logo for Harvard University Press
Garden as Art
Beatrix Farrand at Dumbarton Oaks
Thaïsa Way
Harvard University Press

Garden as Art: Beatrix Farrand at Dumbarton Oaks features essays and photographs of this remarkable landscape as a living and breathing work of art. Published on the occasion of the centennial of the Dumbarton Oaks Gardens in 2021, the book illuminates the stewardship of one of the most beautiful gardens on earth.

Edited by Thaïsa Way, this volume includes essays from scholars and practitioners as well as photographs by landscape photographer Sahar Coston-Hardy. The essays place the garden in the context of its historical surroundings, explore its archival significance, and reflect on its effects on the world of contemporary design. Accompanying the essays is a collection of newly commissioned photographs by Coston-Hardy that document the seasons and growth in the gardens over the course of a year and that invite the reader to contemplate the art of garden design and the remarkable beauty of the natural world. Archival images of the gardens offer a chronicle of evolving design concepts as well as illustrate how gardens change over time as living works of art. Garden as Art offers an inspiring view of a place that has been remarkably influential in design and the art of landscape architecture.

[more]

front cover of A General History of Quadrupeds
A General History of Quadrupeds
The Figures Engraved on Wood
Thomas Bewick
University of Chicago Press, 2009

In the late eighteenth century, the British took greater interest than ever before in observing and recording all aspects of the natural world. Travelers and colonists returning from far-flung lands provided dazzling accounts of such exotic creatures as elephants, baboons, and kangaroos. The engraver Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) harnessed this newfound interest by assembling the most comprehensive illustrated guide to nature of his day.

A General History of Quadrupeds, first published in 1790, showcases Bewick’s groundbreaking engraving techniques that allowed text and images to be published on the same page. From anteaters to zebras, armadillos to wolverines, this delightful volume features engravings of over four hundred animals alongside descriptions of their characteristics as scientifically understood at the time. Quadrupeds reaffirms Bewick’s place in history as an incomparable illustrator, one whose influence on natural history and book printing still endures today.

[more]

front cover of Geometry in Architecture
Geometry in Architecture
Texas Buildings Yesterday and Today
By Clovis Heimsath
University of Texas Press, 2002

Pioneer Texas Buildings opened people's eyes when it was first published in 1968. At a time when "progress" meant tearing down the weathered houses, barns, churches, and stores built by the original settlers of Central Texas, this book taught people to see the beauty, simplicity, and order expressed in the unadorned geometric forms of early Texas buildings. It inspired the preservation and restoration of many of the remaining pioneer buildings, as well as the design of modern buildings that employ the same simple geometries.

This revised edition of Pioneer Texas Buildings juxtaposes the historic structures with works by twenty contemporary architects who are inspired by the pioneer tradition to show how seamlessly the basic geometries translate from one era to another. As in the first edition, sketches and brief commentary by Clovis Heimsath explain how squares, triangles, and circles take shape in the cubic, triangular, and cylindrical forms that comprise houses and other buildings. Then black-and-white photographs, the heart of the book, illustrate these geometric forms in historic and modern buildings. The book also includes two essays in which Heimsath discusses the factors that led him and his wife Maryann to document early Texas buildings and the results in historic preservation and timeless architectural designs that have followed from their efforts.

[more]

front cover of Ghost Signs of Arkansas
Ghost Signs of Arkansas
Cynthia Haas
University of Arkansas Press, 1997

From the late 1800s to the early 1950s, painted wall signs were a major mode of advertisement for both national companies and local businesses across America. Many of these artistic messages, now faded, peeling, and partially covered, still peek out from the storefronts, barns, alleyways, warehouses, theaters, and even stagecoach stops they once decorated.

Photographer Jeff Holder and author Cynthia Haas explore this often overlooked art form in Arkansas and show us signs that appear mysteriously in the rain, signs that are curiously painted in remote places, images and words now only half decipherable. From Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, and Grapette Soda to Kis-Me-Gum, Uneeda Biscuit, and Snowdrift Flour, the logos and slogans are at once familiar and enigmatic. Archival photographs reference the time
when these brightly colored messages covered the facades of downtown buildings. Of particular interest in this book are the profiles of three “wall dogs,” or sign painters, who remember the difficulties and joys of their unusual profession.

Ghost Signs of Arkansas ties us to a gentler past, a time when Main Street was the center of a community’s life, before mass media forced grand-scale advertising from brick walls to the television screen. In documenting a fading but valuable traditional art form, this book fills a gap in both the cultural fabric of Arkansas towns and the history of American art.

[more]

front cover of Ghostlight
Ghostlight
Photographs by Keith CarterStory by Bret Anthony Johnston
University of Texas Press, 2022

A collection of otherworldly photographs of Southern wetlands featuring an original ghost story.

Southern wetlands, with their moss-draped trees and dark water obscuring mysteries below, are eerily beautiful places, home to ghost stories and haunting, ethereal light. The newest collection from award-winning photographer Keith Carter, Ghostlight captures the otherwordly spirits of swamps, marshes, bogs, baygalls, bayous, and fens in more than a hundred photographs.

From Ossabaw Island, Georgia, to his home ground of East Texas, Carter seeks “the secretive and mysterious” of this often-overlooked landscape: wisps of fog drifting between tree branches; faceless figures contemplating a bog; owls staring directly at the camera lens; infinite paths leading to unknown parts. Similarly, spectral images are evoked in the original short story that opens this book. Ghostlight, writes best-selling author Bret Anthony Johnston, “hovers, darts, disappears. It can be as mean as a cottonmouth, as mischievous aes a child. The closer you get, the farther the light recedes.” A masterpiece of “Bayou Gothic,” Ghostlight challenges our perceptions and invites us to experience the beauty of this elusive world.

[more]

front cover of Ghosts of Glen Canyon
Ghosts of Glen Canyon
History beneath Lake Powell
C Gregory Crampton
University of Utah Press, 2009
Drift down the Colorado River through Glen Canyon and explore the people and places that encompass the history of this majestic canyon before it drowned in the rising waters of Lake Powell.
Author Gregory Crampton led the historical investigations of Glen and San Juan Canyons from 1957 to 1963 under contract with the National Park Service. The objective was to locate and record historical sites that would be lost to the rising waters of the reservoir. This book records that effort.

First published in 1986, this edition has been revised to include several new “ghosts” of Glen Canyon, including a never-before-published foreword by Edward Abbey. It also showcases stunning color photographs by Philip Hyde and includes hundreds of black-and-white photographs taken by the original salvage crews.

This informative guide to the historic treasures of Glen Canyon includes numbered maps keyed to each location. It is a book for both the armchair traveler and the lake enthusiast eager for a journey through the past to a place few had the privilege to know.
[more]

front cover of The Golden Age of Boston Television
The Golden Age of Boston Television
Terry Ann Knopf
University Press of New England, 2017
There are some two hundred TV markets in the country, but only one—Boston, Massachusetts—hosted a Golden Age of local programming. In this lively insider account, Terry Ann Knopf chronicles the development of Boston television, from its origins in the 1970s through its decline in the early 1990s. During TV’s heyday, not only was Boston the nation’s leader in locally produced news, programming, and public affairs, but it also became a model for other local stations around the country. It was a time of award-winning local newscasts, spirited talk shows, thought-provoking specials and documentaries, ambitious public service campaigns, and even originally produced TV films featuring Hollywood stars. Knopf also shows how this programming highlighted aspects of Boston’s own history over two turbulent decades, including the treatment of highly charged issues of race, sex, and gender—and the stations’ failure to challenge the Roman Catholic Church during its infamous sexual abuse scandal. Laced with personal insights and anecdotes, The Golden Age of Boston Television offers an intimate look at how Boston’s television stations refracted the city’s culture in unique ways, while at the same time setting national standards for television creativity and excellence.
[more]

front cover of Good and Bad Hair
Good and Bad Hair
Gaskins, Bill
Rutgers University Press, 1997

In a time when image is indeed everything, our personal appearance has a tremendous effect on nearly every aspect of our lives on a daily basis. Our choice of hairstyle can mean the difference between acceptance and rejection by groups and individuals. The choices made by African Americans are particularly charged, often affecting the wearer and the viewer in unique and sometimes life-altering ways.

