During the 1960s the Cleveland Publishing Company, which was based in Sydney, Australia, printed quite a lot of books like the one above—i.e., World War II adventures that in retrospect are subtly racist. Well, actually, who are we kidding? Retrospect and subtlety have nothing to do with it. Even in the context of the 1960s these were overtly racist books featuring depraved and heinous Japanese adversaries putting Aussie soldiers through hell, often in jungle prison camps. We have other examples we’ll share later, but this is probably the most interesting of them, art-wise, with its devilish villain painted camouflage green. Mack Kenton, the author here, wrote many war books for Cleveland, including Beachhead, Operation Solo, Ordeal of the Damned, Fight or Die, et. al., but despite his extensive bibliography there isn’t much info on him. Uncredited artist as well. It’s amusing to imagine that both author and illustrator disavowed themselves from this dubious work, but that probably isn’t what happened. The book is just obscure. As always we’ll dig for more.

Stuart Cloete’s 1943 jungle melodrama Congo Song was not glowingly reviewed, but was reprinted over and over. Its popularity certainly owed something to the fact that it nurtured all the cherished Western stereotypes about Africa. We’ll just give you the book's closing words and you’ll get the idea: This was the Congo song: the song of sluggish rivers, of the mountains, the forests; the song of the distant, throbbing drums, of the ripe fruits falling, of the mosquitoes humming in the scented dusk; the song of Entobo, of the gorilla, and the snake. The song no white man would ever sing. So, basically white people in Africa are undone by their inadequacies, which are amplified by the deep, dark, primitive, savage, mysterious Congo. Cloete’s characters include Nazis, artists, and spies, but the real creation here is Olga le Blanc, who has a pet gorilla she—wait for it—nursed at her own breast when it was an infant. Le Blanc nursed le gorille, eh? Cloete’s symbolism is pretty thick milk. Eventually the surviving characters are chased away, but they remember the Congo with bittersweet nostalgia. Kind of like in that Toto song “Africa.” It’s gonna take a lot to take me awaaaay from yoooou… There’s nothing that a hundred men or moooore could ever doooo… I bless the rains down in Aaaafricaaa…

One of the most reclusive writers in the world has been forced to step into the public eye because of what she claims was a carefully orchestrated swindle. Harper Lee, author of the American classic To Kill a Mockingbird, filed suit in a Manhattan court against a man she says stole rights to her book. Lee’s lawsuit details how Samuel Pinkus, the son-in-law of her longtime agent Eugene Winick, tricked Lee into transferring the copyright on her 1960 masterpiece. In 2002 Eugene Winick was ill and Pinkus began folding some of his father-in-law’s clients into his own literary agency. In 2007 Pinkus took advantage of Lee’s failing eyesight and hearing to transfer Lee’s rights to himself, assuming irrevocable interest in the income derived from To Kill A Mockingbird, and offering no payment to the author. Lee signed the crucial papers when she was recuperating from a stroke. In 2012 she took legal action and regained the copyright, but Pinkus still derives income from sales of the book though he is no longer Lee’s agent. The lawsuit says Lee has no memory of agreeing to anything, and frankly, any neutral observer would find it hard to disbelieve her.

Since this is a website, not a court, we’ll just say what other stories about this haven’t yet—Samuel Pinkus thought Harper Lee was going to die and stole her book. With Lee dead, and very little likelihood such a private individual would have discussed the matter with anyone, there would have been nobody to dispute his ownership of a revered, Pulitzer Prize-winning gold mine. When she recovered and realized what had happened, Pinkus scrambled to give the copyright back but had arranged to keep raking money off the top in perpetuity—his backup plan. Pinkus, naturally, has had no comment on the lawsuit, and presumably won’t until the Manhattan court has to decide whether his scam will stand. In this age of trillion dollar bank swindles, naked buy-offs of elected officials, and rampant court corruption, we don’t have high hopes for Ms. Lee. In fact, we suspect that in the aforementioned circles Samuel Pinkus is being hailed as a genius.

Lady Boss: “You know what else is missing? A cup of coffee in my hand. Now get to brewing—chop chop!

We really like this cover for the 1958 Beacon Books paperback of H.B. Ames’ 1952 hardback Hell Bent. It's about a woman named Joan Blake who's determined to charm and sleep her way to riches, but whose choices go wrong until she ends up with a man who pretty much ruins her. Basically, it’s the story of most any sorority girl you care to name. Okay, maybe that seems out of line, but even though we joke about sorority girls a lot for purely prejudicial reasons, we also slam fraternity boys. So that makes it all okay, right? Yes! False equivalency=redeemed. The cover artist is uncredited, by the way, but he or she deserves an award for nailing this moment. 

Above is the cover of the 1953 gringo-in-Havana thriller Cuban Heel by Steve Harragan, aka Bart Carson, née William Maconachie, which finds the lead character tangled up in political intrigue as well as the arms of a local beauty. We really like the title of this one, because the fact that a Cuban heel is literally a style of boot heel makes it a nice play on words. We also really like the art, which is by that master illustrator Uncredited. We know a bit more about the author, but as with so many pseudonyms, the story behind Harragan/Carson/Maconachie is a bit convoluted. We may return to it at some point, but not today.

Today we have the cover and thirty-four scans from an April 1972 copy of Australia’s Adam magazine, which you know by now we collect obssessively. Because of this issue's condition it was added gratis to the last group we bought, but the inside is basically intact, which makes it well worth sharing. We have eleven more issues of Adam in reserve, and we’ve already posted twenty-nine others you can see by clicking here.