Bill Maher
To discover what really goes on inside the belly of the media beast, read All the Art That's Fit to Print. The "Some That Wasn't" are never-published illustrations censored by Times poobahs and revealed here for the first time. Jerelle Kraus's juicy tales include clashes with tyrannical editor Howell Raines over imagery he erroneously viewed as politically incorrect or sexual and a hilarious story of meeting Richard Nixonbehind an unmarked door after a secret knockwho wanted the original of her drawing of him and Brezhnev. In today's world of thought crimes, All the Art is must reading.
Ronald Searle
The pages of this book are illuminated by the results of Kraus's love affair with that remarkable editorial space in the Times.
Brad Holland
At first sight, the art of the Op-Ed page baffled. An intelligent reader might have guessed that the Times editors were locking their writers in one room and their artists in another, giving them the same assignments, then joining their words and pictures in editorial matrimony. Like many novel ideas, this approach first struck many as a mistake. Yet within a few years, the 'mistake' had spread to publications around the world, and as the novelty became commonplace, readers came to accept that pictures don't have to illustrate; they can stand on their own. The Op-Ed page was an experiment in form and content. Unlike the gorgeous color illustrations that appeared in glossy magazines, our artwork was defined by short deadlines, low budgets, and simple reproduction. This discipline taught us to whittle our imagery down to sharp points. We let authors dissect their subjects, stretching thought out in time, while we compressed thought into space.
Milton Glaser
All the Art That's Fit to Print (And Some that Wasn't) is a fascinating display of the social and political events that have shaped the last third of a century, brought to life with powerful graphic images that persist in the memory.
Garry Trudeau
Among its other innovations, the New York Times Op-Ed page has given us the elegant visual jazz of artists set free in a parallel universe, a monochromatic dreamscape where language is banished, allegory rules, and Dada collides with Pop. Kraus serves up the best of these excursions, including, happily, those that went too far.