Richard Cheek Livres

Spectacular color photographs of the 1.1 million acres of land in Massachusetts that are permanently protected from development.

Hardback book with dust jacket, 128 pages. Lots of color photos.

The ways books, magazines, printed ephemera, and toys relating to military life and wartime experience were used to persuade boys to admire, and aspire to become, soldiers and sailors are illuminated in this lively catalogue, which accompanied a Grolier Club exhibition. Covering the period 1871–1918, Richard Cheek shows that young people were encouraged to accept war as an inevitable form of human behavior that offered them a swift path to manhood, defined by acts of exceptional bravery, selfless service, and patriotic devotion. A lavishly illustrated visual history, Playing Soldiers is a valuable resource for those interested in the influence of war culture on children.

Published to accompany the exhibition "Selling the The Books That Built America's Houses, 1775-2000," on show at the Grolier Club December 11, 2013-February 7, 2014. The evolution of the house design book in the United States is a long and complicated story, filled with architectural creativity and banality, commercial genius and excess, egalitarian and humanitarian ideals, literary and social ambition, can-do individualism, faith in progress and invention, and endless energy. All of these quintessential American traits are bound within the pages of the builder's guides, pattern books, catalogues, and other forms of architectural literature that have competed for the financial and psychological rewards involved in designing and building a domestic haven for every citizen. In this illustrated survey - the first of its kind to showcase the enormous variety and graphic appeal of these materials - Richard Cheek highlights the more visually arresting and socially compelling exampl