Travel Books - Page 4

One Special Summer

Lee Bouvier, Jacqueline Bouvier

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Frothy Deluxe Dee-lite! 5 out of 5 stars.
20 of 20 people found this review helpful.

This was written when travel was glamorous and these two certainly made the rounds! I was journalling before journalling and scrapbooking became the present rage and enjoyed this book because it was done without the present day pre-fabbed gew-gaws. The sisters took their mother and later the lucky readers through castles and meetings with friends of friends who were high up and taught us how to handle an embarrassing situation of being taken "home" across Paris by a couple who really didn't ant to take them home, Lee did a hilarous entry of her experience at a dance where she danced with a lead-footed man who pointed out his family "all with the same noses!" and Jackie drew herself dancing with a dashing Russian Soldier during the same event. These two had a great approach to life and even their bad days were hilarious adventures. Much is written in French and it delighted my second year French-student daughter then she discovered that she was able to translate for me. After reading this book, you will discover how to have a good time and find the humor in any situation and never leave a sheet of paper or an envelope blank. Jackies' drawings are easy and cute an an inspiration! One of my daughters' teachers borrowed this book from me to show the students that they can make art anywhere about anything!

America at Home

Rick Smolan, Jennifer Erwitt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the co-author of the New York Times Bestseller America 24/7.

The week of September 17, 2007, marked the largest collaborative project in Internet history as 100 of the top photojournalists and millions of Americans documented the concept of home. The result—which included several million photos—is the most extensive record of American home life at the beginning of the 21st century.

Now the powerhouse team of photographers and editors behind such bestselling titles as America 24/7 and the A Day in the Life of... series, present their latest collection of stunning personal and dramatic moments with this tie-in volume.

America at Home aims to capture the emotions of home: the distinctive rituals, ceremonies, traditions, intimate moments, and all the myriad ways in which we work, play, learn, conduct our lives, and interact with friends, family members (and pets!) as we transform our houses (and apartments, trailers, etc.) into our homes. From McMansions to mobile homes, from tree houses to tenement slums, from ranches to old-age homes, the public was invited to help document the harmonies and paradoxes of home life across America over a single seven-day period...

Highlights of this extraordinary project include:

Massive grassroots online outreach: Americans were invited to simultaneously contribute their own images via a series of daily snapshots each day throughout the week. These shots covered topics such as: morning rush, what’s for dinner, and evening family rituals. Participants received daily emails with assignment instructions and also took general photos of what makes their home special. The public was able to sign in and upload them at www.MyAmericaAtHome.com.

Multiple formats: An international team of leading magazine and newspaper photo editors edited all of the images, shot by both professionals and amateurs. The best images are woven together here with essays from leading writers in a unique and evocative coffee table book. In addition to the website, a TV show and photography exhibit are planned, with the help (and advertising) of major corporate sponsors such as IKEA, Google, HP’s Snapfish, and BabyCenter.com.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men: Three Tenant Families

James Agee, Walker Evans

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

I thought I hated it at points, but I've never been able to get it out of my head. 4 out of 5 stars.
12 of 13 people found this review helpful.

This book is an amazing work of art. At times it's baffling, and at times almost impertinent--like when the author decides to describe every object in an entire home, and yet in all these things and in all the conflicting emotions it evokes, it creates a mood and a feeling and a setting that will seep into your skin and fog your brain for months.
The writing is beautiful, the story it tells--of poor, sharecropping, depression-era families--is heartbreaking, and the experience of reading about it all is like a baptism by fire. This book just might re-wire your brain.
I think this is a much better read than Agee's "A Death in the Family," and that one won the Pulitzer Prize. Read this, for sure.
I read it on a bus trip across Guatemala, and the way Agee's descriptions of the old southern poverty fit the poor little towns full of Guatemalan coffee pickers was uncanny.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and let us start with James Agee.

UPDATE: It's years later, and this book has never stopped haunting me. I think of it almost daily. If I were to review it today, I would definitely give it Five Stars.

