Documentary-collections Books

This book is excellent!

The introductory essay brilliantly connects the history of the city, the multiculturalism of the city, the reality of the city in a way that is warm and insightful. It smoothly flows from the actions of yesteryear that have lead to the great metropolis of today, all while maintaining an emphasis on the human side of the story. Its a great literary preparation for the visual feast your eyes will experience as it glances, absorbs, and inspects photos in the latter parts of the book.

The images themselvess are fantastic. The book is divided into six chapters: City of Islands (which is the well written introduction), Passage (random images of the city), Retreat (images of green areas, parks, and gardens), Connection (images of bridges and roadways), Structure (images of facades and interiors of a few important buildings), and Edge (images of places along the outer edge of the city such as Staten Island, Rockaway Beach, and Coney Island among other places). There is a certain human element through out the book. One of the nicest element is that the author places emphasis on showing pieces of all New York boroughs and avoids the Manhattan bias typical of other books about this city.

All in all, the book shows New York City as it is, a great multicultural metropolis worth saving!

I bought the book based on the coverphoto. Regarding that I in fact wanted a book on New York, I cannot say I regret it. The book is fully illustrated with beautiful photographs of New Yorks five boroughs. Though I`ve been to New York five times before I`ve only been to Manhattan and Queens, but I surely was tempted to see all five boroughs when I go back during fall -99. The photographs has a soul in a way and all represent a motion or a mood that I catched right away. I could actually feel the smells the sounds and the dynamic pulse New York stands for. Pete Hamill's text as an introduction to each borough gives the reader a fully good and poetic insight in New Yorks majestic soul.

I bought this book back in 1999. I am a New Yorker and I wanted a book that showcased all of my wonderful city. I never, in my wildest dreams, thought that I would have to look at this book in order to ever see the World Trade Center again. After the attack on New York City on Sept.11, 2001, my whole world as I knew it changed forever. This wonderful, beautiful book is my only reminder of the New York City that I have known and loved all my life. I know the Twin Towers will rise again! Until then I have my book!

this is the kind of book that should be mandatory in classrooms !
the world as it is...

The photos of this book have the technical excellence of Ansel Adams pictures (except they are not B+W). But they are not vistas of pristine, pretty National parks that Adams shot; here the hand of man is all too present.

Beahan and McPhee have eloquently captured both our enmeshment with nature, and Her attempts to hold fast. Photos so beautiful you catch your breath.

I found this book in the giftshop at the Sioux Falls airport in South Dakota. As a woman who grew up On the Plains, I found that Brown's photographs captured the true essence of the beauty one finds there. It's not simply a collection of "postcard" photographs of abandoned windmills, lonely pastures, and fragile pasque flowers. The photos depict the "real" plains, complete with its people and its architecture. Norris' introduction is, as I had anticipated, an enjoyable complement to the photos. This is a lovely book to share with people who appreciate the beauty of the Great Plains.

This is a really excellent collection of 77 photos taken 1985-1995 across the high plains states from Montana to Texas. All are in richly captured color, and all manage to bring the panorama of this wide open country within the viewfinder of the still camera. Brown's achievement is to show the suggestive and telling details that transform these "empty" landscapes into spaces that are filled with drama and atmosphere.

A shot of winter prairie, south of Edgerton, Wyoming, reveals the contoured undulations of grasslands thick with frost, the banks of a shallow wash weaving into the distance, the horizon blending into the brightly overcast sky. The entire image seems sepia-tinted in the winter light. An early summer shot of ground water standing dark and rippled in a Nebraska Sandhills pond shows tufted grasses in the foreground leaning with the wind. A single slender fence post is echoed in the distance by a single tree in full leaf and just visible beyond it a windmill. The grass extends to the gently rolling horizon where a white thundercloud begins to pile upward into the vivid blue of a brightly sunlit sky.

Light, shadow, clouds, all seem still but are in movement, and many of the photographs heighten a sense of time's gradual passing -- the hour, the day, the season, the years. A roadside directory, indicating the distances to ranches has been weathered and sun-bleached. An old shingle-roofed elevator stands empty and overgrown with trees. There's a disused one-room school, white paint worn by wind and rain down to the bare boards. Tall weeds grow in the playground, and the setting sun casts the shadow of a swing set against a side wall.

And there are many signs of life, as well -- a general store with gas pumps and pop machines in front, a TV antenna overhead, and a gravel lot for parking; a barber shop with curving glass brick and shiny red tile facade, with an American flag on a pole at the curb; a last-picture-show cinema, the Rialto, with nothing on the marquee, but above it a wonderful mural of cowboys around the campfire and a chuckwagon with "Welcome to Brownville" on its canvas covering.

There are photographs of small town life -- a young man and little girl stand by the front door of a tiny house, the white siding bright in the late afternoon sun and a darkening sky behind them; a sign painter sits on the back of his truck under a hand-lettered sign, "Advertise Dammit Advertise Before We Both Go Under"; a floor-to-ceiling chalkboard is filled with for-sale notices for hay hauling, an early American sofa and matching swivel/rocker, a 3/4 ton Chev. 4x4, toy poodles, chow puppies, and a bird dog that "will point."

