Hoaxes have been perpetrated in every field of human endeavor. This volume chronicles dozens of amusing examples of political pranks, literary lies, supernatural scams, religious ripoffs, historical humbugs, scientific swindles, infamous imposters and more. Consider the 10-foot Cardiff Giant, the fake Fossil Man “discovered” in 1869. P.T. Barnum was so incensed at the money-making hoax, he had a copy of it made—and charged people to see it! Or the Vinland Map, purportedly drawn by the Vikings in America centuries before Columbus, which later tests showed couldn’t have been drawn before 1917. Or the fake Vermeer, Christ and the Disciples at Emmaeus (actually forged by Hans van Meeregen in 1937), which was brought into question when the face of Christ was discovered to resemble a photograph of—Greta Garbo! GR

Publisher: Visible Ink
Paperback: 244 pages
Illustrated

Five essays on “the anxieties of self-presentation, the strategies we adopt to avoid loss of face in our routine social encounters, and the emotions—namely, humiliation, shame and embarrassment… “ We grovel, we crawl, we debase ourselves, wailing and begging. It’s grotesque. An Icelandic saga illustrates our need for these emotional theatrics: “It involves dismembering corpses for use in a ceremony that compels a higher-status person to take vengeance on a corpse. In that ceremony the threat of shame is made explicit by the person (usually a woman) bearing the pieces of the dead man: ‘If you don’t take revenge, you will be an object of contempt to all men.’ This is the ultimate in grotesquerie, but the grotesque and the dark comic world to which it belongs is… the defining substance of the humiliating.” It’s a good thing! GR

Publisher: Cornell University
Paperback: 270 pages

Unlike Adolf Hitler, who tossed Modernism out of Germany, Benito Mussolini embraced the style, seeing its vigorous streamlining as an ideal propaganda vehicle for Fascism. “In 1921, 30 percent of all Italians were illiterate, and graphic images were the best way of addressing them. Mussolini saw Italians as ‘political consumers,’ and as Fascism’s ‘creative director’ he controlled their behavior through slogans and symbols.” When not working for the state, graphic artists were busy making up for lost time, since 19th-century romantic illustration held on in Italy to the bitter end. The Modern style they developed was poetic and allegorical—one didn’t sell a car, but the concept of speed. The results were lively and full of celebration, rendered dramatically in soft-shaded posters and advertisements. And, oh, mechanical rows of soldiers and flocking warplanes for Il Duce. GR

Publisher: Chronicle
Paperback: 132 pages
Illustrated

Snapshots and press clippings follow the Hound Dog Man from ‘55 to ‘57. Detroit: “An atomic explosion of juvenile emotion hit the Fox Theater last night. It was triggered by Elvis Presley, the singer with the profile of a Greek god and the motions of a Gilda Gray, who is the current sensation of the rock ‘n ‘roll business… The guitar seldom got twanged, because Elvis was too busy flexing his knees and swinging his thighs like a soubrette in the palmy days of burlesque.” Jacksonville: “The teen-age rock ‘n’ roll idol, who was advised before his first show here to ‘keep it clean’ or face court charges, met with local Juvenile Court Judge Marion Gooding after the opening performance and was warned sternly to remove the objectionable hip movements from the act.” Vancouver: “One could call it subsidized sex… It was disgraceful, the whole mess.” Tacoma: “I certainly don’t mean to be vulgar when I wiggle my hips during a song. It’s just my way of expressing my inner emotions.” A fresh look at the first years. GR

Publisher: Popular Culture Ink
Hardback: 200 pages
Illustrated

“Wonders, Wonders, Wonders,” “Seeming Impossibilities,” “Masters of the Mysterious” and “Twentieth-Century Sorcerers,” in a heavily illustrated history of stage trickery from the pharaohs to television. A brief stop on the Continent for some fire-resisting: “The king of Eighteenth-Century fire eaters at the British fairs was Robert Powell. He ate hot coals ‘as natural as bread,’ licked red-hot tobacco pipes—aflame with brimstone—with his bare tongue, and cooked a cut of mutton using his mouth, filled with red-hot charcoal, as an oven. A spectator pumped a bellows to keep the coals blazing under his tongue… Chabert, the French ‘Incombustible Phenomenon,’ was later to carry the fiery arts to new extremes… With several steaks in hand, he boldly entered a blazing oven. Singing merrily in the inferno, he cooked the steaks and handed them out to be eaten. Then he himself emerged, smiling broadly, with not so much as a single singed hair.” GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 224 pages
Illustrated

This treatise “established the 20th-century roadside landscape as a subject for serious study.” The author “traces the transformation of commercial development as it has moved from centralized main streets, out along the streetcar lines, to the ‘miracle miles’ and shopping malls of today.” Also “explores the evolution of roadside buildings, from supermarkets and motels to automobile showrooms and drive-in theaters.” GR

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University
Paperback: 260 pages
Illustrated

Coffee-table tome for street- and sewer- life aficionados. “They lie underfoot, embellished and gleaming,” cast-iron lids on a dark world where “liquids such as beer, milk, ice cream or orange juice flow unseen down secret avenues.” They’re waffled, starred, sunburst, checkered and grooved. “Part history of material culture, part exercise in obsessive photographic cataloguing, part crypto-Pop artist’s book. There’s a crisp and even elegant matter-of-factness to their writing and their pictures, a spare functionalist precision.” Photographed directly from above, a hefty collection of metal presented in lustrous black and white, the pictures aesthetically satisfy “a certain organicist longing for closed forms.” GR

Publisher: MIT
Hardback: 252 pages
Illustrated

The colorful history of illegal booze in America-making it, running it, shipping it and stopping it. “Filled with the exploits of shifty-eyed moonshiners tending backwoods stills; daring bootleggers hustling cars laden with ‘tax-free’ whiskey over rural highways; revenuers pursuing their quarry on foot, in cars and from airplanes; and rumrunners and Coast Guard ships engaging in the occasionally fatal ‘booze ballet.’” With a cast of characters that includes “Scotch-Irish immigrants, Revolutionary War heroes, blockade runners, pirates, hard-drinking pioneers, wealthy and vicious gangsters, devil-may-care adventurers, and ludicrously incompetent amateurs.” GR

Publisher: Classic Motorbooks
Paperback: 192 pages
Illustrated

“Do you remember seeing or being told about the vast diorama of Democracity representing the theme of the Fair in 1939, ‘Building the World of Tomorrow’; GM’s Futurama ride; the world’s largest mirrored ceiling; 3-D movies; Elektro, a robot seven feet tall; the Town of Tomorrow; Toyland; the Parachute Jump; Billy Rose’s Aquacade?” The fairgrounds were a fantasy of Art Deco and Bauhaus confections, all centered around the pseudo-symbolic Trylon (700 feet tall) and Perisphere (200 feet wide). The pavilions were designed by Raymond Loewy and Norman Bel Geddes, among others, and filled with the most modern art by the likes of Dali, Noguchi, and Calder. Johnny Weissmuller showed up to shake your hand, and Sally Rand did her famous fan dance. This was the world of tomorrow! Then came World War II… GR

Publisher: Dover
Paperback: 152 pages
Illustrated

Explores the aesthetic, historical and social influences on German and Austrian graphics between the wars—before Hitler’s heavy hand of kitsch descended on the design world. Posters, packaging, trademarks and more are strikingly arranged to showcase the commercial artist’s mastery of weight and severity (echoes of calligraphy and woodcuts), contrasted with muted color palettes, richly textured surfaces and (surprise) a German sense of character and humor. GR

Publisher: Chronicle
Paperback: 132 pages
Illustrated