West Books

Photographing the Southwest: Volume 2--Arizona (2nd Ed.) (Photographing the Southwest)

Laurent Martres

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Editorial Review:

Have you ever wanted to see with your own eyes all the beautiful locations found in coffee table books, posters and travel magazines? Do you want to see the most photogenic spots in our national parks and monuments? Do you want to visit spectacular "off the beaten track" locations outside the parks? Are you are interested in rock art and early Native American dwellings? The Photographing the Southwest guidebook series is the culmination of over twenty years experience exploring and photographing the natural landmarks of the Southwest. A must for everyone with a Passion for the Southwest, Volume 2 takes you on a grand tour of Arizona, starting with an in-depth discovery of the Grand Canyon, from the rim and from the river, exploring the superlative landscapes of Navajoland, including Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly, amazing narrows and slot canyons such as Antelope Canyon, the incredible swirls of Coyote Buttes and its crown jewel: The Wave, the colorful area around Sedona, all the national parks and monuments of the Sonoran desert, and finishing with a foray into the adjacent southern tip of Nevada.

Tales of the Road: Highway 61

Cathy Wurzer

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Editorial Review:

Highway 61 traces approximately 440 miles through Minnesota, from Pigeon Falls at the Canadian border south to La Crescent. Along the way, the road hugs the North Shore, zips through St. Paul, and navigates bluffs along the Mississippi River. While places such as Split Rock Lighthouse or Sugar Loaf Mountain offer well-documented stopping-off points, observant travelers may wonder about historic buildings , abandoned sites, and decaying structures they see along the way.

In this companion book to a new Twin Cities Public Television documentary also called Tales of the Road (airing in November 2008), Cathy Wurzer unearths stories about these places and more as she travels down the road and into the past, spotlighting famous and fascinating locations, many of them little remembered today. Learn about bootleggers crossing the St. Croix by ferry or importing hooch from Canada onboard vessels designed in White Bear Lake. Visualize--or maybe even visit--the quaint tourist cabins, supper clubs, and lodges that served tourists who began motoring up the road in the 1920s. Take stock of historic and current industries: Russ Kendall's Smokehouse in Knife River, a rutabaga plant in Willow River, the pottery factory in Red Wing. Each tale is illustrated with historic and current views to show how much-or how little-Highway 61 has changed. Here's one road trip you won't want to miss!

Cathy Wurzer is host of Morning Edition on Minnesota Public Radio and cohost of Almanac on Twin Cities Public Television. She has been honored with four Emmys for her work on Almanac.  

Wild Beauty: Photographs of the Columbia River Gorge, 1867–1957 (The Northwest Photography Series)

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Columbia River Gorge exerts a powerful influence on the lives and imaginations of the inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest. For people who live here today, just as for those Native Americans and European settlers who preceded us, this dramatic natural landform is a source of awe. Since the 1860s it has inspired superb photographers who have framed and interpreted the way we see the Gorge, and who have in turn had their artistic vision shaped by this compelling landscape. The ninety-year period covered in Wild Beauty was a critical one in the river’s history. Over thousands of years the wild, free-flowing torrent of the Columbia River carved a passage—the Columbia River Gorge—through the Cascade Mountain Range. In the 1860s, when the first photographers arrived, the Gorge still looked much the same as it had when Lewis and Clark made their way down the river in 1805, and indeed as it had for centuries before that, when the native peoples’ culture of fishing and trade thrived along the river’s banks. In the mid-twentieth century, the character of the river was fundamentally altered by the construction of hydroelectric dams. Terry Toedtemeier and John Laursen have selected more than 130 images—most of them previously unpublished and many of them never before available for public view—by some three dozen photographers to chronicle the history of photography in the Gorge. Wild Beauty begins in 1867 with images by the legendary Carleton Watkins, creator of some of the greatest landscape photographs of the nineteenth century. Later photographers include Benjamin Gifford, Lily White, Sarah Ladd, Fred Kizer, Alfred Monner, and Ray Atkeson. The volume ends in 1957 with the completion of The Dalles Dam, which drowned Celilo Falls and with it the historic site where Indians had fished for millennia.The images in this beautifully designed volume are presented one to a spread, with captions on the facing pages. The book is organized into five chronological sections, each with a brief introduction; a map shows the locations where the photographs were made. The photographs have been meticulously restored and are exquisitely reproduced in four-color process to capture the subtle coloration and nuanced tonal values of albumen prints, gelatin silver prints, platinum prints, hand-colored photographs, and early Kodachromes.The photography of Watkins and his successors is a significant piece of the cultural heritage of the Pacific Northwest. Readers interested in the history of the Columbia River and the photography of the developing American West will be enthralled by the book’s scope and artistry. And those who love the Gorge’s stunning beauty will welcome how this volume has captured its grandeur.Wild Beauty represents, in the words of one reviewer, “a culmination of decades of research, exhibition, and total immersion in the geology, history, and photography of the Columbia River Gorge.” Oregon State University Press is proud to partner with the Northwest Photography Archive to publish this remarkable volume.

