Historic Books

This is an informal, funny, but informative view of baldness. It convers the history, psychological and sociological aspects of this common condition. Where Kuntzman really shines is when he introduces the reader to the true characters in the hair business. These visits include scientists working on treatments for baldness, including gene therapist Ron Crystal; the radio show host who has a support group for the bald; the "proud to be bald conventioneers"; the hair tansplanters; and even the president of the hair club for men. These interviews are insightfull, informative, and hilarious.

As someone who began losing my hair at age 25, I found Gersh Kuntzman's "HAIR!" to be the perfect balm for my wounded pride. Kuntzman just tells the story of mankind's crazy, insane search to rid itself of this supposed scourge with wit and a great amount of research. Who knew that the ancient Egyptians used to spread hippo fat on their bald heads? By the way, it didn't work. This is a fun and funny book about a serious subject near and, unfortunately, dear to many men's hearts.

This cogent, piercing analysis of the causes and cures of baldness kept me riveted throughout. Kuntzman mixes wit, irony, and just a plain old appreciation for the wacky with some very sharp and thorough reporting. I have seen a picture of him and he has a full head of hair, which is what makes his sympathy for poor balding schlumps like myself all the more impressive. My only criticism of this book is that I wish it was longer.

A bright and funny book, _Hair! Mankind's Historic Quest to End Baldness_ (AtRandom.com) by Gersh Kuntzman takes up the causes, stigma, and above all the treatments for baldness. It has a hilarious and scary section on the quack cures for the "loathsome disease," but concentrates on the real cures or crutches. There are now treatments for baldness, the "drugs" part of the amusingly named trilogy of cures: drugs, rugs, and plugs. Drugs available now for baldness are Rogaine and Propecia, and they both work in a limited way. There is a peculiar difficulty for researchers in field of baldness treatment. They can publish small, tentative, preliminary reports in the most obscure technical journals. All of a sudden they are inundated by requests from bald men who want to get the treatment, and if there is no treatment ready, they want to get into the test groups immediately, and if they can't get into the test groups, they accuse the investigators of being in a large, undefined conspiracy against bald men. The volumes of mail and complaints about treatments that are not yet in existence have meant that researchers had no time for research, having to spend it all on public relations.

Rugs are given an amusing coverage (sorry) in the book, but the strangest of superficial treatments are the "hair in a can" varieties. These consist of something like spray-on or spread-on gunk, sometimes chopped up sheep hair. Sheep hair is grated into microscopic pieces, dyed and given a negative static charge so that it sticks to whatever hair remains. A dry cosmetic called DermMatch gets rubbed into the scalp. The company slogan is, "Nothing looks better, stays on better, applies neater, is more healthful, or costs less to use." Kuntzman, a witty reporter, writes, "If that's the company _slogan_, I'd hate the see the employee handbook."

Plugs are no longer the thing. It used to be that hair transplants were cores of little circles of hair plugged into the balding areas. Look closely and a plugged scalp looks like that of a doll. But now there are micro-transplants, teensy cores of three hairs apiece carefully plugged in where they might do the most good. It costs thousands of dollars, and Kuntzman describes the bloody process with enthusiasm. One of the plastic surgeons interviewed who does such operations is himself bald. He says, "I'm a reasonably content guy, and it doesn't bother me enough to go through a surgical procedure. For me, hair loss is no big deal." Maybe not for him, but it is clear that is overall a big deal with big social and financial repercussions. _Hair!_ tells about them with good humor and intelligence. If one of our obligations in life is to spot human foibles and to sympathize and laugh about them, Kuntzman has helped us along.

Hearing is a really satisfying novel because of the way it builds and accumulates and stores and supplies meaning little by little, page by page, in gripping patches of prose laid out like a vast acreage of many crops growing side by side to produce a bountiful plenty. But I'm not sure it can be read at the beach, it's not to be dipped into and enjoyed at random-it can only be fully established by reading it sentence by sentence from beginning to end because of the way meaning slowly accumulates even as decades of time are covered. There are no end of stories. They are used, story after story, story on top of story, to build meaning. The authors seem to want the power of stories to be questioned, not to get rid of them or put them down but to break their hold on us. The novel's facinating voodoo sanctuary hidden in a antebellum house depicts a place where its votaries go to tell stories and give them a new kind of hearing. There, they can at the same time freely hear stories and, as one of them puts it, hear "the speech of deliverance" from stories.

As for me, I just want to hear more stories woven together like these. Reading this book brings a new experience of how stories can be heard moving over a vast range of feeling in a short compass like an unfamiliar musical composition.

