Campanella showcases the work of Fairchild Aerial Surveys, the cornerstone of the industrial empire of Sherman Fairchild, who became interested in photography and flying as a youth. Splendidly mounted on 14.5-by-12.5-inch pages, the photos show a sampling of U.S. cities, circa 1921-50, and are disposed in three parts according to whether the city in view is in the East, the interior, or the West of the U.S. Virtually all taken on crystal-clear days at angles ranging from, say, 30 degrees to the perpendicular, they are wonderfully well detailed, so that the new 1936 cars on the Ford lot in Dearborn are unmistakably of the old square passenger-box and trapezoidal engine-compartment style. If New York comes off most impressively, the pictures remind us of such less-renowned urban glories as Philadelphia's fine skyscraper collection, Annapolis"baroque late-seventeenth-century city plan, and Cedar Rapids" Municipal Island. Present-day western metropolises, such as Albuquerque and Phoenix, surprise with how relatively small they were and how much room they had to grow. A book to pore over again and again. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved