Warren Kinsella has just written a book about both. It analyses how Canadian response to war in the middle east has, he believes, been manipulated.

The lure of the latter proved too great. Plus, I don’t happen to agree with him. So, two incentives.

The first question that came to mind for me about The Hidden Hand: The information war and the rise of anti-semitic propaganda was: could not this book itself be considered part of the propaganda war? Isn’t Netanyahu’s bombing to death of 74,000 Palestinians in response to the horrific, graphic slaughter of 1200 Jews on October 7th excuse enough for genuine outrage to occur on its own? Could student protest not simply be a spontaneous reaction, and not an expression of antisemitism? Could this not just be an unpremeditated protest, instead of some nefariously organized campaign?

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Propaganda has gotten a bad rap over the past century. Its techniques, including book publishing, can, after all, just as easily be put to good use as bad. The Bible, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Mein Kampf.

The challenge for the responsible citizen lies in trying to sift through it all, to arrive at something that approximates the truth.

Warren’s book purports to help ( it’s published by “McClelland and Stewart” - formerly Canada’s greatest publishing house, now a lowly imprint - part of an entirely foreign-owned conglomerate that largely determines what Canadians read).

Why am I wading in? Anti-semitism is on the rise. It’s an insidious, dangerous scourge. And a canary. A sign that much worse could be on the way. As such, it must never be normalized. It can’t be tolerated in Canadian society. On the flip side, neither should the thwarting or demonization of free speech.

Fine line.

One way to draw it is first to try to talk rationally about what’s being said. Is anti-Netanyahu-ism being disingenuously conflated with anti-semitism? Is criticism of Netanyahu just a mask for jew-hatred? Does labelling someone anti-semitic diminish free speech? Like Conrad Black suing journalists?

Books represent the best way to introduce original, imaginative, complex, considered ideas into the public realm. That’s why I love them. Discussion - acceptance or rejection of these ideas - is what determines a book’s impact; for good or ill, in the long and short term. Conversation constitutes culture.

An interview request is in. Please stay tuned.

Now, back to biblio travel.

Late last February we were in Vienna. When we left Prague the weather was fine, close to ideal - perfect for visiting outdoor flea-markets. After the train ride south, however

Unbelievable contrast just four hours away.

So, no outdoor flea markets. Just quickly off the train, around the corner and indoors to admire

some Klimts

and Schieles;

to stand, vis à vis, in front of a room full of Franz Xaber Meserschmidt’s ‘character heads.’

Eerily modern. They were sculpted in the 1770s. Hard not to smile; most of these dudes are captured screaming with laughter, or about to burst into it. A reaction to our world.

Antisemitism at the time of the Vienna Secession was very much in play. The fin-de-siècle saw Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka and other giants at their peak, rejecting tradition. Their work dealt with squeemish subjects like sex and psychology, the unconscious, and hypocricy. Right-wing critics couldn’t handle it; they called it “degenerate;” criticized it for being a product of a “Jewish mentality.” At the time, arts-engaged organizations - galleries, high society clubs, nationalist student associations - barred jews from belonging, and openly protested against the influence of “cosmopolitanism.” Anti-semitism was being normalized.

Consider this: if Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka (none of them jews, btw) had shown up twenty or so years later, it’s likely - because it was wealthy jewish patrons who supported their labour - we wouldn’t have any of their magnificent works to admire today.

Karl Lueger was mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910. He won popularity by scapegoating the jewish minority. He loudly blamed them for the hardships that lower-middle class Austrians were experiencing. Hardships that were largely caused by industrialization. Anti-semitism was being normalized, leveraged for political popularity. Hitler was there at the time taking notes.

During the Anschluss in 1938 most of the families who funded Viennese Modernism were murdered or forced to flee. The Nazis looted their art collections— stealing “degenerate” masterpieces of Klimt and Schiele.

Staggering the degree to which anxiety, fear, and tensions, if allowed to flourish, can fuel and trigger both the most murderous human insincts and the most magnificent art.