An incident recounted on the first page or two of this novel sets the stage for what it's all about. Jael B. Juba catches a plane from New York to New Orleans and sits beside a man "wearing one of those Italian silk suits women always want." It's not the man she wants but his suit. Busy with her own personal matters and put off by her perception that he's preparing to come on to her, she resorts to a queer form of protection from unwanted bids for attention. From her briefcase, she pulls out a sheaf of papers she carries to use for just such occasions and studies a sheet closely. A display of what she's looking at takes up the whole of page 2 or so in the novel and certainly confirms Jael's comment that it's "just the right amount of alien without that fatal exotic-erotic combo" to put them off: "the most dense, absolute nonsense computers can generate, every element scaled, cropped, flipped, modified beyond recognition, overprinted, no telltale repetitions." At the very beginning, this device, besides recalling eighteenth century novelists we may have read in high school, like Sterne or Defoe, performs all kinds of functions. It questions our expectations and distances us as it does the attractive man beside her but it also sets up a playful, teasing interaction with us. This foregrounding of print technology (along with a reference to the man's "closed laptop astride his genitals, IBM compatible") situates us in today's world of media. It clues us in on what not to expect in this novel. There's no budding romance here. Jael's feelings are strong and deep but, we discover shortly, they are directed toward an old handwritten diary: "Old leather as soft-skinned as a smooth fat baby." An object produced with the older technology of the pen and one that links her to others, alive and dead, from a past not of her own making.
As in many modern novels (Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, Joyce's Ulysses, McEwan's Saturday, to name a few), time in Hearing is restricted to a day or so in the life of one character (Jael) while covering decades, even centuries, of events (as far back as sixteenth century European struggles for control of the Americas). The novel unfolds as the telling and `hearing' of Jael. We read the diary at the same time as Jael re-reads it. We hear Jael's stories as she tells them and we travel with her into a wild spit of Florida for consecration of her beloved book, the old diary, and on to South Beach, Florida where she leaves us with a sketch for a flyer and a sign advertising a new line of work she envisions for herself:
Jael B. Juba, Travay Philousiac
first and last practitioner
As to what this sign could possibly mean, only Hearing, its centuries of movement resounding through a couple of days from one woman's life, offers an answer.

Hearing is fiction in the grand tradition and will appeal, I think, to readers ready and willing to be transported by fabulous writing into the reaches and depths of a fictional world. This novel gets my highest recommendation, but this one is not for you if you're looking for nonfiction embroidered with fictional touches.

I'll flip through each chapter to give some idea of what you can expect, while trying not to give away particulars of the twists and turns that make reading this novel such a pleasure. In the first chapter, "Trail of Seduction," the narrator Jael B. Juba describes how she's following the "trail" made some 15 years earlier (in l977) by her friend Elizabeth Harding Dumot-from Athena, New York, to an antebellum house in Old Tarragona, the historic section of a Florida Gulf Coast town advertised as "the oldest continuous settlement in America." As you move along with Jael over this terrain, you begin to understand how Harding was seduced into buying the broken-down old Boullet House and how Jael experiences that seductive pull when she travels the same route in l993 to return the diary of the long dead Frances Boullet to the Boullet House, where Harding found it. You hear the story of how Harding falls through a rotting windowseat one day while restoring the house, and finds herself in an architecturally concealed voodoo sanctuary. This secret space is so vividly and realistically described that you actually believe in its reality. By the end of the long first chapter all living major characters have been introduced. You have the feeling that you know the people of Old Tarragona and you know where you are in this semi-tropical atmosphere. You're now prepared to hear what's in the diary.

In the second chapter, "Bride of Freedom," you begin reading the diary compiled by Frances Boullet as she approached her ninetieth birthday, back in l935. She originally had 40 volumes of diary and had filled up 39 of them, starting at age 15 on the eve of the Civil War. To fill the remaining blank volume (the one you'll be reading) she cut the material she wanted out of the other 39, burned what was left of them, and pasted her selections into the remaining one. From the way she puts together these cut-outs you get slices of her life and world over a period from l860 to l935. You hear what she sounds like as a teenager, a young woman, a mature woman, and as the old Frances putting together volume number 40. As you listen to changes over time in her voice, you get a strong sense of how she and her cronies develop over decades of time and how America developed from its Floridian and Caribbean beginnings. This chapter is highly entertaining.

Continuing with the diary, the third chapter, "Heroes and Refugees," takes on Frances's father and his ancestral line, showing her turns of character as well as those of America's early settlers. In the fourth chapter, "Of Legacy and Dispossession," you hear the story of how the times brought people together in such unexpected connections that a woman with Frances Boullet's French and English lineage found it natural to adapt the practice of voodoo to her life-and many other fascinating stories of her kin and kind. In chapter 5, "Blood Washes Blood," Frances reveals how the African diaspora and the Caribbean islands, especially Haiti, came to play a profound and lasting role in her life and death (a fascinating and moving read). Chapter 6, "Remains," does a smashing job of tying up loose ends from this amazingly rich and unusual range of material.

