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Grady Harp wrote on 12/25/2011:

HEAVY TRAFFIC: PORN COVERS is far more than a collection of covers for magazines, periodicals, books and film jackets - though it is most assuredly one of the finest collections of such materials yet published in full color and on well designed pages. This book is an important sociologic study of the chronological development of the progress of gender studies since the early 1960's to the 1980s. In an excellent introduction - Gay History: In Detail, In Color, and in the Flesh - written by Dr. Kevin Clarke, author of the book 'Porn: From Warhol to X-Tube', curator and current editor-in-chief of Manner magazine, we learn about the progress form 'suggestive covers' in the years of censorship, through the post Stonewall new gay identity, through the present and how Clarke sees this collection, gathered from the Schwule Museum in Berlin and other sources, as a solid path to understanding the development of gay literature. This quality of scholarship is continued in the article 'From Romance to Raw' written by Dennis Forbes/Fred Bisonnes further detailing the significance of photography and design in providing the gay public with increasingly more unfettered advertising of the contents of the magazines such as Advocate Men, Blue Boy, Adonis, Physique, Arena, Falcon File, Playguy, Hustler,etc.

Lest the reader think that the contents of this book contain only raw seductive imagery, rest assured that there is considerable humor and parody and some fascinating bits of information included. For example, there is a multipage spread on a magazine that sells sex related toys, many of which are hilarious. It is also very entertaining to see the types of models through the years covered by this book - from the early 'beefcake poses' through the varying hairstyles and swimsuits (when present!) styles to the more raw and flagrant covers. Reading and looking through this book is as fine a survey of the emergence of gay visibility as has been published. Editor Stephan Niederwieser and his staff at Bruno Gmünder Verlag are to be commended not only for an entertaining book but also for adding to the recorded history of this important study of art representation of a movement.

Grady Harp