America and Britain. Our Two Democracies at Work.

Pioneering design. First edition, first impression. A beautiful copy of this rare wartime educational book with charts by the Isotype Institute. This is the second in the "America and Britain" series, and is less common than the first, Only an Ocean Between. The series was designed to educate citizens of each nation about the other, explaining 'how the two systems really work to form strong popular governments' and creating 'a vivid contrast to the totalitarian system that we are fighting'. It would also help readers 'understand newspaper items, films, and stories about America' and vice versa (jacket blurb).

Developed in the 1920s by Marie and Otto Neurath and Gerd Arntz, Isotype was a simplified visual method for conveying complex information. Isotype 'helped establish some of the core principles of graphic design' and its legacy 'can be seen everywhere from newspapers and textbooks to signage, transit maps, interfaces, and emojis' (Inglis, 'Meet Marie Neurath', AIGA Eye on Design, September 17, 2019).

At the start of the Second World War the Neuraths escaped Austria and then the Netherlands, finally settling in Britain where they established the Isotype Institute in 1942. Marie Neurath was 'a remarkable practitioner' who 'researched, calculated, and co-designed nearly every Isotype ever created, from the early days in Vienna in 1925 all the way to when she retired in 1971' and was almost certainly responsible for the charts in this book (Forrest, 'The Missing Legacy of Marie Neurath', Medium, January 20, 2020). Marie continued the work of Isotype after Otto's death in 1945 and became known for the series of children's books she published over the next twenty years, 'an ideal place to put Isotype's methods into practice' (Inglis).

First edition, first impression; 8vo; 19 colour charts, some of which are double page, 33 illustrations from photographs, ownership signature to the front free endpaper, contents fresh; original pink-orange cloth, titles to spine and pictorial design to upper board in red, cloth very slightly dulled along the edges, boards just a little bowed, an excellent copy in the lightly rubbed and spotted jacket; 64pp.