***

Next day we made for some bookstores and their magazine sections. Expectations were high thanks to the enthusiatic AI descriptions we’d read.

We were dissappointed.

Hyper over-praise seems to be endemic in the new technology. AI is a product of capitalism after all.

One short shelf of fashion magazines at the first stop, not in great condition, going for about 35 Euros each.

A handful of English Playboys here

for 25. Okay, this may bode well for what we can get for our Playboy cache at home (if it’s sold in Europe that is), but still, the shop’s selection was depressingly slim, in light of our inflated expectations. On a happier note, we spotted MAK - the Museum of Applied Arts across the street, and an exhibition called Helmut Lang. Seance de Travail 1986-2005

Our joy was short-lived. Dreadful. Vacuous. Weakly argued garbage about identity architecture and advertising - signifying nothing. It confirmed most of what I believe about the fashion industry: it’s shallow and mindless. A predatory, mercenary, scam.

Why then collect fashion magazines? Because money attracts great mercenary photographers (and Avedon, and Penn) and they know how to present surface materials, in hot, attractive, innovative, striking new ways. Which is, after all, what fashion is about. So why criticize it for doing what it’s supposed to do?

Downstairs there was a poster exhibition, Best of 2025. Glad we took it in, if for no other reason than it proved that the French posters from the 1920s and 1930s we’d seen weeks earlier in Prague mark a highpoint for the medium.

Next day, a bit more luck. We Ubered out to an indoor flea market

where we found these Phaidon books

one on the pioneering art director Alexey Brodovitch (who died in poverty) and the first of three volumes Martin Parr published on his collection of photo books. Listen to my conversation about it with Martin here from a few years ago (he died last year).

That afternoon we stopped in at an Antiquariat next to this hoppin’ vinyl shop

and found a nice bound edition of Simplicissmus magazines from 1921-1922

Steven Heller calls it Germany’s most influential satire magazine, one that features “complex mixes of brilliant anti-authoritarian wit alongside raw, matter-of-fact social and racial stereotypes.”

Next we tried to get into the storied Cafe Central

Settled for Cafe Kafka

back close to where we bought Simplicissimus and this, Funk Film,

for our celebrity cover collection.

There was a fittingly cool vibe at Kafka. Until, that is, these two assholes walked in, and pushed two chairs in front of us into our exit path. Oblivious, they sat down, backs to us, facing the rest of the cafe, and started talking loudly ( maybe one of them had a hearing problem?) trying, it seemed, to sound more intelligent that they patently were. The circular lensed eye-glasses one of them placed on the tabletop in front of them was a dead-givaway.

Loud, disrepectful, annoying, attention-seekers. The mild-mannered, respectful, charming Kafka would not have approved.

Later that evening we went to a pub near the hotel. Pleasant, quiet atmosphere, until a group of five or six young men showed up, took a table, and started to drink. Soon outbursts of laughter started ringing off the walls. Every five minutes or so. There’s no way that what they’re saying is that hilarious, not enough for all this projectile braying, I thought. This has more do do with bonding. Good ole bro behavior. Macho. Not joyous, more aggressive. Attention seeking. Dominating. Decidedly assholish behavior. Showing off. Exaggerated comraderie. Boorish group ICE behavior. Loud and inconsiderate.

As Stephan Zweig put it in his memoir The World of Yesterday, “this lust for aggressiveness and simultaneous lust for horde-servility too obviously showed the worst and most dangerous aspect of the German spirit…the mere sight of these rude militarized gangs, these choppy and insolently provocative faces, made me loathe visiting the university halls;”

A place of nascent evil. Un-Canadian. Or is it?

Stay tuned for Part ll: Vienna, Stefan Zweig, Theodor Hertzl, and the museum you absolutely must visit.

