Dick Tracy The Secret Files edited by Max Allan Collins and Martin H. Greenberg

Since I was able to read the comics page in the newspaper on my own, I've been a fan of Dick Tracy. He's a cartoon embodiment of my detective fiction, Dragnet rerun, Columbo-watching childhood, and he will forever be fond to me because the Warren Beatty-Madonna movie is the first movie I ever saw in a theater behind my mother's back. (Sorry Mom!)

He's kinda fallen on hard times, only appearing in like 50 newspapers now and being written and illustrated by a team that doesn't quite seem to know how to tell a consistent story. I follow the strip online now, and it's great one day--or even for a few days--then falls into artistic issues (a motorcycle that dwarfs two men) or plot problems (how do two men keep moving with bear traps on their legs?).

So getting a chance to read a book edited by the man who succeeded Chester Gould was too good to pass up. Almost certainly a movie tie-in, Collins puts together a fairly solid set of stories about the yellow-clad detective, with Tracy ranging in age and time period from today's dark crimes and violent drug offenders to some that harken back to the days of Gould's run (which I am reading in the collections from Fantagraphics and will be reviewing over on the sister blog, Panel Patter).

I'm going to highlight the stories I liked best and worst, which should give you a pretty good feel for if this is the book for you.

Origins by Mike Resnik opens the collection with a young Gould working on finding his niche in the comics world and aided by a man who will end up seeming very familiar. This may be the best in the collection, which is no surprise given Resnik's resume.

Ron Goulart sends Tracy to Hollywood to interact with a recurring character of his. While they're filming a Dick Tracy movie, a suspicious suicide happens on the set. Can Tracy spot the crime in time to prevent a miscarriage of justice? Playfully written, Goulart's ability to write about 1940s Hollywood (as shown in his Groucho books) always puts his stories a cut above the rest.

Cereal Killer takes things in a darker direction, being the first of many stories placing Dick's family in danger--or at least, perceived danger. (This also happens in Auld Aquaintance, Homefront, and Chessboard's Last Gambit, to name a few.) I like the trick Rex Miller uses here, but some readers may feel cheated.

Rockabilly is notable for bringing back Tracy's nemesis Mumbles as a singer in a band. The story itself is pretty straightforward, but I found that idea so funny that I forgave the story itself any flaws it may have had. Tracy almost ends up one for the record books in this caper, and of all of them, it feels like the one most likely to have appeared in comic form.

Homefront is by Max's wife Barbara, and it didn't do anything for me. I felt like Collins ran Tess through every possible woman-in-danger cliche, and that didn't work for me. It's possible she was trying to be ironic, but the irony was lost on me. This was my least favorite story in the collection.

Paradise Lake Monster tries to take Dick out of his usual environment by giving him a simple mystery on vacation. I solved the crime within the first few pages, so the rest wasn't all that engaging for me. It may also just be anthology fatigue--sometimes I get a bit tired halfway through a book of this nature.

Old Saying is a playful story with a lot of verbal wordplay. Tracy and Sam must go after a gang with a member who can change into anyone for a brief period of time, leading to sight gags and peril. Can they catch the crooks--once they figure out who they are? Any story with puns gets points with me, so while I guffaw, you may groan at this one.

Whirlpool, Sizzle, and the Juice and Living Legend are by far the darkest of the bunch, with the violence pushed to the forefront and ham-handed commentary on the 1980s gang wars and Tracy struggling to deal with the new realities of the world. They're technically fine but I just felt like the writers were laying it on too thick.

Edward D. Hoch, who seemingly has written everything but a chapter in the Bible, provides a compelling story of misdirection in Chessboard's Last Gambit (I'm not giving anything away by saying that, as that's what a gambit is--making a stunning move to try and throw your opponent off) as Tracy must try to sift through the clues and attempt to beat the system to save the day--and maybe, just maybe, his wife. Hoch shows more modern realities in his story, too, but in a way that doesn't jar the reader.

