The panorama is primarily a visual medium, but a variety of print matter mediated its viewing; adverts, reviews, handbills and a descriptive programme accompanied by an annotated key to the canvas. The short accounts, programs, reviews, articles and lectures collected here are the primary historical sources left to us.

DIVCombine the wild waters of the Mississippi River and wordsmith Mark Twain, and what have you got? Some of the most famous and familiar literary works in American history, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Gilded Age, and Life on the Mississippi. Twain spent the first half of his life on and around the river, from his boyhood home in Hannibal, Missouri, to his years as a steamboat pilot, during which he traveled up and down the river as far south as New Orleans./divDIV/divDIVCommemorating one of America’s most beloved authors and the landscape he portrayed in his works, Mark Twain’s Mississippi River includes illustrations from various editions of his books, both fiction and nonfiction; maps; historical photographs; landscape paintings of the river and its inhabitants; and modern photography of towns and countryside, showing how much the landscape has changed (or hasn’t) since the days of Huckleberry Finn./divDIV/divDIVFilled with excerpts, quotations, newspaper clippings, and commentaries, this book is full of historical information about the life of Samuel Clemens, his literary creations, and the river that figured so prominently in both. With over 200 beautiful photos and a knowledgeable narrative written by Twain scholar and author R. Kent Rasmussen, Mark Twain’s Mississippi River is simply a joy to read for anyone who loves to discover the reality behind the writer./div

"Each time the waters of the mighty Mississippi River overflow their banks, questions arise anew about the battle between "man" and "river". How can we prevent floods and the damage they inflict while maintaining navigational potential and protecting the river's ecology?" "The design of the Mississippi and how it should proceed has long been a subject of controversy. What is missing from the discussion, say the authors of this book, is an understanding of the representations of the Mississippi River. Landscape architect Anuradha Mathur and architect/planner Dilip da Cunha draw together an array of perspectives on the river and show how these different images have played a role in the process of designing and containing the river landscape. Analyzing maps, hydrographs, working models, drawings, photographs, government and media reports, painting, and even folklore, Mathur and da Cunha consider what these representations of the river portray, what they leave out, and why that might be. With original silk screen prints and a selection of maps, the book joins historic, scientific, engineering, and natural views of the river to create an entirely new portrait of the great Mississippi."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

This biographical dictionary of some 3,000 photographers (and workers in related trades), active in a vast area of North America before 1866, is based on extensive research and enhanced by some 240 illustrations, most of which are published here for the first time. The territory covered extends from central Canada through Mexico and includes the United States from the Mississippi River west to, but not including, the Rocky Mountain states. Together, this volume and its predecessor, Pioneer Photographers of the Far West: A Biographical Dictionary, 1840-1865, comprise an exhaustive survey of early photographers in North America and Central America, excluding the eastern United States and eastern Canada. This work is distinguished by the large number of entries, by the appealing narratives that cover both professional and private lives of the subjects, and by the painstaking documentation. It will be an essential reference work for historians, libraries, and museums, as well as for collectors of and dealers in early American photography. In addition to photographers, the book includes photographic printers, retouchers, and colorists, and manufacturers and sellers of photographic apparatus and stock. Because creators of moving panoramas and optical amusements such as dioramas and magic lantern performances often fashioned their works after photographs, the people behind those exhibitions are also discussed.

With more than 150 never-before-published duotone images, taken between 1892 and 1930, this collection explores the history of the Chicago River and the impact its reversal had on the watershed all the way to the Mississippi River. Offering the most complete description available of the river reversal, the stories told here provide a better understanding as to how it was done and why it was necessary, as well as how the water from the Chicago River is treated. The photographs were pulled from a glass plate photo collection taken by the Sanitary District of Chicago.