Editorial Review:

The clasic that became the prototype of the modern nonfiction novel. A watershed literary event at its first publication in 1941, LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN is an "unsparing record of the harsh existence of three Alabama families, and a poetic meditation on the terrible beauty of their lives," recognized by the New York Public Library as one of the most influential books of the century.

Africa

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Eye on Africa: Thirty years of Africa images, selected by Salgado himself Sebasti?o Salgado is one the most respected photojournalists working today, his reputation forged by decades of dedication and powerful black and white images of dispossessed and distressed people taken in places where most wouldn?t dare to go. Although he has photographed throughout South America and around the globe, his work most heavily concentrates on Africa, where he has shot more than 40 reportage works over a period of 30 years. From the Dinka tribes in Sudan and the Himba in Namibia to gorillas and volcanoes in the lakes region to displaced peoples throughout the continent, Salgado shows us all facets of African life today. Whether he's documenting refugees or vast landscapes, Salgado knows exactly how to grab the essence of a moment so that when one sees his images one is involuntarily drawn into them. His images artfully teach us the disastrous effects of war, poverty, disease, and hostile climatic conditions. This book brings together Salgado's photos of Africa in three parts. The first concentrates on the southern part of the continent (Mozambique, Malawi, Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia), the second on the Great Lakes region (Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya), and the third on the Sub-Saharan region (Burkina Faso, Mali, Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Mauritania, Senegal, Ethiopia). Texts are provided by renowned Mozambique novelist Mia Couto, who describes how today's Africa reflects the effects of colonization as well as the consequences of economic, social, and environmental crises. This stunning book is not only a sweeping document of Africa but an homage to the continent's history, people, and natural phenomena.

Vanishing America: The End of Main Street Diners, Drive-Ins, Donut Shops, and Other Everyday Monuments

Michael Eastman, William H. Gass

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Think of the quirky buildings you pass every day but whose quiet beauty you take for granted—the moviehouses, juke joints, soda fountains, barbershops, roadside diners, and storefront churches. You don’t miss them until they’re gone. As suburban sprawl and strip malls conquer the country, these vestiges of a lost way of life are falling under the wrecking ball. Here the photographer Michael Eastman has made the ultimate road trip, crisscrossing the nation dozens of times, to capture these buildings on film before they vanish. These dreamy images call us to question what we choose to let go in the wake of contemporary life, with a cool melancholy that evokes the work of Edward Hopper, Jack Kerouac, and William Eggleston. There is a wry sense of humor here as well. The book delights in the idiosyncracies of America’s vernacular styles, ranging from Depression Deco to New England clapboard in random juxtapositions that accrue over time in a town’s landscape. Countless visual puns arise among the book’s many detailed images of signs and statuettes. Vanishing America catalogues great everyday American architecture and design. But it also offers a provocative portrait of the silent emptiness that has descended upon vanishing small communities everywhere.

Pink Box: Inside Japan's Sex Clubs

Joan Sinclair

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

This Isn't a Book for Prudes or Feminists 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

