New Literary History of America

I’ve had the very good fortune to design book jackets for Harvard University Press for many years. Many can be seen here. This book, a massive and sweeping survey of American literature, in a variety of genres, from Anne Bradstreet to Jelly Roll Morton to Maya Lin, presents a very concise design problem: How to encompass the idea of America?

This cover is perhaps my best single idea expressed in visual form: the sun rising over the Atlantic Ocean on the front and setting over the Pacific on the back. In between: America. From sea to shining sea.

The cover that was selected took a different approach to sampling Americanness. I was happy to get Ted Williams in there.

More that weren’t chosen.