RIT Press

07/23/2026

"'Wail: The Visual Language of Prestige Records' includes some of the most memorable album covers of their era. Looking at these covers as a collection, so much is revealed about the design, craftsmanship, typography, and production as it was done some seventy years ago." —Steven Cerra on JazzProfiles

Wail - The Visual Language of Prestige Records by Chris Entwistle and Mark Havens - A Blog Feature

07/22/2026

Summer sale! Use coupon code 32IBSON to save 20% on "The Pleasure of His Company: Male Togetherness in Found Photographs" by John Ibson. Coupon is valid on the softcover and hardcover editions of the book, at https://press.rit.edu/9781956313406/the-pleasure-of-his-company/

Expires July 30, 2026.

07/21/2026

"WAIL: The Visual Language of Prestige Records" has been selected for the 2026 Association of University Presses Book, Jacket, and Journal Show, which recognizes outstanding achievement in book design and production. Written and designed by Chris Entwisle and Mark Havens, the book explores the groundbreaking album cover art of Prestige Records, highlighting its role in documenting the golden age of modern jazz from 1949 to 1960. Learn more at: https://design.up.hcommons.org/

07/21/2026

Chris Entwistle and Mark Havens, designers based in Philadelphia, teamed up to create a lavish book about the midcentury aesthetic of Prestige Records. They talk about it, and share choice images, in this Q&A with Josh Jackson.

06/23/2026

"For readers interested in photography, social history, gender studies or the emotional life of everyday images, this book is a rewarding and quietly important publication. It reminds us that photographs do not simply show us how people looked. They show us how they stood near one another, how they touched, how they wanted to be remembered — and sometimes, how much pleasure there was in another person’s company." — ArtDaily -The First Art Newspaper on the Net

At first glance, the photographs gathered in John Ibson’s a href= https://amzn.to/4oAljIx rel= nofollow The Pleasure of His Company /a may se

05/08/2026

RIT Press summer semester hours start on Monday, May 11, and will continue through August.

Monday: 9 am – 4:30 pm
Tuesday: 9 am – 4:30 pm
Wednesday: 9 am – 4:30 pm
Thursday: 9 am – 4:30 pm
Friday: Open by appointment

05/06/2026

From Bill Kopp at Musoscribe: "'WAIL: The Visual Language of Prestige Records' is the product of an intensive and often daunting two-decade adventure in which the authors sought to locate quality copies of every record released on Prestige Records during the ‘50s. The duo also went to great lengths to locate the designers – or traces of them – to include new, firsthand perspectives on the often revolutionary design work done for the label."

Almost from its very beginning, Prestige Records was a landmark record label, a giant in the world of jazz. Artists including Dorothy Ashby, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Milt Jackson, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins and other greats released records on the New York City-based independent label founded

05/01/2026

New book!

A photo may capture a moment in cultural time—literally mirroring beliefs, assumptions, conventions, and notions of behaviors acceptable and scorned. The 385 photographs in this book are just such mirrors. Two decades ago, John Ibson, a historian of masculinity’s history in the United States and of the variety of male relationships, used that approach to photography to examine shifting meanings of American manhood in his influential book "Picturing Men: A Century of Male Relationships in Everyday American Photography."

Now, in "The Pleasure of His Company," John Ibson opens his vast collection of everyday photographs of males together once again. Ibson believes these photos, all published here for the first time, take us to a world of unselfconscious affection among American men, a world largely lost today.

Learn more at: https://press.rit.edu/9781956313406/the-pleasure-of-his-company/

04/29/2026

✨ Introducing the Craft for Social Change series ✨

This series spotlights original scholarship about how craft objects are created and deployed to enact social reform and express dissent to the reigning political order and social status quo. The series generously defines and enthusiastically embraces a big-tent approach to craft by medium, historical era, technical approach, level of expertise, and geographic location of the craftwork. The series welcomes submissions from interested scholars, curators, makers, and activists. Series editor: Hinda Mandell

The first book in the series is "đây/đó (here/there)" by Grace McQuilten, Rimi Khan, Becky Lu, Nguyễn Ngọc Thảo, and Tammy Wong Hulbert.

"đây/đó (here/there)" explores how transnational collaboration in the Asia-Pacific can sustain craft knowledge, cultural heritage, and livelihoods in a time of ecological and social precarity. Bringing together critical scholarship and creative practice, the book examines cross-cultural exchange as both a possibility and a problem: a space for reciprocal learning and innovation, but also one that can reproduce colonial hierarchies of cultural value. Centered on four in-depth case studies of collaboration between Australian and Vietnamese makers and designers, the book traces innovative practices across fashion and textiles, ceramics, and furniture-making.

Learn more at: https://press.rit.edu/9781956313321/daydo-herethere/

04/16/2026

The spring issue of Rochester History is now available! Copies have been mailed to subscribers, and individual issues can be purchased from press.rit.edu.

Urban renewal marked a pivotal chapter in the evolution of American cities, and, as Benjamin Comeau and Katie Eggers Comeau demonstrate in “Saved by Play: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Rochester’s Southeast Loop,” Rochester was no exception. They explore urban renewal and its lasting legacies of racial inequity in the city of Rochester, with an unexpected ending. Also in this issue, historian Rich Newman interviews Mark Ferrara about his book, "The Raging Erie: Life and Labor Along the Erie Canal."

Rochester History, which was awarded Best New Journal in Humanities and Social Sciences in the 2025 PROSE Awards, is a collaboration between RIT Press, the Central Library of Rochester & Monroe County, and the RIT Department of History. Visit https://rochesterhistory.rit.edu to learn more or subscribe today!