Scrapbooks: An American History
by Jessica Helfand
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List Price: $45.00
Our Price: $28.21
Your Save: $ 16.79 ( 37% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 709
EAN: 9780300126358
ISBN: 0300126352
Label: Yale University Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 224
Publication Date: 2008-11-03
Publisher: Yale University Press
Studio: Yale University Press
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Book
Comment: Aside from being beautiful book, this unique and thorough contribution expands on the traditional definition of primary sources for the understanding American history.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good to a point
Comment: the author has found some charming old scrapbooks, including an amazing one covering the poet Anne Sexton's elopment. In general I'd describe the book as beautiful and fascinating. But for some reason that I hope to write her about, the author has no appreciation of present-day scrapbookers, which is really a pity. She strikes me as being overwhelmed by the number of products available for scrapbooking, and seems to have a gut reaction that if people are using "products" for scrapbooking, it can't be a good thing. But in fact I would argue that modern scrapbooking looks different from the kind Ms. Helfand likes because of very good things indeed, like a greater ambition and confidence on the part of scrapbookers today. So if you're a scrapbooker looking to trace the connection between what you do now and what was done in the past, this book will, I'm sorry to say, disappoint you.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Keeping it Real, page-by-page
Comment: I was given this book as a holiday gift, by a fellow artist, and it is delightful. The author's obvious love of her subject shines through, as the reader is allowed to peer over her shoulder and view a grouping of unique, distinctive and heartfelt personal archives. Each scrapbook is a private view of a life that was made more meaningful by the practice of collecting and saving small bits of paper, souveniers, photos and ephemera. Most of the books have the un-self-conscious intimacy of private visual journals. The hand-written inscriptions and at-times inexplicable clippings and carefully-saved what-nots create a mood of unmistakeable pathos. As one who keeps visual art journals, and has written books on this topic ("Artists Journals & Sketchbooks"), I felt this book added significantly to my thoughts about why people need the emotional outlet of hand-made archives to express their innermost thoughts.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The curiosity of a collector
Comment: Jessica Helfand cannot help herself. She is drawn inexplicably to particular objects without reasoning why--at least at first. In her 2002 "Reinventing the Wheel", it was the information wheel that caught her eye in flea markets, secondhand shops and online buyers' markets (i.e. Ebay) over and over again. What drew her to them? In the beginning it was an amusement, but her mind wouldn't rest there. Her curiosity led to her to question the history and meaning of these primitive interactive designs, and deliver an exquisite book full of unlikely associations, brilliant narrative, and social history. And now she's done it again with "Scrapbooks: An American History." Helfand's inquisitive nature has drawn her (and us) into the fascinating lives of dozens of people who opted to chronicle their experiences with the detritus of life: cigarette butts, candy wrappers, theatre tickets, photos, scribblings, whatever they found memorable and meaningful; the littlest things that brought their lives into focus for themselves, and ultimately for us. How Helfand manages to weave a thread, to tell a story, thru all the scrapbooks she has collected, is the most astonishing aspect to me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Almost a vanished art form
Comment: This book is just like the scrapbooks it features: it's very beautiful, it's a great read, and it's historically relevant. You shouldn't hesitate to buy it just for that. But I love that it shows a form of the art that is in danger of being eclipsed; a sole strong voice emerging from just a blank book, nothing more. The term scrapbooking means something else now. Think of the equivalent to this book when historians one day assess modern scrapbooking the way Ms. Helfand has done for early scrapbooks. The scrapbooking industry provides such a wonderful and satisfying experience for many people, but it also creates quite an artistic din from all the guidance it provides. Later generations will marvel not at how the sole voice was heard because of modern scrapbooking, but at what it took for the voice to be heard above it. These are two forms of the scrapbook art and the distinction is meaningful. Seeing distinctions makes all artists better. I think the book would be inspiring to keepers of scrapbooks of all kinds.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Book
Comment: Aside from being beautiful book, this unique and thorough contribution expands on the traditional definition of primary sources for the understanding American history.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good to a point
