Big ideas, pretty packages

Yeah, yeah, we all know we should catch up on the Great Books that we missed in college and high school; each of us carries around a mental list of the gaps in our reading histories, with varying degrees of shame. But to actually buy and commit to these volumes can feel harder than it should be.

Penguin Press's exquisitely designed "Great Ideas" series may help some readers overcome inertia, as the books are as satisfying to gaze upon as to read--and they certainly don't signal homework. Design blogs are hailing the arrival of the third and latest installment of the series, due out in August.

The basic idea is that the designs evoke the original period in which the works appeared, but that leaves plenty of room for play. The cover for Plutarch's "In Consolation to His Wife," is, indeed, quasi-classical …

… but the one for Kirkegaard's "The Sickness Unto Death" nods to mid-19th-century Denmark far less than it does American and English paperbacks circa the early 1960s, when the book was in special vogue:

So far this design, for Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," has inspired the most raves. The cover replicates the book's own spine--in multiples:

Yes, that's the book cover. The British designer David Pearson created the Kirkegaard and Benjamin designs, while Catherine Dixon (also British) did the Cicero.

See more covers for the forthcoming Volume Three in the Great Ideas series here.

Meanwhile, Pearson's website collects the cover images for Volumes One and Two.

Via Boing Boing.