I am currently reading Popular Crime: Reflections on the Celebration of Violence by Bill James, the famous baseball statistician. It's basically a bunch of summaries of murder cases that captured the American imagination from the 18th century to the present. It's much more interesting than my description can do justice. A good book if you're one of those people who watches the ID channel or TruTv all the time.

Currently reading The Onion Field (1973) by Joseph Wambaugh. It has the reputation of being one of the best true crime books written, up there with In Cold Blood. Pretty good so far.

Just finished the book Seven Sisters Style by Rebecca C. Tuite, recently released by Rizzoli.

It is, roughly speaking, the female equivalent of "Take Ivy." Ms. Tuite searched the photo archives of the Seven Sisters colleges – Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Mount Holyoke, Radcliffe, Smith, Wellesley, and Vassar – to find the unique apparel choices that enabled these schools to establish trends and standards for women, much as the All Male Ivy League schools* established trends and standards for men. The Seven Sisters Book covers a longer sweep than the few months it took the Take Ivy photo team to visit all the Ivies.

Nonetheless, The book is a fascinating, period perfect, look at feminine style in the elite women's colleges of the United States.

Here are a few pictures from the book:

Cover:


Pearls & Peter Pan Collars:


Bermuda Shorts & Weejuns


Fringed skirts with decorative safety pin, knee high cabled socks, shetland cardigan:


Angora socks (aka fuzzy sox). This picture's from 1938, but they came back big in the early sixties


Formal dances occurred 4-5 times a year in the 1960s. It was a no brainer to buy a Tux rather than rent 16-20 times during college.


Fur-blend sweater, district check Tweed Bermuda Shorts, Cabled knee high socks:


All items vetted by the Classic Beauty, who wore every style shown in these pictures at one time or another during college.

For men of a certain age, Seven Sisters Style is a great walk down memory lane.


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* Excepting Cornell, which was a co-ed school from its founding.

^ Thanks for reminding me I should get this for the Mrs, who went to Smith. It looks like great fun and thanks for sharing the pictures.

I'm in love with the girl in the last photo.

If I may, here are a couple images a Life Magazine photographer took of a Colby College student on "Mountain Day" in 1950. I think I was born too late.

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby is the title of Tom Wolfe's first collected book of essays, published in 1965. The book is named for one of the stories in the collection that was originally published in Esquire magazine in 1963 under the title "There Goes (Varoom! Varoom!) That Kandy-Kolored (Thphhhhhh!) Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (Rahghhh!) Around the Bend (Brummmmmmmmmmmmmmm)…" Wolfe's essay for Esquire and this, his first book, are frequently heralded as early examples of New Journalism. While I am a big fan of Rods and Customs (and have been since since the 1952 Merc – and that's NOT Mercedes-Benz) there is one essay in the book that might/could appeal to a menswear style forum. Here are six pages from the book, as an inducement to buy the book and read about many aspects of the culture of the 1960s.













Since I was in "the Biz" at that time, I knew a number of guys who played that game. Heck. For one suit, I played that game. Ugly game! Then I moved to San Francisco and was a 3/2 roll Navy Blazer, Blue OCBD, Khaki pants, Weejuns guy for the next 25 years. For the most part, I still am....

I'm also reading Tom Wolfe right now, but I'm working on 'Bonfire of the Vanities.'

What a great writer he is/was.

Did you gents catch that the NYPL recently acquired his personal archives? Here's a Times story about them: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/21/books ... .html?_r=0

Have been drawing a lot lately and getting a lot of inspiration from the very cool photos on this blog.
http://www.retronaut.com/

including a 1920's LA alligator farm...
http://www.retronaut.com/2013/01/los-an ... ator-farm/

and the regrading of Seattle...
http://www.retronaut.com/2014/02/regrading-seattle/

Great photo blog, Popinjay. What a mess Seattle was during that period...

I'm currently reading "House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War" by Alexander Waugh.



I've long been interested in Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher of the family. I'm also learning about his older brother Paul, who lost his arm in WWI. His ambition prior to the war was to become a concert pianist. After the war, he continued to play with his left hand. Ravel (a family friend) wrote "Concerto for the Left Hand" specifically for Paul, who did become a concert pianist (although his musicianship received mixed reviews).

The family patriarch had amassed incredible wealth in the steel industry. His children were all incredibly talented, but the family was also dysfunctional as hell. Of the five Wittgenstein boys, three committed suicide. The sisters were also quirky/odd. It's hard to imagine growing up Wittgenstein, but this book sheds some light on what the experience was like.

A Good Man is Hard to Find and other short stories by Flannery O'Connor.
My sister (who reads much, much more than I, being a writer and an editor) usually gets me books for Christmas/B-day so I have a bit of a back-catalog I'm working through. Just started reading this and it is amazing! Very unsettling, kind of that Southern Gothic feeling I got from watching True Detective (which I'm coincidentally re-watching).

A couple of Christmas gifts: In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides and Breaking Blue by Timothy Egan.
Just started both but I can already tell they're going to be great.

I'm reading all the Janet Evanovich "number" books in order. I'm up to #15. They are all pretty much the same.

Been binging on Brian Sanderson lately, seems like he writes all of my favorite guilty-pleasure genre: sword-and-sorcery, urban fantasy noir, sword-and-spaceship, ect. It's been grand, like eating an entire batch of fresh chocolate-chip cookies in one sitting.

Got 9 1/2" of snow last night. Re-reading the Milagro Beanfield war while munching on a big bowl of pintos with lotsa green chile and a little cheese and flour tortillas. Snow'll be gone tomorrow.

I wanted to read a "hard-boiled" noir novel and kept a list from a past "Wall Sreet Journal" article about a few authors who wrote in that genre. Femme fatales appeal to me, so I looked at some used book stores for "A Hell of a Woman" by Jim Thompson.

I didn't find that book, but I did pick up "The Killer Inside Me" by the same author. Finished it last night. Very disturbing. I don't think I'll be right for days.