09/12/2024
Here's another blast from the past... Circa 1987-92, I did a bunch of cover illustrations for the legendary Bob Aulicino, Ramdom House design chief, of which by far the trickiest was The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, by Paul Kennedy, Yale prof. We bounced around literally dozens of ideas, each one doodled or sketched or half-rendered, and finally we agreed on one, it went on the book, and the book was a critically acclaimed and a big seller. I figured I'd made the big time.
The following summer, I finally met one of my biggest fans for the time—Joe Schenkman's mom (a fine musician who introduced Joe to Beethoven's Late Quartets with her violin vibrating on his unborn head). She happened to mention she'd read the Kennedy book. She hadn't even noticed there was a cover illustration! Oy vey!
The next thing I knew, a different team designed the paperback edition and commissioned a slightly different illustration, and that was that. Chalk it up to experience.
But then, twenty-some years later, someone let me know they'd seen A PBS interview with Prof. Kennedy, who said the cover illustration nicely summed up his thesis, stressed he was referring to the original hardcover edition art (not the paperback), and the camera lingered lovingly for what seemed forever on a close-uo of that inconspicuous little image. I contacted Bob at his Prescott Arizona retreat where he now designs books by local authors and lives on roadkill (I'm embellishing a little) and thanks his lucky bright desert stars every night that he's free at last and forever, far from the NYC rat race to tell him of our belated success. "We're vindicated!" said he. "One of our triumphs after all!" So with this happy ending, it went from a forgettable washout to something to feel smug about.
NewsHour correspondent Paul Solman talks to Yale historian Paul Kennedy about the rise and fall of great economic powers like the United States.