The last chapter, "The Opening," may be my favorite. All the other chapters prepare you for this one, which is a celebration of the opening of the secret voodoo sanctuary to the public. Besides being very funny, it brings you to the sudden realization that you, the reader, have involuntarily acquired an insider's ease of understanding what goes on here in the heart of "the oldest continuous settlement in America." The voodoo sanctuary has opened for you too, it seems. Beware!

Hearing by Lydia Fakundiny and Joyce Elbrecht is a highly complex and totally engrossing novel, a tour de force in collaborative fiction. It works as a sequel to The Restorationist, from 1993, but it isn't necessary to have read its predecessor to enjoy Hearing. The work is brilliantly conceived, using the device of one composite diary, compiled from forty volumes of diaries with significant incidents, stories, and history cut and pasted into this final volume. The forty volumes span as many years from the late 19th century into the first half of the 20th, but dip far back into the early years of this country. The myriad layers of time flow logically and smoothly in and out of one another. I thought of it as a tightly packed flower bud with each diary entry like a petal unfolding, and each one opening a new dimension of either time or locale or culture. There are many distinct voices in this novel, each one clear and different from the others - a truly masterful handling of language. Furthermore, the story is completely engaging with shocking surprises along the way, a bit of mystery, a wealth of history and Caribbean culture, and a touch of serious social commentary. If you enjoy reading works that fully engage your brain and all your senses, that open up new worlds and suck you right in, this is the novel for you.

Purchased as a gift. If you want a book on hiking trails in Oregon, this is it.

I really enjoyed this book. I own all of his hiking books and have done about 50-60 different hikes (some many times) because of him. I have lived in Oregon all of my life and did not know many of these stories that William tells in this book. My favorite part is about Silver Creek Falls State Park and how they use to float cars over the South Falls for tourists to view for ten cents. I also like the story about the building of the lighthouse on an island of off Tillamook.
I highly recomend this book and I hope William Sullivan writes more history books, because he is very well researched and is a very good author with an easy to follow writing style.

My husband bought me this book because we're moving to Oregon; I'm thrilled with it, both the book and the move. Mr. Sullivan's writing style is wonderful. It is amazing what this guy knows about every nook and cranny of the state. I am eager to explore the terrain the author describes and look forward to reading his other books on hiking in Oregon. Every travel or hiking book should strive to be as informative and interesting as this one. Alas, its rarely the case. This is a special book.

After moving to Oregon a few months ago, I discovered this gem of a book. While most hiking books will have plenty of information about where to go and what to see, I've never seen one that's just plain fun to read before. The book is full of interesting and amusing stories that will keep you turning pages late into the night. And, even better, the places that are described--you can hike them! One "hike" described is through downtown Portland that describes the flood of 1894 (among other things). Sullivan writes, "Chinese locals staged a gala boat race from the New Market Theater up Second Street to Stark and back on First. Winning time for the eight-block course was five minutes flat, a record that is likely to stand for some time." Last weekend I did the Tillamook Head hike (#11). If you haven't heard the story behind Tillamook Lighthouse located a mile offshore, pick up this book and read about it. You won't be disappointed! It's the best darned hiking book I've ever read in my life!

This book is an absolutely astonishing achievement, and is most highly placed among my favorite books of any genre. Most readers will find this to be the finest book on the many historic buildings of the French Quarter, and for many reasons. First, the writing is superbly clear. One need not be an architectural engineer to understand the many fine points covered; believe me, with Mr. Vogt's writing, even we amateurs pick it up easily. One also need not be an historian to comprehend the intricate and detailed timelines involved; these are seamlessly integrated into the writing so that one learns the history naturally, as a matter of course, and a great many historical characters come vividly to life for our reading pleasure. Yes, the buildings described of are built of brick and plaster and colombage and other stuff, but to Mr. Vogt, they are also built from a heady infusion of cultures from many continents converging on a place called New Orleans to create an spicy mix of styles and traditions. In other words, to Mr. Vogt these glorious buildings, some now more than two centuries old, are not inanimate objects, but very, very much alive. Second, the outstanding pen and ink drawings are invitingly warm, showing these appealing buildings in a classic way that blends remarkably well with the written text. I've often found myself pleasantly studying one of the drawings (or perhaps just daydreaming) for several minutes at a time before resuming my reading. When first flipping through the pages of the book, one might be inclined to say that line drawings usually look pretty similar, but I would suggest there is considerable variety in Mr. Vogt's work. Artists should find his approach particularly interesting, with some subjects shown at night rather than in bright daylight, others after a rain, and so on. Take a closer look, and appreciate the artistry unique to each and every drawing.

