A well printed paperback facsimile of the original 1939 hardback edition of this famous book. The 112 photos, one to a page with a short headline and quote, capture the desperate times thousands of farmers and their families endured in the South and Midwest and their migration to an uncertain future in California. Nearly all of the photos were taken by Dorothea Lange and this includes forty-six that she took for the Farm Security Administration between 1935 and 1938.

In the back of the book there are two essays, one by Sam Stourdze, is an excellent explanation of how Lange and Taylor compiled the book. The sales fell well short of their expectations and Stourdze comments "the rigor of its approach, the verism of its oral testimony and the radicality of its photographs were hardly designed to have mass appeal" Quite right I think, having looked through the book many times I don't think the powerful photos are backed up by adequate captions. All the photos are anonymous, even the ones with people, and surely any reader would want to know who are these folk, what is their story? This information was available because Lange took detailed notes on all her photographic assignments. It's as if the author's thought the only way they could put their point across was in an abstract way and ignore the very human turmoil the photos clearly show. In 1937 photographer Margaret Bourke-White and writer Erskine Caldwell compiled a similar photo book about the living conditions of the desperately poor rural underclass, called 'You Have Seen Their Faces' (reissued as a paperback in 1995) but here the photos and captions blend together better.

'An American Exodus' is a book of remarkable photos and well worth having if you are interested in America during the Depression years. BTW, the book reproduces the back dust jacket of the original and the New York publisher, Reynal & Hitchcock, list other "Vital books of our Time" and for three bucks you could buy 'Mein Kampf' by Adolf Hitler, "The blueprint of the Nazi program by the man who is shaking the world. No American should miss it".

These heart-breaking black & whites were shot while Lange and her husband Paul Taylor were under contract with the Federal WPA and chronicle the exodus of dustbowl refugees of the Great Depression and the anguish of their daily struggles for survival in the 'promised land' of California. Some of these photographs are difficult to view, giving an infinite depth-of-field perspective of the arid, ruined farms and starving families of the midwest hitch-hiking or walking (sometimes barefoot) to find a better life. For it's superb detail, brutal realism, and captured raw emotion, this collection is regarded as one of the most important photographic documentaries published during the 20th century. It is criminal this masterful work has not been reissued in affordable hardback binding. Scholar, amateur photographer, and layman will surely peruse these monumental pages with pleasure for years to come.

For a considerable period of time the Mexican colonial period was viewed as a wasteland in the arts, a barren stretch awaiting the arrival of the Spaniards. Recent scholarship reveals that this was not the case. In fact, just the opposite was true as is showcased in this magnificently illustrated bilingual volume.

Displayed between these pages are eye-popping decorative and fine arts from the Mexican viceregal period (1521 - 1821). Included among the collection are paintings, sculptures, furniture, ceramics, metals, textiles, featherwork, lacquer, and books.

Five informative essays by Mexican and American scholars provide a backdrop for the arts of colonial Mexico, and extensive commentaries allow further exploration of individual pieces.

"The Grandeur of Viceregal Mexico" is an extraordinary volume shedding light on a previously little known segment of art history.

- Gail Cooke

I thought I knew my American history reasonably well until Henry Mayer taught me how much I had missed. Garrison certainly was far more than the hot-headed crusader on the nut fringe I read about in one text after another. But this book also is more than a correction of an historial footnote; Mayer breathes life into the moral arguments about slavery before the Civil War and weaves America's history from the signing of the Constitution to the passage of the 14th Amendment into a colorful, lively tapestry. This is biography raised to its finest form.

I read a great number of biographies that deal with American history, and this is simply one of the finest works I have ever read. In terms of scope and ambition and writing style, I compare ALL ON FIRE with Robert Caro's THE POWER BROKER. Henry Mayer should come to be known as one of America's finest living biographers. In addition to being the definitive biography of William Lloyd Garrison, this is also a brilliant retelling of nineteenth-century American history as seen through the eyes of its greatest Abolitionist leader. This is social and intellectual history at its finest, for Mayer uses Garrison as a focal point to tell the story of the political leaders, writers, agitators, and early women's rights advocates whose lives were affected by the fight to abolish slavery. I realize that this book will take you a good chunk of time, but it is worth every minute. ALL ON FIRE becomes an absorbing, tragic tale, yes, an epic, with all events leading to the carnage of the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves. Once you have finished this book, you will put Garrison before Lincoln as the one person most responsible for setting free the slaves. It's hard to imagine a time in American history when people were so socially and politically responsible (read the section where 10,000 people encircle a Boston prison to protest the removal of an escaped slave back to South Carolina, for example). There is a great tradition in America of social protest. This book is really a colossal achievement that harkens back to an age when people and ideas still mattered.

I cannot recommend it highly enough. A rich read about a great American hero for all times. Mayer obviously loves and admires Garrison, but this did not keep him from portraying this hero with his blemishes as well as strengths. The most startling thing about this great read is just how important Garrison was to America's most tumultuous time --- the abolitionist of all abolitionists, a leader who appreciated how deep religious beliefs and moral politics go together, who believed in the power of the written and spoken word, who helped perhaps as much as anyone in our history to move our nation and free it of slavery. Truly a companion biography to go with the best biographies of Lincoln --- no understanding of the Civil War can be complete without knowing about Garrison, and this is definitely the way to know about Garrison. To say it simply: no one can claim to be a Civil War buff without knowing about Garrison, and no one can know about Garrison any better way than by reading this book. Highest kudoes to Mayer!

Few biographies manage to avoid the perils of the genre, and this one is no exception. Mayer celebrates his subject, misunderstanding Henry as a fore-bearer of Jacksonian democracy and failing adequately to appreciate Henry's conservative commitment to social hierarchy, genteel leadership, and religious establishment. As a consequence, Mayer cannot convincingly explain Henry's espousal of Federalist politics in the 1790s, which makes sense only if we abandon any lingering neo-Whiggish inclination to find in Henry a self-conscious commitment to democracy.

There have been numerous other biographies of Patrick Henry. I would still recommend Moses Coit Tyler's 1887 PATRICK HENRY, which was reprinted by Chelsea House in 1980 with an introduction by Lance Banning. William Wirt Henry's three volume PATRICK HENRY, LIFE, CORRESPONDENCES, AND SPEECHES (originally published in 1891 but recently republished) should be used with care, since W.W. Henry incorrectly attributes a number of letters and other sources to Patrick Henry which more recent scholarship has established were written by others. Richard Beeman wrote a good analytic biography, PATRICK HENRY: A BIOGRAPHY, in 1974, which provides an excellent brief introduction to Henry's politics. The most comprehensive modern scholarly biography remains Robert Meade's two volume master-work, PATRICK HENRY (1959, 1967).

Mayer's prose is far more sprightly than Meade's, but Meade provides the more balanced and judicious treatment, and Meade's documentation of his conclusions is much superior. While Mayer updates Meade and Beeman in a number of places, his work does not supercede theirs, and should be read in conjunction with the earlier scholarship. Mayer's is a good book, especially as an introduction to a general audience. It is not, however, a work of historical biographical scholarship in the same class as, say, Drew Gilpen Faust's biography of James Henry Hammond, nor is it researched with the same meticulous care as Meade's account of Henry.

There's much more to Patrick Henry than 'Give me liberty or give me death,' the most famous line from his most famous speech. But if ever a one-liner summed up a man's philosophy, this was the line for this man.

Sadly, many of the great figures of America's early history have faded from public understanding. Maybe we remember the ones who became President, but truly great and influential men like Patrick Henry and George Mason are all but forgotten. Mayer's excellent book shows what a tragedy this is.

From his early career as a Virginia lawyer, to the way his beliefs and oratory were shaped by circuit-riding nonconformist Christian ministers, Mayer lays the foundations for Henry's later greatness. But most absorbing, to this reader, was Mayer's depiction of the fight in the Virginia Assembly over the ratification of the Constitution. Henry's prescient warnings of the growth of centralised power at the expense of the sovereign states leads one to wonder if maybe the anti-federalists weren't right after all.

Vital insights into a vital figure in a vital period of our history.

While Henry Mayer exaggerates the extent to which Patrick Henry was a democrat, he certainly does a brilliant job in portraying the key figure in Virginia politics from the decade before the Revolution to through ratification of the constitution. This book should be on the shelf of everyone interested in the period in which Henry lived.

This is not the sole extensive biography of Henry, but the other book that fits that description -- a three-volume work, including a volume of Henry's surviving letters, by Henry's grandson -- is over a century old. Since then, we've not had anything that competes with Mayer's book either in narrative style or in the accuracy with which it captures the true Patrick Henry. (Richard Beeman's brief anti-Henry, pro-Jefferson and Madison volume of thirty years ago, for example, completely misapprehends Henry's role between 1787 and 1799.) Read of Henry's stirring Revolutionary oratory, then consider that he used the same gift for stirring men's souls in opposition to the current federal constituiton's ratification in 1788. Mayer shows that it wasn't Henry, but the world around him that had changed between 1765, or even 1776, and 1788. To understand the reasons for Henry's opposition to the current constitution is to have an inkling of what was lost when it was ratified; our generally Whiggish national outlook on history does not allow us often to stop and contemplate what might have been.

One should note, too, that it is incorrect to claim unqualifiedly, as the reviewer above does, that Henry favored religious establishment. It is true that Henry opposed the severe disestablishment legislation written by Thomas Jefferson and successfully sponsored in the Virginia General Assembly by James Madison, but Henry's alternative legislation was only a pale immitation of a real establishment. Anyone who knows Henry's story will find this unsurprising, since Henry's was a very ecumenically minded version of Episcopalianism.

This is a truly outstanding book.

The author of this book had an idea that, in its way, is as good as the subject that the book covers. But it's a shame that the author didn't execute his idea nearly as well. It's an easy, if awkward, read.

As another reviewer noted, the book feels like an overgrown magazine article -- and not a great article at that (you'd never see "Outside" magazine print this).

In addition to what seems like superficial research -- reading a bunch of books and magazine articles rather than finding anything original -- the author makes all sorts of hyperbolic statements. For example, he says that the the mythic "frontier" ended when the railroad was completed and that it was the last audacious engineering project ever attempted. Huh? Ever heard of moon launches? In fact, the author does mention NASA later on, but to no apparent purpose.

In short, this is a book that needs either a writer with a better dramatic ability to tell the human tale, or a far better technical ability to tell the engineering tale (where are the maps and diagrams?).

A truly fabulous book. I strongly recommend it.

Driving home from work the other day, my radio was tuned to National Public Radio, and I heard someone reading from a section of book describing the 1935 hurricane. Reaching my driveway, I sat in my car listening the harried tale of the greatest storm to hit American shores.

Curiousity peaked, I ordered the book to find out more. Let me say, the two chapters about the hurricane, alone, are worth the price of the book. Well writen and captivating. It's one of those books that's hard to put down. Les said in an interview, "To me, the question of whether a story is true or fictional has never been as important as the question of whether or not it's a good one." TLTTP is a "good one."