Subway Lives by Jim Dwyer

First edition of Subway Lives published by Crown Publishers in 1991

Journalist Jim Dwyer's Subway Lives is an amazing series of non-fiction vignettes that revolve around the New York City subway system over a 24 hour span. Dwyer's account follows higher-ups in the Transit Authority, especially David Gunn, who is famous (and infamous) for ending the graffiti pandemic on the subway, a pregnant woman who gives birth on the subway, petty thieves, a mentally challenged teen, traffic control rooms, subway police, a conductor with a strange penchant for singing, and a few of New York's most famous graffiti writers at the time, Reas, JA, Soni, and Slick. Interspersed with a bevy of historical information about the subway system and statistical figures, Dwyer's book is a treasure trove of late 1980's/early 1990's New York City. While this book will obviously appeal more to New York natives or people who have lived here, it is still an interesting social study from a particularly transformative time in the history of the city and it's world renowned subway system. Dwyer himself is a New York City native and covered the subway beat for New York Newsday in the late 1980's before reporting for the Daily News and eventually the New York Times. With excellent book design by June Bennett-Tantillo, Subway Lives remains an artifact of a bygone time in New York City.

Bobby Fischer's Conquest of the World's Chess Championship by Reuben Fine, Ph.D.

First edition published by David McKay Company in 1973

Reuben Fine's seminal book recounts and discusses the entirety of the World Chess Championship in 1972 between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. Arguably some of the most famous matches ever played, the championship during the summer of 1972 at the height of the Cold War were some of the most widely talked about and covered in the history of chess. Spassky, a Russian, and Fischer, an American, embodied the Cold War on chessboards and Fischer's victory was a global symbol and triumph for America. In his book Fine, a chess grandmaster and psychologist, discusses his views on the matches and the psychology behind them. With amazing, simplistic cover design by Lawrence Ratzkin, this first edition is a great volume about a great part of history.

The Man In The High Castle by Philip K. Dick

First book club edition of The Man In The High Castle

Philip K. Dick's nightmarish alternate history was published by Putnam in 1962, and won the Hugo Award the following year. It tells of a world in which the Axis of Evil triumphed in World War II, and in the story's present they effectively run the world. The alternate future begins with FDR being assassinated prior to taking office, and then after the war's outbreak the Nazis take over Russia and later Africa, and everything else goes downhill after that. It is a grim but fun book that makes you think about how close we all came to potentially living in an inane world like the one Dick invites us inside. It's not my favorite book of his, but it definitely possesses all the hallmarks of a Philip K. Dick novel. The stark jacket design by Robert Galster also gets the point of terror across well.

Movie Magic by John Brosnan

First printing of Movie Magic by John Brosnan

This book is clearly dated, but still interesting. John Brosnan published this book in 1974 on St. Martin's Press chronicling the history of special effects in film. It covers everything from Jason and the Argonauts to 2001: A Space Odyssey, with amazing illustrative pictures and information. Brosnan, who was part film scholar, was also a writer of science fiction in the 1960's and 70's. This book is obviously irrelevant at this point in time, but it serves as a pretty good historical almanac as to how movies were once made. It also has a great cover of a still from the original King Kong movie.