Last up is Collins, writing a fractured Christmas tale that involves the murder of children and one horrible Santa Clauss. The tale is dark without being too gory, Collins allowing the reader to fill in the nastier pictures. I love how Tracy and Co. react to the crime--it's one thing to go after a killer, but a child-killer is another thing altogether. A great ending to the series.

I didn't touch on all 16 stories in the collection, but they are similar in nature, featuring Tracy taking on criminals odd and mundane, often with Sam and Lizz in tow. Pat is mostly the Chief here, but he gets in some good licks, too, when the time is right.

If you like Dick Tracy or simple detective fiction, this is a great, fun read. As with most Greenberg anthologies, the stories are always quality--nothing here sticks out as being badly-written, even if I didn't love it. On the other hand there's no chances here, either--a story about Gould himself and a few nods to meta-Tracy are all you'll get in the way of experiments. All in all, while the stories are definitely a product of their time, it's a writing style I enjoy and I think most of you would, too.

Star Trek 3 by James Blish

What better way to celebrate the release of the excellent new Star Trek movie (it's quite possibly my favorite Trek movie ever, you really should go see it) than to read some more of James Blish's adaptations of the Original Series?

I had noted in my review of volume two that Blish, with serious space limitations, had fallen into plot summary writing rather than storytelling, a trend that had me worried.

With this set of episodes, however, there is a much more nuanced style that works far better. Rather than trying to get everything in, as it felt in the second book, Blish tries to keep a narrative going with compelling dialogue and use of point of view. It makes for a far better read.

Interestingly, this is also the first edition that has a lengthy introduction, in which Blish talks about the immense popularity of Star Trek, how he's not as connected with the show as people think (he mentions seeing Roddenberry only three times), and just how many awards the show's writing was nominated for while still getting cancelled (though he tactfully leaves that part unsaid). He also mentions how his Star Trek mail was larger than mail on all his other fiction combined and gives a few tips for the budding sci-fi writer.

It's a nice humanizing preface that helped me get into Blish's head a bit better on how he was writing these. I think my favorite part is his genuine surprise that someone wants him to write an original Star Trek novel.

Heh.

This volume has several great Star Trek episodes in it, including "The Trouble with Tribbles", "The Doomsday Machine", and "Mirror, Mirror." There's also "The Last Gunfight," "Assignment: Earth", "Friday's Child," and "Amok Time," all of which are given a nice treatment here by Blish.

What continues to be most interersting to me when Blish is not doing the plot summary writing is the subtle changes made here and there. "Doomsday Machine" in particular has an immensely different ending that strikes me as Blish adding another layer of Anti-Vietnam War commentary on top of the original "mutual destruction" theme--an idea that works rather well, I thought, though your mileage may vary. Almost all of the episodes included here can reflect on the American-Russian problem, as the Klingons lurk in the background almost constantly, if not right at the surface ("Tribbles").

Where Blish shines best, I think, is in the Kirk-Spock-McCoy triangle. By the time these episodes were aired, it was clear who the stars of the show were, and they tend to be on the page most often. Blish is probably best with Spock, giving him the wry lines that make the character sing while at the same time offering coldly logical commentary on the situation. But he's gotten better by this time at handling McCoy's continual conflict of morality versus practicality and Kirk's desire to have it both ways.

I'm afraid I don't remember enough of "Mirror, Mirror" to know how much of the final Kirk speech is Blish and how much is the episode, but the writing of Kirk's appeal to the logic of the evil Spock is top notch:

"Mr. Spock, one man can change the present. BE the Captain of this Enterprise, whether you want the job or not. Find a logical reason for sparing the Harkans, and making it stick. Push where it gives. You can defend yourself better than any man in the fleet, if you are anything like MY First Officer, and I think you are. In every revolution, there's one man with a vision. Which will it be? Past or future? Tyranny, or the right to hope, trust, love? Even here, Spock, you cannot totally be without thedecency you've shown on the--the other side. Use it, make it work!"