First, some big picture business:

In a democracy, or for that matter under any form of goverment, you’ve got to accept that your leaders are going to lie to you; all you can do is hope that they’re doing it for the good of the country - the greater good of the people. You’ve also got to hope that government policies aren’t being dictated solely by a greedy self-interested oligarchy. What you want are policies generous enough to both maintain the peace, and spread the prosperity; to protect against orange meglomaniacs getting into office threatening peace and freedoms. You also want to vote for politicians who commit to making the system fairer; who work for the people, not corporations. Who won’t take bribes. Who vow to redistribute at least some of the wealth fairly - taking a reasonable amount away from those who do absolutely nothing to earn it and putting it into healthcare, pensions, education, culture, infrastructure - things that enhance everyone’s wellbeing

Most of the lies told by politicians pertain to who gets what, and why. How resources the country possesses - raw materials, land, labour, human ingenuity - are exploited, monitized, and shared.

Good questions to ask about government policies: who benefits, to what extent, and why? What justifies the existing set up?

The very rich (Canada fww ranks near the tippy-top of the oligarchy measuring stick - among democracies that is) know that they need to shave off enough cheese to keep the plebs from starving, otherwise they’ll revolt. They know that keeping good government, the right government, in place is essential for peace, order and the status quo: staying very wealthy - protecting the principal, not risking too much, and maintaining control ideally without anyone noticing or caring - that’s the goal: distracting the masses from unsavory truths about nepotism, offshore taxhavens, tax loops, unfair business practices, corruption, entrenched advantage…

Keeping most people from appreciating that democracy exists to make the system fairer for everyone.

Speaking of lies, whenever I’m in Dresden I experience this strange sensation - it’s like walking into weather front, sadness bumping up against shame, a mixture of loss and incredulity tempered only by the fact that there’s this great museum bookstore in town with a super discount section full of cool art books.

***

They’ve pretty well rebuilt the entire old town centre, and, if reports are to be believed, they’ve done a fine job of it. I can’t help but wonder, however, how much better the original was, and why such beauty had to be destroyed.

Despite all the books that have been written justifying its flattening - the weapons that were manufactured here, it being a major transportation hub and all - I’m having trouble buying it. I’m pretty sure Albert Speer claimed that its desruction did nothing to hasten the end of the war. Not that he “the good Nazi” can be believed on anything (long after the trial at Nuremberg it became clear that he lied when he said he knew nothing about The Final Solution. Turns out he knew all about it from the very beginning).

The Americans chose to believe him - this saved his skin - likely because they wanted his help figuring out how to defeat the Japanese. Why do you think they let him write his memoir in jail? Made him wealthy.

Lying pays.

Anyhow. All sides in war lie and commit crimes against humanity - it’s only the extent that varies - a matter of degree. No side has a monopoly on morality - good and evil exist in all trenches. If you’re going to set up tribunals, if you want to see justice done, how can you justify just putting the losers in the dock? Even at that, nowhere near enough Germans were tried. Just too damned many of them “following orders” to mete out any kind of meaningful punishment for all the atrocities that were committed, beyond token executions. The victors - especially the top brass - are often just as culpable as the vanquished. And everyone lies about how bad the other guys are.

War turns everything to shit. Many, despite two world wars and Vietnam, still don’t seem to realize this.

You’ll recall all the Playboy magazines we recently acquired. Well, I found an interview with Kurt Vonnegut in this one

He was a prisoner of war in Dresden when the Allies bombed it in February 1945. He avoided getting fried by the subsequent firestorm by hiding in a three-story underground meat locker (Slaughterhouse Five). He was later forced to exhume German corpses from the rubble. Kurt saw the Allied bombing as an atrocious, senseless act of barbarism. A war crime. He famously averred that the attack killed more civilians than the nuclear blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined: the carnage, he said, was a product of the kind of rage and vengeance inherently found in all war.

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Referencing a friend’s loss of faith in his own government Kurt said:

I saw a very good movie the other night called Katyn. It’s all about different goverments saying different things about the same atrocity. Contradictory lies.

