Hardboiled America

Lurid Paperbacks And The Masters Of Noir

Contributors

By Geoffrey O’Brien

Formats and Prices

Price

$19.99

Price

$25.99 CAD

Format

Trade Paperback

Format:

Trade Paperback $19.99 $25.99 CAD

Dashiell Hammett, Mickey Spillane, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, David Goodis … these are a few of the masters of noir responsible for the great lurid paperbacks of the thirties, forties, and fifties. With titles like The Big Sleep, Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, and Street of the Lost, with racy cover lines like “My gun-butt smashed his skull!” and “Ruthless terror ripped away the mask that hid cold fear,” and with some of the most extraordinary cover illustrations ever to grace American literature, these paperbacks held the ingredients of American nightmares. In Harboiled America—lavishly illustrated with 135 paperback covers, and expanded with new material on Thompson, Goodis, and others—Geoffrey O’Brien masterfully explores the art, history, and ideas of the American paperback.

On Sale
Mar 22, 1997
Page Count
214 pages
Publisher
Da Capo Press
ISBN-13
9780306807732

Geoffrey O’Brien

About the Author

Geoffrey O’Brien is the editor-in-chief of The Library of America, and author of fifteen books, most recently The Fall of the House of Walworth, and other works including Hardboiled America, Dream Time, The Phantom Empire, The Times Square Story, The Browser’s Ecstasy, Castaways of the Image Planet, and Sonata for Jukebox. He has contributed frequently to The New York Review of Books, Artforum, Film Comment, and other publications. He lives in New York City.

Learn more about this author