And this really only scratches the surface. The photographs reveal themselves slowly, and with a patient and inquisitive eye, there is much to see in all of them. If you have lived in or traveled through this region, as I have, you will see much that you recognize, recall its quieter pace of life, and marvel again at the great diversity of landscape, seasons, and weather.

Kathleen Norris has written an appreciative introduction to the book, and Brown has an essay at the end, describing a lifetime of fascination with this part of the world. The book includes a listing of all its photographs, noting the location of each and the year in which it was taken. For anyone who grew up on the Plains and now lives elsewhere, this book is like a return home. As a companion volume, I'd recommend Ian Frazier's book "Great Plains," which covers this same territory in words and with much the same attitude. Kathleen Norris' "Dakota" is another good one.

Photographer Peter Brown wanted this book to reflect the many jouneys he made across the Plains in his youth...''from open country to a small town, through this town, on to a larger one, and then out again into open space and sky'', he says in his Afterword. This great book of photos does just that.

Years ago I read Walter Prescott Webb's definitive study 'The Great plains' and I became fascinated by this amazing part of America (still haven't managed to get there yet) and he descibes how some of the early settlers stopped when the came up against the Plains, being used to the European countryside they just could not take the flatness, no trees, no hills and if it it was not the quietness it was the wind, blowing for days on end. These fine photos capture the flavor of what they must have seen.

The small town photos show buildings with a weather-beaten look, the Allensville, Kansas, city hall is no bigger than a simple house, the lovely aerial shot of Marfa, Texas shows a town you could drive through in a minute and after the photo of Marathon, Texas it is back to the flat landscape until the end of the book.

If you want to capture the feel of the Plains this book will do it for you...an excellent keepsake. Maybe I'll visit next year!

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

This book is woooonnnnderful!! You will not be sorry you bought this book. One-of-a-kind.

This is a story told through photographs, with text providing some framework for the pictures. Dignified, moving, insightful. The photographs date back to the 1800s and focus specifically on photographs of African-Americans. Only the very last few pages of the album have contemporary photographs of adults and children.

There are formal portraits of black families in their finest attire, pictures of black intellectuals, candid pictures of black families, children, social life, families on their homesteads, in large metropolitan cities, working in fields, upper-class black people.

More photographs than I have ever seen before of past generations of African-Americans in all of their variety. Photographs are worth a thousand words; more clear and illuminating than a dry volume of essays on the African-American experience. This history is in living color.

I have seen some libraries classify this album as a children's book, but it is not one. This is a full-size album, with stories told through photographs. This is a book to show to your children, to display and to cherish. A beautiful record of the past.

One More River to Cross, by Walter Dean Myers displays endless research that is organized revealing a brillant reflection of Black American portraits in such a pique way that the historical snapshots reveal the struggles to freedom that led to hope and resilent faith in the promise land America the Beautiful.
Excellent photographs that capture the emotional ties of the past to the present.

Highly successful and popular children's author Walter Dean Myers has crafted a work of strength and power as he takes the reader on a photographic journey of the African-American from slavery to the present. The photographs assembled, mixed with the author's prose, effectively exhibit the numerous triumphs and tragedies that have been a part of the African-American experience.

Scenes of blacks toiling in the South's cotton fields are blended with rare looks at the black soldier throughout the various conflicts of which this country was involved. There are pictures of the famous (Madame C. J. Walker, Duke Ellington, and Joe Louis, to name a few) interspersed with the not so famous (members of an old "Negro League" baseball team, an unnamed soldier in the rice paddies of Viet Nam, to cite just two).

Professionals do some of the pictures while the amateur for family remembrances has taken others. It is no wonder that the book received a Golden Kite honor award, an accolade presented to authors by authors and artists.

This book comes highly recommended for its historical significance as well as its artistic and social merit.

This book is easily my best rail book purchase in a longtime. The photo reproduction is supurb and railfans have not seen thesort of writing that is in this book since David P. Morgan died.

This book will probably not interest the rivet counter/roster shot takers, it centers on people, on heartfelt feelings, on the things that matter.

Highly recomended.

Mark Bau END

These photographic essays on Western railroading provide excellent black and white images of trains, providing a photogenic collection of rail scenes from across the country. Rail buffs will find these historical photographic presentations engrossing.

If you're not a fan of railroads and not a fan of photography, you will still enjoy this book. It's no secret Ted's been around, and to some places you wouldn't even believe. However with all these places it's hard to contain it all in a single volume, but Ted has done a wonderful job picking the best and his favorite photographs for the book. Thirteen lucky chapters detail his subjects with a flare and writing that goes down like a bottle of imported beer...nice and smooth! This book is a must for your home library!