I have now read this book several times (something I never expected to do when I first bought it), and each time find myself so deeply immersed in pictures and words it's as though I'm living altogether in another time and place. The book is that coherent, that illuminating, that much of a pleasure to enjoy. For anyone who thinks they might even be slightly interested in this subject, this is likely just the volume for you.

Mr. Vogt focused his work on the greatest American city of New Orleans, and that was surely enough to keep him happy for a lifetime. Would that he had had more time to complement this work with another on the early architecture of, for instance, whatever might remain in Biloxi, Martinique, Haiti, Cuba, and other antecedents and contemporaries of New Orleans as it was growing up. In the present volume, he gave us just enough to tease us. Perhaps a bright, enterprising scholar of architecture will be able to follow up some day; that would surely honor Mr. Vogt's lifetime achievements.

"Historic Buildings of the French Quarter" is highly recommended without the slightest hesitation to anyone who enjoys a truly fine book.

This book, as other reviewers have said, is about the architecture of the Quarter and the history that drove its trends and changes. It is an excellent book if you are interested in architectural details and some floor plans in historic buildings of the Quarter as well as typical buildings that would have been built there. If you want to learn about types of buildings in the Quarter, why the Quarter developed as it did and see line drawings of specific historic buildings, then this is your book.

If you want a glitzty photo book showing interior design of said buildings, this is NOT the book for you (thank God, like we need more of that!).

It is my hope that Lloyd Vogt branches out and produces a similar book in other areas with a distinct architectural heritage as it appears to me that most books that address this topic are of the interior design eye-candy type.

The New Orleans' historic French Quarter was founded in 1718 by the French, moved to Spanish control, and was home to generations of occupants who built grand ballrooms, courtyards, and Spanish structures. Historic Buildings Of The French Quarter uses black and white line drawings to blend history with architectural insights, illustrating building types and styles of different eras and profiling some sixty representative buildings. Students of either regional history or architectural history will find it revealing.

Founded by the French, developed by the Spanish and the West Indian Creoles, finally acquired by the United States, le Vieux Carre, the French Quarter, is sixty-six square blocks of solid history spread over nearly three centuries. Despite several desvastating fires, a surprising amount of early architectural history remains, and this lush volume of pen-and-ink drawings of buildings and floorplans is notable as both history and art. An introductory section describes the sources and development of vernacular architecture in south Louisiana, the roles of wrought iron, brackets on shotgun houses, and the courtyard plan, and the influence of each succeeding cultural overlay. Then, arranged into chronological chapters, Vogt describes in some detail more than forty structures and locations, both public, like Jackson Square (originally la Place d'Armes) and the U.S. Mint (erected in 1838 on the site of Fort San Carlos), to private dwellings, including the Peyroux House (built c.1780), the Bosque House (1795), and the La Rionda-Correjolles House (c.1810)-- with a full discussion of generic building types and styles for each period. How many visitors to the Quarter are aware that Pat O'Brien?s inhabits what was once the townhouse of planter John Garner, or that Preservation Hall was the home of Madame Fanchon, a free woman of color, from 1817 to 1866, or that the Le Carpentier House on Chartres was not only the home of novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes and the birthplace of Paul Morphy but also the site of a series of murders by the Italian "Black Hand"? A glossary and selected bibliography will also be useful to the student, though an index would have been very handy as well. The author is well known among students of New Orleans architecture; his _New Orleans Houses: A House-Watcher's Guide_, now in its fifth printing, has become the standard reference.

This book captures the true meaning of Christmas and what the holiday is all about. Captain Scheunemann was truely a giving person and his family were very brave to carry on his legacy. I have been to the ceremony of the Christmas Tree Ship at Navy Pier and it is an inspirational ceremony.
Because of this book, the story of Captain Scheunmann has been revived and lives on. Thank you Rochelle.

This is truly a touching story. I purchased the book after attending one of Rochelle's presentations on the tale of the Christmas Tree Ship, an event which I also enjoyed very much. This story has since become a family favorite and we read it every Christmas. Rochelle also has another, smaller book on the Christmas Tree Ship, which is full of beautiful artwork--also a great read!

This was an amazing book! I loved reading Rochelle's first Christmas Tree Ship book I wanted more information about the story. The Historic Christmas Tree Ship is overflowing with early 1900s newspaper articles, historic photographs, and more details surrounding the story of Captain Schuenemann and his family than you could even imagine. If you're interested in the story, or just looking for a heartwarming Christmas book, I would definately recommend this one!

