When Bad Things Happen to Good People by Harold S. Kushner (Schocken, 1981)

Six lines of stacked and staggered Perpetua, combined with Basilea for the author’s name, on the book jacket of the first edition of Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People, published by Schocken in 1981.

Kushner addresses in the book one of the principal problems of theodicy, the conundrum of why, if the universe was created and is governed by a God who is of a good and loving nature, there is nonetheless so much suffering and pain in it – essentially, the evidential problem of evil.

The tightly spaced Perpetua is some bold phototype variant, and narrower than the digitally available version. The interior (not pictured here) is set in Janson Text and was designed by Nancy Dale Mundoon. It’s not clear if she takes credit for the jacket design as well. The same design was used with different colors for the paperback edition by Random House.

See also the paperback edition by Avon and others, featuring ITC Benguiat.