"All I ask is that viewers not assume that the profession is inherently degrading. It's more complicated than that. These women are not powerless, they are not on drugs. They have made conscious choices: they have their own dignity. The clubs are a reflection of modern Japan, a literate society, where the rules are written out, prices are not negotiable, and fantasies are predetermined, prescripted, and prepaid." Those are the words of Joan Sinclair, the young female photojournalist of this amazing book. In addition to startling pictures of a startling world unimagined to most of the western world the reader is provided some valuable historical information about what they are seeing. One of my favorite pictures is a close up a man's smiling face with a woman in the background laughing at his silly antics for the camera while she enjoys a cigarette. The customer quote from the 65 year-old Mr. Taniguchi is "I think men are universally perverted; it's just that in Japan, we do something about it." According to economists, in 2001, "the commercial sexual services sector in Japan accounted for nearly $20 billion." "Pink" or "pinku" translates as "Sexual: Commercial Sex." Most of these pictures were made in 2004.
It's amazing that this book was ever made. In the United States the people involved would probably never have allowed the foreign photographer in the front door, much less let her take any photographs. What is very obvious from the pictures is that the people involved in this fantasy land of sex are having a good time and even enjoying being photographed for publication. Their profession simply doesn't have the negative stigma attached to it, as is the case in the western world. Japan never experienced an extended period of time when various forms of sex was considered taboo or wrong. It was just a natural bodily function that was intended to be enjoyed by both partners. It was considered an important element of good health and long life. Guilt over sex wasn't a part of Japanese culture. Here you have both the hosts and hostesses as well as their customers cutting up for the camera lady. It was obviously a lark for them. They obviously weren't worried about being recognized by their family members and being ostracized from society because of their behavior.
This book provides an incredible look at an unknown to the western world phenomena. It shows high school girls selling their used high school uniforms and underwear to a "Used Underwear Shop." It shows a television auction for a woman's panties (they sold for 26,000 Yen) and she included a freshly plucked pubic hair as a bonus. There is a smiling portrait of a beautiful young woman holding up the 53,000 Yen she had just received for her used, soiled underwear. Sociologist James Farrer provides a very helpful introduction to this alien universe. The various clubs and lounges photographed and discussed include Hostess Clubs, Host Clubs, Nude Theaters, Touch Pubs and Pink Salons, Soaplands, Peeping Rooms, Fashion Health, Hotel Health, Cosplay (costume play), Image Clubs, (with fantasy rooms such as "Pervert Trains" full-sized scale models of subway cars for groping other passengers, Happening Bars and Couple Cafes, and a whole universe of fantasy, S&M, Kinky stuff that I can't begin to mention in this review. Some of my favorite pictures were of women dressed in their favorite Anime Character costumes. Other interesting and almost unbelievably surreal pictures were from the Club Mammoth, Tokyo's club for those usually skinny guys who like really big, big (obese) Sumo sized women. There were also clubs where customers can paint nude bodies with traditional calligraphy brush and ink, Karaoke with some unusual twists, sushi or sashimi meals served on a nude woman. This 192-page photographic coffee table book is beautifully done and manages to tastefully skirt actual pornographic pictures (not an easy task). Some of the text in the book's picture captions is so small it's difficult to read without a magnifying glass, but most of the text is actually oversized. I suspect the weird combination of type sizes and fonts had to do with the fact the book is probably translated into several different languages? Whatever, this book will provide readers and viewers with a voyeur's eye view of the underside of Japan. Just as with Brassai's coverage of the underbelly of Paris in the 1930's, this tome is not for prudes or puritans because western ideas of sexuality standards and culture don't apply. This world is an adult amusement theme park. The mostly young people pictured in the book are obviously proud of their profession and the money it makes them. They may even feel that they are on a par with rock stars and super models? The book is full of cartoon-like settings and cartoon like characters. One has to view it with an open mind and not try to psychoanalyze it to death. The obvious question of what happens to these young hosts and hostesses when they begin to show their age isn't answered or even discussed. This is a talented photojournalist's coverage of what is there and the reader/viewer will feel like they have actually been there looking over the shoulder of the thirty-year old American lawyer/photographer. That fact is not important to the book's pictures, but it does give you additional insight into the mind of the photographer. There is a lot of both intentional and unintentional humor displayed by the various photographic subjects. This volume is a peek at a surreal world that could probably only exist in Japan. It's probably already reached the status of the traditional Japan Shunga (Floating World) Pillow Books of the Edo Era. The two types of book are obviously related.
As one views this book they may feel an urge to pinch themselves to be certain they aren't dreaming and what they are viewing is real, not fiction. It is fantasy, but it is also very real.

Editorial Review:

In Pink Box, photographer Joan Sinclair takes us on a journey inside the secret world of fuzoku (commercial sex) in Japan, a world where kawaii (cute) collides with consumerism and sex.