This is a beautiful book that tells the story of Captain Schuenemann and his family and crew who brought trees from northern Michigan to Chicago for the people to buy at Christmas, and the disaster that took the captain and crew's life. It is a story of hope following sadness as the Schuenemann family carried on the work after the shipwreck. The pictures and historic articles are great. Nice story to read just prior and during the Christmas season.

A truly unique work of seminal research, "War Wings: A Guide To The World War I Aviation Documentary Motion Pictures held In The U.S. National Archives" is an impressive contribution to Military Studies; Aviation Studies; and Motion Picture History Studies reference collections. A member of the American Aviation Historical Society, the League of World War I Aviation Historians; and the Military Writers Society of America; Phil Stewart has applied his considerable research skills to amass a body of information with respect to identifying and listing more than 2,5000 individual sciences of filmed aerial action that took place in the skies of the European theatre during World War I as military aircraft evolved from crude observation platforms to attack vehicles for airborne as well as land-based targets. Additionally, hundreds of other filmed action scenes are summarized for the benefit of the reader. The state of movie making technology was one of using cumbersome wooden boxes with crude brass-encased glass lenses, metal hand cranks, and ungainly tripods. The results were to range from the mundane to the spectacular. There are scenes of pilot training, airplane manufacturing, and post-Armistice testing of enemy planes. The time frame involved ranges from 1917 to 1919. "War Wings" must be considered as an indispensable resource for scholars, aviation history enthusiasts, World War I buffs, and students of the history of motion picture technology. With an informed and informative listing of historical film footage arranged in chapters focusing on the training of airmen, the building of the planes, transporting aircraft to the European theatre of war, the A.E.F. over France; other combatant (including German aviators), and a roster of 'The B List films', academic librarians and museum curators should consider "War Wings" as a core addition to their reference collections.

Reviewed by William Phenn for Reader Views (3/08)

Mr. Stewart, the author of "War Wings" is a retired USAF Lt. Colonel, aviation film consultant, and TV producer. Colonel Stewart spent the better part of twenty years researching and reviewing thousands of reels of rare WW I footage and cataloging them in this very complete volume.

In this, his latest reference book, "War Wings," he identifies and describes the 71 titles with aviation content. His book documents and describes each scene in detail for over 2,550 action-packed scenes, taken from those 71 titles that he has found in the archives. Scenes of pilots in training, airplanes being manufactured, Dog Fighting in the skies over France, and the post-Armistice testing of the enemy's new airplanes. This and much more was all captured on black and white film back in the years of 1917-1919.

Colonel Stewart has set his book up with very well-written appendices, index and even added a few official letters from that era. "War Wings" is an exceptional reference of all the aviation footage in the National Archives. It is interestingly written, well made and the cover art is very fitting. I think Colonel Stewart did a good job in chronicling all the file films and scenes. I gave the book an A rating and I suggest it to anyone who will be researching the aviation aspects of WW I.

This just in from Leonard E. Opdycke, Editor/Publisher of WWI AERO and SKYWAYS magazines:

Phil's arrangement of the films in this book; the way he codes the index listing and gives a sentence or phrase for each scene in a film, allows the reader to almost watch the films themselves unroll in front of them. Much research was needed to properly identify the aircraft, men, and situations shown in each scene and Phil did an outstanding job.

The reader (almost, "the viewer") comes away with a new appreciation for the men and machines of the period. Phil deserves our gratitude for collecting this material and making it available. It is fascinating information. It's the next best thing to seeing the films themselves.

Walter J. Boyne, Historian and National Aviation Hall of Fame Enshrinee, "This book is absolutely indispensable to a student of World War I aviation. I wish I had it when co-founding Wingspan, the Air & Space Channel, and it would be equally invaluable to any student, author or historian interested in the period. Phil Stewart's succinct reel by reel, scene by scene, analysis is completemented by a wonderful index that points you to the subjects you want. Anyone writing anything about WWI aviation needs to use this book to give flesh and dimension to what otherwise is found only in the printed word."

I grew up in Memphis in the late 40's, 50's and 60's and now live in Phoenix. It was such a pleasure to view these photographs and read about places and events in Memphis that happened (most before my time). A lot of the old buildings still stand. Memphis is so much more than Elvis, "The Birthplace of Rock n' Roll, and Home of the Blues". This book is a testament to that fact. Yesterday, I returned from a visit back there to see my Mother and many other relatives, and took this book to show my brother. He loved it so much that I had to give it to him, so I'm ordering another one for me!

Absolutely a spectacular book for those interested in a piece of history. I don't even live in Memphis and enjoyed seeing the photo's and comments. Some photo's are of then and now, very sad to see great structures destroyed and pathetic ones put in there place, someone should have been held accountable for this poor judgement, even as it goes on now!

