The Love Of Learning, Imagery & Design

When I was a kid, my mom loved the serial book buys. It began before I was even born when she purchased a set of encyclopedias one volume at a time and proudly displayed them like a trophy kill on a shelf in our living room. As a kid, we shopped in the only grocery store in town, Krogers. And they teamed up with Random House to sell various books on topics bound in volumes sold over a number of weeks and months. We purchased the Encyclopedia of the United States, the Encyclopedia of American History, the Charlie Brown dictionary (10 volumes), the young person's encyclopedia of knowledge, AND my favorite, the Rand McNally Illustrated Atlas of Today's World. That would have been the world as it was in 1972. And now it's just the most precious 12 volumes I own and a fascinated window on world history.

Each nation got an introductory page something like this one for Paraguay. And many got these amazing little ink drawings. I FUCKING LOVE THEM! Like the illustrations in dictionaries--I just love them.

Am I just a freak? Anyone else remember these things?