Unrivaled in their creativity and the sheer number of choices, the clubs featured in this book offer their clientele every fantasy imaginable. Subway groping, visits to the nurse’s office, and comic book character encounters are just the beginning of the immense list of possibilities that are played out in colorful playrooms for adults where no detail is overlooked. Sinclair’s photographs capture it all, while an introduction by sociologist James Farrer provides a brief history of commercial sex in Japan and places the images in the context of contemporary Japanese culture.

The Nature of Photographs

Stephen Shore

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This book grew out of a college course that Stephen Shore taught for many years. Its aim is not to explore photographic content - the subject of an image - but to describe the physical and formal attributes of a photographic print, the very elements that form the tools a photographer uses to define and interpret that content. By teaching us how to look at photographs and helping us to see the world the way the photographer may have seen it, Shore also teaches us a way of looking at the world around us. "The Nature of Photographs" is a primary tool for critical analysis and the understanding of photography in general. As one of the photographers who established colour photography as a legitimate medium of artistic expression in the early 1970s and an influential and important teacher of both the theory and practice of photography, Stephen Shore is the ideal guide to the subject of 'how' to look at photographs. By putting himself in the shoes of the photographers, he imagines the concerns or approach to the subject or concept they may have had when they were taking the picture. As well as a selection of Shore's own work, "The Nature of Photographs" contains images from all eras of photography, from classic images by Walker Evans, Brassai and Eugene Atget to more contemporary work by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Cindy Sherman, Joel Sternfeld, Thomas Struth, Richard Prince and Andreas Gursky. It includes all genres, such as street photography, fine art photography and documentary photography, as well as images by unknown photographers, be they in the form of a snapshot from the early days of photography or an aerial photograph taken as part of a geographical survey. Shore has selected images by, among others, Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, Diane Arbus, William Eggleston and Robert Adams, and offers an explanation as to how they 'work'. Together with his clear, intelligent and accessible text, Shore uses these works to demonstrate how the world in front of the camera is transformed into a photograph.

I Was Cuba: Treasures from the Ramiro Fernandez Collection

Kevin Kwan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

I WAS CUBA 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I had originally bought the book for me, but when I opened the book and saw all the beautiful pictures of what Cuba once was, I knew I had to give this book to my parents. When my mother unwrapped the book on Christmas Day and started to look at the pictures with my dad, tears came from both their eyes. My mother hugged me and could not stop thanking me for the gift. Those of Cuban Heritage, please buy his book, for "YOU ARE CUBA" and you won't regret it.

Editorial Review:

While most think of Cuba as a mythical island of rum, rumba, and revolution, period photographs reveal a more complex place. I Was Cuba is an original look at Cuban history as seen through the Ramiro Fernandez Collection arguably the world's leading archive of Cuban photos and ephemera. I Was Cuba showcases rare, vernacular images from the nineteenth century through the revolutionary period, exploring the everyday and the eccentric. With texts from famed Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas (Before Night Falls), this captivating volume is an intimate view into a bygone era of glamour, political upheaval, and astounding visual culture.

San Francisco Then & Now (Then & Now)

Bill Yenne

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Welcome to America's Most Conservative City! 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 11 people found this review helpful.

I'm not using "conservative" in the current political sense, obviously. Everybody knows that John McCain has less than a snowball's chance in Gomorrah of winning in SF. I using the term conservative in its root meaning, something like "saving what was valued in the past." Preservation and conservation have the same Latin root. San Francisco has conserved more of its past than any western American city, and I could make a case, I think, for its preservation of more old-fashioned city life even than Boston or Savannah.

Except for the tiny downtown financial district, San Francisco "looks" old. The vast majority of houses, churches, and schools were built in late Victorian styles and have been lovingly restored in the same styles. Even the relatively "new" streets of the Sunset are old-fashioned now, predominantly in modest Art Deco style of the 30s and 40s. And it should be no surprise that ATT baseball park is a booking success, since it's strikingly old-style brick in construction, with a street car stop at the front gate.