Good and Bad Hair emerges out of photographer Bill Gaskins's traveling photo exhibition of the same name. The book features 60 evocative photographs of African American men, women, and children, documenting contemporary black hairstyles and their role as a feature of African American culture.

On one level, the photographs present readers with a variety of popular and personal approaches to wearing one's hair. On another level, they isolate what amounts to a bold, assertive departure from the common definition of American beauty that excludes the physical features of many people of African descent. This narrow definition of beauty has created a race-based measurement for what is considered "good" and "bad" hair. Gaskins's pictures identify African Americans from different regions of the United States who expressively symbolize their sense of self and often their sense of an African or black identity through their hair.

[more]

front cover of Governors' Mansions of the South
Governors' Mansions of the South
Ann Liberman, Photographs by Alise O'Brien, Foreward by Governor Jeb Bush
University of Missouri Press, 2008
From the Greek Revival architecture found in Mississippi to the Queen Anne style of North Carolina, governors’ mansions in the American South convey a passion for antiquity, as well as a regional elegance. Ann Liberman, author of Governors’ Mansions of the Midwest, spent much of her life in Texas and admires the remarkable architecture of the antebellum South—a respect that she now brings to her newest book.
            Governors’ Mansions of the South is devoted to the eleven states of the old Confederacy, plus Kentucky and West Virginia, and offers a brick-and-mortar reflection of the region’s rich history. It includes the country’s oldest governor’s mansion in continuous use, in Virginia, plus two built as recently as the 1960s, in Louisiana and Georgia. These mansions reflect an architectural cohesiveness found throughout the South, as Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival styles imbue antebellum houses with a classical aura, while others built in the first quarter of the twentieth century reflect the monumental eclectic styles of the Beaux Arts era.
            Liberman provides readers with a room-by-room guided tour of each of the buildings as she comments on their architecture, symbolism, and lore. She places the mansions in historical context, describing how their locations were chosen, how they were designed and decorated, and how they have been preserved, lost, or transformed over the years. While focusing primarily on the buildings themselves, she also highlights those governors and their wives who played significant roles in the mansions’ maintenance or renovation. Alise O’Brien’s accompanying color photographs capture the lavish interiors and furnishings as well as the dignified exteriors and landscapes.
            “Living in the Governor’s Mansion is a remarkable honor,” writes former governor of Florida Jeb Bush in his foreword, “but it is also a constant, humbling reminder that the people who occupy the mansions are, indeed, the public’s servants.” For site visitors or architecture buffs, Governors’ Mansions of the South is an enlightening introduction to these historic executive homes, reminding us that, however opulent, they provide a personal connection between the public and its government—and connect past generations to the present.
[more]

front cover of Grasses
Grasses
Bromus to Paspalum, Second Edition
Robert H. Mohlenbrock
Southern Illinois University Press, 2002

Since the publication of the first edition of Grasses: Bromus to Paspalumin 1972, twenty-two additional taxa of grasses have been discovered in Illinois that are properly placed in this volume. In addition, nu­merous nomenclatural changes have occurred for plants previously discovered, and many distributional records have been added. New keys have been pre­pared for each genus where additional species from Illinois are known. For new species, full-page illustra­tions are provided. This second edition updates the status of Illinois grasses. The book features 263 fig­ures from the first edition plus 21 new figures for this edition by Paul W. Nelson.

Genera of grasses included in this work are Aegilops, Agropyron, Agrostis, Aira, Alopecurus, Anthoxanthum, Avena, Beckmannia, Briza, Bromus, Calamagrostis, Cinna, Dactylis, Deschampsia, Elyhordeum, Elymus, Elytrigia, Festuca, Hierochloe, Holcus, Hordeum, Koeleria, Lolium, Milium, Paspalum, Pennisetum, Phalaris, Phleum, Poa, Puccinellia, Sclerochloa, Secale, Sphenopholis, Torreyochloa, Triti­cum, and Vulpia.