Route 66 Lost & Found: Ruins and Relics Revisited

Russell A. Olsen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Lost and Found 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

Both volume one and two are very interesting and well researched books.
I traveled Route 66 a couple of years ago and reading the book was fascinating- now I know how many locations I went sailing past without a clue!
When I next get a chance to do a repeat journey, I shall certainly re-read the books very thoroughly and travel slower so as not to miss such historic scenes.

Editorial Review:

Route 66: Lost and Found conveys the spirit and the times, not quite like any other book. Arizona Daily SunFor several decades, Route 66 was the nation's main east-west thoroughfare, pointing Middle America toward all the promise California seemed to hold at various times, whether permanent refuge from the Dust Bowl or a temporary escape from the drudgery of everyday suburban life in prosperous postwar America. As such, America's Main Street once teemed with activity . . . bustling centers of commerce that evaporated into the vast American landscape like the jet contrails overhead and the heat rising from the Interstate asphalt. This engaging look at the "Mother Road" takes 75 locations along its 2,297 mile route from Chicago to Santa Monica and shows them first during their halcyon heydays through black-and-white photographs and period postcards, then on the facing page as they appear today, from the exact same angle and also through vivid black-and-white photographs.

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.

The Most Beautiful Villages and Towns of California (Most Beautiful Villages)

Joan Tapper

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

California's picturesque villages and small towns and its stunning landscape, from rugged sierras and fog-laced headlands to golden sand beaches and rolling oak-studded ranchland.

California is nicknamed "The Golden State," and though the name applies literally to the color of its state flower, the golden poppy, it is also a metaphor for the hopes and dreams that have lured generations of settlers. There are villages that grew up around the famed Spanish mission trail, and communities that boomed because of Gold Rush fever. There are places whose natural beauty nurtured artists and writers, and fertile valleys that were home to vintners and cattlemen.

The state is known for reinventing itself, yet a surprising number of its towns and villages still offer charming glimpses into its history and heritage. Their architecture may be quaint, historic, or gracious and their physical settings may take the breath away, but they are also vital communities, prized for their small-town values, their lifestyle, food, and wine. This book showcases the most beautiful villages and towns of California in Nik Wheeler's stunning photography and Joan Tapper's perceptive commentaries. These evoke not just historic houses, but also streetscapes, parks, and physical surroundings.

The book is divided into four regions: Northern California Coast, Northern California Mountains and Valleys, Central and Southern California Coast, and Central and Southern California Mountains and Valleys. In addition, there are photographic essays on the wine country, missions, and ghost towns, plus essential information for tourists on places to stay and to eat. 323 color photographs.

The Complete Route 66 Lost & Found

Russell A. Olsen

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Editorial Review:

Now Russell Olsen’s best-selling collections featuring Route 66 filling stations, main streets, motor courts, cafés, campgrounds, honky-tonks, truck stops, and barbecue joints as they appeared both in their heyday and today is available in one package.

For more than 30 years, Route 66 was America’s main east-west artery, pointing the nation toward all the promise that California represented. To serve these travelers, Route 66 boasted bustling commercial hubs, many of which remain today, many more of which crumbled long ago. All of the sites included here—150 in all—are shown both during their mid-century heydays and as they appear today. Taken together, the marvelous visual and descriptive elements assembled here—period postcards and imagery, specially commissioned maps, and Olsen’s own photography and capsule histories of the sites featured—comprise a unique, state-by-state look back at America’s Main Street.

Great Lodges of the National Parks: The Companion Book to the PBS Television Series

Christine Barnes

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

Beautiful book with spectacular pictures! 5 out of 5 stars.
98 of 98 people found this review helpful.

This is a gorgeous book.
It has 192 pages--loaded with lovely glossy pictures.
Not all of these lodges, however, are located in the national parks.Timberline Lodge is in a national forest and Oregon Caves Chateau is located at a national monument.
The pictures in this book are breathtaking. Historical pictures as well as present day pictures are located in the book.
This book is VERY similar to the Great Lodges of the West book (also by Christine Barnes). Some of the EXACT same pictures that are in the Great Lodges of the West book are in this book!
But this book adds more pictures.
This one has more pages (as compared to 136 pages) and this one has more pictures. Also covered in this one is Belton Chalet and Sperry & Granite Park Chalets (which the other book doesn't cover in full detail).

