Documentary-Collection Books

"NYC Pet Project" is a phenomenal book, published by a great company. The fact that 25% of the proceeds of all sales of this book benefits NYC Pet Shelters with "no-kill" policies is awesome! Combine that with touching letters to pets from their "mommies and daddies", and beautiful photography and you've got an all-around winner!

Kudos to the publishers! I'm looking forward to more "great things" from "Great Books Publishing"

This is the perfect gift for all the pet lovers in your life.

I strongly recommend this book to anyone who's remotely a pet lover, the letters people write to their pets are unbelievable. The book covers such an amazing range of people -- from celebrities to everyday families to the homeless guys with their pet rat -- their letter is particularly touching... If you're looking for a great gift that's also helping a great cause, this book is IT! And, the photography is absolutely amazing!!

What is to say? He advertised a book in a certain condition and delivered the same on all counts. BTW and in a very prompt manner. I would do business with this person in a heart beat.

An amazing collection of some of the most exceptional images taken of our oceans. Every guest seeing it on the coffee table has commented positively on it...great conversation catalyst since everyone has a favorite image/memory of the oceans in their lives.

I have always liked the work of Jack Leigh, but this book is his best work in my opinion. Starting at the spring from which the Ogeechee begins to where it empties into the ocean. Jack has shown us the landscape and people who live along this river. His photographs and descriptions of the people and the river take me back to my youth. I fished all along this river with my grandfather as a boy. I remember meeting Billy Bishop, the boat builder, when my grandfather went to pickup a new boat. Opening this book and looking at the photos take me back many years. If you enjoy the out of doors and especially if you enjoy boating the rivers of this country, you will enjoy this book.

Fantastic coffee table book, that gets lots of attention. Wonderful photographs of the Savannah, GA area.. that take you to bygone days of childhood. We love it!

I saw his work at a Chicago exposition and then bought the book and one of his photographs,(the cover photo in fact) The photographs are awe inspiring and eerily detached from the subject matter. Much like a Rothko painting, the photographs turn real fires into an abstract division line between earth and sky. It is as if we have stepped into a different world where darkness and flames are the norm. Buy this book!

Having followed Larry Schwarm's carrer for the past decade his FIRE imagery produces a photographic essay that can be described as apocalyptic and rebirth. The sweeping imagery with different timed exposures produces a surreal view of controlled fire in the Flint Hills. Having recently met Mr. Schwarm and seeing his large scale imagery I came away with the feeling of seeing a master artist and his canvases. The emotion of his images remind me of Chuck Close, Diane Arbus, Tom Baril and Robert Mapplethorpe - all different in context but emotional charged with its simplicity.

Unusual, not ordinery at all. Why not break the rule and have a book and art work both together?

The Order of Things is a good book all around, right down to the unique binding. it's easy to flip through pages if you take out the foamcore in the center of the book, and it doesn't damage the spine, either.
It's a great book if you are really interested in Schoerner. If you just kind of like the Prada/Miu Miu campaigns that he did, then this book is overdoing it a bit. It does however reveal some inspiration for how he uses his images and turns photographs into great art by computer modification. I would recommend this to any person looking for inspiration in photography/art. a source book of sorts.

Pablo Cabado is one of the great cotemporary photographers to choose Cuba as subject.This book is at last the first document from a serious photographer who along Ernesto Bazan will reach an outstanding recognition among photographic historians.

Cuba may be the size of the proverbial postage stamp, but that certainly does not curtail the media fascination with all things Cuban. Most photographs of the island depict a country lost in a 1950s time warp with its art deco colors and automobiles held together by spit and wire. There is another side, of course, just as there is in most regions, but it is a picture rarely seen in the west. Photographer Pablo Cabado has seen the soul of Cuba, however, and his photos are that of an outsider (he lives in Argentina) who is not afraid to search for the truth. Without the colors to distract our attention, the black and white photos cannot help but draw us to the subjects, the ordinary people who are at the heart of Cuba.