***

Other than the aforementioned museum shop, there isn’t much in the way of bookstores here. There is however a weekly flea market. And that’s why we headed up last Spring

Pickings

were decent.

Found a nice bound edition of Moderne Kunst magazines from the 1890s with some beautifully printed images of fashionable young ladies

A clutch of illustrated newsprint magazines featuring images from the Great War, printed in 1918:

and some DU magazines, one containing a famed photo essay on prisons by Danny Lyon from 1971

Of course there was also a lot of interesting crap here that we just weren’t interested in buying. Nice to look at though.

A few weeks later I returned to interview Christoph Hanzig about Nazi propaganda. He works at the Hannah Arendt Institute. Before our conversation I visited the library to scope things for myself. Pretty chilling going through the various Nazi newspapers and magazines, seeing all the lies that actually circulated.

Last time out I wrote about Henry Wolf, visual thinking, and what makes magazines covers memorable. No mention of animals though, so let’s remedy that with Cheesface

and a couple of camels

My design activities have often ended in results other than the printed page, but it is the magazine, the book, the things you can hold in your hand at will, unchanging over time, that remains my favourite.

Henry Wolf.

I’m re-reading Ken Whyte’s biography of William Randolph Hearst.

In it he paraphrases great American newspaper feature editor Morrill Goddard dishing on the business of being an editor. It comes down to two fundementals according to Morrill: seizing attention and delivering a compelling message. In order to do this he says successful editors need to know what interests people, and why.

Goddard believed that humans are far more interested in their sense perceptions and emotions than they are in their thoughts. This, because we’ve been sensing, feeling and emoting way longer - since we lived in caves - than we’ve been cultivating our rational faculties. In relative terms, public education and mass literacy are last minute innovations. Reading too for that matter.

How do you judge what’s ‘interesting’? For me it’s simple. How badly do I want to keep reading. If I’ve put the book down, how badly do I want to pick it up again. What seizes and holds my attention? Writing that makes me feel good: more alive, vital, happier, more knowlegeable (likely because I’m learning something interesting). Strangely fulfilled. Maybe it’s making me think, and I like thinking. Or maybe I’m getting a laugh - enjoying the punch lines. Or how well the words are put together. To use Goddard’s word, good writing captures and holds attention because it’s “compelling.”

You see this freakin’ word on every second dustjacket these days; but what exactly does it mean?

Words that make you want to know what the next words will be, for one thing.

I’m not going to get into the how of writing again. I’ve already spent years winding myself questioning best practitioners about this topic. What I am going to get into, however - because of what Goddard said about feeling and emotions, and my current collecting interest, and the fact I haven’t written much about it - is images and what makes them “compelling.”

Propaganda has always fascinated me. Mainly because I’ve always been keen to convince others that my way of seeing the world is the right way of seeing the world:

How propaganda makes audiences do, think and feel what its authors/auteurs want them to do, think and feel. How words and images, myths and symbols, narratives and visual tricks - the use of colour, light, fonts, space, forms, size, scale, texture, movement, sound, close-ups, perspective, cropping, angles - how they all together combine to produce zombies. To indoctrinate and manipulate the feckless viewer (Luther hired really good artists to illustrate his texts). I want to know how to manipulate the feckless viewer.

Mostly it boils down to choice I think. Choice from a whole bunch of possibilities. The details you select; what’s left in and out of the story; what produces the most powerful effects - suspense, mystery, tempo. How emotions are produced. How you get to sadness, fear, relief, love, thrills, confidence, elation, gratitude, faith, belief, courage. Inspiration, anger, shame. Laughter and tears.

Knowing the answers - knowing what the possibilities are and how to make the best choices - knowing this is pretty useful if you want to dominate the world.

***

I’ve been asked many times over the past few years what types of magazines I like to collect.

