For Us Humans

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John Carter

"For millions of Americans, Solomon D. Butcher’s photographs epitomize the sod-house frontier. His images from western Nebraska constitute the most extensive photographic record of the generation that settled the Great Plains. Their faces are imprinted on our minds: jaunty bachelors and earnest husbands (Civil War veterans of both armies), spinster sodbusters, determined mothers, cowhands, farmhands, and former slaves––all in search of land of their own. This first book devoted to Butcher and his photos presents a unique visual chronicle of that epoch, firmly establishing Butcher's place in frontier photography.In a substantial introduction, John E. Carter traces the variegated career of this Virginia-born photographer who was himself an immigrant to the Nebraska plains. Combining critical analysis with biography, Carter situates Butcher in western history as well as in the history of photography and assesses his achievements in both. Exploring the nature of Butcher’s works and their scope, content, and significance, Carter offers a perspective for evaluating the historical evidence found in his work and new insights into the evolution of Butcher’s style and subject matter."--Book jacket.

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Susan M. Stabile

"A renowned literary coterie in eighteenth-century Philadelphia - Elizabeth Fergusson, Hannah Griffitts, Deborah Logan, Annis Stockton, and Susanna Wright - wrote and exchanged thousands of poems and maintained elaborate handwritten commonplace books of memorabilia. Through their creativity and celebrated hospitality, they initiated a salon culture in their great country houses in the Delaware Valley. In this original and heavily illustrated book, Susan M. Stabile shows that these female writers sought to memorialize their lives and aesthetic experience - a purpose that stands in marked contrast to the civic concerns of male authors in the republican era." "Drawing equally on material culture and literary history, Stabile discusses how the group used their writings to explore and at times replicate the arrangement of their material possessions, including desks, writing paraphernalia, mirrors, miniatures, beds, and coffins. As she reconstructs the poetics of memory that informed the women's lives and structured their manuscripts, Stabile focuses on vernacular architecture, penmanship, souvenir collecting, and mourning." "Empirically rich and nuanced in its readings of different kinds of artifacts, this work tells of the erasure of the women's lives from the national memory as the feminine aesthetic of scribal publication was overshadowed by the proliferating print culture of late eighteenth-century America."--Jacket.

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[images and text] by Bill Campbell and Nye Simmons

A guide to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park for photographers of all ages and experience. Organized by areas of the park with special sections on weather, seasons and hints on proven techniques. Written for both film and digital photographers, and illustrated with 148 color images.

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Nicholas Fox Weber

His tales translated into 17 languages, Babar the elephant fled the jungle and entered Western civilization in 1931 in a book by the de Brunhoffs. Here, for the first time, is a fascinating look at the story behind Babar and his creators.