Customer Reviews

Peanuts: A Golden Celebration: The Art and the Story of the World's Best-Loved Comic Strip

5 star:		(37)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book a couple of months before Charles Schulz announced he was retiring Peanuts due to illness. Now it is very hard to find.

The 50th anniversary book is a must for a true Peanuts fan, but it is disappointing in that it is very poorly edited. A couple of the same strips are shown twice (in fact two of the same comic appear right on top of each other - can't believe no one caught that). When a series of strips are presented a couple of times, they are shown out of chronological order. I also question the need for the section where Schulz shows some letters sent to him by people criticizing some of his more religious strips; it just doesn't seem appropriate for a Peanuts "celebration".

Schulz' insights to some of the comics are enlightening and even touching at times. It was also nice to see some of the older strips that I had never seen before.

Overall, it's a good book to have if you are a true Peanuts fan, but it could have been better. I'm hoping that someday we will see a CD-ROM package that will contain all of the strips in the Peanuts 49+ year history.

PEANUTS: A GOLDEN CELEBRATION is a remarkable celebration of one of two of the great achievements of American popular culture: the life of Charles Schulz and the quintessential comic strip of this or any generation. This magnificent volume is both a coffee-table book for the Peanuts fan and a skillfully-presented history of the Peanuts strip. Filled with entertaining examples of the Sunday and weekday strips, anyone who collects 20th century iconography, and any historian who will want to someday chronicle the feelings and foibles of the last five decades of the American people will want a copy of this book.

It seems like once every 5 or 10 years, there has been a book about the history of Peanuts. This one is almost complete, considering it came out a month or 2 before Schulz's surgery right before his retirement (which I think helped alleviate the devastation of the sad news on 12 February). It'll probably be a collector's item since Schulz stated in this book he had no plans to retire.

This book features some of the best Peanuts cartoons, and touches only briefly on the classic Charlie Brown TV specials (the book's only disappointment).

Mostly, this book emphasizes what I love about Peanuts. I love Charlie Brown because he's the perfect everyman, somone like you and me (mainly me). I love Linus for his philosophical viewpoints (he has the answer to everything except why the Great Pumpkin never pays him a visit!). I love Lucy because she's dared to say and do the things we only wish we could! And I love Snoopy because he can do it all (a shortstop, a World War I Flying Ace, a vulture, a dancer, an author, and Joe Cool!)!

Goodbye, Sparky, and thanks for everything! You'll be missed!

This is a good Peanuts collection, but the material could have been presented better. For a fifty-year retrospective collection there should have been detailed discussions of each character, and you should be able to easily find the strips where each character was introduced. Instead the book is organized chronologically, e.g. the 50's, the 60's, the 70's. There are comments from Schultz sprinkled throughout the book in the margins near relevant strips, but if you wanted to find out what Schulz had to say about Sally, you would have to hunt for a long time.

Some of the reprinted strips have dirty gray backgrounds, which I assume is due to the age and condition of the archived material. This kind of artifact could have been easily corrected; I don't understand why it was not done.

Given this book's premium price, and the fact that there is no new material here except for (maybe) Schulz's sparsely scattered comments, the publisher should have done much more to add value. For this reason I can't give this book five stars. The weak presentation of the material precludes a four-star rating, so I give it three stars. Schulz was a genius, but I think his publisher got lazy on this one.

After being a Peanuts for most of my 29 years, I can guarantee that this book will have a special place on my bookshelf. This book is a great history of Charlie Brown, the gang and my favorite, Snoopy (being a golfer, I have to like someone who has qualified for the Masters as often as he has). I know I'll be sharing this book with my young nieces as they like the Peanuts too. On a serious note, my thoughts and prayers are with Charles Schulz during his battle with colon cancer.

Packed with strips from the beginning in the 50's to today, arranged by decades with Charles Schulz' comments & stories about the strips in the margins & color illustrations from the strips. Includes sections with stories & photos of how Charles Schulz got started, how he creates the strips, letters he's received, what inspires him, and more.

This is the best Peanuts anniversary book ever! From the 50's to the 90's, great care has been taken to choose a representative sample of the best of Mr. Schulz's long running comic strip. I would highly reccomend this book to all fans of Snoopy, Charlie Brown and company. This book proves why Peanuts was and still is my all time favorite comic strip! Happy Anniversary, Charlie Brown!

What a wonderful trip down memory lane!

This book is for the young and young at heart! To say more would spoil the fun any fan of Charlie Brown and the game would come to expect - complete, unadulterated fun. There's wonderment on each and every page!

Happy Birthday Charlie Brown! and thank you Charles Schulz for giving the world Charlie Brown.

I bought the 25th Anniversary book when it came out in 1975 (I still have it) and saw this book at a friends house and came right home to order it. Now that Mr. Schultz is gone, it will mean even more to me, because Charlie Brown (and the whole Peanuts gang, for that matter) are 6 months younger than I am (I was born in November of 1949 and he started the "Peanuts" strip in May of 1950) and I have loved them since my mother first read the strip to me and bought me my first book in 1959, which I also still have. Bravo, Charles Schultz, and God Bless you and thank you for 50 wonderful years!

This book represents the greatest comic of all time and withhundreds of comics in a great treasury, this is surely a must-have.Buy the book and you'll be amazed at the beauty of it all.