Often when I purchase a volume of photographs I feel that I have wasted my money on a book that took me all of two minutes to 'read.' Mind you I like looking at photographs, particularly historic ones, but most photographic books leave me a bit dissatisfied.

Not so this book. It is not an exaggeration to say that "Historic Photos of Memphis" is so much more than a conventional book of old photographs. Cordell and O'Daniel have done a excellent job of choosing images that illustrate the growth and development of Memphis,Tennessee.

Equally significant are the chapter introductions and detailed captions which provide a wealth of information on the history of the Bluff City.

Taken together, the photos and text included in "Historic Photos of Memphis" are a major contribution to our understanding of urban history in the American South.

You'd think it would be easy to put together a book of historic photographs, especially since you don't even have to take the pictures. I mean, don't you just grab up some old snapshots and slap them together into a book? Well, not quite. Actually, there's a lot more that goes into it, as this well-thought volume of historic images aptly demonstrates.

The best photography books tell a story, the way this one does. The pictures run together thematically, and there's a logical progression to the way the book is laid out. The process is anything but willy-nilly, as I learned while watching Gina and Patrick comb through the Memphis Room's 16,000-odd historical images. It was intimidating to watch, to say the least. The two of them ran back and forth with bundles and bundles of photographs, selecting this one, rejecting that one, changing their minds and then changing them back again. Everytime I walked through the processing room the two of them would be huddled over some photograph or other, giving it the once-over and deciding its fate.

Once they had their photographs in order, then they had to go back and write captions for them, as well as introductions to the various sections. That was yet another Herculean task. Gina and Patrick had definite things they wanted to say about the pictures, and the stories that they tell, but they also had to research each image in order to get their facts straight. A snapshot for the Business Men's Club, for instance, tells us that "the organization was founded in 1900 and moved to 81 Monroe in 1907. Beginning in 1913, the building (they had occupied became) the headquarters for the Memphis Chamber of Commerce." It takes a lot of work to find all of that out. A lot of digging and poking through dusty old books and half-readable microfilm reels. Now imagine doing that 198 times. Sounds daunting, huh? I can tell you from the looks I sometimes saw on their faces that it definitely was.

But about the book itself. There have been numerous Memphis photograph books, but this is easily the best. Not only does it have a pleasing size and shape, but the paper and the ink settings are of very high quality. In short, it's a coffee-table book that you can hold in your hands. But the thing that really makes this book special is the thoughtful photograph selection and sequencing that lies behind it. Naturally the book follows a historical progression, but there are thematic ones as well. The opposing images on pages 32 and 33, for instance, both show us the uglier side of industrialization in 19th-century America. Other photographs stress the beauty of the landscape, the majesty of the river, and the ebb and flow of social change. Sometimes the images capture the hustle and bustle of everyday life in a growing city, and sometimes they catch a private moment that would otherwise be lost forever. In my personal favorite, a scene from Court Square in 1932, an off-duty railcar conductor feeds the pigeons that alight at his feet. Some of the birds are captured in mid-air, their wings a flapping blur of motion.

The photographs also give us a chance to learn things we never knew. I was shocked, for instance, to learn that a lonely country road, passing through a grove of trees, was actually Union Avenue. I was also taken aback by the enormity of the trees that lumbermen felled in days gone by. Who knew that such tall giants once stood watch over Memphis? And all that flooding? I never dreamed that water could rise so high. Thank God for levees, I say.

But the very best thing about this book is that it includes everyone. The Memphis that emerges from these pages is a melting-pot in its brewing stage. Sure, there's an elite upper-crust, but there's also a throng of working class people, male and female, black and white. we see them in crowds, but we also get glimpses of their individual faces. They stare boldly from the pages, asserting their rightful place in our collective memory. There are snapshots of mule drivers, cotton loaders, beauty queens, gamblers, motorcyclists, gossiping women, policemen with tommy guns, schoolchildren, and even a rare shot of a jug band. The list goes on, but why should I spoil it? This is an everyman's Memphis, as the book makes plainly clear. As such, its a tribute not only to what Memphis once was, but what it is today and what it someday might become.

"A gorgeous book, these photographs of one of the world's most interesting cities makes this book a real joy for the photography collector."

I bought this book for my fathers 80th birthday gift.
It arrived in perfect condition and on time and we
even discussed it last night. He is a native nashvillian
and my sister gave him a television set and he hasn't taken
that out of the box but carries the book around all day,
every day enjoying photos of the past.
I and my family love, love it and I appreciate the great service
that I get when I order from Amazon. I work for the library
and can order here with an employees discount but prefer ordering
from Amazon instead. Thanks, Vickie L. Jones

I recently received "Historic Photos of Nashville" -- what a top quality book throughout! Over 200 beautifully printed pages, depicting scenes from Nashville history since the mid-1800's. These extraordinary old photographs have been found in various archives, and provide a great historical representation of the people, places, and events that have occurred in Nashville. This book was intended as a gift for a friend -- but looks like I'll have to order another one, because this one has become MINE!!