That's a speech that you know Kirk would make, and even when Blish is tweaking things, he captures the feel of the characters well. Which is good, because in the interest of space, he sometimes needs to condense things, which forces great interpretations at times, such as when McCoy has to drug Kirk faster in "Amok" because there's only 20 pages to get the whole job done.

This volume sees a transition, I think, from just doing the episodes to the beginnings of Star Trek fiction. As such, I think it's a good read for any Trek fan. I'm still not convinced these are for a casual audience, but if you wanted to give them a try, this seems like a good place to start.

Sherlock Holmes in New York, adapted by D.R. Bensen

I love going into used book stories and finding weird shit like this book, which I read all in one sitting on a plane trip to Arizona (though if it was coming or going, I forget). It's based on a TV movie that starred Roger Moore and Patrick Macnee and isn't on DVD anywhere, much to my chagrin.

Come on people! James Bond and Steed in a Holmes movie! That's video purchase gold, right there.

At any rate, I just have to be content with the text version, picturing their lines of dialog in my head, where it might just be better than the actual product was for all I know.

I am a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, and I'm planning to re-read the entire Doyle series from start to finish later this year. I've watched Rathbone, Brett (my personal favorite), Spiner (via Data), and others play the part to varying degrees of quality. I've listened to the radio shows and even read one of the radio scripts. I've read everyone from Laurie King to Martin Davies have a run at the character, not including parodies or homages.

So when I say that this plot is actually very enjoyable and one of the better non-Doyle stories I've read, that's no small compliment. Based on the script by Alvin Sapinsley, Bensen manages to capture the Holmes-Watson dynamic really well. While Holmes is stunningly brilliant, solving crimes literally from the time he steps on the boat to New York, he needs Watson as his grounding to reality, lest his overly anylitical mind withdraw him too far from humanity. (It doesn't hurt that Watson is shown as fairly competent, part of what makes or breaks a Holmes story for me. After all, why would Holmes hang out with a baffoon?)

The book opens with yet another Holmes-Moriarity battle, this one with the full backing of the police. Holmes, supremely triumphant, has no idea the problems that Moriarity will give him later, which is part of the fun. (Holmes is a great guy, but no one ever called him modest.) A letter calls Holmes and Watson across the sea to meet one of the few people to ever best Holmes, Irene Adler. She's a bit older, with a child in tow, but no less lovely than she was in the past.

Unfortunately, and this is the one part of the book I had an issue with, is that Adler becomes the woman in the refridgerator, as she falls apart because her son is kidnapped by Moriarity as a lever against Holmes interference in his American schemes. (For those not into comics, that's a callback to the imfamous scene where a new Green Lantern's girlfriend is murdered and stuffed into his fridge. Classy stuff, comics, sometimes.) She recovers in time to help aid Holmes, but not in the role of equal that would have made this story sing. But it's a small complaint--if I stopped reading any story where women were not treated equally, I'd sadly read hardly anything at all.

As the American police grow ever-more irate with Holmes, he concots a plan of deceipt to save the day, using Adler and Watson as decoys while Holmes plays master of disguise. Proving more than a match for the men keeping him at bay, it's on to the real scheme and another showdown with Moriarity--perhaps for the last time!

This is where the book really moves, as Watson provides inspiration and essential help, Adler stops being so useless, and Holmes leads the reader through his logical world into a denouncement that gives a nice spin on the locked-room mystery. There's nothing earth-shattering about the main plots--I am pretty sure I copped to both tricks before the big reveal--but they're fun and make sense, which is really all I ask from a mystery. The clues are all out there for the reader, if you're the type who wants to solve it before the sluth does. I don't recall any points where the author kept things from the reader in order to make the resolution somehow more effective. (I hate books that do that, personally--your milage may vary.)