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The quick answer is: the ones with covers that I find most ‘compelling.’ For a better answer I’m going to turn for help to one of my favourite magazine art directors, Henry Wolf, and his book Visual Thinking: methods for making images memorable.

Here are the highlights. They help explain the thinking behind why I pull the trigger.

1. Unexpected combinations.

   The Surrealists and Dadaists loved ‘em. The more unorthodox, or shocking, or surprising, the better. Images are made memorable by using clever additions and striking substitutions.

   

2. Strange perspectives.

   Often involves unusual distortions. Figures seen from overhead, or below, or ground level - any change from the normal viewpoint is good. The vanishing point is usually at eye level. Things look different from a worm’s eye view, or when you’re staring through a fish-eye lens. The Cubists observed objects from many different vantage points. Einstein too. Unusual angles, distorted visions - these are interesting and command attention.

   

3. Repetition

   When the repeating image gets smaller and smaller, disappearing into the distance. Like in a mirror. Again, any time the image is different from what you normally see, you’re good. A kaleidoscope, for example, with repeating sections side by side, all the same size. Prisms; twins. It’s the opposite of surprise. The reverse of shock, but comforting, and appealing, in a way.

   

4. Motion

   Speed-lines in a comic strip. A streaked background, or streaks across an object in the foreground. Multiple exposures: like Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, or Muybridge’s 19th century motion studies.

   

5. Manipulated symbols

   Symbols are graphic devices that prompt action, that say Danger! for example. They’re also shorthand for complex ideas. They help overcome language barriers and are, when they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing, instantly recognizable. They reaffirm the facts and legends around themselves. The trick is to apply ingenuity and use the symbol in ways different from the way in which it was originally intended to be used. A symbol thrives on revival and is strengthened by frequent adaptation.

   

6. Scale

   An object can only have scale in comparison to another object. Extremes are always effective. I’ll never forget the Ron Mueck exhibition I went to at the National Gallery in Ottawa in 2007.

   

7. Type as Design

Type can serve as a bridge between word and picture. It can serve as a decorative element, or assume literal meaning as imagery. Where the visual aspect of the type itself acquires literal meaning, type, according to Henry, reaches its highest potential: when it’s doing double duty.

8. Homage

   Homage is a variation on a classic work that gives full credit to the original. It’s often associated with nostalgia and humour. Think New Yorker cartoon.

The line between inspiration and plagiarism is thin. Tact is essential. Outright imitation is not good.

9. Colour

The connection between colour and emotion is deeply grounded. White is pure. Black is is evil. Red means passion. Green: hope. Blue sky is happy. Grey sky is sad. Climate and geography have a lot to do with colour preference. Blues and greens recede. Reds and yellow comes forward.

Black and white photographs are an abstraction. No-one has ever seen everything in black and white. This makes them compelling to look at.

10. Collage

    Typically the images are not made by the artist, they’re found. Good collage artists are good editors. They’re packrats. They collect oddities: train tickets, calling cards, illustrations clipped from Sears catalogues. Judicious combining creates a mood, a message, a feeling. Strange juxtapositions can create startling effects - different content, style, textures, 3D elements. Selection of components, placement, size and colour relationships all have an impact. It’s like baking a cake.

11. Improbable settings

    Henry credits Hungarian-born photographer Martin Munkacsi with introducing photos with real-life backgrounds. The strangeness of his settings made them memorable. Elegantly dressed women no longer dwelled solely in Park Avenue drawing rooms surrounded by over-stuffed chintz sofas. He created a new counterpoint between subject and surroundings.

12. Humour

It’s funny when expectations are gradually built up, and then quickly destroyed, when scenarios are established, then blown to pieces.

Henry praises a few artists in particular: Robert Doisneau and Elliot Erwitt for their photographs of ludicrous, amusing situations. Chaplin for eliciting strong, often contractory - sad and funny - emotions.

