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Rating: 
Summary: Awful printing quality bad shadow detail, poor sharpness
Review: ... because you can put four legs on it and use it for a coffee table. If you're going to have a single Ansel Adams book, this is the one. His images just don't work in any smaller format.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review: If you're a fan of Ansel Adams, you will absolutely love this book. It's 127 pages of breathtaking photography with poetic writings by John Muir. The images fill the entire page while subtle text accompanies the photographs. "I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out until sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in." These passages work hand in hand with the photographs giving a meditative quality about them. For a split moment you actually feel like you are physically standing in that surrounding and experiencing the beauty of nature. Adams and Muir work as a unit to document this beautiful phenomenon we call nature and present it to us in this book called America's Wilderness.
This book allows you to appreciate the beauty of America from the vast mountaintops to the endless plains to the ever-changing cloud formation. He captures the essence of Mother Nature and all her minute details. This book would be far from complete if it were not for the eloquent writings of John Muir. Though Muir has long passed away, his writing, fortunately, will never depart.
Rating: 
Summary: Are we looking at the same book?
Review: Many of Ansel Adams' exquisite photographs call out for large reproductions, and this book displays them in a decent size format. But what a waste. The reproductions are nearly all flat and murky, with little detail in the shadow. If I had read far enough down into the customer reviews, I would have been warned; but the reviews at the top of the stack were quite favorable. Which leads me to wonder: Are we looking at the same book? I advise readers to purchase Adams books published by Little, Brown, and Company (aka "Bulfinch"). Even at smaller sizes their books display much more detail and clarity than does this disappointing edition.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful Reproductions of Some Outstanding Adams' Images
Review: This book is flawed by the images selected to be in it. The other main weakness is that the book is clearly overpriced. The good news, however, is that the image sizes are large enough to capture the power and majesty of Adams' work. The reproduction quality is superb, as well! The essay by William Turnage is an excellent discussion of the roles of Thoreau, Muir, and Adams in creating the awareness that has helped us to save and cherish some of what remains of our American wilderness. The artist-turned-conservation leader, Adams' role, is a particularly important function in our society. The artist helps us to experience what we have never seen while the conservation leader takes actions that galvanize the emotions that are evoked by nature and the artist into helpful improvements. When the artist and conservation leader are the same person, there is a combined power and continuity of vision that is irresistible. Thank goodness! Adams is someone we should all admire for another reason. His nature photography and conservation efforts were hobbies, labors of love. Photography of nature is a field that offered meaningful remuneration only in recent years. His day job was doing commercial photography. He took pictures of dead people in the Los Angeles morgue as well as of open pit copper mines in Utah. What we admire about him was what he did on weekends, before and after work, and on vacations. Because he wanted the most remarkable images, this often meant hiking before dawn in difficult winter conditions to remote peaks to get just the right perspective. Andrea Stillman did a good job of selecting Adams' quotes for her opening remarks. "Photography is a way of telling what you feel about what you see." " . . . [T]he turning out to the light the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit . . ." is what his work is about. Throughout the book, you will find other quotes about Adams' reflections on the wilderness. They are well selected and add much to your consideration of what his images mean. Here are some of my favorite photographs as reproduced in this book: Santa Elena Canyon, Big Bend National Park, Texas, 1947 Monument Valley, Arizona, 1942 Canyon de Chelly National Monument, 1942 Sand Dunes, Sunrise, Death Valley, 1948 Sand Dune, White Sands National Monument, 1942 The White Stump, Sierra Nevada City, 1936 Terraya Creek, Dogwood Rain, Yosemite, 1948 Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite, 1944 Half Dome, Winter, from Glacier Point, Yosemite, 1940 Leaves, Mills College, Oakland, California, 1931 Maroon Bells, Near Aspen, Colorado, 1951 Old Faithful (4), Yellowstone, 1942 Mount McKinley and . . . Lake, Denali National Park, Alaska, 1947 After you have finished being refreshed and rejuvenated by these inspiring images, I suggest that you contemplate what the wilderness meant to your grandparents and parents, what it meant to you as a child, what it means to you now, and what it means to your children. If you are like me, you will see that wilderness is rapidly receding as a concept as well as a reality. What are we losing? How can we reverse that loss? Understand all of Nature's message for us by living in harmony with her!
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: This book is not worth the paper, believe me! I don't know if it's because 'printed in China', but the photos are not comparable with other Ansel Adams books or calendars. Please don't mix it up with the hardcover version which is >100$.
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