Book Review: Iconic America
on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 
Author: Tommy Hilfiger and George Lois
Publisher: Universe Publishing
Pages: 335
After hitting our stores, television sets, lifestyles and government with its style of marketing, America has now reached our coffee tables. Or some coffee tables, rather, for Iconic America by Tommy Hilfiger and George Lois is certainly not for the masses. Even among the elite few, it will be like a Shakespeare or Mein Kampf — flaunted but never opened.
It is not difficult to pinpoint what went wrong with the book. It begins well with first roller coaster that America gave to the world and the Declaration of Independence; it carries with it the native American, Marlon Brando, the Wright brothers, brilliant Kodak moments and Rosie the Riveter. But somewhere along the way you are left wondering — where’s the whole picture?
While the contents of the book give the reader a 70mm take on “the eye-popping panorama of American Pop Culture”, the presentation lacks the desired punch. The impact of the images, which are, admittedly, truly iconic, gets diluted in the abundance of white, empty space in the pages. The images hang in mid-air. Being a design communicator, Lois could have done better by planning all the pages like the spread where there is an image of native American and a red lipstick with the word ‘war paint’ written connecting them. Or the one that juxtaposes Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart in startlingly similar photographs. The punch lies in the information that accompanies each image but that, too, is lost, for the chronology makes no sense. The information and the images are placed haphazardly in no coherent manner; they do not follow a time line and nor are they grouped together to represent a certain fad or phase of American pop history.
Moreover, certain inclusions raise eyebrows — you feel that the authors are going a tad overboard by including The Wizard of Oz as an iconic film; if so, where’s Gone with the Wind? Also, ironically (and shockingly) enough, the authors have given American literature a complete miss! The inclusion of the Peace Pipe medal only brings to mind the way migrating Europeans pushed the native American community to the sidelines.
What is nearly blasphemous is the inclusion of the game Monopoly in pop American culture. While the authors have left almost no stone unturned to make sure that every other invention or discovery has been hammered in as ‘American’, the write-up on Monopoly has refrained from such a tone.
The mark of a great coffee table book is its presentation. For coffee table books are meant to excite and enlighten. Creating a book on American pop culture is a mammoth task, but this one has missed the bus. To quote Tommy Hilfiger, “In a sad time of self-inflicted anti-Americanism, George Lois and I have endeavored to craft an enlightening book that reminds the world — of the variety and magnificence of American pop culture.” Unfortunately, this book only puts forward a face of America that the world is too familiar with — one that believes that no publicity is bad publicity. We doubt this book will do much to alleviate Hilfiger’s association with racism and Oprah. Oh, by the way, Oprah has made it into this book.
Here are some sites where you can buy this book:
