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Summary: Brilliant look at our nation from the "catbird seat."
Review: "You can find out a lot by taking the bird's eye view," my grandma used to say, as she watched over the traffic on the street from her comfortable perch on the third floor. Now Gregory Dicum has compiled a wonderful book using my grandma's philosophy, and illustrated it with a wealth of satellite and other aerial photographs.
It's comforting to think that so much of the USA has been mapped out by surveyors for us to enjoy, and not a little worrisome that foreign terrorists probably know all areas as well as we do. Dicum explains that the urge to see things from above is a longstanding one in the brain of man, and while we can make out an ugly patch here or there (strip mining, etc) such photos have an eerie, depopulated beauty much like that of the Australia Nevil Shute wrote about in ON THE BEACH.
Dicum writes wonderfully and concisely. I would recommend this book to everyone who's curious about the world around us, and who doesn't mind looking at it from my grandma's "catbird seat."
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Summary: Dazzled by Dicum!
Review: Dicum is witty and intelligent in a way that few writers are. As a frequent airplane traveler (2 million miles on American!), his book added new interest to what had become the drudgery of business travel. I now find myself peering out the airplane window with delight and fascination! To be sure, after you read this book, you'll have a ready answer to the question: "Window or aisle?" I'm guessing this one will make a great gift for a beloved frequent flier.
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Summary: Title a misnomer . . . great concept, but doesn't deliver.
Review: I agree wholeheartedly with the Oakland, Pittsburgh, and St. Paul 1 & 2 star raters below. Glad I checked this out of the library before buying it. It went back well before the due date.I was excited when I read the review for this book. I anticipated a book chock full of photo references from 35,000 feet to help decipher the view below. Instead, what's presented is a bunch of satellite photos that have absolutely no relevance to the perspective one has from a plane. While there is a lot of good information for the geography buff, I'm rating this only one star because it clearly doesn't deliver what the title suggests. And kudos to the King County Library System for quickly acquiring many copies of new releases, allowing me to try before I buy without waiting months.
Rating:
Summary: Title a misnomer . . . great concept, but doesn't deliver.
Review: I agree wholeheartedly with the Oakland, Pittsburgh, and St. Paul 1 & 2 star raters below. Glad I checked this out of the library before buying it. It went back well before the due date. I was excited when I read the review for this book. I anticipated a book chock full of photo references from 35,000 feet to help decipher the view below. Instead, what's presented is a bunch of satellite photos that have absolutely no relevance to the perspective one has from a plane. While there is a lot of good information for the geography buff, I'm rating this only one star because it clearly doesn't deliver what the title suggests. And kudos to the King County Library System for quickly acquiring many copies of new releases, allowing me to try before I buy without waiting months.
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Summary: More than just a travel book
Review: I love books that meld several subjects into a coherent whole. Window Seat does just that combining travel writing, geography, geology, with a smattering of history, environmental, and social commentary.
Ostensibly, Dicum wrote this for airplane travellers so they can understand what they're seeing from the window. While I could easily see a first time reader taking it along on a flight, I can't see someone lugging it along repeatedly. However, it's equally good for an armchair traveller seeking to remember (or imagine) what they saw because of the many, many illustrations. The heavy, glossy paper means the pictures are the equivalent quality of what you'd get in National Geographic.
The book's divided into self-contained regional sections like "The Pacific Northwest", so you can easily find where you're travelling to and from or just browse where you're most interested in. The format means you can easily read short bursts anywhere in the book without worrying about continuity. Also included are likely sites near airports and along heavily used flight paths like the FedEx hub, Orlando's Disney World, and SF Bay.
I especially like that he has short analyses of what you're seeing, such as the following excerpt:
..."In 1825, with the opening of the Erie Canal, the fertile and much more plow-friendly lands of the Midwest became available for American settlement, quickly emptying New England of farmers. Flying west across the Hudson River, over upstate New York, you are following the course of this migration; if you keep going, you'll find the missing farms in the Midwest.
"With the farmers gone, the New England forest regrew. ...These are the woods immortalized by Thoreau, and their resurgence in the past century is one of the brightest spots in America's ecological history."
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Summary: Open your eyes!
