Why not Helvetica Neue (extended) and Garamond?

The Sans on the cover seems to have a short middle arm on the E, so I suggest something like Engravers Gothic or maybe Interstate widened.

The Sans inside the book is not the same, and might be Helvetica, as Ryuk suggested.

- Mike Yanega

I'm also not convinced that Garamond is the right serif for the cover, although it's hard to see the detail well enough. The M seems more splayed looking, and I thought Janson might be closer. Also because the 'k' upper arm seems so much lighter in your sample.

If you can get a closer view that would help a lot.

- Mike Yanega

thanks for all the help, heres a hi-res of the cover - could the sans have been pulled from an old catalogue?

I wish I could say that helped, and I guess it did in a way, but it hasn't pointed to an answer yet. That 'k' is quite unusual. The 'a' does look like Janson to me, but nothing else matches very well. The M looks more like Romana than anything else, but the rest of the lower case isn't Romana.

Can you tell that I'm stumped? I would really like to know what this is now.

- Mike Yanega

The closest I can seem to manage is a customization/distortion of De Vinne. This image (below) is admittedly crude because it was made by distorting a test drive image, but I think it shows the possibility that a typeface like this could have been artificially condensed/manipulated to produce something similar. This De Vinne was the one from Wooden Type Fonts.

Perhaps the initials were not distorted as much, but if you look at the basic font, I see a strong resemblance to the typeface used for the book cover. Am I imagining things?

- Mike Yanega