Books like Appalachian Wilderness — picked by fans

I have seen many photos of trees over the years, but these unique photos by Robert Adams of cottonwoods near his home in Colorado are poetic and lyrical.

They make the viewer feel the trees are almost speaking back with messages both haunting and affirming.

I have long been an admirer of Jim Brandenburg's nature photography. This is his magnum opus, in which he raised the bar by only exposing one photographic frame each day for the 90 days of autumn. The results are spectacular.

I first learned the techniques of nature photography from the Ansel Adams 5-book series. Adams offers great insights into how to best approach photographing difficult aspects of nature (including forests) in all weather and light conditions.

I found this guidebook the best for identifying species and explaining their characteristics within a forest. Knowing the species improved my forest photgraphy greatly.

My memories of childhood are of white winters and deep snowfalls. Like anyone in a perfect snowstorm, I have often looked at the flakes on the shoulders and sleeves of my coat and wished I could preserve that perfect crystal. I also wondered if the saying was true—that no two snowflakes are alike—and how anyone could possibly know.

I had no idea as a child that a Vermont farmer, Wilson Bentley, studied and photographed snowflakes for years, leading to discoveries about these six-sided, fleeting jewels. In Snowflake Bentley (another Caldecott recipient), Jacqueline Martin introduces us to a time “In the days when farmers worked with ox and sled,” and a boy “who loved snow more than anything else in the world.” A fascinating, educational,  and true story to explore.

During my time in India, I met some amazing women scientists. The Brahmaputra is one of the world's largest branching rivers, with multi-branched channels that branch and merge to form a distinctive branching pattern. It is home to temporary islands, and the flow of the water exhibits rapid periodic fluctuations between seasons.

Just as the water of the Brahmaputra has to navigate many obstacles from the river's source to the sea, women scientists in India face many obstacles in their work and personal lives. This book documents and illustrates the beauty of science and the importance of involving more women in science worldwide to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and reduce the multitude of contemporary socio-environmental problems, using India as an example.

Ray Atkeson was one of the premiere ski photographers of the early days of skiing, although he continued to produce photos from the 1920s all the way into the 1990s. His photos were primarily in black and white and can easily be compared to the brilliant nature photography of Ansel Adams. My mother, herself a ski pioneer, who became the first female to certify as an instructor in California, modeled for Atkeson in the 1940s. This book is a compilation of some of the finest ski photos ever put together.

Before I began to read this book, I knew it was about the men who raised the stars and stripes atop Mt. Suribachi, a photograph of which became an iconic image of the Battle of Iwo Jima and the Pacific War. Indeed, the book meticulously conveys the story of the six flag raisers, men who were representative of the U.S. Marines and those who fought at Iwo Jima.

Their lives are fascinating in themselves. But as I discovered, the book is much more. It a gripping account of the Battle, where the Americans sustained more casualties than the Japanese, a moving tribute to the courage, valor, and camaraderie of the Marines, and a thorough exploration of myths surrounding the flag raising and its effects on the flag raisers.

Print the Legend, the product of profound scholarly immersion in archival sources, manages to both offer a wealth of totally new information on the ways photographs have represented the West and give a superior account of themes and figures already extensively studied. Paradoxically, much of its excitement is due not so much to the way Sandweiss reads the photographs themselves – though we can all learn from her in this respect – but the way she reads the written texts (what she rightly terms “the legend”) that contextualized them. I am personally much indebted to Sandweiss’ treatment of the photographers who worked for the various government surveys and, most of all, to her nuanced readings of how Native Americans were seen over time.   

This book is a lively, questioning, and comprehensive survey of American photography, from its beginnings to the present. It analyzes achievements in each of the genres, from portraiture, through landscape, to documentary, fashion, etc. It treats individual photographic artists, from Avedon to Weegee, from the views of New York taken by Berenice Abbott to J.T. Zealy’s likenesses of enslaved Africans. American Photography is always concerned to underscore what photographs have to tell us about major aspects of American culture: race and ethnicity, gender and identity, business and technology, religion, and region. It also has numerous well-reproduced images; illuminating sidebars and boxes on such topics as the daguerreotype or picture magazines; a helpful timeline; and notes on further reading and viewing. The book was expanded and retitled as Photography in America in 2015, but the first edition still holds up.