Jim Hanas

And the winner for best title and best cover design of 1905 is … Miss Nonentity my L.T. Meade. Ms. Meade wrote over 300 (!) books for girls, including “A Gay Charmer, Wild Kitty, Daddy’s Girl, etc.”

I assume that is Ms. N, not the author, there on the cover.

From the time A. introduced this volume — 1936’s How to Worry Successfully by one David Seabury — into our home, I knew it was the book I had been looking for my whole life. I had worrying down, but was always trying to stop. Maybe I was doing it wrong? From the preface:

Again and again people have asked me: “What do you mean by ‘successful’ worry? Isn’t it always harmful?” And the answer is: “No.”

Unfortunately, that’s as far as I’ve gotten. 

Craziest? I don’t think so. I’m guessing some publicist cooked this up to deflect someone’s attention from Benzedrine-fueled orgies at the Chateau Marmont.

With occupation on everyone’s mind, I though this would be an appropriate pick for Ephemera Friday: a postcard of the United Nations that identifies it on the reverse as the Empire State Building. 

You know. To confuse Italian flash mobs.

This week in Ephemera Friday. A found love note and video of the inaugural PÇC Chat.

This is a page from the July 1953 issue of Prevue, a pamphlet-sized celebrity rag. This issue includes the cover line “Foreign Films: Visitors or Invaders” and a story titled “Thumb Wrestling — Hollywood’s Newest and Craziest Craze.” But Alexandra Ringe — who will soon join us on Google+ — spotted this image as the real winner. 

So what do you think? WIWDLA?

Today on Google+: “Man-Bait and other Hairdos.”

Today on Google+, it’s “Ephemera Friday.” (For me, at least.) First up, the complete Nielsen TV Research Activity Book, a coloring book that teaches kids how to use a Nielsen People Meter. No, really.