In the late 1980s, David Kahler was deeply inspired by seeing an exhibition of O. Winston Link photographs. He soon began making annual trips to the West Virginia and eastern Kentucky coalfields, destinations that strongly resonated with his own aesthetic of "place." Armed with a used Leica M6 and gritty Tri-X film, he and his wife made six week-long trips in the dead of winter to photograph trains along the Pocahontas Division of the Norfolk Southern Railway. Nearly one hundred images edited from this body of work form the core of The Railroad and the Art of Place, along with a selection of earlier Pennsylvania Railroad steam-era photographs that reflect Kahler's interest in the railroad landscape from an early age. Also included are three essays by Kahler, Scott Lothes, and Jeff Brouws, discussing the personal motivations, historical context, and aesthetic development behind the photography. With funding for printing provided by the Kahler Family Charitable Fund, all sales will go to support the Center's work.

In "Railroads and the Art of Place: An Anthology," a team of thirty contemporary and historical photographers--whose work is displayed across eighteen portfolios--visually contemplate the visible and philosophical imprint of the railroad on the American landscape. Combined with lucid, literary essays by Kevin P. Keefe, former editor of Trains magazine, noted transportation historian Alexander B. Craghead, industrial historian Matt Kierstead, and the late Michael Flanagan (author of Stations: An Imaginary Journey) the book, conceived by David Kahler, is sure to set a new benchmark in the field of railroad photography and transportation studies. Produced to the highest standards and featuring 230 color and black-and-white photographs, this deluxe 372-page book printed on heavy stock portrays a storied industrial culture in an entirely new context. Produced by the Center for Railroad Photography & Art and generously funded by the Kahler Family Charitable Fund.

WINNER OF THE 2022 PULITZER PRIZE "A compelling and important history that this nation desperately needs to hear." -Bryan Stevenson, New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative Chasing Me to My Grave presents the late artist Winfred Rembert's breathtaking body of work alongside his story, as told to Tufts Philosopher Erin I. Kelly. Rembert grew up in a family of Georgia field laborers, joined the Civil Rights Movement as a teenager, survived a near-lynching at the hands of law enforcement, and spent seven years on chain gangs. There he learned the leather tooling skills that became the bedrock of his autobiographical paintings. Years later, encouraged by his wife, Patsy, Rembert brought his past to vibrant life in scenes of joy and terror, from the promise of southern Black commerce to the brutality of chain gang labor. Vivid, confrontational, revelatory, and complex, Chasing Me to My Grave is a searing memoir in prose and painted leather that celebrates Black life and summons readers to confront painful and urgent realities at the heart of American society. Booklist #1 Nonfiction Book of the Year * African American Literary Book Club (AALBC) #1 Nonfiction Bestseller * Named a Best Book of the Year by: NPR, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Barnes & Noble, Hudson Booksellers, ARTnews, and more * Amazon Editors' Pick * Carnegie Medal of Excellence Longlist

In the TracesRailroad Paintings of Ted RoseIntroduction by Thomas H. Garver Railroad paintings by a major American watercolorist. In the Traces presents 60 paintings by Ted Rose, with commentary by the artist. The works are an eloquent and absorbing view of industrial America, especially of railroads as an integral part of the man-made landscape. Here is the rich narrative of a journey of discovery that began 50 years ago when Rose confronted changes everywhere during the time railroads and the country were in transition. His paintings are a record of his continuing fascination with railroad places, a visual anthology of past and present. These masterful watercolors well describe the atmosphere and life along the tracks during the last half of the 20th century. Rose finds beauty in the commonplace -- the common places of our experience and in the back alleys of a reality we thought we knew so well. These expressive works are visual documents, informed by the rhythmic idiom of blues music and the poignant song of railroad operations in winter bleakness, blazing sun, or darkest night. The artist's empathy with his subjects, human and mechanical, is given through a brilliantly controlled technique which Rose deftly adjusts to match the nature of a scene, from the soft light of dawn on the prairie to the harsh glare of headlights and signal lights at midnight. Although his works evoke the look of earlier American realist paintings, Rose's knowledge of subject matter and his often unorthodox use of the watercolor medium support his narrative purposes without reference to other artists. Ted Rose, a signature member of the American Watercolor Society and the National Watercolor Society, lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His paintings have received consistent recognition in juried and invitational exhibitions, and appear often in books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues. Recently Rose was honored when the U.S. Postal Service commissioned him to create five watercolors of streamlined American passenger locomotives. The images were subsequently issued as postage stamps. Thomas H. Garver, a former curator and director of several art museums, is author of more than 40 exhibition catalogues.

For nearly half of the nation's history, the steam locomotive was the outstanding symbol for progress and power. It was the literal engine of the Industrial Revolution, and it played an instrumental role in putting the United States on the world stage. While the steam locomotive's basic principle of operation is simple, designers and engineers honed these concepts into 100-mph passenger trains and 600-ton behemoths capable of hauling mile-long freight at incredible speeds. American Steam Locomotives is a thorough and engaging history of the invention that captured public imagination like no other, and the people who brought it to life.

Celebrating the sesquicentennial anniversary of the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States , After Promontory: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Transcontinental Railroading profiles the history and heritage of this historic event. Starting with the original Union Pacific—Central Pacific lines that met at Promontory Summit, Utah, in 1869, the book expands the narrative by considering all of the transcontinental routes in the United States and examining their impact on building this great nation. Exquisitely illustrated with full color photographs, After Promontory divides the western United States into three regions—central, southern, and northern—and offers a deep look at the transcontinental routes of each one. Renowned railroad historians Maury Klein, Keith Bryant, and Don Hofsommer offer their perspectives on these regions along with contributors H. Roger Grant and Rob Krebs.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • "An American masterpiece" (NPR) that chronicles a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. • The basis for the acclaimed original Amazon Prime Video series directed by Barry Jenkins. Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. An outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is on the cusp of womanhood—where greater pain awaits. And so when Caesar, a slave who has recently arrived from Virginia, urges her to join him on the Underground Railroad, she seizes the opportunity and escapes with him. In Colson Whitehead's ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor: engineers and conductors operate a secret network of actual tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora embarks on a harrowing flight from one state to the next, encountering, like Gulliver, strange yet familiar iterations of her own world at each stop. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the terrors of the antebellum era, he weaves in the saga of our nation, from the brutal abduction of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is both the gripping tale of one woman's will to escape the horrors of bondage—and a powerful meditation on the history we all share. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!