Individual Parks Books

this gives a full treatment of st gauden's works. The critically acclaimed work was nominated for a pulitzer prize in 1986 and its apparent why

This gift to my wife, was one of the best ever bought. She loves bears so much her eyes filled with tears at the beauty and love in this book.
She has a dream of holding; even if just for a second a baby bear; this book brought her so close. The pictures left both of us speachless, and made us feel as though we were standing right next to the wonderful photographer.Beautiful,beautiful,huge,full,and beautiful!!!

This was a great rural living memoir. I enjoyed the stories about the neighbors and the town's struggles, the different things that Parks learned about animals and plants, and the story of the success of the pottery school that he founded. He's on my list of people I'd like to meet!

I love this book! Monet is one of my favorite artist's and I especially love his Water Lily pictures. The contrasting colors are so beautiful! His art work always gives me a feeling of peace and serenity. Monet is an artist that you don't have to understand the painting but just be able to enjoy all the colors and life that are in them.

During the years 1941-1942, Ansel Adams was employed by the U.S. Department of the Interior to take a series of photographs in the Western national parks. These photo-graphs were part of the Mural Project, a series of decorative murals created for the Department's new museum in Washington, D.c. at the request of Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes. Ickes learned of Ansel Adams' work and decided that photographic murals would be an appropriate addition to the conventional, painted murals already commissioned for the Project. The Mural Project offered Ansel Adams a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel at government expense and photograph the national parks. By November 1942 he had completed a series of 225 signed exhibition prints; however, World War II intervened and the Mural Project was put on hold. It was never resumed after the war, and Adams' photographs were filed away, all but forgotten. This volume marks the first time the Mural Project photographs have been presented to the general public. These are monumental photographs, an impressive addition to Adams' extensive body of work on the national parks. 85 black and white images are reproduced here, using the advanced printing techniques Adams developed in the maturity of his career. The photographs are accompanied by excerpts from the wilderness writings and speeches of Theodore Roosevelt, an early champion of the national park system. A preface by the present director of the National Park Service, William Penn Mott, and an introduction by Peter Wright and john Armor, the compilers of this volume, outline the history of the Mural Project and the rediscovery of these timeless photographs. The publication of The Mural Project fulfills the promise these photographs have held for almost 50 years, and is a major addition to the legacy of one of America's greatest photographers, Ansel Adams.

The fifty-one black and white photos in this nicely designed book will not be to everybody's taste. The photos could not be more stark and minimalist, mostly eye level, straight on, images of almost plain walls of commercial premises in Irvine, Los Angeles. The only concession is (photo twenty-two) a close-up of an open two-switch electrical box, I bet Baltz only took this because the box cover was off and the inside looked interesting.

Looking through the photos at the shapes and rigid right angles of the walls, doors, guttering and windows suggest abstract paintings and I can well understand that the appearance of the book encouraged the significant 1975 photo exhibition, 'New Topographics'. Some of the ten photographers (including Baltz) in that show have gone on to exhibit and publish books about the man-altered landscape. I think this particular photographic genre is now well established, thanks to Baltz.


The book is as minimalist as the photos, apart from the simple captions there is no essay about Baltz (at least not in my German produced copy which does not have a photo on the cover) no page numbers, nothing on the inside flaps or back of the cover. I would have preferred this 2001 edition to have some reference to the influence these photos had over the last twenty-five years. An equally minimalist designed book I have enjoyed is 'Meadowland' by Ray Mortenson (ISBN 0912810408) here the photos are of an industrial area in New Jersey. The photos are not as rigid as those by Baltz and frequently show how the natural landscape has been changed by heavy industry.

Both books present a vibrant photographic style and I like them because they show how visually fascinating the man-made environment can be.

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

Nearly every Norman Rockwell coffee table book includes his famous "Four Freedoms" paintings. Most tell the basic story behind the works -- how the artist was inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt's State of the Union speech of 1941, how he sought without success to find sponsorship by a government agency, and how the paintings were originally published in four issues of Saturday Evening Post magazine in 1943. This generously illustrated volume by Stuart Murray and James McCabe tells a much more complete -- and much more fascinating -- story.

