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Four Years in Izumi takes an in-depth and critical approach to understanding Japanese village life through analysis of the diary of Kujō Masamoto, the former chancellor of the imperial court who resided briefly in one of his provincial estates from 1501 to 1504. For a high ranking courtier to travel to the countryside and manage a family estate was unheard of during the era of Sengoku, the “country at war.” The diary Masamoto kept offers a remarkably rich and vivid portrait of village Japan, which has seen no significant study in English-language scholarship.  

Through extensive examination of the diary and close and critical reading of it and complementary sources, Lee Butler provides a window into the inner workings of late-medieval village life that challenges typical portrayals of the period. In Four Years in Izumi, we see the complexity of relations between commoners and elites in action. We also see the ways in which an estate functioned in practice at the heart of the medieval economy and local social structure.

"In the beginning, there was no real plan, just a road trip that became a journey." In the years 1986 and 1987, Keith Carter and his wife, Patricia, visited one hundred small Texas towns with intriguing names like Diddy Waw Diddy, Elysian Fields, and Poetry. He says, "I tried to make my working method simple and practical: one town, one photograph. I would take several rolls of film but select only one image to represent that dot on my now-tattered map. The titles of the photographs are the actual names of the small towns. . . ." Carter created a body of work that evoked the essence of small-town life for many people, including renowned playwright and fellow Texan, Horton Foote. In 1988, Carter published his one town/one picture collection in From Uncertain to Blue, a landmark book that won acclaim both nationally and internationally for the artistry, timelessness, and universal appeal of its images—and established Carter as one of America's most promising fine art photographers.

Now a quarter century after the book's publication, From Uncertain to Blue has been completely re-envisioned and includes a new essay in which Carter describes how the search for photographic subjects in small towns gradually evolved into his first significant work as an artist. He also offers additional insight into his creative process by including some of his original contact sheets. And Patricia Carter gives her own perspective on their journey in her amplified notes about many of the places they visited as they discovered the world of possibilities from Uncertain to Blue.

“Another fine, reflective, anecdotal look at rural Texas.” —New Yorker

“Graves writes eloquently about a countryman’s concerns. There's not a false note in the book.” —Boston Globe

“Like the unmortared stone fences of Graves’s native hill country, From a Limestone Ledge is constructed of bits and pieces never designed to fit together, yet made to achieve a unity that is more enduring than the sum of its individual parts by the hands of a master craftsman.” —Southwestern Historical Quarterly

“The beauty of his work endures, and there is a greater pride in Texans’ hearts for their home, I think, than there would be if he hadn’t written the books he did.” —Rick Bass, Garden & Gun

“In describing the particulars of his surroundings, Graves often was describing the world in microcosm and the place and plight of humankind in it.” —Bryan Woolley, Dallas Morning News