Covering the '60s

Book excerpt: George Lois was the genius graphic designer responsible for the legendary series of covers of Esquire magazine that were an icon-shattering and icon-defining commentary on the '60s. This collection of the best of those covers includes short anecdotes by Lois, but the chief interest is in the pictures he created. His covers were generally poster-like and free of excess words, and yet these pictures say plenty. The list of subjects is stellar: Marilyn Monroe, Norman Mailer, Muhammad Ali, Andy Warhol, Germaine Greer, and Richard Nixon. Sometimes the picture is a tease for the story within, sometimes it subverts it (as in the cover of a hangdog Roy Cohn with a ridiculous halo that accompanied a self-justifying piece written by Cohn). Only one of the covers reproduced here, a nude shot of Jack Nicholson, was cut before press time.