American places / Eliot Porter ; Wallace Stegner & Page Stegner ; edited by John Macrae, III.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Porter, Eliot, 1901-1990.

Contributor:

Stegner, Wallace, 1909-1993.

Stegner, Page.

Macrae, John.

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown Collection (University of Pennsylvania)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Stegner, Wallace, 1909-1993.

Travel.

United States--Description and travel.

United States.

Natural history--United States.

Natural history.

Stegner, Wallace, 1909-1993--Travel--United States.

Stegner, Wallace.

Penn Provenance:

Venturi, Robert; Brown, Denise Scott

Physical Description:

224 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 32 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Wings Books ; Avenel, N.J. : Distributed by Outlet Book Co., 1993.

Summary:

Enjoy a close look at America, with a decidely personal touch, by seasoned observers of the continent's varied human and natural history. The range is wide, from Maine west to the Pacific Northwest and south to Florida, across the Mississippi, the Plains and the Rocky Mountains through the Canyonlands to California. American Places, a splendid marriage of text and photographs, was a dozen years in the making. It is graced with eighty-nine dazzling color photographs taken especially for the book by Eliot Porter. Conceived as a unique exploration of North America's human and natural history, it has much to say about how the American people and the American land have interacted - how they have shaped one another - what patterns of life, with what chances of continuity, have arisen out of the confrontations between an unformed society and a virgin continent. American Places begins with the first impressions, in their own words, of the early explorers and settlers of the continent and en ds today - five hundred years later. Along the way it evokes the sights, sounds, and people of this diverse land to reveal why America has had a powerful hold on the imagination - first of the European explorers and then of generations of immigrants. Every chapter in the book and every photograph can be considered an illustration of a stage in the process of our adaptation and naturalization. Some American places - the Maine coast, Utah's Colorado Plateau, to name two - are better understood by Eliot Porter's photographs, unembellished by words. Others - Salt Lake and the Mississippi Valley - where several hundred years of human history are lost on today's scene, are better rendered in words. There hsa been no attempt by photographers or writers to cover exactly the same terrain, or merely to illustrate, in words or pictures, the other's work. A unique and striking work, American Places will appeal to a broad range of readers: naturalists, conservationists, historians, those who apprec iate great photography and good literature - in short, to just about everybody. -- from dust jacket.

Contents:

Inheritance

America in 1800

The Northeast kingdom

Last exit to America

The river

Dead heart of the west

Crow country

High plateaus

New riders of the purple sage

The redwood curtain

There it is: Take it

Life along the fault line

Remnants

Unfinished business.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 218-222) and index.

Local Notes:

Presented to the Penn Libraries by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown

ISBN:

0517413612

9780517413616

OCLC:

27937495