We’ve finally secured a copy of Mark Lewisohn’s Extended Special Edition of The Beatles: All These Years Vol.1: Tune In. The box-set book has been out of stock in Australia for a few weeks, but new supplies have arrived.
Here, for your viewing pleasure, is an unboxing of this treasure of packaging and the fine art of book-binding. The set comes in shrink-wrap. Here’s the front and side of the main outer box:
And the rear:
The base of the box (still in its shrink-wrap) carries some interesting information:
Sean Garrehy designed the box set. He’s Art Director at LBBG (Little Brown Book Group) – the UK publishers. Mike Wykes is the owner of Handmade Press, an art and design studio based in Leicester in the UK. As you’ll see later the hand-written design elements of the box set are in Lewisohn’s own writing.
Using a razor blade to carefully remove the shrink-wrap from the base of the box you can slide it up and off:
This reveals the two hardback volumes (together totalling 1728 pages) making up the extended text of All These Years Vol.1: Tune In. These sit inside an inner, three-sided cardboard holder:
So far, so good. This is an impressively packaged and presented item. Here are the three sides of the inner holder. First the right-hand side:
The left side:
And the rear panel:
When you remove the two books there’s more detail on the inside of the holder. On the right-hand side is a map of Liverpool:
On the rear panel just the word “Why?”:
And on the left a pic and short bio of Mark Lewisohn:
The books themselves are great. Very understated, but oozing quality and all the hallmarks of the bookmakers art. Lewisohn’s website says that they’re printed on New Langely Antique Wove woodfree paper, with red-and-white head and tail bands and red ribbon marker. The covers are very textured, deeply embossed and look good. One comes in dark grey, the other in red:
Inside there are more photo sections than in the standard editions (and hence more photos) – and many of the photos are laid out in a different way. Here are a couple of examples:
For a comparison between this special edition and the standard UK release here they are standing side-by-side:
Now that we have it we can’t wait for the holiday season to begin so that we can start ploughing through this baby! All the reviews so far agree: this is the definitive Beatles biography, bar none. And it’s beautiful to boot.
See also the UK and US standard editions compared.
Beatles Blog 
What do you make of the “why?” inside the box? It must be one word of a three-word phrase, but what will the other two be? I would guess “when” and “where”.
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Really good question Terry. Anyone else have any ideas?
I notice on the British edition of the book the dust jacket has the word “All” written in Lewisohn’s hand-writing. Clearly there the on the second and thrid volumes will be the words “These” and “Years”.
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Where did you order this copy from and how recently?
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Hi Dave. Got it in December in Australia through the book store chain called Dymocks. They got it from the Australian distributors as a special order. That company is called Hachette and they still have it listed on their site: http://www.hachette.com.au/books/9781408704783/
However, I did read that Mark Lewisohn has Tweeted that the special edition is now officially sold out and is out of print.
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I saw the same info about it being out of print. I also heard that there are no plans to reprint it or make the e-book available in the US where I am. Thanks for the info!
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I bought one listed on Amazon UK for $223 plus shipping which is pretty close to the original price. Some news:
From Steve Marinuccis beatles examiner:
The extended print version of Mark Lewisohn’s “Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years, Volume 1,” which is currently sold out, will become available again in the future, the author told Beatles Examiner.
“In the UK, Little, Brown have sold out two print runs, describing this as ‘phenomenal’ and a landmark event in publishing,” he said. “They will reprint at some future time, but at this moment I’m not sure when that’ll be.”
On the other hand, the e-book version of the expanded edition (available in two separate files (part one andpart two) remains available though only in the UK, and it’s still unavailable to U.S. buyers. He said he had wanted the expanded version to be available in the U.S.
“Crown Archetype declined to publish the extended edition of ‘Tune In’ in book form,” he said. “I got the impression they didn’t think there was enough of a market for it in the U.S. They had some interest in issuing an e-book, but couldn’t agree (on) contractual terms. And so, to my deep regret and disappointment, there seems no prospect of a U.S. issue at present.”
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