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Showing posts with label Rare Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rare Books. Show all posts

Manhattan Mapbacks! Dell Paperback Maps of the Big Apple New York City on the Back of a Book



















All great fake crimes take place in Manhattan. Sure, some happen elsewhere, but except for a few genre-creating masterpieces set in Los Angeles (okay...maybe they can claim a few) the dark, scary corners of the West Side are still the best place to fictionally stab or shoot someone. Dump them in the Hudson and they won't float up until spring.

Maps are snoresville...GPS killed them, and piles of the once familiar gas station freebie now fill baskets at the flea market. All of us still have a few crumpled and stuffed in the back of the glove compartment, still as ungainly and unmanageable as ever. I once drove from Manhattan to Los Angeles, a trip everyone should do, not only to realize the scope of the country but to obtain major bragging rights. 6 days for me...and I traced every mile on my faithful USA road map until the Petrified Forest in Arizona, when a big wind grabbed it right out of the car. I watched it fly down an ancient ravine, just like a recent automobile commercial which has sullied my memory.

By far the coolest paperback books are the Dell Mapbacks which were published from 1943 to 1951. I recently disparaged them in a post about a more obscure publisher...but they remain most collectible, mostly affordable and mostly available. And they are cool. My father, who visited me in Manhattan annually, used to love reading them and he would shout "I was there" a few times in each volume. Most were hard-boiled mysteries, the greatest fictional genre EVER. Shown here are a dozen or so Dell Mapbacks located in Manhattan. I do not believe there is one placed in the Petrified Forest.

A complete directory to the Mapbacks in shown HERE. There were hundreds, and all are great...but the ones set in the Big Apple were always my dad's favorite.


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Hang Fire Books

Just a quick note of thanks to Hang Fire Books, one of the best sources of vintage sleazy paperbacks, obscure books and the owner of one of the most interesting blogs around. The proprietor is an old time picker in the best sense of the word. He combs the cobblestones of Brooklyn and turns up wonderful things, all the while reporting his success rate (which seems pretty good) He also builds a damn fine bookcase, this being done with wood and nails rather than his usual dry wit. He blurbed me, which is appreciated. His blog (and others I follow religiously) shows under my ABOUT ME page here. ALL the blogs I have bookmarked there are way above average, and you can also see the other blogs I write.