Here are 98 books that The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics fans have personally recommended if you like
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I was walking across the country in 1986 when I met a journalist named Mike Sager who showed me that writing can also be an adventure. Since then, I’ve edited an alternative weekly newspaper and written books about zydeco, Hurricane Katrina, comics, and old Kodachrome photos. So far, most everything I write seems to be centered in some way around my adopted home state of Louisiana, a place that never seems to run out of stories. Also, I still like to walk.
Warning: This book will make you build a new bookshelf. Like other oversized offerings from Peter Maresca’s Sunday Press Publishing, you need a tape measure, not a ruler, to determine its dimensions. This means that you can read this startling collection of strips from 1895 to 1915 in the grand size in which they first appeared in early newspapers, back when the colors and characters screamed off the page, reflecting and refracting the frenetic dawn of a new century. These old newspaper comics pages are where Americans first learned to laugh together. Society is Nixcan be difficult to find but is well worth the effort.
THE BIRTH OF COMICS. From the Yellow Kid to the Captain and the Kids, these are the origins of the American comic strip, created at a time when there were no set styles or formats, when artistic anarchy helped spawn a new medium. This book features the earliest offerings (1895 to 1915) from the famous and lesser-known cartoonists who where there when comics were born-over 150 creations from more then 50 superb artists, most reprinted for the first time ever. And all in the original broadsheet size and brilliant colors. Chris Ware calls Society Is Nix,"a mind-blowing portable museum retrospective…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I was walking across the country in 1986 when I met a journalist named Mike Sager who showed me that writing can also be an adventure. Since then, I’ve edited an alternative weekly newspaper and written books about zydeco, Hurricane Katrina, comics, and old Kodachrome photos. So far, most everything I write seems to be centered in some way around my adopted home state of Louisiana, a place that never seems to run out of stories. Also, I still like to walk.
Paul Tumey is one of our pre-eminent comics scholars, but like the cartoonists he honors in this work, he mainly wants to make you laugh. To this end, he’s assembled cartoons, comics, and old photos, mostly dating to the early 1900s, to build a case for a comics genre he calls Screwballism. It’s all a very funny read, and if the names of genius creators like Frederick Burr Opper and Gene Ahern aren’t yet household names, don’t blame Tumey.
The story of screwball comics, with new research and rare art from some of the most hilarious cartoonists of all time.
Before "screwball" became a movie genre, it was a staple of other forms of American culture, including newspaper comic strips. Emerging from the pressures of a rapidly accelerating technological and information-drenched society, screwball comics offered a healthy dose of laughter and perspective. The disruptive, manic, and surreal verbal-visual comedy of these "funnies" fostered an absurdist sensibility embraced by The Marx Brothers (who took their names from a popular comic strip), W. C. Fields, Tex Avery, Spike Jones, Ernie Kovacs,…
I was walking across the country in 1986 when I met a journalist named Mike Sager who showed me that writing can also be an adventure. Since then, I’ve edited an alternative weekly newspaper and written books about zydeco, Hurricane Katrina, comics, and old Kodachrome photos. So far, most everything I write seems to be centered in some way around my adopted home state of Louisiana, a place that never seems to run out of stories. Also, I still like to walk.
Before there were funny pages, there were sports pages with funnies on them. Eddie Campbell, best known as the artist-collaborator with Alan Moore on From Hell and the creator of his own wonderful and sort-of autobiographical Alec: The Years Have Pants, has pored over these old sports pages to uncover the secret origins of the funnies. Along the way, he tells stories of a lurid murder trial and a racially charged boxing match, all seen through the eyes of sports cartoonists. This is hidden history at its most entertaining.
A rip-roaring and exhaustively researched new take on the origin of the comic strip by one of the leading cartoon storytellers of our time.
With more than 500 period cartoons, The Goat Getters illustrates how comics were developed by such luminaries as Rube Goldberg, Tad Dorgan, and George Herriman in the sports and lurid crime pages of the daily newspaper. This wild bunch of West Coast-based cartoonists established the dynamic anatomy and bold, tough style that continue to influence comics today, as well as their own goofy slang that enriched the popular lexicon.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
I was walking across the country in 1986 when I met a journalist named Mike Sager who showed me that writing can also be an adventure. Since then, I’ve edited an alternative weekly newspaper and written books about zydeco, Hurricane Katrina, comics, and old Kodachrome photos. So far, most everything I write seems to be centered in some way around my adopted home state of Louisiana, a place that never seems to run out of stories. Also, I still like to walk.
Unlike the other books on this list, this isn’t primarily a reprint collection of early-twentieth-century comics. Rather, Art Spiegelman (whose essential memoir Mauswas the first comic to win a Pulitzer Prize), re-introduces old comics characters in a very personal story of the 9/11 attacks and the political fallout. Figures like the Happy Hooligan, Jiggs and Maggie, Little Nemo, and Krazy Kat and Ignatz float through these stories like New York City’s awakened ghosts. Spiegelman also adds a masterful essay on comics and curates a few selections of the original strips. No work better demonstrates how the early cartoonists can speak through the rubble of history with vitality and humor.
