Over My Dead Body: The Sensational Age of the American Paperback 1945-1955

In Over My Dead Body: The Sensational Age of the American Paperback 1945-1955, Lee Server shows that these paperbacks surely sent the feminists of the day into howls of fury. Luckily for us, the passing of 40 years allows the feminists of today to cackle at the sight of these book jackets, on which artists treated literature and smut as equals. Arthur Miller's Focus displays a hulking man grabbing a protesting blond, whose breasts threaten to spill onto the page; Jack Kerouac's Tristessa shows a track-marked, smoking prostitute whose shirt barely does the trick. Other books, like Hitch-Hike Hussy ("Anyone could pick up Sunny!") and Jailbaithardly need the lurid illustrations, but they're delightfully disgusting, all the same. A