By the end, Holmes and Watson must return, and Adler must fade back into the mist of Holmes' past, but not before giving him something rather important to think about. It's a nice touch that, if someone wanted to and could find the rights, might make into an interesting series of its own.

Bensen does a pretty good job aping the dialog of the Victorian age, though in places it feels a bit clunky and might jar some readers. I'm not a stickler on perfect period writing, as long as I like the story and no one's running around talking about President McKinley when we're still in the age of Chester A. Arthur or something that a simple fact-check by the editor would have fixed. I wasn't able to notice any jarring inconsistencies like that, but I'm sure there's one or two you might spot on a careful reading.

He also has Watson comment--probably a bit too often--on when he's writing about things he couldn't have known first-hand. Those scenes did throw me out of the moment, and I didn't see their point. Watson is of course writing this at a later date, and would have checked up with Holmes on anything he didn't have first-hand knowledge with. Playing around too much (like imagining Moriarity's instructions to his lackeys) hurts rather than helps. But it, like the fact that Adler wasn't stronger as a character, is a minor quibble on a pretty good book.

If you're not a fan of adaptations or writers playing with classic characters, this is a poor choice. But if you love Holmes as much as I do, finding a copy of this one in your friendly neighboorhood used book story should lead to an elementary decision on your part. I had fun with this one, and I think you will, too.

Supernatural Horror in Literature by H.P. Lovecraft

Now here's something ironic--this book is the first non-adapted Lovecraft work I've read!

While looking for something else entirely, I stumbled upon this little treatise on the history of horror by one of its main writers during the 1930s. Originally written for what we'd call a fan magazine today, the obsessive Lovecraft worked for years on the project and never saw it get the detailed publishing it deserved.

The cover of the copy I read was a lot more understated than the one pictured here, buried under the solid read of a old library binding. I think it fits the work better than a fanciful one, because this is a serious essay that was obviously a labor of love (no pun intended) for the author.

Lovecraft has his biases, of course--it's very Anglo-Aryan-Franco based, with other cultures (from the Irish to Indians to Israel) existing as exotic cultures to be mined by superior literary talent of the aforementioned races for what Lovecraft refers to as "weird" literature. It's a bit jarring here and there for a modern reader, but I think the perspective of a pulp writer on how the genre got to where it was circa 1925 is worth the price of the negative aspects of Lovecraft's personal views.

The opening chapters are pretty rudimentary stuff, with Lovecraft explaining the genre's origins in believed myths told by the fireside as a way to explain life, showing his grounding in the scientific reductionism that ran rampant during his lifetime and led to tragic ideas like eugenics and racial superiority. Here, it's used to explain the superiority of those who didn't have time for ghosts as anything more than plot devices. (Interestingly enough, Lovecraft doesn't mention Doyle's belief in the very supernatural that laces his non-Holmes fiction.)

There's some mention of the earliest genre writers, none of whom I was familiar with until we get to Hawthorne (who Lovecraft gives a hometown discount to in terms of his writing abilities) and of course Poe, the man who nearlysingle-handedly made genre fiction what it is today, even if he was not recognized for it at the time. Poe is given his own chapter, where Lovecraft extols his virtues while stating his humor was terrrible and his writing sometimes overblown. (I admit to giggling every time Lovecraft disses on a writer in some way. It feels like pre-internet snark.)

Here's Lovecraft's reasoning for why Poe is so important to the writers of "today":

"Before Poe the bulk of weird writers had worked largely in the dark; without an understanding of the psychological basis of the horror appeal, and hampered by more or legs of conformity to certain empty literary conventions such as the happy ending, virtue rewarded, and in general a hollow moral didacticism, acceptance of popular standards and values, and striving of the author to obtrude his own emotions into the story and take sides with the partisans of the majority's artificial ideas. Poe, on the other hand, perceived the essential impersonality of the real artist; and knew that the function of creative fiction is merely to express and interpret events and sensations as they are, regardless of how they tend or what they prove -- good or evil, attractive or repulsive, stimulating or depressing, with the author always acting as a vivid and detached chronicler rather than as a teacher, sympathizer, or vendor of opinion."