For the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Maus, the terrorist attacks of September 11th were both highly personal and intensely political. In the Shadow of No Towers is a masterful and moving account of the events and aftermath of that tragic day.
Spiegelman and his family bore witness to the attacks in their lower Manhattan neighborhood: his teenage daughter had started school directly below the towers days earlier, and they had lived in the area for years. But the horrors they survived that morning were only the beginning for Spiegelman, as his anguish was quickly displaced by fury at the U.S.…
I’ve always loved pirates and fantasy – combining the two is just wonderful in my eyes, cemented with my first watch of The Curse of the Black Pearl.It’s a struggle to identify exactly why these things appeal so much – I suppose my imagination and sense of free-wheeling roguish adventure runs wild. I’ve loved action-adventure and exploration since growing up watching the Indiana Jones films and playing Tomb Raider. The beloved genre of pirate fantasy seemed absurdly scarce within literature. I couldn’t find the books I wanted to read – so I had to write them, filling them with all the pirate fantasy staples I adored, twisting them, and adding entirely new creations.
I must start, of course, with the quintessential pirate fantasy book.
Many might not be aware that the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film was loosely adapted from this 1987 novel by Tim Powers. Anybody who knows the genre and is asked for a pirate fantasy book most likely brings up this one first. It’s the clearest yet expression of a rarified genre, and something with few imitators.
Expect to be entertained with high-seas piracy, ship battles, jungles, dark voodoo, ghost ships, and zombies as you follow Jack Shandy on the quest for the Fountain of Youth. Blackbeard, played wonderfully by Ian McShane in the film, proves a foreboding antagonist with supernatural designs.
Shortlisted for the World Fantasy Award Shortlisted for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel
1718: Puppeteer John Chandagnac has set sail for Jamaica to recover his stolen inheritance, when his ship is seized by pirates. Offered the choice to join the crew, or be killed where he stands, he decides that a pirate's life is better than none at all.
Now known as Jack Shandy, this apprentice buccaneer soon learns to handle a mainsail and wield a cutlass - only to discover he is now a subject of a Caribbean pirate empire ruled by one Edward Thatch, better known…
My fascination with pirates began as a student in Bristol (UK) – the legendary hometown of Edward Teach a.k.a. Blackbeard. Later, I visited the Pirates of Nassau Museum in the Bahamas and was amazed to learn there had been women buccaneers too. I wanted to discover more about these daring females and find out what might have enticed them to brave a tenuous life on the account. As fate would have it, I now live in North Carolina near the Outer Banks where Blackbeard met his fate. These experiences inspired me to write a different kind of adventure story about the real pirates of the Caribbean featuring a strong, resilient, swashbuckling female.
Lee’s reappraisal of Blackbeard (Edward Teach) examines the mythical persona of arguably the most notorious pirate of The Golden Age. But what is the truth behind the real man? In studying most of the extant evidence Lee displays a certain amount of respect for Blackbeard’s bravery, planning, psychological warfare tactics, and appetite for women, describing him as the “famous knight of the black flag.” This intriguing book offers an alternative view to Blackbeard the Monster.
Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was one of the most notorious pirates ever to plague the Atlantic coast. He was also one of the most colorful pirates of all time, becoming the model for countless blood-and-thunder tales of sea rovers. His daring exploits, personal courage, terrifying appearance, and fourteen wives made him a legend in his own lifetime. The legends and myths about Blackbeard have become wilder rather than tamer in the 250 years since his gory but valiant death at Ocracoke Inlet. It is difficult for historians, and all but impossible for the general reader, to separate fact…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I’ve been obsessed by the story of Anne Bonny and Mary Read since I heard about them in an Adam Ant song "Five Guns West". I know more than is good for me about pirates and wanted to share some of the fantastic books that inspired me when I wrote the novel Bonny & Read. Eighty years before Pride and Prejudice was written there were women armed with cutlasses roaming the Caribbean looking for ships to plunder – I want to give everyone the opportunity to learn more about this incredible hidden history.
Possibly Daniel Defoe, possibly not; the mysterious Captain Johnson clearly had first-hand information about the most notorious pirates of the Golden Age of Piracy in the Caribbean when it was first published back in 1724.
As well as stories about Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and Black Bart Roberts, Johnson is the reason we know about Anne Bonny and Mary Read’s extraordinary true stories. Jack Rackham served with Blackbeard, too – a fact that I love.
