Thursday, February 7, 2008

Come on, you know you love Chip Kidd!


You can tell a book by its cover, especially if it's one of the flat out fabulous covers by Chip Kidd. Case in point, the cover of his new novel THE LEARNERS actually has the red part as a kind of overleaf. It's smashing to look at and to touch (I dare you not to.)

The great news is that cover designer and novelist Chip Kidd will be coming to Boston for an event at the Art Institute and to read at Borders Back Bay on Thursday, February 21.

Not only is Chip Kidd the man who singlehandedly changed the world of book design, but he is a clever and thoughtful novelist in his own right. His new book, THE LEARNERS is out February 19 and it brings the advertising culture of the 1960s to life. The main character, Happy – who is, well, happy -- becomes part of the 1961 Milgram experiments (faithfully recreated here by Kidd) which measure just how far people will go to inflict pain on another person when under orders from an authority figure. His life is changed forever.

Augusten Burroughs says “This gleefully roguish satire of 1960’s advertising-gone-mad is delightfully shrewd, droll and urbane. And any novel that includes the phrase ‘bloated dirtpig’ and features the beloved Milgram Experiments earns a place on my shelf. A must-read for the ambitious, creative, or chemically unbalanced.”

I say (I just got the book) "Genius outside. Genius inside."

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