San Francisco is a bastion of old-fashioned independent mom 'n pop businesses. There are thriving corner groceries and open-air once-a-week markets: independent restaurants ranging from very cheap to ultra expensive, but hardly any chain restaurants in the neighborhoods. The big chain grocery stores like Albertson's struggle to stay open in competition with locally owned stores like Andronico's, which has six stores around the whole Bay Area. There are more independent fitness centers and gyms in the neighborhoods; 24-hour fat farms are not the norm in SF. There are no malls that would be recognizable to most Americans in downtown or neighborhood San Francisco. The only malls - and very small they are by US norms - are on the suburban fringes.

Even Boston is cut up by freeways today, though the traffic is no better managed than when I lived there in the early '60s. Seattle is sliced in half by its ineeffective central freeway. San Francisco is the place that blocked freeway construction in the late '60s. Several freeways have been demolished in SF in the last ten years! Streets in SF are narrow and parking is tough, but a measure to build more parking lots was recently defeated at the polls, and any attempt to chop wider streets through SF would meet with armed resistance.

Baseball is the number one sport in SF. The fans of the football team pour in from the 'burbs to the hideous modernistic but crumbling stadium just at the edge of the city. The basketball team plays in Oakland. Any town where baseball rules has got to be considered conservative!

People in SF are conservative dressers, especially by California standards. I know women who live in LA, who carry clothes they consider drab to SF when they visit, so that they will not stick out like the inflamed rear view of a peacock's tail. One never sees "his and hers" outfits on the streets, especially not pastels. Men wear less bling per capita in SF than in Omaha. A neck chain and an open shirt would get you sneered out of polite society in SF.

Sweet old-fashioned window boxes are everywhere in SF. Street tree plantings are lovingly maintained. Open space is all-important to San Franciscans, and it's by stubborn resistance to development than SF has preserved more open space (finangling the take-over of decommissioned army, coast guard, and navy bases) than any comparably populated region of the USA. Nature is inherently conservative.

The half-mile strip of upper Haight Street, which gets the attention of the "screaming heads" on TV and radio, is not populated by San Franciscans. It's the runaway and stumble-away refuge of the discontented - the "poor abused confused missused" - of all the dysfunctional "conservative" families and communities from Modesto to Miami. They come to SF to enjoy the true conservative values of privacy, tolerance, and neighborhood friendliness.

Editorial Review:

The natives call it simply "the City." This is the story of the changing face of San Francisco, and how it has become one of the most picturesque cities in the world. Seventy modern color photographs are compared side-by-side with seventy archival photographs from the 1850s to the 1950s. While focusing on famous vistas and familiar landmarks, it also explores well-known neighborhoods. The Then and Now series includes: New York, Washington, Boston, and San Francisco.

Life: Heaven on Earth: 100 Places to See in Your Lifetime (Life)

Editors of Life Magazine

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Great Travel Ideas, Beautiful Photos 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 21 people found this review helpful.

I bought this book to get travel ideas. I was not disappointed. It included several terrific places that I've already gone to such as Paris and Cartagena, Colombia, several places I've already planned to go to such as Guilin, China and Kauai and dozens of beautiful places I had never known about before. Only 20 of the places are from the United States so it does a good job of depicting places from every continent except the south pole.

The photos, for the most part, are high quality and beautiful. The only drawback is that there is only one picture of each location with only a one paragraph description of each place. Although you will have to do more research on your own if you are interested in actually going there, this is a very good place to get started.

Another good book is "Unforgettable Places to See Before You Die" which only has 40 places, but has multiple photos of each place as well as a six to eight page description of each place. There's not that much overlap since only about 15 places are in both books.

Editorial Review:

From the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx to the mysteries of Easter Island and Stonehenge, the editors of "Life" draw on the world's finest photography to reveal why you must include these truly special 100 places in your life's itinerary. Drink in the kaleidoscope that is Australia's Great Barrier Reef and gaze at the majesty of Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro. Sample the sophisticated splendour of the Tuileries Gardens in Paris and the sun-baked wonders of the fortress city of the Andes, Machu Picchu. And, of course, the treasures of America are not forgotten, such as the awe-inspiring Grand Canyon and the serene Atlantic beauty of Nantucket Island.