16mo. (20)ff. Johnson's critique of 1980s consumer culture, media grandstanding, and political gamesmanship remains eerily familiar. Images of advertisements for K-Mart, GQ, Mrs. Slaby's Whole Wheat Noodles ("chosen as finest by makers of noodles for astronauts"), and a tipped-in scratch-off ticket from McDonald's hint at the heavy visual stimulus driving the average citizen to buy, and to buy the best, as a matter of social prestige. The pinnacle, provided by Johnson, is her reproduction of an advertisement for Bijan, menswear designer who promoted himself as purveyor of "The costliest men's wear in the world," and to that effect designed a 24-karat gold, $10,000 Colt pistol (also pictured). In 1981, Bijan launched a line of bulletproof clothing in direct response to the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Appropriately, after the Bijan image the Johnson immediately segues to the Reagans: Nancy stands poised in one of the White House state rooms, deferring a crown because "it messes up your hair" and Reagan appears in royal garb as a paper doll, brushing off his inflammatory tax policy as fixed "unless there's a palace coup." Bookending Johnson's work is a quotation by designer Jan Tschichold, as much a meditation on the special position of the harmoniously formatted book as an implicit worry over the book as a commodity within the selfsame politically-vexed marketplace. Bound in decorative paper over boards backed in pebbled black cloth, with red paper cover label. Stray rubs at corners, else near fine.