Gramp (by Mark and Dan Jury)

While we’re on the subject of vintage photo-journals, might I highly recommend Gramp – A man ages and dies. The extraordinary record of one family’s encounter with the reality of dying.

In 1970, Frank Tugend (b. 1893 d. 1974), an upstanding family man and citizen of Glenburn, PA, began a tragic three-year decline brought about by generalized arteriosclerosis. His memory began to fail. At first, he lost the ability to drive. Then, the ability to remember who and where he was. The once polite man began to hallucinate and became aggressive to visitors. He and his family were ostracized by the community. His behavior was often erratic. Having lost the ability to bathe, dress, and control his bowels, he required constant care.

“On February 11, 1974, Frank Tugend, aged eighty-one and of dubiously sound mind- but certainly of sound body – removed his false teeth and announced he was longer going to eat or drink. Three weeks later to the day, he died.”

His life and death, 1970-1974, were recorded through interviews and hundred of photographs (the Jury family carried cameras and tape recorders the entire time), and condensed into a gorgeous 152 page volume. It is probably one of my favorite books of all time. It tackles difficult and undignified subject matter in a very complete, and often beautiful manner. It is a very emotional volume, to say the least.
Copies are readily available and inexpensive.

Jury, Mark, and Dan Jury. Gramp. New York: Grossman, 1976.

The Only War We Seek (by Arthur Goodfriend)

The perfect vintage volume for you politicos who love to complain about the Bush Administration’s certainty that we would be greeted with “open arms” in the Middle East. You can show it to your friends and tell them with conviction that the United States has done this before, etcetera. An absolutely spot-on example of how we lose when we fail to understand other mentalities or cultures.

“Why did communism win in China? Why is Asia seething? Why, after decades of missionary efforts, expanding trade and over twenty billion spent on global aid, are we seemingly so friendless?” (This was 1951!)

The Only War We Seek was written in the context of the Korean War by Arthur Goodfriend, who reported to Truman and the State Department during the 40s and 50s. Keeping with our policy of containment, we provided aid and propaganda to China and hoped that they would not be tempted to adopt communism (look up the “Four Point Program”). But mysteriously, in spite of our “best efforts,” they did! Goodfriend offers a very sincere, approachable explanation in a lengthy series of period journalistic photographs and short, lamenting captions. It’s very sentimental and very sincere, if not a little vague at times.

Some statements about the Chinese people are a bit… broad… but the book is not racist or xenophobic. It is rather anti-communist. And a lot of the pictures are kind of… random.

The Only War is uncommon but copies still can be found for not a lot amount of money. Cool enough to keep in your history/poli. science classroom or on a coffee table. It’s a nice floppy softcover with a picture of an ox on the cover.

“We can boast about our skyscrapers to illiterate people who live in one-room dirt-floor shacks. We can remind them how rich we are… how poor, they. We can show off our push-button civilization until, convinced of how hopelessly different we and they are, they turn elsewhere for help and understanding… We can make democracy seem alien to others by preaching it abroad in terms of our history and culture… holding up Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln… or we can express democracy in events and personalities other people understand and honor… stressing the democratic content in the doctrines of Buddha, Confucius, Mencius, Mohammad and other saints and heroes whose teachings are already part of a native tradition.”

“I am delighted that this book is being published which will give a pictorial concept of the Point Four Program and I hope it will be widely read.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=191674

Goodfriend, Arthur. The Only War We Seek. Farrar, Straus, and Young, Inc., 1951. Published for Americans For Democratic Action.