Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton University Press, 1970 (2nd Printing). Hardbound. First published in Paris in 1951 by Librairie Payot as Le Chamanisme et les techniques archaïques de l'extase. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Design by Andor Braun. Jacket designer Paul Rand, born Peretz Rosenbaum in 1914, grew up painting signs for his father's Brooklyn grocery store and taking night classes at Pratt while independently studying the work of European designers such as Moholy-Nagy. By his early twenties, after anglicizing his name and clocking hours generating stock images for a periodical syndicate, he had earned the accolades of that same iconic Bauhausian, who opined that Rand was 'able to analyze his problems but his fantasy is boundless.' Such praise would propel the young designer to go on to create branding for some of the world's largest corporations, as well as this striking Bollingen Series cover, featuring expressive lettering over a unique tricolor composition. In his later years, Rand would publicly denounce the rise of postmodernism, saying the 'faddish and frivolous' movement 'harbor[ed] its own built-in boredom' when he left his faculty position at Yale upon the appointment of Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. Ex-library.