Comment: the author has found some charming old scrapbooks, including an amazing one covering the poet Anne Sexton's elopment. In general I'd describe the book as beautiful and fascinating. But for some reason that I hope to write her about, the author has no appreciation of present-day scrapbookers, which is really a pity. She strikes me as being overwhelmed by the number of products available for scrapbooking, and seems to have a gut reaction that if people are using "products" for scrapbooking, it can't be a good thing. But in fact I would argue that modern scrapbooking looks different from the kind Ms. Helfand likes because of very good things indeed, like a greater ambition and confidence on the part of scrapbookers today. So if you're a scrapbooker looking to trace the connection between what you do now and what was done in the past, this book will, I'm sorry to say, disappoint you.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Keeping it Real, page-by-page
Comment: I was given this book as a holiday gift, by a fellow artist, and it is delightful. The author's obvious love of her subject shines through, as the reader is allowed to peer over her shoulder and view a grouping of unique, distinctive and heartfelt personal archives. Each scrapbook is a private view of a life that was made more meaningful by the practice of collecting and saving small bits of paper, souveniers, photos and ephemera. Most of the books have the un-self-conscious intimacy of private visual journals. The hand-written inscriptions and at-times inexplicable clippings and carefully-saved what-nots create a mood of unmistakeable pathos. As one who keeps visual art journals, and has written books on this topic ("Artists Journals & Sketchbooks"), I felt this book added significantly to my thoughts about why people need the emotional outlet of hand-made archives to express their innermost thoughts.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The curiosity of a collector
Comment: Jessica Helfand cannot help herself. She is drawn inexplicably to particular objects without reasoning why--at least at first. In her 2002 "Reinventing the Wheel", it was the information wheel that caught her eye in flea markets, secondhand shops and online buyers' markets (i.e. Ebay) over and over again. What drew her to them? In the beginning it was an amusement, but her mind wouldn't rest there. Her curiosity led to her to question the history and meaning of these primitive interactive designs, and deliver an exquisite book full of unlikely associations, brilliant narrative, and social history. And now she's done it again with "Scrapbooks: An American History." Helfand's inquisitive nature has drawn her (and us) into the fascinating lives of dozens of people who opted to chronicle their experiences with the detritus of life: cigarette butts, candy wrappers, theatre tickets, photos, scribblings, whatever they found memorable and meaningful; the littlest things that brought their lives into focus for themselves, and ultimately for us. How Helfand manages to weave a thread, to tell a story, thru all the scrapbooks she has collected, is the most astonishing aspect to me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Almost a vanished art form
Comment: This book is just like the scrapbooks it features: it's very beautiful, it's a great read, and it's historically relevant. You shouldn't hesitate to buy it just for that. But I love that it shows a form of the art that is in danger of being eclipsed; a sole strong voice emerging from just a blank book, nothing more. The term scrapbooking means something else now. Think of the equivalent to this book when historians one day assess modern scrapbooking the way Ms. Helfand has done for early scrapbooks. The scrapbooking industry provides such a wonderful and satisfying experience for many people, but it also creates quite an artistic din from all the guidance it provides. Later generations will marvel not at how the sole voice was heard because of modern scrapbooking, but at what it took for the voice to be heard above it. These are two forms of the scrapbook art and the distinction is meaningful. Seeing distinctions makes all artists better. I think the book would be inspiring to keepers of scrapbooks of all kinds.
Combining pictures, words, and a wealth of personal ephemera, scrapbook makers preserve on the pages of their books a moment, a day, or a lifetime. Highly subjective and rich in emotional content, the scrapbook is a unique and often quirky form of expression in which a person gathers and arranges meaningful materials to create a personal narrative. This lavishly illustrated book is the first to focus attention on the history of American scrapbooks—their origins, their makers, their diverse forms, the reasons for their popularity, and their place in American culture. Jessica Helfand, a graphic designer and scrapbook collector, examines the evolution of scrapbooks from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present, concentrating on the first half of the twentieth century. She includes color photographs from more than two hundred scrapbooks, some made by private individuals and others by the famous, including Zelda Fitzgerald, Lillian Hellman, Anne Sexton, Hilda Doolittle, and Carl Van Vechten. Scrapbooks, while generally made by amateurs, represent a striking and authoritative form of visual autobiography, Helfand finds, and when viewed collectively they offer a unique perspective on the changing pulses of American cultural life. Published with assistance from Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund
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