Print the Legend:
Photography and the American West
by Martha A. Sandweiss
$27 (416 page paperback)

This book tells the intertwined stories of photography and the American West--a new medium and a new place that came of age together in the nineteenth century.  The story begins just a few years after the invention of the daguerreotype in 1839, as pioneering photographers followed American troops into the Mexican-American War.  Taking advantage of rapidly developing technology, photographers soon set out across the overland trails, recorded the shifting fortunes of California’s goldseekers, pictured native peoples, and documented the spectacular topography of the American West.  The new medium of photography made vivid a landscape few Americans had seen for themselves.  148 sepia photographs.  Winner of the 2002 OAH Ray Allen Billington Prize for the best book in American frontier history.  Winner of the 2003 William P. Clements Prize for the best non-fiction book on Southwestern America.