Four Turbulent Decades: A Cartoon History of America, 1962–2001 by Joan Stack
Featuring artworks by longtime St. Louis Post-Dispatch political cartoonist Tom Engelhardt, Four Turbulent Decades offers evocative images of pivotal events ranging from the President Kennedy assassination to the 9/11 attacks. The cartoons were chosen from SHSMO’s collection by art curator Joan Stack, who also provides narratives that add historical context and reveal artistic techniques for each drawing. Momentous events from the civil rights movement and the President Kennedy assassination to 9/11 are distilled into elemental images in the work of Tom Engelhardt, longtime political cartoonist with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Selections of Engelhardt’s evocative drawings from the State Historical Society of Missouri’s art collection are accompanied by narratives from art historian and SHSMO curator Joan Stack that add context and reveal artistic influences and techniques. A commentary by Engelhardt and his friend Jules Feiffer, author, playwright, and Pulitzer Prize–winning political cartoonist, gives further insight into Engelhardt’s career and the field of newspaper cartoons in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Engelhardt also describes his path to becoming the Post-Dispatch’s editorial cartoonist in the book’s preface. About the Editor A native Missourian, Joan Stack received her Ph.D. in art history from Washington University in St. Louis. She spent five years as curator of European and American art at the University of Missouri's Museum of Art and Archaeology before joining the SHSMO staff as curator of art collections in 2006. Her research interests include George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Hart Benton, and the study of material culture's role in shaping historical memory. Product Specifications Published by the State Historical Society of Missouri, 2015. 181 pages. 66 illustrations.
