Customer Reviews

Iconic America: A Roller-Coaster Ride through the Eye-Popping Panorama of American Pop Culture

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a really great book, that takes you on a historical journey through American culture. A real treat!

Though the cover line refers to `A roller-coaster ride through the eye-popping panorama of American pop culture' the book, fortunately, has a much further reach than just pop. With about four hundred subjects covered and obviously reflecting the hopes and aspirations of the two authors I thought the book was a fine celebration of Americanism.

Firstly though the book is a visual treat. Designer George Lois has handled a whole range of graphic material brilliantly, especially in presenting similar items on the same spread: a photo of James Brown (The godfather of soul) facing Marlon Brando (The godfather of film) or Babe Ruth facing a Baby Ruth candy bar or a spread with a photo of an apple pie (As American as apple pie) and an Apple logo (Apple changes the American lifestyle). Another lovely design touch is running five Burma-Shave signs over five pages (The bearded lady/Tried a jar/She's now a famous/Movie star!/Burma-Shave).

Lois has blended all the personality photos, product shots, logos, paintings, cartoons and display typography together beautifully and the 175dpi printing on quality paper makes everything sparkle. The design treatment did remind of a similar strong visual book covering the same subject 1,001 Reasons to Love America (1,001 Reasons to Love).

I liked the wide-ranging coverage of icons throughout the pages and nicely not necessarily positive ones. Page seventy-one features the Enron logo, page 135 has a cutout photo of a lemon with Edsel printed on it, also included are a few frames from the Zapruder home movie of Kennedy's death likewise a photo of OJ Simpson, in court, trying on a glove.

The book is essentially visual and all of the images get detailed captions, sometimes a hundred words or more. The authors, where needed, provide light hearted headlines as in the housewives' favorite 'Yes, Virginia, there really is no Betty Crocker'. Cesar Chavez gets 'The grapes of wrath' or 'The web of justice' for Spider-Man.

You'll probably have your own icon that is not included, though with four hundred it'll be hard to pin-point something that's missing. All I could come up with is UPS and FedEx, neither are included in the comprehensive index. Maybe the reality is that the strength of America's past and present could easily produce a second volume!

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

We enjoyed the book very much and we've shared it with our friends and family. We were disappointed that "Iconic America" was printed in China.

I think this is a VERY awesome book and actually a history of life in America. I just want to caution anyone who MAY be shocked by a Playboy, nude centerfold in the middle of the book. I had bought the book for an elder member of my family and hadn't realized the photo was there. It was not well received. The photo may actually make you WANT to purchase the book now but just in case you may be offended...just know that it IS there.

I enjoyed this book before I gave it to my 84 year old Dad who is still enjoying it as a coffee table book. The print is large and the pictures are great. Brings back memories.. nice ones. thank you

Tommy Hilfiger did a great job capturing what America is. I really enjoy looking through this book.

This oversize coffee-table book, finally available at a popular price (it was originally brought out at about $65), is rather like a less text-oriented version of America A to Z: People, Places, Customs, and Culture. But it makes up for its lack of words with dazzling full-color photographs, many of them full-page and some even gatefold. Hilfiger and Lois cover American icons that range from those that put a lump in our throats (the Liberty Bell, the Declaration of Independence, Mount Rushmore), to those that make us chuckle ("The Studio 54 Phenomenon" and Pac-Man) to those that evoke the less-than-perfect about our country (slave chains, the Watergate scandal), with stops along the way at well-known performers (John Wayne, Tupac Shakur, Marlene Dietrich, Janis Joplin, Elvis, and "the eight greatest crooners in the history of popular music," to wit, Crosby, Sinatra, Garland, Astaire, Tony Bennett, Nat "King" Cole, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald), history (the Forty-Niners, the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima), art (Georgia O'Keeffe, Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware, Albert Eisenstaedt's famous VJ-Day photo of the sailor and the girl in Times Square), journalism (USA Today), activists of note (Malcolm X, Martin Luther King), objects (Barbie, the Wurlitzer juke box), places (Las Vegas), personalities (Yogi Berra), clothing (the cowboy hat and boots, the aloha shirt), fictional characters (Popeye)--every category that goes into defining pop culture. This, along with the Reader's Digest volume mentioned (see my review), would make a good volume to offer to a foreign guest wanting to get a handle on what "American culture" consists of, or a nice adjunct to a homeschooling program (though one photo is just a tad R-rated; it didn't bother *me*, but others may be more squeamish). I was very pleased to add it to my collection (though *not* at the full publisher's price--I bought it used!).