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During the decades that followed the twenties pioneering art directors Mehemed Fehmy Agha, Alexey Brodovitch and Alexander Liberman started experimenting with the techniques Henry outlines above. In fashion magazines mostly, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. The old ones are all pretty beautiful. Pricy too, what with demand from the industry. But it’s been great fun exploring the world looking for the lesser known. The innovative. Getting to know the next generation of art directors from the 50s and 60s. Henry Wolf, Otto Storch, Frank Zachary. Plus some of the Europeans. Willy Fleckhaus, Roman Cieślewicz.

What am I’m looking for? Design that stops me. The best practitioners of Henry‘s tricks. And visual metaphor. Covers that I can’t take my eyes off. That I can’t stop thinking about. That make me exclaim “Damn that’s clever.”

A few posts back I took the time to shit all over the used book sellers of Krakow for the ignorant unfriendly indifference that shimmered off them as we entered their stores.

It’s not just Krakow.

The other day we walked into McGahern Books in Ottawa’s Byward Market. Liam, one of the owners, was quick to greet me by name, then he immediately returned to his screen. Expecting some sort of conversation once he’d finished his business online I perused the shelves waiting for him to complete whatever it was he was doing. But no. There he remained after ten - fifteen minutes, head down, nose to the computer. On the way out I asked him to pass along my best wishes to his father.

I haven’t spent that much with McGahern over the years. $2000 maybe. But still.

Due to a healthy egocentricity I got to thinking that maybe the cold shoulder was due to something I might have said. Perhaps I was out of line. Was it me? Or was he just having a bad day?

Who knows. Problem is, a lot of used bookstore owners - everywhere - seem to be having bad days. Not just in central Europe. But why take it out on the customer?

Pity. I was looking forward to catching up.

Friendliness is the glue that keeps society together.

For now I’m domiciled in Canada, likely until October when we plan to return to Czech for 90 EU-diktat-ed days, and the Jihlava Documentary Film Festival. For now, the focus is on Canada:

BEST CANAD…

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Canadians have it ass backwards when it comes to appreciating literature.

Combing through/eyeing down the quantity of used books I do, I can confidently report that during the past year or so there’s been a significant uptick in the number of Alice Munro works on the shelves of Canada’s used book and thrift stores. The stories haven’t changed; haven’t g…

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We found them on-line and drove across town to an industrial park to take a peek. There were a bunch of videos too, but we took a powder on them. The first thing out of the vendor’s mouth was: they don’t belong to me.

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(then it’ll be back to biblio-touring: Dresden, Vienna, Berlin and Amsterdam all coming up, in that order).

We’ve now been back in Ottawa for about a month. Here’s a bit on the terrain, and a few comparisons with Prague:

As reported previousl…

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This was pretty hard to miss when it was up on the wall next to the entrance way at Spálená bookshop in Prague a couple of months ago. Sadly it disappeared quickly. Took less than a week to sell.

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had a rock named after him (a mineral actually, called Churchite), and wrote some books on food

Turns out he was among the first to apply science to the practice of collecting - subjecting materials to measurements that verified things like age and molecular structure. He was also an expert on paint chemistry and conservation. Even dabbled in landscapes himself.

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Some say he was responsible for transforming collecting from just a hobby “a mere acquisitiveness,” into a rigorous scientific discipline, by applying chemical analysis to the preservation and authentication of art. As a collector himself, of all sorts of things (from ceramics to botanical drawings, precious stones to Japanese sword-handles) he believed that those of us who practice are public benefactors responsible for preserving our property for the benefit of others - artists and archaeologists and historians for example.

He’s credited with being a pioneer in preventative conservation practices, advising the Ashmolean Museum early on in 1896 to moderate light, temperature, and humidity in its galleries in order to protect its paintings. His book The Chemistry of Paints and Painting (1890) became an essential guide for identifying stable pigments versus those prone to fading - this fundamentally changed how collections were managed and maintained. Restoration Expertise? He was called upon to restore the Maclise frescoes at the Palace of Westminster, during which he proved that airborne sulphuric acid from smoke was the primary cause of their decay. Technical Curatorship? While honorary curator at the Corinium Museum he conducted detailed chemical analyses of Roman wall pigments.

