Choice 评论

The publishers got off to a bad start when they reversed the color reproduction of Jackson's painting The Mountain of the Holy Cross for the dust jacket. From then on the book runs pretty much downhill. The subtitle characterizes, perhaps by way of unintended double entendre, this latest addition to the resurgently exploitive industry of the myth of the American West. Yet another book on the life and times of William Henry Jackson is hardly a compelling imperative, given the recent (1986) reprint of the artist's autobiography. Moreover, Peter B. Hales's exemplary study of Jackson's photographic practice (William Henry Jackson and the Transformation of the American Landscape, 1988) outstrips Waitley's text, which, despite its trendy title, generally manages to circumvent the possibilities of its intriguingly complex subject. Neither an especially needed biography, nor a particularly insightful analysis of the role of the survey photograph in shaping the sensibilities of the age and the perception of the American West, this book borders on redundancy. However, chapters on Jackson's military service during the Civil War and his photographic stint at the Anasazi pueblos of the Southwest are less familiar, and reproductions of several unpublished drawings and paintings, most from the Scotts Bluff National Monument collection, are a welcome addition. General readers. R. L. McGrath; Dartmouth College