In other words, Poe is a modernist in thinking even if a Victorian in writing style, much as Twain and James will be in varying ways approximately 40 or so years later. This is what sets him apart and makes "The Fall of the House of Usher" a classic while Hawthorne's "House of the Seven Gables" tends to be, while good, an artifact for the modern reader.

Lovecraft probably would not like my singling out of James as a good writer. He only grudgingly admits to the quality of "The Turn of the Screw" and says that the work, "triumphs over his [James's] inevitable pomposity and prolixity sufficiently well to create a truly potent air of sinister menace..." Spoken like a person who didn't like having to read James in school!

After Poe, the names Lovecraft references become more familiar to me, such as Bierce, Stoker (who Lovecraft says in another snark had ideas better than their execution), Doyle, Wells, and Stephenson. He even singles out one of my favorite Doyle stories, "Lot 249" in the essay as a great use of the resurrected mummy plot. Still, his concentration on modern writers tends to names I didn't know, such as Robert W. Chambers, Mary E. Wilkins, Leonard Cline, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and a Dr. James, amongst others. Perhaps I am just out of touch on late 19th and early 20th Century horror (quite possible) or perhaps this is a fine example of why literary criticism is such a fickle animal. As tastes change over time, writers that were once in fashion are almost unkown a few scant generations later.

After all, no one really saw Poe comnig, did they? Or that Robert Howard would be the person whose stories lived on well after his death while other contemporaries with longer histories would fade away.

Lovecraft definitely has his blind spots--he seems to feel overall that horror needs no hero to drive the story, and that writers who try to moralize marr their work (it's his only complainst against Frankenstein, by the way, which he correctly cites as being a high point of the genre's early days). I can't say that I disagree with either point, but I do object to his bias against stories with a detective feel and also his quite puzzling bias against proto science fiction. (This is why Verne and Wells seem to get short shrift here.)

Overall, it's a fascinating and quick look inside the views of a master giving his perspective on a genre he clearly loved and hoped to see prosper in the years to come. The little quips and barbs Lovecraft throws in are enjoyable and as an overview of the supernatural fiction world up to aboiut 1920, it works pretty well. I'm sure Lovecraft would have been a blog-centric creator with a lot of comments, at least based on this and his love for interacting with fellow writers.

I'm not sure how he'd feel about modern horror--as a rule, I think it's too quick for shock value and too slow to engage the reader's mind, but my readings of modern works are admittedly limited. But I think he'd be happy to know that "weird fiction" is alive and well today.

A Lume Spento by Ezra Pound

This book is so old I can't even find a picture to go with it, sorry.

As part of National Poetry month, I tried to read as much poetry as I could, which will trickle down into reviews here as time goes on.

One of the things I tackled was some Ezra Pound, a poet I've had on my "to-read" list for quite a while now.

Maybe I shouldn't have gone with an early work, or maybe I just have to accept that I am far more comfortable with the poetry of the personal, because for me this Pound was only worth a few cents.

(I apologize, that was terrible. Blame my editor. Oh wait, I don't have one.)

In a little over 100 pages of early poems and notebook work, there is simply not a single poem I liked, not even just a little bit. Usually, I can find at least one or two good poems even from a poet I dislike. But Pound's lines are just so blandly constructed on subjects that feel so artificial--a troubadour, dryads, old men with troubles, and the like, all portrayed as distant actors, without a chance to get close to the reader.

It's almost like reading Shakespeare without talent, or a homage to old poetry without a sense of irony that someone like Atwood might try. It's not that I object to the subject matter. I am going to rave about a poet that uses Barbie as her subject sometime soon, so I'm not saying you have to write from what you know. You can write a good poem, even today, about any of those things I list above. But the language Pound uses feels outdated even for the early 20th Century and today is just downright painful to slog through. I don't get this many "thee" and "thou" references when I read old Stan Lee Thor comics!

