The jury decided that this is a portfolio, and not properly a book, and therefore could not be included among the “excellent books” of the year. But I got permission to refer to it as one of my “interesting books, “ because I think that people who look at it ought to derive a great pleasure from the inspection of the title page!

This title page is so good that I would be willing to believe that it is derived from some French book of the seventeenth century, when printers were producing dinosaur-folios like this one; just as, when one nowadays hears a popular melody which is musically literate, one is willing to believe that it must derive from Tschaikowsky.

But I may be giving offense to the designer of the title page when I am intending to compliment him. For the man (or woman) who planned this title page has a fine eye for proportions. Everything about it seems to me just right: the Frenchiness of the types themselves, the values given to each line, the placing of each line on the page. Those people who are engaged in any kind of creative endeavor know how seldom it happens that, even though one may have worked on one’s creation with infinite pains, the result can be described as “just right.” I think this title page can be so described, and I hope the book will be opened in the exhibition to the title page, so that visitors may feast their eyes upon it.

George Macy