In short, what he was, was one of those quite common indefatigable Victorian hyper achiever-types who put everyone else (including ancestors) to shame with the amount of work they did. Then again, he didn’t have any kids - that I’m aware of.

Regardless, I’m proud to be related to him, even if I had nothing to do with it. Despite the fact that everything chemistry makes me nauseous (high-school hangover), it’s pretty clear that I inherited a collecting gene from him.

Which brings us to the first question I asked bookseller Dan Morgan during a recent conversation I had with him in Prague: could this kind of inheritance have played a role in his life?

Dan and I sat down (for the second time) in his cool, quiet, secluded bookshop last month to discuss his transformation from modernist book design collector to bookseller.

It’s one collector interview in a series I hope to expand over the coming months (for some already in the can, try Mark Samuels Lasner and Mark Andrews).

Collecting, and studying what you’ve collected, adds a great deal not only to the understanding of one’s own life, but also, I’d say, to one’s heritage. It’s patriotic! Collectors can help their fellow citizens to learn about communal history. Collectors do the job that Librarians and Archivists should be doing but can’t, in many cases, due to lack of funds. Given this, cultivating and celebrating collectors is the least governments and libraries should do. I’ll see what I can do to get Canada’s chief librarian (and the U.S.’s and U.K.’s) to address this with me ahead of the new National Library and Archive building opening scheduled for later this year. Please stay tuned.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy listening to Dan’s story - his love affairs with an extraordinary Czech woman, collecting, and Czech Modernist book design.

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I found a design contest/exhibition catalogue from the sixties for sale at this not-for-profit Archive in Prague. Figured that Frank’s work might be in it — after all, he won hundreds of international awards (well, more than a hundred anyway) during his lifetime. Unfortunately, no such luck, although there were a couple of entries listed for Rolf Harder.

Still, not all was lost. We now knew about the Archive, and so spent that evening looking online through what they had to offer. We found four bound volumes of Die Dame magazine from the twenties, hurried back to the Archive offices the next morning, had a look, and spotted this cover by Tamara de Lempicka,

That was all I needed to pull the trigger.

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Tamara is the Art Deco artist. Her work exemplifies the movement’s style, filled as it is with sleek geometric machine-like shapes; urban settings; sexy, expressive yet mask-like - often masculine - female faces: cold, distant, and yet filled with emotional power. Her paintings were cool, stream-lined, and cultured. Hip. I first heard about her from my father 25-odd years ago (he loved her work. He also loved Paul Robeson, Jules Massenet, a good cigar, a lit candle, and endlessly adjusting paintings on the wall ‘til they were in exactly the right position, fww. Some day I’ll write more about him).

This beautiful illustrated magazine (The Lady) was established in 1911 (died in 1943), the first in Germany to target and treat “modern” women as independent cash-carrying consumers.

Many, including me, consider it, along with Vanity Fair and Vogue, to be the "best journal of its kind in the world" for the period. Maybe of all time.

It reached a peak during the 1920s when it featured essays and images by the best writers, illustrators, and photographers of the day. Thomas Mann, George Grosz, Hannah Hoch, Man Ray, Martin Munkacsi, Arthur Schnitzler, Walter Benjamin…all contributed to its pages. Ernst D took over as art director in the mid-20s. Elizabeth Friedlander handled typography and layout.

Die Dame is in fact scarcer than the two American magazines mentioned - many were destroyed during WW2 by the Nazis.

Here are a few more Prague picks

I found this at Valentinska, a good, big online bookshop with several outlets in Prague where you can go look at stuff you’ve spotted online. The first time I saw a copy of Simplicissmus (“Germany’s Most Influential Satire Magazine” says the great Steven Heller), was just outside of Munich in a museum at Dachau concentration camp. What I find so impressive about Karl Arnold - who carries much of the load in the issues we own (stay tuned for details), is how much emotion he could squeeze out of so few short lines.