Here's a few snippets of the poems, chosen more or less at random.

From La Fraisne:

"For I was a gaunt, grave councilor
Being in all things wise, and very old,
But I have put aside this folly and the cold
That old age weareth for a cloak."

From Villonaud for the Yule:

"Towards the Noel that morte saison
(Christ make the shepherd's homage dear!)
Then when the grey wolves everychone
Drink of the winds their chill small-beer
And lap o' the snows food's gueredon
Then makyth my heart his yule-tide cheer
(Skoal! with the dregs if the clear be gone!)
Wineing the ghosts of yester-year."

The Tree (entire):

"I stood still and was a tree amid the wood
Knowing the truth of things unseen before,
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple olde
That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder-thing.
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many new things understood
That were rank folly to my head before."

This last example may be the best poem in the book, but even so, it's horribly dated for the time it's written, at least in my opinion. (I had a similar reaction to Robinson Jeffers' poetry.)

I do understand that this is Pound's early work, so maybe it gets better over time. I also think that those who like classical poetry post Shakespeare through the Victorian age (I don't) would enjoy the overwrought writings in this collection. But when your poetry requires footnotes by the poet, I think you're on thin ice and I'm pretty sure I don't want to read more, at least for awhile.

If you find yourself drawn to Kim Addonizio, Mark Doty, and other writers of the very personal, this is not the book for you. It's going to remind you of at least one of your interminable college english classes, where this type of writing was your professor's favorite. If you are a fan of classic poetry only, give this a shot. I have a feeling you'll like it. If you need me, I'll be hanging out with my complete works of Alan Ginsburg, something you'd be unlikely to enjoy. Luckily for us, poetry's nice and varied that way.

Little Round Top A Detailed Tour Guide by Garry E. Adelman

Gettysburg is arguably the most-visited Civil War battlefield in the United States. Therefore, there are a lot of books written about it and one subsection of those books are battlefield guides—books that take all or part of the conflict and help the reader/tourist understand the fighting on a more detailed level.

If you visit Gettysburg regularly—and I do—then at a certain point you want books that will take you to a certain section of the battle and walk you through the action step by step. “Little Round Top” is one of these books, and it's definitely highly recommended.

Adelman looks at the fighting on Little Round Top from a chronological perspective, rather than by walking across the top of the hill that sits at the eye of the so-called fishhook formation created by General Meade to defend at Gettysburg. Therefore, while a person walking along with the book may be a bit flummoxed by why they start at one end of the hill, move to the other, and then back again, (especially if it's ninety plus degrees and they have a hernia) the logic becomes clear as you read the text.

Fighting in a Civil War battle is never clean and neat, with a row of fighting moving left to right. It's a chaotic mess occurring—at least hopefully if you're the attacking party—several places at once. In the case of the fighting at Little Round Top, there's a need to get the perspective of General Warren first. Adelman helps you get into the mindset of those there at the time by telling you what Warren saw from the same spot that you are standing on.

From there, it's a bit of a walk to get over to the scene of the fighting made famous by the movie Gettysburg, namely Chamberlain's 20^th Maine. Adelman walks you through the fighting by that famous regiment as well as its neighboring units, who actions were no less heroic—they just didn't get the top billing when the cameras rolled.

In this general area, there's a bit of nice commentary on the changing nature of the battlefield park. Sometimes we tend to think that the park comes into place whole, protecting things as they looked and nothing about it needs to be changed. Well, that's completely untrue. After all, there weren't neat paved roads, fences decay over time, and of course there's the constant threat of vandalism. Adelman helps the user of this guide understand the changing face of Little Round Top, winding it seamlessly into the narrative of the battle itself.

