New Book Releases

Join author Catherine Campanella as she recounts the history of one of the country's largest city parks located in New Orleans, Louisiana.

City Park's 1,300 acres cradle the largest collection of mature live oaks in the nation. Established in 1854, it is one of the country's largest urban parks (457 acres larger than New York's City's Central Park and two years older) and contains the highest earthen elevation in New Orleans. City Park has welcomed as many as 11 million visitors per year who walk among 50 species of trees, including bald cypress, southern magnolia, and pine, and the thousands of ancient southern live oaks. At one mile wide and three miles long, the park's 11 miles of lagoons (the largest in the shape of Lake Pontchartrain) are stocked with a variety of fish. Neoclassical, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Arts and Crafts, Mission, and modern architecture complete City Park. It is a precious and beloved jewel.

Join author Robin R. Salmon as she recounts the history of Brookgreen Gardens located in through the lens of 200 vintage images.

Brookgreen Gardens evolved into the cultural attraction it is today from its beginning in 1930 as a winter home for philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington and his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. The 9,000-acre tract had been four rice plantations as early as the 18th century. Home to rice planters, sportsmen, statesmen, industrialists, horticulturists, soldiers, novelists, artists, and poets, Brookgreen has entertained the great and the humble throughout its 300-year history. This book provides photographic glimpses of the men, women, and places connected with the land that became Brookgreen Gardens and documents Brookgreen's emergence as America's first public sculpture garden. A National Historic Landmark, Brookgreen's significance rests in its history and in its future service to visitors.

The public art in Atlanta includes a broad range of media, subjects, styles, and artistic merit. Statuary and figurative sculpture, often in bronze, memorialize historic individuals, while contemporary sculpture includes large-scale abstract works in stone, stainless or weathering steel, and other materials. Street artists and muralists have created more than 1,000 urban murals throughout the city, including large and colorful abstract "canvases," with thematic subjects referencing sports, nature, social issues, the city's African American and Hispanic communities, and Atlanta's leadership in the civil rights movement. Some guerrilla artists began as traffickers of graffiti who tagged buildings, railroad boxcars, and underpasses, creating iconic compilations such as the Krog Street Tunnel. Street art styles embrace photo-realism, abstract expressionism, or folk, op, or pop art, with the latter inspired by fantasy, comic-strip graphics, or Goth. Native Atlantan Alex Brewer (also known as HENSE) has executed commissions from Peru to Australia, while artists from Barcelona, Rome, and Zimbabwe have contributed to Atlanta's status as an international city.

Brookgreen Gardens' expansive property exhibits the finest outdoor collection of American figurative sculpture in the world. It began in 1930 as a winter home for philanthropist Archer Milton Huntington and his wife, sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. When the Huntingtons founded Brookgreen Gardens in the following year, they initially placed artworks from their own collection. By 1932, they had begun to actively purchase sculpture and to commission prominent sculptors to create works for the gardens. This volume portrays Brookgreen's beginning as the first public sculpture garden in America and its rise as a respected museum of American sculpture. In 1992, it was designated a National Historic Landmark, recognizing Anna Hyatt Huntington's status as an important sculptor and patron of the arts and Brookgreen's significance as a site for women's history in America.

Over 80,000 of woodland acres became the home of America's first forestry school and the heart of the East's first national forest formed under the Weeks Act.

When George Vanderbilt constructed the Biltmore House, he hired forester Gifford Pinchot and, later, Dr. Carl A. Schenck to manage his forests. Now comprising more than 500,000 acres, Pisgah National Forest holds a vast history and breathtaking natural scenery. The forest sits in the heart of the southern Appalachians and includes Linville Gorge, Catawba Falls, Wilson Creek Wild and Scenic River, Roan Mountain, Max Patch, Shining Rock Wilderness and Mount Pisgah. Author and naturalist Marci Spencer treks through the human, political and natural history that has formed Pisgah National Forest.

This volume in the Images of America series preserves through vintage photographs the gardens that, by their very nature, are impermanent. Although Charleston's contemporary gardens are well documented in other sources, those of past generations are depicted here, reminding readers that Charleston was primarily a city of family homes where life was enjoyed in the garden. From more traditional formal designs to surprisingly informal yards, these 19th and 20th-century photographs detail gardening life from bygone eras. Beyond the peninsula, informal country gardens were a small but important part of working farms, and summer cottage yards were intended for recreation and relaxation.