Last summer I saw the Atget exhibit at the Bibliotheque Nationale, which was a marvelous passage through a lost time. This book matches some of those absorbing old photos with photos of the same location taken today. I think it's a fascinating book and I can lose myself in the nuances while comparing the photos. This pasttime may not be to everyone's taste, but I highly recommend the book to thoughtful people who enjoy looking at things.

What Berenice Abbott et al did for New York, Atget and Raushenberg have done for Paris.

My huband and I were privileged to attend the Passion Play in Oberammergau last month. I saw this book at the shop across from the theater before the performance, but I did not purchase it because I thought it would be too heavy to carry in my suitcase on the rest of our European tour. After seeing the live Passion Play, I went back to the shop to purchase this book because it really captured both the history and performance of the "2000 Passionspiele." The only thing I regret is that they did not include a CD of the music that accompanied this incredible drama.

If you do not have a chance to go to Germany this summer and see the passion play, this book is your one chance at a glimpse of a great tradition. This wonderful work, put on every ten years for the past 400, is the product of a small village in Germany where the locals play the parts of Christ's passion. The phtography captures as best as is possible the beauty and craftmanship of the production. "Passion" easily refers here to both the trails of Christ's earthly journey as well as the effort and style of the performers' work. The book is a very well done look at a play which is simply inspiring as good art really is.

Patagonia is justifiably admirable for its vast beautiful emptinesses. These photographs capture the sense of wonderful wilderness that still pervades so much of this unique, spectacular part of the world. Not to be tamed or truly settled by humanity, Patagonia is awe-inspiring. Seeing it through the eyes of this book is the next best thing to being there. After the experience, a reader will want to be there. Being there is not just the stuff of romance and legend; it is the stuff of confrontation with onesself and one's place on this planet. In some ways it is like visiting a place somewhat like our own American West if it were mirrored on another, parallel, accessible planet. This might have been the American West if fate had taken a different course. The book suggests the intensity of seeing these possibilities first-hand. It's a trip.

These are the best pictures I have seen of the subject, and I perused all the other books on the topic. The hardbound Mountaineering in Patagonia is the nicest GUIDEbook for climbers, but Neilon's pictures are timeless, artistic, and inspiring. His admixture of gritty black-and-white pieces with soaring, beautiful color plates (shot with a large-format camera in many cases, hence incredibly sharp and grainless reproductions) are enough to have me saving for a trip to Patagonia already.

Peter Miller's work is marked by both personal and professional integrity. His writing always is clear, sensitive, funny, sympathetic to the subject unless he isn't, and layered with well researched meaning like a fine painting. His photography is as unwavering as the agreement in an old time Vermont handshake.

When Peter Miller hit the roads of the Great Plains to photograph and write about its people, it was a journey of discovery as much as a quest for stories, information and images. His discoveries are as significant, beautiful and moving as the stories and images in People of the Great Plains. This is a book every reader, every lover of fine photography, every person interested in the soul of America will want to have.

I am surprised to be the first reader reviewing this book, but accept the honor of setting the table. But why no other reviews? This book is beautiful in every department; Miller's photography is stunning, often provocative, and his portraits of a people shine in the pages, capturing the tenacity, grit, and joy of Great Plains life. Miller wisely lets everyone tell their own stories and saves most of his own remarks for the book's introduction and conclusion. He also rightly includes the stories of our indigenous peoples remaining on the reservations, whose ancestors held their own stories of the land long before Europeans arrived. Plains history includes both beauty and tragedy.

The book deserves its award for visual excellence. Miller includes several panoramic shots, only appropriate considering the ocean-like vastness of the landscape. He also shows us the people in a way that, combined with the text, almost makes you feel you've been introduced to them in person. This book honors them, and if they had the chance to read it I hope they would agree.

Plains people, of course, are no more or less important than anyone else. But if this book were, say, "People of the Strip-Mall Towns," I don't think it would have quite the same appeal. It seems Great Plains life is in many ways endangered, not only its economy but also, more importantly, its ideals. What is it like to have roots, a heritage? What is freedom, good work? These questions beg to be asked as we careen through our microchipped, catch-me-if-you-can Information Age, a beat to which America marches faster each year. The future can never--and should not--be exactly like the past, but nevertheless there are many things worth saving. Read this book and you may understand.