While the majority of the fighting did occur near Chamberlain's men, Adelman makes sure we know about the other troops involved that day. While their fighting was not quite as intense, other troops plugged the gap in the Union Line, preventing the Confederates from enacting their planned flanking maneuver. Warren grabbed troops from wherever he could, and by the end of the day (and the end of the walking tour), troops from New York and Pennsylvania manned the hill and kept the Confederates at bay, even doing a bit of late-day charging to make sure the position held the night.

The last stop on the tour is the location of an old amusement park on the battlefield. I wish I were kidding. Thankfully, we'd never stop to such crass commercialism today. Of course not.

As is appropriate for a work this detailed, Adelman gets into smaller work, such as the sweeping of the lower hill or the placement of little-known batteries of artillery. He also laces the work with pictures both old and modern to help the reader make sure they are in the right place. (Very key for a few of the harder-to-access locations.) There's also a set of visual challenges, though I did not attempt them.

Even though this is a small tour guide, Adelman notates all of his sources and references, just like a more formal work, should the tourist wish to delve into the material further. It's a nice extra touch that makes this such a well-constructed book.

One word of warning should you use this book—since it is nearly 10 years old now and the Park Service is working on redoing the battlefield, you may have a bit of trouble locating some of the tour stops. My friend—who's been to Gettysburg more times than I have and that's saying something—ran into a bit of trouble here and there. Also, when you go may play a large part in how adventurous you choose to be. I got mauled in briers and gave up trying to get across the face of the hill for location 7A.

With plenty of maps for each part of the tour and just enough description to aid the reader-viewer without bogging down into minutia, “Little Round Top” is a great book for veteran Gettysburg visitors to pick up and use on their next trip to the hallowed ground my friend refers to as the promised land.

Images of America Downtown Pittsburgh by Stuart P. Boehmig

Though I don't own too many of them, I am a big fan of the Images of America series from Arcadia Publishing. They provide a valuable service, namely putting out local history books with lots of pictures of what an area looked like from the age of photography right up to about the 1960s. (Whenever I am on vacation, I try to find at least one book that is a pictorial history, and Images of America is almost always there for me.)

This edition is pretty typical of the series in general. A topic is selected, in this case the downtown area of my home city, and the author arranges the photographs with small commentary at the head of each section. So for instance, here we have "The Forks of the Ohio," "Well-Known Places", "Landmark Buildings," "Immigrants, and Industry", and "Prominent Pittsburghers", to name a few of the chapters.

In addition to the section intros, Boehmig and his fellow authors provide notes for each of the pictures. That's not really necessary if you're a local--I can spot most of the scenes in the book a mile away, and I'm sure you could for your hometown--but those picking this up as a travel book are given the clues they need to understand what they're seeing. That's a nice piece for a project like the Images series, and I am glad they do it.

Those interested in Pittsburgh history will find a lot here to like. There's pictures of Market Square in transition, the original (and industrial) Golden Triangle, G. C. Murphy in its prime, the Mon Wharf before parking flooded it out of the commerce business, and even shots of the jail and courthouse before skyscrapers blocked out its sunlight.

But Boehmig doesn't just dwell on the static parts of the city. The immigrants section is full of photos of those who came to Pittsburgh from other countries, seeking a better life. (Nowadays, people leave Pittsburgh seeking a better life.) They stare, frozen in time, wondering if they made the right choice, just like we do today, except that their choice meant 14 hour days or worse in steel mills, coal mines, and other hell holes run by the industrial barons, who also get a feature in the back of the book as part of the famous people section. Others get their shot, too, including Dr. Salk and the Pittsburgh Crawfords. (I didn't plan on the shot pun for Salk, but that's too funny to take out.)

Overall, this is a great book for those who like old pictures and/or photography. If you want to have a look, there's a way to preview some of the pages here. I'd easily recommend this or any others in the Images of America series to anyone interested in the particular subject they cover.