We just received Historic Photos of Nashville and who knew that Nashville had such a rich history. This book has hundreds of photographs of Nashville covering nearly 200 years and is just the right coffee table book size.
Historic Photos of Nashville is well-made, educational, and just subtle enough to make a real an elegant statement no matter where it's placed. This is a must have for anyone who loves Nashville History.
We're ordering more copies to give as holiday gifts to all of our friends.
Joe

This is a wonderful addition to any West Point book collection. It contains many old photographs of West Point not normally seen in other books. It is especially interesting to see how the buildings and landscape of this American Icon have changed and remained the same over the years.

The authors are to highly commended for their collective efforts in assembling the photos and historical insights contained in this book. It is a true history of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point since the advent of photography in America and should be a must in the library of every West Point graduate's home.

Growing up in northeast NJ meant many trips to West Point. Always a wonderful experience and was happy to introduce my children to its wonders and glorious history. This book is a great plus to any library and joins many books I have on the Point.

There are few places in America with a deeper sense of tradition than the military academy at West Point. It is from the classes of cadets at West Point and the other military academies that our nation's officers are largely drawn. This volume shows us a couple of hundred photographs from 1850 through 1959.

The authors, Eugene Palka and Jon Malinowski have close ties to the academy and know its traditions well. They have provided wonderful section introductions and captions for the photos. We see a great many of the corps training in the field, in the classroom, some of their living conditions, and the evolving campus.

The four sections are:

Civil War and Social Change (1850 - 1899)
Decades of Change (1900 - 1918)
Between Two Wars (1919 - 1939)
The Long Gray Line In War and Peace (1940 - 1959)

The source for each photo is also provided in a back section of notes on the photographs.

I appreciate the large format and good quality printing for each photo so we can see quite a bit of detail. Handsomely done book that will be of interest to those who appreciate our military heritage and American History.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

Silver Spring, Maryland borders Washington, D.C. and shares the major thoroughfare of Georgia Avenue. I have lived on the Washington, D.C. side of the line for many years, and frequently take walks along the Georgia Avenue corridor: sometimes facing south into the District, sometimes north into Silver Spring, to the stores and the Metro or to sit in Blair Park and read.

With my walking though Silver Spring, I was fascinated by this collection of photographs "Historic Silver Spring" (2005) by Jerry McCoy and the Silver Spring Historical Society as part of a series of books called "Images of America" which celebrates neighborhoods and towns throughout our country. Although I have seen the streets and many of the places shown in this book many times, this book has given me a new understanding of and appreciation for a place with which I thought myself all too familiar. The book includes a collection of current scenes and of places that are no more, and they melded together for me in my looking at the photographs.

Silver Spring was founded by the Blair family of Maryland in the 1840s. It developed into a thriving residential commercial and transportation center and then went into a long decline. Sustained efforts over the last few decades have produced a revitalization of Silver Spring with the metro, mall, and new housing developments.

The book consists of over 120 pages of beautifully reproduced photographs together with careful annotations of date, place, and subject to help the viewer understand the photo and place it in a context. The four sections of the book include postcard photographs taken of Silver Spring in 1917 and 1928; photographs documenting the change in Silver Spring from the mansions of the Blairs through industrialization, through the present; photos of the main commercial intersection of Silver Spring at Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road; and photos of early homes in East Silver Spring.

I most enjoyed looking at the photographs of places I know or remembered. Thus I enjoyed the photos of the Silver Spring "Acorn" and "Spring" just off Georgia Avenue about four blocks from the District line. There is also a photograph of a mural that was painted recently at the site of Acorn Park on the wall of a failed department store to commemorate Silver Spring's past and present. There are pictures of trains, railway and streetcar stations, parks, post offices, ice cream parlors, and people -- and of the former Canada Dry bottling plant that closed a few years ago. The old Silver Spring Armory was demolished recently, and the book offers photos of the Armory, its demolition, and the new mall-associated construction that took it place. A community landmark was the Silver Spring Tastee Diner which was moved in the early 2000s from one site on Georgia Avenue to another site on the other side of the Georgia Avenue -- Colesville Road intersection. A homeless person named Norman Lane, the "Mayor" of Silver Spring, wandered the streets of downtown Silver Spring from the 1960s to his death in 1987. A sculpture was built in his memory in 1997, and it is reproduced here. There is much more. Introductory texts accompany each of the four sections of the book and each photograph is carefully annotated.

