Jack Kerouac’s Hand-Drawn Cover for On the Road (1952)

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This falls under the cat­e­go­ry, “If you want it done right, you have to do it your­self.”

In 1950, when Jack Ker­ouac released his first nov­el, The Town and the City, he was less than impressed by the book cov­er pro­duced by his pub­lish­er, Har­court Brace. (Click here to see why.) So,…

An Architect Breaks Down the 5 Most Common Styles of College Campus

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Every now and again on social media, the obser­va­tion cir­cu­lates that Amer­i­cans look back so fond­ly on their col­lege years because nev­er again do they get to live in a well-designed walk­a­ble com­mu­ni­ty. The orga­ni­za­tion of col­lege cam­pus­es does much to shape that expe­ri­ence, but so do the build­ings them­selves. “Peo­ple often say that col­lege…

How Editing Saved Ferris Bueller’s Day Off & Made It a Classic

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“In our sal­ad days, we are ripe for a par­tic­u­lar movie that will linger, death­less­ly, long after the green­ness has gone,” writes the New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane in a recent piece on movies in the eight­ies. “When a friend turned to me after the first twen­ty min­utes of Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off, in 1986,…

Hear the Very First Adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Starring David Niven (1949)

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Since George Orwell pub­lished his land­mark polit­i­cal fable 1984, each gen­er­a­tion has found ample rea­son to make ref­er­ence to the grim near-future envi­sioned by the nov­el. Whether Orwell had some prophet­ic vision or was sim­ply a very astute read­er of the insti­tu­tions of his day—all still with us in mutat­ed form—hardly mat­ters. His book…

What is Electronic Music?: Pioneering Electronic Musician Daphne Oram Explains (1969)

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Sur­vey the British pub­lic about the most impor­tant insti­tu­tion to arise in their coun­try after World War II, and a lot of respon­dents are going to say the Nation­al Health Ser­vice. But keep ask­ing around, and you’ll soon­er or lat­er encounter a few seri­ous elec­tron­ic-music enthu­si­asts who name the BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop. Estab­lished in…