Raymond Loewy: Never Leave Well Enough Alone!

I like it

Raymond Loewy was one of the founders of the Industrial Arts school of design. My interest in the man, and his work, has grown since I've become a collector of Rosenthal China, for whom he designed fresh, new dinnerware patterns mostly aimed at the growing WWII American market of the '50's and '60's. His creative and inventive work was not limited to tabletop items; he became extremely well known for his designs for the in the Studebaker car company, Greyhound buses, high-speed trains, and even for the NASA space program. He came to the U.S. from France in the fairly early part of the 20th century with very, very little money in his pocket. Eventually--and through years and years of hard work and persistence, and his enormous creative talent, he came to be the embodiment of The American Dream. This popular book--published in many languages around the world--lets you hear from Raymon Loewy himself.

This book did not contain Loewy's entire book "Never Leave Well Enough Alone;" it only included selected photos from his book. There was no text from his original book.

Actually a disappointment as it is a mere poorly printed phamphet, which does explain its lox price. xxpaul bruce

It's a pity the publishers used the title of Raymond Lowey's 1951 book for this publication because there is no connection between the two.Philippe Tretriack's book is just a collection of fifty-four pages of photos and illustrations with a short essay on the first fourteen. I get the impression that the book is probably intended for senior school libraries. Universe (Rizolli) issued the book in 1999 and Assouline in 2005. Both are now close-outs so they shouldn't cost more than a few dollars and certainly aren't worth more.The image selection is very poor with no thought given to an historical sequence or even picture quality. Captions to these are on the back four pages, using thumbnails of the spreads instead of page numbers. The captions are very superficial.Tretiack's short essay is in alarmingly long paragraphs (page twelve is a whole page of text) and is really no more than a cut and paste job from other books and not necessarily accurate. On page fifteen he says Loewy was not involved in the design of the Coke bottle, certainly not the original design but he was involved in creating a slender look bottle to the original shape.If you want to know about this fascinating designer I think his  Industrial Design , which is a pictorial record and can't be beat. For more scholarship check out  Raymond Loewy: Pioneer of American Industrial Design , a thorough analysis, in words and photos. Of course his very own  Never Leave Well Enough Alone , reissued in 2002, is full of his design thoughts, reminiscences and some humor, too.***LOOK AT SOME INSIDE PAGES by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

Silly me! I was looking for a copy of Raymond Loewy's 1951 book "Never Leave Well Enough Alone"; instead my postman brings me "Raymond Loewy: Never Leave Well Enough Alone!", by some sleazebag who figured on cashing in on the confusion. Well, the crook got my nine bucks plus $3.99 to Amazon for aiding and abetting this slimy practice. Can't wait for the limited editions of "The Son Also Rizes" and Jacklin Soozan's "Planet of the Dolls". I'd love to see what happens when Amazon sells the "Core-Ann"!

it came on time and was just what I ordered