The famous history that inspired so many adventure novels, movies and most recently Black Sails & Pirates of the Caribbean. Find out the truth behind the legend: Table of Contents: • Of Captain Avery, And his Crew • Of Captain Martel, And his Crew • Of Captain Teach, alias Blackbeard • Of Major Stede Bonnet, And his Crew • Of Capt. Edward England, And his Crew • Of Captain Charles Vane, And his Crew • Of Captain John Rackam, And his Crew • The Life of Mary Read, And Anne Bonny • Of Captain Howel Davis, And his Crew •…
I’m not a real pirate, at least not most of the time, but as a kid, I wanted to be one. I was firmly in love with the romantic “Robin Hood” type legends of the pirate kings. As an adult, the love for all things pirate became a fascination with the pirate archetype, pirate history, and pirate legend. But, honestly, for me, it’s the mystery. There are so many mysteries involving pirates: Where did they hide their treasure? Was there a secret pirate kingdom called Libertalia? Were there pirate curses? This prompted me to research and write The Devil’s Treasure, inspired by the need to know, the need to solve, the need to conquer.
This is a beautifully illustrated and well-presented book that covers everything pirate from slang to weapons. It’s a gorgeous book, cover to cover, with detailed pirate history and fun pirate myths. This one is an easier read with beautiful illustrations and memorabilia. This title absolutely belongs on ye olde pirate bookshelf.
1
author picked
Pirates
as one of their favorite books, and they share
why you should read it.
This book is for kids age
6,
7,
8, and
9.
What is this book about?
Ever wanted to be a pirate? Sign the contract that comes with this book and you'll be ready to sail the high seas. There's even a pirate slang dictionary, to help you talk the talk as you walk the plank. With detailed biographies of legendary pirates plus features on their weapons, codes of conduct and punishments, Pirates delivers a thrilling portrait of life at sea in a bygone age - a story rich in colour, intrigue and adventure. Documents include a guide to pirate weaponry, a guide to their bloodthirsty flags, wanted posters, and the grisly notice of a death…
Let's face it: pirates of the Golden Age are just cool. No one would actually want to encounter them, but they have been the stuff of escapist dreams since childhood. Adventure, fellowship, treasure–the “romantic” aspects of piracy are what make these otherwise nasty individuals anti-heroes par excellence. As an adult and academic and as an occasional crewman on square riggers, I adopted pirates as a favorite sub-set of maritime history. As with other aspects of the past, I view the history of pirates and piracy as really two narratives: what the records tell us happened and why and what our persistent fascination with them reveals about us.
I taught courses on Atlantic piracy in the early-modern era and always included this lively, authoritative survey of piracy (and anti-piracy). It is a go-to volume for the newcomer to pirate history as well as for the specialist, and my students consistently praised it.
Peter Earle brings his mastery of maritime history to each page and is never boring!
Investigating the fascination pirates hold over the popular imagination, Peter Earle takes the fable of ocean-going Robin Hoods sailing under the "banner of King Death" and contrasts it with the murderous reality of robbery, torture and death and the freedom of a short, violent life on the high seas. The book charts 250 years of piracy, from Cornwall to the Caribbean, from the 16th century to the hanging of the last pirate cptain in Boston in 1835. Along the way, we meet characters like Captain Thomas Cocklyn, chosen as commander of his ship "on account of his brutality and ignorance,"…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I confess to being a lawyer, having tried over 250 cases as a defense attorney throughout my career. I am always drawn to themes of oppression of the marginalized, who are our brothers and sisters among us. I am also a constitutional scholar and have taught as an adjunct professor of criminology for 25 years and have a strong belief in individual rights. I have a passion for colonial-era history and the outdoors. Combining those, I have canoed and kayaked close to 400 different “pioneer paddling” grounds in 21 states with a directed focus on locales where pirates plundered, patriots fought, and Native Americans struggled to survive.
I remember taking a charter fishing boat out from Beaufort Inlet when they found the Queen Anne's Revenge back in 1996, the flagship of the legendary Blackbeard, who was killed off Ocracoke Island in 1718. I also remember visiting Springer's Point and paddling “Teach's Hole” on the island, not to mention searching for his alleged treasure both there and at the site of his former home in Bath, N.C.
I have also visited White Point Gardens in Charleston, where Stede Bonnett and crew were hanged, and kayaked along the many sounds and inlets where these buccaneers used to plunder and pillage. From the time that I was a child, I have been enchanted with pirate culture, and this book offers historical accuracy that you can't find by watching Johnny Depp in the theater.
They were bold, arrogant, brutal. They strode the rolling deck of a ship more easily than the tame streets of a town. They were wealthy―some beyond the wildest dreams of the governors and kings who first supported them, then pursued them. They were the pirates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they terrorized shipping lanes and coastal villages around the world.
The pirates in this book sailed far and wide, but all made their mark on the Atlantic coast. Some made their home there, such as the notorious Blackbeard, who anchored his ship off Ocracoke Island and lived for…
