The Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?

Rating:
Summary: SPLENDID!
Review: Here's three good things about this book.

First, the 157 pages of text provide a comprehensive overview of the history of the you-know-what-symbol. The swastika. There's a lot of interesting revelations. For example, the swastika appears to be the oldest symbol uncovered anywhere, and is found in just about every culture and civilization, everywhere and at any time in History. I mean, it was everywhere!

Second, the book provides dozens of reproductions of the swastika, in a myriad of variants, including on cigar labels, poker chips, cards, as a shoulder patch for the U.S. Army (1918), and on a monthly American magazine for young girls, entitled: "The Swastika: Written, Issued and Read by The Girl's Club."

Finally, the author is a graphic designer, and a darn good one. The book itself--the size, the color, the paper, the setting of the text, the brilliant and varied reproductions--these all delighted me, and I hope they delight you.

Not only that, consider that the bookjacket has to be one of the most extreme, hardcore bookcovers in history. The cover shows a black swastika, on a white circle, on a red background. One glance at it, and you'll know why the swastika is the most powerful symbol ever created. Forever sinister, the swastika today is the only symbol that you can write with a pen on the border of the daily paper, that has acquired the status of "genetically evil." Those scribblings on the notepad--they will never be redeemed! Hollywood is calling.

Take a peek.





Rating:
Summary: "The Swastika: Symbol of Socialism?" by RexCurry.net
Review: Very good book. Slightly deficient in that the book fails to discuss the newer argument made elsewhere that one of the reasons that the Swastika was chosen or maintained as a symbol by the National Socialist German Workers' Party is that the swastika resembles two 'S' runes (ancient German letters) overlapping to represent "Socialism" or "Socialist" groups joining together as the horrid National Socialist German Workers' Party.

Rating:
Summary: Terrifying Visual Anthropology
Review: What a pleasure it is to experience the work of an author who has total command over his material. In a slender 160 pages, the author explains -- in both words and pictures -- the mythology, anthropology, abuse, and endurance of this fascinating and lurid symbol. This is one of the most interesting books on fascist regalia written in recent years.