Yesterday, I finished the aesthetic masterpiece that is The Learners by Chip Kidd. Kidd is a graphic designer turned novelist and you can tell by his book. His book is beautiful.
The Learners is nominally about the Yale Milgram Obedience experiments in the 1960s, and a lot about the main character’s, Happy’s, transformation because of them. There are many underlying themes in this book, including but not limited to torture, suicide, and typography. Kidd writes in a clever, quick style that is breezy while grave and the writing is as mentionable as the book design- there are many different typefaces, the cover is gorgeous, and there are digressions about the function of form peppered throughout the book.
I probably wouldn’t have bought this book if I had known more accurately what it was about, but it was still a good read, and the design alone made it worth reading. There’s also a lovely letter from one of the administers of the Milgram experiment, which is interesting and historically relevant for people interested in the actual Milgram experiment.
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