(7 of 7)
An Osborn Festival of Phobias. Text by Eve Wengler. Unpaged. Liveright. $6.95. Robert Osborn's cartoons seem perfunctory, but where else can one quickly brush up on the meaning of erythrophobia, pogonophobia, comapocopophobia, metopogrammoscopophobia or autophobophobia (fear of blushing, beards, haircuts, having one's character read by the lines in one's forehead, one's own fears)?
The Last Whole Earth Catalog. 447 pages. Portola Institute/Random House. $5. The last—though the first bestseller—in the series of cheerfully ingenuous catalogues of items (water pumps, canoes, books, domes) for anyone seeking self-sufficiency, even vicariously. The implicit message: escape from a consumer-oriented industrial society takes a lot of hard work—and a willingness to spend some money.