From the vest pocket of a jet-setting leprechaun.

In video game years, this book is 3,000 years old.

"Since the Haberule Character Count Scales and Conversion Chart are scientific in principle, your Haberule Visual Copy-Caster will always remain up-to-date."

Elusive bibliographic quarry: a phrasebook to a language that doesn't exist.

"If you mean to speak about pigs, or local government finance, or the poetry of Wordsworth, or abstract painting, you must know pigs, finance, Wordsworth, or abstract painting thoroughly well, and have some strong feelings about them."

The first person to find a coherent theme linking these titles wins an all expenses paid vacation to Girard, Kansas.

"In addition to sincerity, another qualification a budding dowser must possess is absolute confidence, combined with a certain aggressiveness of outlook."

The most intoxicating book of the week, from a strictly biblio-aesthetic point of view:

Some items deserve superlatives: this tiny, obscenely-illustrated field guide to "breast types" is the CRUDEST and MOST OFFENSIVE pamphlet we've ever handled.

An aesthete with a sweet-tooth for midcentury graphics was overheard in our shop describing the gift books of Peter Pauper Press as "the liqueur-filled bon-bons of letterpress culture."

But if an activity is really that wholesome, can it still be FUN?

It would be so gratifying to be able to shout, "My beach house is an egg!" in German.

Puerile laughter at the front desk: "Dude, can you design a logo for my cock?"

Or maybe the most satisfying book is the unique one that you cobble together yourself.

It's a shameful admission, but in recent months we've been neglecting the "Remote Window Display" in favor of almost-daily Fbook posts. For those who disdain social media and prefer our blog, we've finally brought over some of this spring's goodies:

Only a pop-up book could so vividly portray the virile thrust of a moon launch.

Your assignment: teach the children of Soviet Estonia to loathe vermin and microbes.

 

Bonus feature: paper footprints.

As an alternative to playing sudoku on your lunch break, you could try to decode the dense and baffling info-graphics in a 1950s Japanese atlas...

Lewis Carroll reimagined as anti-Prussian propaganda: "Twas dertag, and the slithy Huns / Did sturm and sturgel through the sludge; / All bulgous were the blunderguns, / and the bosch bombs outbludge."

Some of us have already made up our minds on this subject.

"It is the bones, tough gristle, and tendons, that interfere with the easy progress of the knife."

The practice of hipster-baiting is more than five decades old.

A book whose juju is irresistible... though that may reveal more about its audience than its subject.

If you changed the title to "21st Century Bibliophiles," this could double as a study of typical Monkey's Paw habituées.

It's endearing that the two of them are still together after all these years.

"I venture to predict that future generations will be taught telepathy in the schools, and that eventually it will partly replace the wireless."

For drawing-room thespians: an inspiring handbook on the lost art of dramatic recitation.

A taxonomy of the entire manufactured world, organized in a single volume: catnip for systematic types who are obsessed with the precise naming of things.

Our latest business plan calls for a portable bookshop, which could be transported from place to place on the backs of camels.

n/a:
PATTERN BOOK 1935. ARMSTRONG'S LINOLEUM
Armstrong Cork Co., Lancaster, PA, 1934.

If you know of anything sexier than a 340-page full-colour catalogue of Depression-era linoleum patterns, please contact us immediately.

<-- pp. 138-139

Monahan, Barbara:
A DICTIONARY OF RUSSIAN GESTURE
Hermitage, Tenafly, NJ, 1983.

The Slavic soul expressing itself in non-verbal gestures: dissatisfaction, resignation, caution, approbation, sexual innuendo, satiety, disgust, etc. Illustrated with photos.

<-- front cover

Cravat, Harland R., and Raymond Glaser:
COLOR AERIAL STEREOGRAMS OF SELECTED COASTAL AREAS OF THE UNITED STATES
U.S. Department of Commerce, Rockville, MD, 1971.

Could be useful if you're planning an amphibious invasion. Includes folding stereo viewer in pocket at rear.

<-- front cover

Burns, Aaron:
TYPOGRAPHY
Reinhold Publishing Corp., [New York], 1961.

Here's a sure-fire bait for trapping graphic designers: take a large-format typography book from the high modernist era, and display it spread open to a dynamic Paul Rand design. Mortally effective!

<-- pp. 14-15

Logan, Herschel C.:
HAND CANNON TO AUTOMATIC: A PICTORIAL PARADE OF HAND ARMS
Standard Publications, Inc., Huntington, WV, 1944.

Lovingly rendered pen-and-ink illustrations of firearms both ancient and modern: basically it's pinup art for pistol fetishists.

<-- front cover