Review: I ordered this book with soaring expectations. Only recently, I had flown over a meandering waterway and wondered what it was. When I read about this book in the Wall Stree Journal, I ordered it, hoping that it would answer that question as well as others. However, other than some really neat satellite images of some of my favorite destination, this book seems little more than a short geography text book. I'm afraid it's not worth the money and perhaps next time I travel I will order an FAA sectional to take along.
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Summary: Satellite photos are NOT window seat views.. a RIP OFF
Review: I suffered one of the risks of buying books online with the purchase of this book... if I had been able to thumb thru it in a bookstore, there is no way I would have bought it. I read about this book in an airline magazine and thought it sounded interesting. The article (and the book's introduction) promised to help decode the land below from the view of a window seat.. at 35,000 ft. However, the book has only a few token "window seat" pix, and instead if filled with *satellite* photos. What good is a satellite photo of the entire SF Bay Area if I'm going to be flying in? The views are complete different. I'm not orbiting overhead in space, I'm landing or flying over at a MUCH lower altitude. Talk about bait and switch! The content was also woefully basic. It might be interesting for a 4th grader, but contained very few insights. If you are an even occasional flyer, there's not much to learn here. I think the *proposed* concept is still great for a book and hope someone actaully does a "window seat" flying guide. Maybe a pilot should take up this project. As for "Window Seat"..don't waste your money.
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Summary: Open your eyes!
Review: I was the type of flyer who did her nails, read my book, and occasionally glanced out the window. Recently I flew from Harrisburg PA to Toronto, Canada on a sunny afternoon. Armed with "Window Seat" I began studying the landscape. What an eye opener: I saw a huge open pit coal mine, a military cemetery, and of course the usual farms, plus the Susquehanna! Later there was Niagara Falls,with all the generators etc., the Welland Canal and locks, and of course all the details of my home town: Toronto! I loved it. But Dicum was right: you do get a crick in the neck.
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Summary: Great handbook for the planetary explorer
Review: I've been flying since I was 5, and still find myself glued to the window from takeoff to landing. I always found it frustrating to look down at some structure or pattern and wonder what it was, knowing I'd never get an answer. How great is it then that a kindred spirit has written this guide for window jockeys like me! The book is written in a friendly and engaging manner, is packed with gorgeous aerial photos and offers up so much additional information beyond what I would have asked that I can't wait to fly again to use it. I'd even go to Nag's Head, NC just to compare it to the beautiful image on page 49.
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Summary: Behave . . . Let this book be what it wants to be!
Review: Okey dokey . . . this isn't a collection of low elevation aerial photographs. that's true. Some of the "reviewers" have taken great umbrage at that, as if it is deceitful and naughty of the author to have used the title he did -- at least the part before the colon. But, y'know what? There are windows EVEN in the ISS (a nearly three-foot optically-correct viewing window in the International Space Station), and this book makes incredibly effective use of satellite and high-orbit photographs (many of them technically "images," since they're not on film) to give us a knowing sense of how to analyze the world around us -- from the air.
And what a sublime gift that is! Dicum makes every image fit four or five different uses and purposes. The analysis is both accurate, which is nice, but also inspiring and tempting, which isn't something that can be said of every "overhead" book. The maps and explications are great, and the intelligence that goes into this struck me as inspiring. The perfect combination would be this book and, let's say, Erwin Raisz's fantastic, yet precise, landform maps (still available; try Google), which show the spine and design of the entire North American continent (and, in other sheets, several others). "Reading the Landscape from the Air" is exactly what this book's about, just as the works of JB Jackson or Michael Parfit or Grady Clay are about learning to look and see.
That said, this is kind of how-to guide, worthy on its own, but especially so for students of the land. I'd use it in a class. If you want pretty pictures (gorgeous ones), buy the fat (yet reasonably priced -- and wow, do I mean that!) *Earth From Above: 366 Days* by Arthus-Bertrand, or some of Georg Gerster's mind-blowing books. They specialize in near ground, often oblique, aerial photography, which gives an unparalleled sense of immediacy and omniscience. This book's instead about doing, seeing, thinking, and enjoying, and learning to understand what surrounds us -- all delivered from a high-elevation view that yields context, which is all-important in seeing from above. The privilege of high-sight is perhaps our greatest gift from the 20th century. This book, nicely produced at an incredibly affordable price from Chronicle Books, is a sweet and affordable work.
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