. Edition of 200. (7.75 x 11.25 inches each; 445 pp.) An additional set of cartoons suitable for framing is also available.
Book: $1200

One of the books featured in the Binding section of the New York Public Library's exhibit Ninety from the Nineties. "Trisha Hammer designed a traveling case for this modern illustrated edition of Mark Twain's travel saga."