16 lodges are featured:
1) Old Faithful Inn (Yellowstone National Park- Wyoming)
2) The Ahwahnee (Yosemite National Park- California)
3) Paradise Inn (Mount Rainier National Park, Washington)
4) Timberline Lodge (Mount Hood National Forest- Oregon)
5) Oregon Caves Chateau (Oregon Caves National Monument-Oregon)
6) Crater Lake Lodge (Crater Lake National Park-Oregon)
7) El Tovar (Grand Canyon National Park- South Rim)
8) Zion Park Lodge (Zion National Park)
9) Bryce Canyon Lodge (Bryce Canyon National Park)
10) Grand Canyon Lodge (Grand Canyon National Park- North Rim)
11) Glacier Park Lodge (Glacier National Park- Montana)
12) Belton Chalet (Glacier National Park)
13) Lake McDonald Lodge (Glacier National Park)
14) Many Glacier Hotel (Glacier National Park)
15) Sperry & Granite Park Chalets (Glacier National Park)
16) Prince of Wales Hotel (Waterton Lakes National Park,
Alberta, Canada)

Also in the front and back is a map that shows where these lodges are located.In the back are Preservation Resources and Travelers' Resources (websites, reservation information, etc...)
Although I didn't know that this book would be so similar to the Great Lodges of the West book--(it's just a bigger version), I do not regret buying it. I have them both and the pictures are mesmerizing.

Editorial Review:

Stand amid soaring Douglas fir in the great hall of Glacier Park Lodge or sit in the setting sun and gaze into the Grand Canyon at El Tovar. This beautiful gift book will transport you to the majestic lodges of our national parks to relive the glory of past vacations or plan adventures anew. This book and the PBS television series of the same title (to air in spring 2002) take armchair travelers into these architectural wonders and explore the surrounding natural beauty of our national parks. Lodges, wildlife, and stunning vistas are showcased in 175 full-color photographs, along with historical documents from the PBS series. In his introduction, Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, offers a call to preserve this national heritage, and a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book go toward the rehabilitation of these magnificent buildings.

Las Vegas Then and Now (Then & Now)

Su Kim Chung

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent Book! 5 out of 5 stars.
18 of 19 people found this review helpful.

I was finally able to visit Las Vegas last year and bought several Vegas books as souvenirs. Unfortunately, most of the books only provided information on present-day Las Vegas. Also wanted were pictures of the Las Vegas I had seen on TV as a kid. After all, that is what gave it its magic & attraction to me.

This book provides that. Pictures of the old & new are featured on opposite pages for easy comparison. The pictures are large, sharp, & clear, & are of excellent quality to this layman's eye. They are also accompanied by short paragraphs of essential facts such as build dates & owners, along with information peculiar to the specific buildings.

I highly recommend this book to the nostalgist.

Another excellent entry in the Then and Now series 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I drove through Las Vegas in 1975 and was so unimpressed I didn't even stop and get out of the car. I wanted to see if this book had any photos from that era and was pleased to find out my memory wasn't faulty. I was also there in the mid '60s and the late '90s and the book didn't let me down on those memories, either.

Editorial Review:

A photographic journey through the history of one of America's most distinctive towns, Las Vegas. Part of the highly successful "Then and Now" series, each spread shows an image of Las Vegas as it was, and how it is currently.

Arizona Highways Photography Guide: How & Where to Make Great Pictures (Arizona Highways: Travel Arizona Collection)

Arizona Highways Editors and Contributor

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

an indispensable book for nature photographers 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This book is a must keep for all nature photographers. The books is well organized into basics,types of photography and places for photography with directions to the best photogenic locations in arizona. The portfolio section is amazing and has some of the outstanding photos one has ever seen about american southwest. The articles and photographs by outstanding photographers like Jack Dykinga,David Muench,Gary ladd,Peter ensenberger,Richard maack,Tom vezo,Leroy dejolie etc are both a visual as well as aesthetic feast to all photo enthusiasts. The experiences they have mastered over the years cannot be found anywhere else in one single place. This is a great travel guide too giving good directions to the best locations through out arizona. A jem of a book. Highly recommendable.

Editorial Review:

Here s an easy-to-follow, illustrated guide that combines information about the basics of film and digital photography; details about different types of photography, such as landscape, architecture, and people and events; and specific information about photographing the defining locations in Arizona, including the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Monument Valley, and the Mogollon Rim.