3 comments about Plates and Dishes: The Food and Faces of the Roadside Diner.

1. Schacher's road trip is interesting. The photos show the food on one side and the server on the other. It's interesting to see some of the food (greasy and burned), and how it changes from region to region. A great concept.



2. The blue plate special, meatloaf, mashed spuds and more are all specialties of the house for most roadside diners, which are celebrated in Plates & Dishes: The Food And Faces Of The Roadside Diner. Artist/photographer/author Stephan Sacher toured the country in search of picturesque roadside diners and their fare: Plates And Dishes isn't a recipe collection, as one might expect, but a visual, artistic food celebration which juxtaposes photos diner dish specialties with their cooks on facing pages. A warm, inviting visual treat, sans recipes.



3. Diners, yet again have seduced another photographer, who wanted to capture an authentic slice of Americana. Stephen Schacher went the extra mile and only ate in them too while travelling to take his photos. This should have been a neat looking book, all the ingredients are there but it turns out to look extremely boring.
   
   Each left-hand page has a food photo and every right-hand page has a shot of the waitress who served Schacher. You can see what I mean by clicking on the images under the book cover at the top of this Amazon page. The images shown are in fact better looking than the ones in the book though, all the food images suffer from a yellow cast, frequently the plates break out of the image area (that would have easily been solved by running the photos of the page) various other elements of the meal, drinks or side orders are only vaguely included. For an alternative look at diner grub try 'Roadside Food' (ISBN 0941434680)
   
   The waitresses on each right-hand page are also slightly yellow looking but perhaps more serious is that the pages all look so similar. Far better I would have thought to vary the poses and show much more of each diner, they are after all bursting with visual excitement as Gerd Kittel found out in his Diners: People and Places. The only visual break in Schacher's book are the occasional graphic spreads that display a map and made-up receipts with details of the meals plus where and when they were eaten.
   
   'Plates+Dishes' is a great idea that just isn't cookin', unfortunately.
   
   Oh yes, Bonnie from Fenders Diner, Cornelia, Georgia can serve me a meal anytime, what a dish!
   
   ***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

No comments about Erno Goldfinger: The Life of an Architect.

1 comments about Havana, La Habana.

1. Excellent book on Havana's architecture from Colonial times to the present. It is a very well structured book with a camera eye that gets deeply into the soul of the city.

   This book takes us to a living tour of Havana's dwellings from "Palaces to Huts" showing through beautiful and insightful details the diversity of styles that characterizes the organized anarchy of this city.

   La Habana captures the ingenuity, creativity and diversity of the cuban mind in the instance of a building. It also shows how this creative mind has been shut down by the experiments on communism.

1 comments about New York's Architectural Holdouts.

1. For anyone serious about studying humans in the urban environment, this is essential reading. The authors detail the sagas (and they often are) of individuals who owned strategically located bits of real estate and refused to sell their property to land developers eager to consume them in major projects. Sometimes you root for the holdout, sometimes you feel sorry for the misguided rebel. The writing can become a bit petulant when the authors fail to see the holdout's point of view (for at least one author progress is always on the side of the Donald Trumps of the world), but ultimately enough information is given to allow the reader to decide who was the wisest player in a particular scenario. This book also provides a look at 'New York buildings that aren't there anymore.'

No comments about Great Opera Houses (Masterpieces of architecture).

No comments about The Netherlands Architecture Institute.

5 comments about Chicago Architecture and Design.

1. My nephew loved it. He grew up in Milwaukee, went to school and lives in California. He comes to Chicago about every other year.



2. This book has beautifull photographs. The book is much deeper than other Chicago architecture books because it has a well thought out historical review of the progression of Chicago architecture. Interesting even for the lay person like me.



3. This book provides an excellent introduction to Chicago's numerous schools of architecture over the years. It also provides a photographic tour of the city's important buildings, from the late 1800s to the present day. The photography is great! Highly recommended for fans of Chicago or architecture buffs in general.



4. I thought this book was very interesting it has great pictures of the buildings in Chicago. It has alot of information about the beginning of when Architects wanted to build something modern but unqiue at the same time. Get inspired by the great exterior and interior of these amazing buildings.



5. This book described many of the significant architects in Chicago history. I found it to be informative and very readable. It is the best book I have found which summarizes Chicago Architecture. The color photograghs are excellent

No comments about Spanish Splendor.

No comments about Lost Europe: Images of a Vanished World.

No comments about What People Want: Populism in Architecture and Design.