[more]

front cover of Grasses
Grasses
Panicum to Danthonia, Second Edition
Robert H. Mohlenbrock
Southern Illinois University Press, 2001

Since the publication of the first edition of Grasses: Panicum to Danthonia in 1973, twenty additional taxa of grasses have been discovered in Illinois that are properly placed in this volume. In addition, numerous nomenclatural changes have occurred for plants already known from the state, and many distributional records have been added. This second edition updates the status of grasses in Illinois. Paul W. Nelson has provided illustrations for all of the additions.

Because the nature of grass structures is generally so different from that of other flowering plants, a special terminology is applied to them. In his introduction, Robert H. Mohlenbrock cites these terms, with descriptions that make the identification of unknown specimens possible. Mohlenbrock’s division of the grass family into subfamilies and tribes is a major departure from the sequence usually found in most floristic works in North America.

Synonyms that have been applied to species in the northeastern United States are given under each species. A description based primarily on Illinois material covers the more important features of the species. The common names—Paflic Grass, Billion Dollar Grass or Japanese Millett, Thread Love Grass, and Goose Grass—are the ones used locally in the state. The habitat designation and dot maps showing county distribution of each grass are provided only for grasses in Illinois, but the overall range for each species is also given.

[more]

front cover of Great Plains
Great Plains
America's Lingering Wild
Michael Forsberg
University of Chicago Press, 2009

The Great Plains were once among the greatest grasslands on the planet. But as the United States and Canada grew westward, the Plains were plowed up, fenced in, overgrazed, and otherwise degraded. Today, this fragmented landscape is the most endangered and least protected ecosystem in North America. But all is not lost on the prairie. Through lyrical photographs, essays, historical images, and maps, this beautifully illustrated book gets beneath the surface of the Plains, revealing the lingering wild that still survives and whose diverse natural communities, native creatures, migratory traditions, and natural systems together create one vast and extraordinary whole.

Three broad geographic regions in Great Plains are covered in detail, evoked in the unforgettable and often haunting images taken by Michael Forsberg. Between the fall of 2005 and the winter of 2008, Forsberg traveled roughly 100,000 miles across 12 states and three provinces, from southern Canada to northern Mexico, to complete the photographic fieldwork for this project, underwritten by The Nature Conservancy. Complementing Forsberg’s images and firsthand accounts are essays by Great Plains scholar David Wishart and acclaimed writer Dan O’Brien. Each section of the book begins with a thorough overview by Wishart, while O’Brien—a wildlife biologist and rancher as well as a writer—uses his powerful literary voice to put the Great Plains into a human context, connecting their natural history with man’s uses and abuses.

The Great Plains are a dynamic but often forgotten landscape—overlooked, undervalued, misunderstood, and in desperate need of conservation. This book helps lead the way forward, informing and inspiring readers to recognize the wild spirit and splendor of this irreplaceable part of the planet.

[more]

logo for Harvard University Press
The Great Wall Revisited
From the Jade Gate to Old Dragon's Head
William Lindesay
Harvard University Press, 2008

A journey along the Great Wall in the past and present, this landmark volume offers an extraordinary portrait of perhaps the world’s most famous structure. Carrying his camera and a file of vintage photographs—the earliest dating from 1871—author-photographer William Lindesay traveled across Northern China for three years, searching for settings where the Great Wall could be examined in the past and present, side by side. The result, The Great Wall Revisited, presents seventy-two of the most elucidating then- and-now comparisons. This glossy dossier opens out as an extraordinary journey from the Jade Gate in northwest China’s Gobi Desert to Old Dragon’s Head on the Yellow Sea.

Far more than a romantic look at the Great Wall of yesteryear, this stunning, artfully crafted volume also contains concise histories of the sites that Lindesay’s images revisit. Colorful literary impressions composed by earlier visitors, juxtaposed with contemporary eyewitness accounts of change traced along the Wall, afford a sense of history unfolding and time inexorably creeping along the contours of this enduring monument to human ingenuity.

[more]

front cover of The Greater Perfection
The Greater Perfection
The Story of the Gardens at Les Quatre Vents
Francis H. Cabot
University of Chicago Press, 2023
The Greater Perfection, now with a new foreword by Francis H. Cabot’s daughter, tells the story behind the creation of Les Quatre Vents, one of the world’s most breathtaking gardens.
 
