Most of us living in Grand Canyon country have given as gifts to relatives a coffee table book of canyon photographs or a calendar of outdoor scenes…But this year, as I’ve been working on the Flagstaff Memories book, I’ve been reminded that our special sense of place is tied as well to our built environment and the people who inhabit it.
Sometimes specialized buildings can carry entire photo books, and two examples are Lowell Observatory by Kevin Schindler in the Images of America Series by Arcadia Publishing and Standing Watch: The Fire Towers of Arizona by Eileen Moore. Each is chock full of images of structures, scientific instruments, and firefighting apparatus that most readers will never see, even on visits to Lowell or the towers in the book. And both books leave enough space for annotations to the photos that are fascinating in their history and technical explanations.
– Randy Wilson, Arizona Daily Sun editor in chief, Mountain Living Magazine, December 2017