Prints of the West - Hardcover

Ron Tyler is the director of the Texas State Historical Association and Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He has written or edited a number of books on Western and American history and art, including Visions of America: Pioneer Artists in a New Land. He is editor of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly.

Here are two views of the Library of Congress, one focused on the library itself and one on prints of the West selected from the library's many collections. The vividly photographed and popularized overview provided by photographer Highsmith and Landphair, a Voice of America writer and broadcaster, hovers between a tourist's memento and visitor's guidebook, yet its engrossing factual style delivers it from categorical dismissal. Artistic photos do justice to the diverse collections emphasized and bring out the beauty and artwork of the historical buildings, particularly in documenting the massive restoration of the Jefferson Building. This fast-paced, informative text highlights the library's eclectic collections instead of its history, with a final chapter that explains, in simplistic terms, LC's dream of an automated future. Jane Rosenberg's The Nation's Great Library (Univ. of Illinois Pr., 1993) is more scholarly yet more narrowly focused; John Cole's Jefferson's Legacy (LJ 12/93) covers more history. For public and general collections. Romantic 19th-century images of Western landscapes, Native American warriors, explorers, and frontiersmen, mined from LC's vast prints and illustrations collections, are the purview of this rigorously researched and impressive pictorial record. Tyler (history, Univ. of Texas), whose numerous books on the American West include American Frontier Life (Abbeville, 1987), fills these pages with prints and commentary on artists such as Catlin, Rindisbacher, Bierstadt, Moran, Audubon, Remington, and printers Currier & Ives. Tyler's work, produced in cooperation with LC's publishing office, is the fourth book in LC's "Classics" series; the history he provides is straightforward and detailed. Highly recommended for Western art and history collections.
Russell T. Clement, Brigham Young Univ. Lib., Provo, Ut.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.