I did not see this book as I bought it online as a gift for my daughter. She said it was exactly what she was looking for - a beautiful coffee table book dealing with our national parks. As a professional photographer myself and a former NPS employee, I am very familiar with the work of David Muench and his use of the 8X10 inch view camera to make his images. All of them are beautiful so I imagine this book is too.

Another stunning book of American Landscape!!
He never cease to amaze me after so many years.
Bob Kim

What a beautiful book! Covering all of our nation's National Parks, David Muench's photography is incredible. From the Great Sand Dunes to Canyonlands, from Carlsbad to Glacier, he's captured our nation's most beautiful land. Great quality book--I immediately wanted to hike up a mountain.

After seeing these photos, I'm further inspired to visit all the national parks!
The essays were unnecessary and took space away from additional photos.

Excellent book. Has exceedingly great pictures of modern HK, invaluable, really invaluable. That's about all I can say.

This is THE book on Hong Kong. The pictures are amazing and show how enormus the city actually. The style is very much like the "Above" books by Robert Cameron, though this one has a map to show where the pictures were taken as well.

This book is made following the same style of Cameron's "Above" Series. Lots of old pictures compared to new ones, where you can see how much has HK changed in a short time. Amazing pictures of the skyscraper architecture of this outstanding city, aerial views of Central HK, Kowloon, the new airport, New Territories. This is a MUST HAVE book. One of the BEST aerial pictures book I have ever bought.

This book, which should be entitled "A day in the Life of Vietnamese" is the creation of Rick Smolan of the "Day in the Life" series.

In 1994, 70 photographers descended on Vietnam for a week to take pictures of the Vietnamese at work from north to south. They caught people in the middle of shopping, selling, eating, working, napping, and so on. The result is a fascinating book detailing the life of Vietnamese during that week.

While most pictures are interesting and original, a few are unique to the Vietnamese society.

PASSAGE TO VIETNAM (Against All Odds/Interval Research, CD-ROM for PC and Mac, $39.95) With its 400 photos, hour of video, lilting indigenous music, and insightful essays, this landmark disc transports you to contemporary Vietnam, where pigs squawk, mothers tote babies on their backs, and peddlers hawk dried sea horses. This Passage, produced with Scorsese-like lushness by Rick Smolan, is no swanky animated program, but it is virtual reality of a high and literary nature because it makes you dream. Without wasting words, the photographers eloquently tell the stories behind their pictures--stories of people at work and play. Though we can't help but remember the horror of war, Passage helps us to see that time has begun its healing. A+ --Harold Goldberg

Vietnam is one of the most picturesque countries and colorful cultures. Yet it remains as one of the least understood countries in the world, despite having been one of the most publicized. This photo journalistic journey allows pictures to speak volumes. Look into the eyes of the children, the lives of the rice farmers. The art, the economy, family and community interaction -- are all visible and life-like in this representation of life today in Vietnam

Philip Trager's new book is both a collection of beautiful photographs and a beautiful object in itself, as are all of Mr. Trager's books. This one is a natural extension of his earlier "Dancers" and brilliantly documents the drama that emanates from these wonderful artists who communicate through the grace and power of their bodies. His portraits of his wife moved also me deeply and unexpectedly. I wish Trager had had the chance to make portraits of Duse, or Isadora Duncan, or especially Chaplin.

"Faces" is a stunning book. The images are emotional and beautiful,
mysterious and theatrical. They are a new kind of portraiture,
capturing the "head" of the dancer as a portrait, while in the midst of
performance. Trager's work has been highly acclaimed by critics. This
book, I believe, is his best ever. The photographs are of dancers and
performance artists, including Mark Morris, Bill T. Jones and many
others. This large sized book is beautifully produced, with superb
reproductions and the highest quality paper and cloth.

Without a doubt. Trager is one of America's great photographers. I have been following his work for years and this is his most haunting and beautiful book. From whimsical to tragic these spellbinding photographic images stay with you long after the cover of the book is closed. And for those already familar with Trager's architectural photographs, often notable for the absence of people, this is a great oppotunity to see Trager's wonderful artistic eye applied to the structure of a human face. This is a high quality art book at a good price and would make an ideal gift for anyone who appreciates fine art.

I bought this book several years ago and I just love it. The photographs are just breathtaking. I highly reccommend this book to anyone who enjoys delicate poetry or appreciates art or photography. Barron, the photographer, has this subtle and amazingly artful eye and you leave the book wanting to decorate your home with her work. This is a must-have!

Barron's photographs and Graham's poetry compliment each other beautifully. The photographs are breathtaking; after flipping through a few pages you want to decorate your home in Barron's work. I have had this book for several years, and continue to treasure it.

Another beautifully printed book from Scalo. Pulitzer prize -winning Graham's sparse verse is not only inspired, but enhanced by Mongomery Barron's pristine imagery.Her (Barron's) still life photographs are not merely decorative interperatations of form, texture and tone. Each image is a poem,a meditation, a complex expression of pure beauty and eerie silence.