This is a huge, expensively priced gift book. You'd think it would be a great source of information. NO. Not at all. This book is filled to the brim with false/wrong information. This is a 330+ page illustrated history of "icons" with about one super giantic image to a page that is accompanied by about five lines (or a paragraph) of brief text. There is no chronology or order to the images, but it is all rather haphazard. It's not by year, or genre or subject. I'm not sure how/why the authors/editors chose the arrangement. I'm assuming it has something to do with what's important to them. Here's the order of how it starts: The first page is the Declaration of Independence. This is followed by images of two hands, and then an Indian. And next comes cosmetics (cosmetics....long before Washington or Lincoln or the Civil War!). By now, on page 7, they "authors" already have got their information wrong (in what is to be a lononnnng ride through misinformation)! Elizabeth Arden is described as a "blue-blooded" American horse-set WASP socialite. In FACT, Arden was Canadian, and from an extremely IMPOVERISHED background!!! So if they start the book with all the wrong facts, what's to come in the next 300 pages? Yes, more misinformation. By page 254 you get a HUGE "Americana" image-- of guess what-- the Tommy Hilfiger label. I get it now. The joke is on the person who buys the book. You're paying for a big glossy Tommy ad. Who are the authors? Tommy. And an advertising executive. On the jacket flap, where the "authors" give their bios, Hilfiger is described as such: (no joke, this is what they provide as his bio): he has a wholesome face with dimples, a Norman Rockwell haircut, and "more talent in one little Hilfiger than most designer have in their whole body". THIS is his AUTHOR bio? I think they should have included the fact that his company is among the top five violators of international human rights laws with his sweat shops in Asia. Along with the nauseating "author" blurbs, and the haphazard non-organization, the book is so, so, so poorly written it's shocking. Whose idea was this book? And who was checking the facts at the ad agency where this was written?

The title of this review stems from my reaction to the size and heft of this book when I first saw it. Clocking in at some 300+ pages, and a hefty size, it's one monster of a book. And it has just about everything that is a part of the American iconography over the past 225+ years of existence. It has Burma shave signs. It has Andy Warhol. It has the Nike Swoosh. It has apple pie. It has Santa Claus.

Tommy Hilfiger may not be the best writer in the world, but he does have an eye for the most memorable icons of the past almost 2½ centuries. There are iconic paintings that have captured American History and Americana (Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware and Wood's American Gothic to name a couple). There are the brand names that are associated with America (Mc Donald's the Pillsbury doughboy and the previously mentioned Nike swoosh). Cinematic memories (Frankenstein, Dracula, Jimmy Stewart, etc.) architecural masterpieces (the Guggenheim, the Empire State Building, Penn Station, etc.) and moments in history (The Hindenburg, the Kennedy assasination, Lou Gehrig's farewell speech) all vie for your attention in these pages.

Some may be scandalized by the appearance of an actual Playboy centerfold (from a 1971 issue) in these pages, or a picture of a topless bikini by Rudi Gernreich, but myself I was more scandalized by the pictures of Michael Jackson and O. J. Simpson and their respectively famous gloves. Yeech!

This book was a gift for my husband for his birthday. Not only is he spending lots of time reading about fascinating people and things in America, our children are also enjoying finding out the origin of these things. It's a beautiful large book with great color pictures. I would highly recommend it.