Judging a Book by Its Cover

I’m intrigued by the art of book design. Some designs are great, some less so. A few deserve to be placed in museums, they’re that good. I’m a huge fan of the Crude World cover that Peter Mendelsund designed for Knopf. Now comes the cover for the British edition of CW, which has just been published by the Allen Lane imprint of Penguin Books. It’s entirely different. Knopf’s is on the right, Allen Lane’s on the left. What do you think? In the months ahead, there will be more covers as editions are published in Germany, France, the Netherlands and Denmark.