If you've ever loved a book with a hideous cover and wondered exactly what the art department was thinking when they okayed that cover, this is the book for you: Penguin 75 looks at 75 books published by Penguin and features short pieces about the creation of book covers written by the book's designer, art director and, in many cases, author.

Because this is a book published in-house, the negativity is pretty necessarily kept to a minimum. Author Will Christopher Baer (hilariously and rightfully) loathes the cover to his novel Penny Dreadful. Cartoonist Julie Doucet found the book she was assigned to draw a new cover for, Little Women, to be "boring," and Garrison Keillor can't stand the paperback cover for his novel Love Me.

But the process of designing a book cover, it turns out, is pretty fascinating stuff. Penguin 75 gets into the details, showing us abandoned cover mock-ups and explaining why certain covers were not chosen (sometimes, it just comes down to fickleness). We hear about some of the fights that take place behind the scenes. And we hear some of the motivations behind the choices. The most important lesson from the book, I think, is that nobody wants to make a hideous book cover. Sometimes you just have to do the best you can with what you've got.