The two authors begin with President Roosevelt and the genesis of the Four Freedoms speech and the Atlantic Charter. They trace the creative process that resulted in Rockwell's "Freedom of Speech," "Freedom of Worship," "Freedom from Want," and "Freedom from Fear."

Beyond the paintings themselves, Murray and McCabe break new ground. They describe in detail how the paintings were published (first in the magazine and then by the Office of War Information) and how they toured the nation. The first exhibition was in Hecht's Department Store in Washington, with Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas speaking. The paintings and posters sold many war bonds, and the two authors well describe the organization and spirit of wartime bond marketing.

Looking beyond the artist, Murray and McCabe describe the enthusiastic reception of the paintings by the American public, quoting reviews, commentaries, and letters written by ordinary Americans. Rockwell had correctly sensed that Americans wanted more than words to understand the war aims of the United States and the United Nations. His great gift to the American people was to first visualize the rich ideals that President Roosevelt had described, and then to render them on canvas in an accessible way.

This book has valuable appendices. It is the only volume I have seen that includes the essays and stories that accompanied the paintings in four issues of the Saturday Evening Post. They complemented the paintings, and although they bear the marks of their decade, they are still powerful.

In the short story ("parable") that accompanied "Freedom of Speech," Booth Tarkington imagined that the young artist Adolph Hitler and the young journalist Benito Mussolini met "in a small chalet on the mountain road from Verona to Innsbruck." In a conversation they admitted their will to power, and the need for a "purge." Tarkington well understood fascism.

Stephen Vincent Benet's essay on "Freedom from Fear" traced the increasing connectedness of the world's nations (what we now call "globalization," evident even then) and how it can strengthen or weaken human freedoms. He portrayed the halting, slow, and difficult advance of freedom in the face of fear, signified in 1943 by aerial bombardment.

The essay by Carlos Bulosan -- an immigrant from the Philippines, then an itinerant worker on the West Coast who had to be tracked down by the Post's editors -- on "Freedom from Want" is a moving call for social justice. Its strong New Deal sound reminds this reader of Henry Fonda's peroration at the end of "The Grapes of Wrath."

The powerful and stirring essay by Will Durant that accompanied "Freedom to Worship" described how religion strengthens American society. He rightly criticized German, Japanese, and Italian fascism for their opposition to faith. The leaders of the Axis powers, he wrote, "leave their people no religion but war, and no God but the state."

The book also includes the long, thoughtful, and challenging essay that accompanied the separate printing of the paintings by the Office of War Information. Less memorable and less lasting are five essays specially commissioned for this book by John Frohnmayer, Theodore H. Evans, James MacGregor Burns, Brian Urquhart, and William J. vanden Heuvel.

The United States is once again at war. Terrorists on one side, the men and women in our armed forces on the other -- both know that America's freedoms are somehow at the heart of the conflict. This book can prompt our generation to consider how the "Four Freedoms" and other American ideals bear on the struggle.

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This is by far one of the greatest photography books in my collection. The reproductions are beautiful. The layout is flawless, and the text is perfect. Every one of Yoshiyuki's photos from "The Park" are beautifully reproduced in this text. The size of the plates is perfect. I spent hours looking through the book over and over again. If you are interested in unique, erotic photography or infared photography-- This is YOUR book.

The item is a little pricey, but what art book isn't?

Ian Parks, named one of the National Poetry Society's New Poets in 1996, presents his second poetry collection Shell Island, an anthology that dwells upon Parks' cherished themes of love, loss, and the connections between individuals and society. Personifying the transitive instants in which life-changing decisions are made, the free-verse poems of Shell Island alternately evoke tenderness, distance, or mourning. "The Catch": When my father married, / he gave up fishing for good / and sold his rod and line / to buy the marriage bed. / But his dreams are haunted still / by dam p river-banks and mist / where he stoops to dip a net, / lifting the catch from memory / in a rehearsal of regret. / The reel unwinds inside his head.

This really serves up the mood and flavor of Tivoli in summer. Great photos of one of the World's greatest amusement parks.