Jim Dow is a Boston photographer whose beautiful photos of North Dakota graced the North Dakota art museum in Grand Forks a little while ago. Jim's quirky, free-wheeling spirit promises an exceptionally entertaining afternoon while viewing this book.

Buy it. Really.

The hard thing about buying books online is that you don't get to see what is inside first. If I had just looked at the cover picture on this book, I don't know if I would have purchased it. But, as it so happens, they had it at a local bookstore.

The cover picture is the goofiest in the book, there are much more serious pictures throughout. It is worth the price alone to get picture #38, entitled "Cat Crossing the Street in Traffic" - 1925 by Harry Warnecke. The picture has a policeman stopping traffic and several on-lookers are watching as a mother cat carries one of her young across the street. It's one of the most touching pictures I have ever seen. It gives you a glimps into not only the love a mother cat has for her kittens, but also the kindness of human nature (something increasingly lacking in today's world). That a police officer would stop traffic for a cat is amazing.

Another whimsical picture depicts an animal shelter worker carrying a box with a cat in it. He is unlocking the door to the shelter, one would assume to put the cat in "jail", but the cat is jumping out of the back of the box to freedom. It makes me smile just thinking about it.

There are a variety of pictures present in this book, some pictures of old, a few pictures that are staged with models (not many of these). Most of the pictures, though, are just candid shots of cats in their environments, such as the children sleeping on a fire escape and one is holding her kitten in her hand. Some are from far off locations such as Israel and Spain. And some are just with people who have an obvious affection and tolerance for the little buggers. :)

It is well worth the price of admission into this whiskered little world.

The biographies of the photographers presented in this book are interesting and well written. They give the reader a peek inside the photographer's heads and reveal what was really going on while the work was being created. The portfolios are interesting and the photographs well done. Some of the images are striking. I found it useful to view the work presented as "portfolios". This book is a good teaching tool if you are or want to put your own portfolios together. The heavy paper and size of the book make it a little too large for a paperback, though, and I don't quite trust the binding.