Featured in the 2018 film The Gardener, Les Quatre Vents in Charlevoix County, Quebec, has been acclaimed as the most aesthetically satisfying and horticulturally exciting landscape experience in North America. This twenty-acre garden seamlessly combines traditional and novel elements into a splendid composition, adorned with unexpected touches and perfectly compatible with its natural surroundings.
 
The Greater Perfection, first published in 2001, illustrates the delights, diversions, and surprises that await the garden’s visitors. Francis H. Cabot’s account of the challenges he faced in developing Les Quatre Vents reveals the fascinating process behind the creation of a world-class garden that has become a mecca for horticultural enthusiasts around the globe. Winner of the 2003 Annual Literature Award of the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries and featuring stunning full-color images by five leading garden photographers, The Greater Perfection is one of the most beautiful books on gardens to appear in years. This new printing includes a foreword by Marianne Cabot Welch, Cabot’s daughter, that further contextualizes the gardens and explores how a place rooted in the past can confront the future.
[more]

front cover of Guardians of Michigan
Guardians of Michigan
Architectural Sculpture of the Pleasant Peninsulas
Jeff Morrison
University of Michigan Press, 2022
Guardians of Michigan profiles the extraordinary architectural sculpture found in both the pleasant peninsulas of the Great Lakes State. Author Jeff Morrison spent years exploring Michigan’s largest cities and smallest towns, using telephoto photography to capture the sculptural details hidden from the naked eye, and researching the beautiful historic architecture he encountered. Organized alphabetically by city, each section documents the history and design of an individual building, accompanied by beautiful photos of the building and its unique ornamentation. 

The buildings profiled in Guardians of Michigan range from county courthouses, churches, and government buildings constructed during the 1800s, to skyscrapers with intricate sculptural decoration too far above street level for passersby to see. As a result, the book highlights examples of Gothic, Romanesque Revival, Beaux Arts, as well as Art Deco and Art Moderne. Guardians of Michigan is a loving tribute to the architecture of the state, preserving forgotten stories and beautiful buildings for all readers to enjoy.
[more]

front cover of The Guide to Oklahoma Wildflowers
The Guide to Oklahoma Wildflowers
Patricia Folley
University of Iowa Press, 2012
With its Rocky Mountain foothills, hardwood forests, many rivers and streams, low mountains, sand dunes, cypress swamps, and wide swaths of rangeland and pastureland, the Great Plains state of Oklahoma is one of only four with more than ten ecoregions. Tallgrass, mixed-grass, and shortgrass prairies are native to large areas; rainfall and temperature are quite variable; and elevations drop from 5,000 to 300 feet. This diversity ensures that Oklahoma is host to hundreds of species of wildflowers, yet no guidebook to these botanical riches has been available in recent years. Patricia Folley’s beautifully photographed and carefully compiled Guide to Oklahoma Wildflowers fills this gap.
 
Folley has photographed and described the two hundred wildflower species that are most commonly seen along roadsides and in parks throughout the state. She provides at least two photos for each plant, showing the entire plant as it occurs in the wild, outside of cultivation, along with a close-up of its flower. Each plant is keyed to a particular geographical location and a particular family, and an index to colors is a further aid to identification. If a species is native—such as big bluestem, the defining grass of Oklahoma’s tallgrass prairies—Folley presents this information in the text along with time of blooming, size and color of blooms, preferred habitat, and common and scientific names for all species.
 
Oklahoma contains vast plains, elevated rocky plateaus, and forested mountains. Botanizing one’s way across the Sooner State reveals celestial lilies in the east, prickly poppies in the west, Dutchman’s breeches in the northeast, large-flowered evening primrose in central and southwest areas, Indian pink in the southeast, walking-stick cholla in the Panhandle, and purple prairie clover statewide. Gardeners, teachers, tourists, and naturalists of all levels of expertise will enjoy this guide’s concise text and vibrant photos.
[more]


Send via email Share on Facebook Share on Twitter