Booknote: Icons of the Highway

Tony Worobiec and Eva Worobiec, Icons of the Highway: a Celebration of Small-Town America. London: Artists' and Photographers' Press Ltd. (AAPPL), 2008. ISBN: 9781904332787.

Genre: nonfiction
Subgenre: photography, Americana, nostalgia
Format: hardback
Source: Berea branch of the Madison County (KY) Public Library.

This is a very nice photography book that captures the landmarks like theaters as well as more common small town elements like diners in the United States. The book looks at various small towns that by now are bypassed by the interstates and at times barely remembered outside the towns themselves. The book mainly focuses in the Northwest, or rather the Plains from north to south to the Southwest. The book offers a short introduction and five chapters.

Each chapter has a couple of pages or so of text followed by the photographs. The authors capture both the magnificent and the quotidian. The movie theaters are some of the best shots in the book. Many of these theaters survive because of generous donations and a lot of volunteer work. They are not only community centers but also beautiful works of art from a bygone era. Some of these towns survive on nostalgia and tourism, such  as those towns along the remnants of U.S. Route 66.

The photography is great. Most photos take a single page, but you also get a few photos across two pages. The authors chose to take many of the photos in the dawn hours, in part to highlight places with neon lights well, and to add a bit of a quiet element. Very few photos have people in them. The photos overall are a pleasure to look at. Part of me wishes I had the time and funds to get in a good car and go see these places before they vanish. And that is the other thing about a book like this: it's about recording and preserving something that may or not survive in the long term.

Overall, I really liked this one. I note the authors do have a previous book, Ghosts in the Wilderness: Abandoned America, which I will try to locate.

4 out of 5 stars.