Reviews for Historical Collections: Being a Collection of Facts, Traditions and Biographical Sketches Re...

The average rating for Historical Collections: Being a Collection of Facts, Traditions and Biographical Sketches Re... based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-11-12 00:00:00 Bryan Lukas Who We Were is a visual commentary of America, but with the push of a button rather than the labor of paint, of special moments rather than the everyday. This collection begins in 1888 and ends in 1972, 350 photos later. (The authors say they looked at a million photos over ten years.) There are kids and kisses, neon, airplanes, floods, hangings, a family’s pig, Homestead Act houses, patriotic displays of vegetables, four mice dead in a trap (a woman holds the trap) double exposures, and plain silliness. Great good fun and highly inspirational; you’ll want to haul the old pics out of the closet and send them to scan my photos to make your own book.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-11-11 00:00:00 Daniel Tagliareni I like the concept of this book: the USA history as depicted by snapshots of ordinary people, right there, right then. I was not fond of the execution of the concept but I don't know that I could do better selecting snapshots from the sources they chose. The last snapshot of the book is compelling. It was taken by an astronaut who photographed a snapshot of his family he left on the moon. This last snapshot was taken in 1972, 37 years before this book was published. To end the book so far away from current history reminded me too much of outdated school history textbooks and teachers who never got to the Korean conflict even though our country was in the midst of the Vietnam War. It left me feeling frustrated because it seems inadequate as a history book and it seems inadequate as an art book to spark creativity in those who read it.