I was moved by the book, as it brought together places I know with places I didn't know. Documentary photographs such as those in this collection both bring a sense of continuity to a place and also gave me the brief feeling that time was somehow standing still. The book will help me look freshly and more carefully at places I see everyday. Those who know Silver Spring will love this book.

Robin Friedman

For anyone who grew up in Silver Spring this book is essential and for those who moved into SS, highly recommended. Highlights for me include: the original mansions of the founding Blair Family, the 1923 tornado that swept through SS, the 1969 attack on the draft board, the homeless "Mayor" of SS and many more, not the least of which is simply seeing the people looking back at me from the early 20th century up to now.

Jerry McCoy has enormous learning lightly worn. With literary skill and a scrupulous command of the images and their historical background, he provides the reader with a fascinating and remarkable look at one of the most interesting - if neglected - suburbs in the United States. This book is a valuable contribution to the history of Silver Spring, but it will also appeal to anyone interested in the story of a small city through the decades. All the outward characteristics of a town are here - commercial buildings; houses; railroad, taxi and trolley terminals; post offices; armories; banks; motels; public commemorations and celebrations - but so are children, students, families, firefighters, waitresses - people who through the ebb and flow of their lives give any place on a map its heart and soul. The thoroughness of Mr. McCoy's research and the skill with which he chose the images is impressive. He captures Silver Spring's story and spirit perfectly.

Years before I ever thought about doing a book on Silver Spring's history I was talking to a woman during the course of trying to raise awareness of the need to restore Silver Spring's 1937 post office mural, "The Old Tavern" (it had been removed from the post office over a decade earlier and placed in storage). I remember her telling me, rather adamantly, "Silver Spring has no history!" I could only think to myself, "My, what an ignorant remark to make about ANY place."

That brief exchange always stayed with me. If this one person thought that way, there were probably many more people who thought the same as she did. Thus was the "seed" planted for eventual publication of "Historic Silver Spring."

As founder and president of the Silver Spring Historical Society, this book justly falls under our organization's mission of "creating and promoting awareness and appreciation of Silver Spring's heritage through sponsorship of educational activities and the preservation and protection
of historical sites, structures, artifacts and archives." My hope for the book is that local residents (and their kids!) or even visitors will use the book as an actual guide to their exploration of the fascinating history of downtown Silver Spring.

The book is divided into four chapters of photographs:

1. Through the Lens of Willard R. Ross: Silver Spring in 1917 and 1928

Willard R. Ross (1860-1948) was a Washington, DC post card photographer who was the first to systematically document downtown Silver Spring, first on June 21, 1917, and nearly eleven years later on March 28, 1928. Twenty real-photo post cards views depict how the original "silver" spring (named for the mica specks in the water) and Georgia Avenue looked when the area was still mostly rural.

2. From Country Estates to Light Industry to Urban Towers: South Silver Spring

South Silver Spring is the area of our downtown community that borders the District of Columbia. Depicting views of the summer estates belonging to founder Francis Preston Blair and his two sons, all constructed in the mid 19th century, photographs show how the area quickly became industrialized in less than 100 years. Today this same area is experiencing an unprecedented building boom of apartments and condominiums due to the area's close proximity to public transportation and the downtown Washington, DC core.

3. Main Streets of History: Georgia Avenue and Colesville Road

These two primary arteries that serve as downtown Silver Spring's "Main Streets" are visually documented as one walks north on Georgia Avenue from Eastern Avenue (at the District of Columbia line) and proceeds to Colesville Road. Incredibly, many of the early to mid 20th century commercial structures located on these two streets still survive and have been restored (the 1938 Silver Theatre and Shopping Center are examples) but far more many structures are in danger of demolition as the "revitalization" of downtown Silver Spring begins to reach out from the central business core of Georgia Avenue at Colesville Road.

4. East Silver Spring's Forgotten Origin: Silver Spring Park

This 100 year old residential neighborhood, located two blocks east of Georgia Avenue, is the second oldest neighborhood build adjacent to downtown Silver Spring. A leafy neighborhood of bungalows, its recent surge in popularity (as well as real estate prices!) has begun to exhibit threats from "McMansionization" (tearing down of original smaller homes to consruct larger ones), encroaching commercial zoning, and potential routing of state of Maryland-subsidized light rail public transportation.

To get a better idea of what is contained in "Historic Silver Spring," an index has been prepared and is viewable at http://www.homestead.com/silverspringhistory/bus.html.

If you grew up or lived in Silver Spring and have stories to share, please send them to [...]. The society would also love to see photographs, post cards, advertising memorabilia, etc. for possible use in a future companion book.

Thanks for looking!

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