No-one looks happy. Bunch of posers with their cigarettes. Sadness, surprise, empathy, love, drunkenness, boredom, irritation, anger… all present. Love the pointed shoes - they make the characters all look so sleek and cool. The multi talented Adolf Hoffmeister possessed a similar genius. We picked up a bound edition of a year’s worth of newspapers from 1920s Prague that feature a lot of his cartoons.

We also scored some Czech newspapers from the early fifties. Peak Stalinism, right before he became persona non grata. Two pages in this one were devoted entirely to a happy-looking Czech woman ministering to her super-happy looking Communist pig.

Something to do with how deeply the two of them loved each other. This may surprise you, but I’m not going to go there.

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I was happy to get back to Prague, if only for 90 days.

Just to catch you up: government has never been more present in my life, nor more objectionable, than it is right now. Permanent residency for me in Czech seems like smoke; not materializing. Now we’re trying the flip side to see if Canada works for my better half. I can’t see why it wouldn’t, and …

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scene.

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In reality, of course, the vast majority of immigrants in the U.S. are exemplary, law-abiding, citizens (more so than the general population) who contribute a great deal to the country’s well-being. Misrepresenting them as enemies of the state -dehumanizing them, smearing them - is exactly what the Nazis did with the Jews, leading up to the gas chambers. In fact it comes straight from the National Socialist playbook. Where’s proof of this demonizing and scapegoating? In Nazi newspapers, which is exactly what, given my electric fascination for print culture, I figured I should go after while I was in Dresden. Nothing at the flea markets unfortunately (I did however score this:

a week or two later in Vienna. Not Nazi propaganda obviously. The opposite in fact. The year is 1933. The paper was shut down in 1934) but I did get lucky at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Totalitarianism Studies, spending a good morning there in the basement scouring

the library.

As it happens, researchers at the Institute, notably Christoph Hanzig, have been digitizing and analysing Der Freiheitskampf, a Dresden-based Nazi daily, for the better part of a decade. Christoph is a ‘font’ of knowledge when it comes to Nazis manipulating the news.

I spoke with him about Miller, and Nazi print propaganda techniques, a couple of weeks ago via Zoom.

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I mentioned to Volodymyr that we were after Ty i Ja (variously translated as You and I/ You and me) magazines. I figured that if any bookshops in the world had them, they - the shops and the mags - would likely be in Poland. Apparently not. At least, not in Krakow, where we pulled a goose egg. Vlod said everyone was after them, and that if there were an…

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We landed in Krakow on a bright, crisp, sparkly, day. I’d found a good deal on a flight from Glasgow with an airline I’d never heard of before, 2jet.com. Turns out they’ve been around for years. Everything went smoothly. No lost wings, not even a bump when we landed, on time, in the right city, so I’m happy to recommend.

Nice to be greeted by this sign

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Can’t say that Margaret was the first thing on my mind though when I saw this cluster on Glasgow’s main pedestrian drag, shortly before we headed to Edinburgh.

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When I was a kid growing up in England we used to watch Dr. Who on TV. I’ve never been more frightened of anything ever in my life, except now perhaps, as I contemplate the corrupt, narcissistic, power-crazed pedophile currently running the United States.

Speak…

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Plus we get even more personal: how does a busy guy like James combat loneliness, why are so many billionaires pedophiles, what are the secrets to long a marriage, and happiness; what constitutes a life well lived, what matters most?

Tune in for some profundity.

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And he showed up the next morning at the Barras Flea Market

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(although I could do without the black sausage). This one’s from Cranberry’s on Brunswick near the first hotel we stayed at, The Social Hub. The rooms here were a bit snug, but the duvets and pillows were super. The reading lamps by the bed however were too dim to read by (a deal breaker), u…

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