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Rating: 
Summary: GREAT LAKES BOOK AWARD WINNER
Review: "Gary Irving's extraordinary photographs and Michal Strutin's elegant prose combine to create a penetrating and vivid sense of place in PLACES OF GRACE. This collection of photographs covering a ten-state region that makes up America's heartland reveals the mystery and beauty of a part of the country that is 'hidden in plain view.' Presenting a counterpoint of vast expanse and luminous detail, this sumptuous volume makes you want to venture out into the land and return to the book." -- from the announcement of the award by the Great Lakes Booksellers Association.
Rating: 
Summary: Fabulous pictorial
Review: A very well composed book featuring fabulous photographs with vivid colors and composition- enjoyable page after page. Books like this succeed for me when I desire to visit these locations. Well done!Good production values overall make this a nice addition to other landscape photography books. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Collection of Landscape Photographs I've Seen!
Review: Mr.Irving has had some wonderful books in the past,but "Places of Grace"is not only his finest,but is the best collection of landscapes i've seen in a long time!This book is a must for anyone interested in the finest of landscape photography!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Collection of Landscape Photographs I've Seen!
Review: Mr.Irving has had some wonderful books in the past,but "Places of Grace"is not only his finest,but is the best collection of landscapes i've seen in a long time!This book is a must for anyone interested in the finest of landscape photography!
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Summary: Amber waves of grain and hallowed haunts....
Review: PLACES OF GRACE consists of a series of stunning photographs by Gary Irving and an essay by Michal Strutin. The book covers states in the upper central plains--Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio and Indiana, although as Strutin notes, some would include other areas. Strutin asks--what is the American Midwest? She outlines what she thinks comprises the area and discusses the forests, wetlands, huge fresh water lakes, and prairie that can still be found throughout the region. She imagines what the first European explorers must have seen when they arrived. She says, for example, the word prairie is French for meadow. French explorers were the first Europeans to travel extensively through the American plains. They saw the amazing wide open spaces where grass grew 10 feet tall and lacking any other word, likened it to their own grass meadows back home. The French named many places from Des Moines to Des Plains. Strutin says conservationists are working to restore parts of the prairie to their natural state. She explains some of the research involved in determining the correct proportions of Asclepia (Butterfly Weed); Echinacea; Daisy; and other flora in a region that contains one of the three major U.S. flyways for birds, butterflies and other migratory animals. PLACES also contains photos and text about non-prairie areas in upper Michigan and Wisconsin where hugh forests once existed as anyone who has ever read Laura Ingalls Wilder's LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS or heard of Paul Bunyun knows. Even today this area is a source of timber and home to many paper mills, though a good deal of the timber is being recovered from the bottom of Lake Michigan where it landed a century ago. Irving and Strutin could have called their book HIDDEN PLACES OF GRACE. There are many wonderful nooks and crannies that somehow escaped the developer's axe, and today are protected in one way or another. This is an interesting and beautiful book.
Rating:
Summary: SYNOPSIS
Review: This 160 page collection of photographs uncovers the mystery and the beauty of a part of the country that for most people is hidden in plain view. These are unexpected images of a Midwest that has borne cultivation and yet retains the marks of its primeval origins. Presenting a vast counterpoint of vast expanse and luminous detail, PLACES OF GRACE reveals both the physical beauty and the natural history of a ten-state region encompassing Illinois, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesotta, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. Gary Irving's extraordinarily sensuous photographs and Michal Strutin's elegant prose combine to create a penetrating and vivid sense of place. From the sculpted sandstone of Ohio's Hocking Hills to the prairie grasses of western Nebraska to the boreal forests of Michigan's upper peninsula, PLACES OF GRACE celebrates the rich visual textures and the near-Edenic beauty of the heartland.
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