Gallery Bookshop - Tony Miksak's Words On Books

Tony Miksak's
Words on Books
as broadcast weekly on KZYX radio

All History is Local (whatever that means)

To order any of the books mentioned in this article, see the links at the bottom of this page.

Mendocino, A 19th Century Village by the Sea reached out and grabbed me the other night. Not the village, the book about the village, with photography and text by Janet Ashford.
This self-published paperback is a gem because the author truly knows what she is doing. Janet Ashford teaches Photoshop and related skills at the Mendocino Art Center. Her best known book is Start with a Scan: A Guide to Transforming Scanned Images and Objects into High Quality Art from Peachpit Press.
Her more modest Mendocino is the book we've needed for years. Not expensive, full color throughout, an accurate history, plus a map and walking tour. Just the right size to mail to friends, (Hey ma -- look at this gorgeous place I washed up in!) and way more useful than a pile of post cards.
While I'm praising Janet's book let me add that her photography is first rate, and the production values uniformly high. Now -- where's the hard cover, the calendar, the printed mugs?
Ashford used the excellent online printing site www.Lulu.com to produce her book inexpensively. This site will give you an instant quote on many kinds of printed material and it's easy to use. Self-publishing, which once was a term of ridicule, has come into its own.
And for just that reason, today's reader must browse with caution. When no commercial publisher stands between the author and the book you hold in your hand, you're on your own. Of course, you're on your own in any case, publisher or no publisher, but that's another story.
Also this month, local author Katy Tahja of Comptche, has published her third book, Images of America: Early Mendocino Coast. The text is hers, she controlled the layout and chose the photographs, and the production of her book takes a middle path between self-publishing and traditional commercial publishing.
Her publisher, Arcadia Publishing in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, has made a successful business producing numerous local histories in standard format with consequent economies of scale. Arcadia recruits local authors, promotes their books and keeps costs low. Everywhere you travel you'll discover Arcadia titles featured in local bookstores.
There are thousands of titles in the series Images of America. They start with A History of Alcatraz Island and African Americans of Jackson and continue through Yorktown Yreka and Zippo Manufacturing Company.
There is a big demand for books like these.
Katy said Arcadia gave her complete freedom to write what she wanted and pick all the photos. It is to her everlasting credit that the book begins not with local lumberjacks but native Americans. Katy took advantage of her own local contacts to uncover evocative and rarely seen images.
"I didn't want to use the redwood bark teepee photos again," she said. Her book is mainly captions, but taken together they give an intense and detailed portrait of the people who lived here and the various (now strange) technologies they utilized.
The Mendocino County Historical Society and similar groups have for many years produced titles of local interest and varied quality. Sylvia E. Bartley's recent book The 1906 Earthquake on California's North Coast is just about the only place to find a comprehensive review of what happened that day north of San Francisco. Bartley's compilation in part recycles Bicentennial oral histories first recorded by Bruce Levene in his definitive Mendocino County Remembered, An Oral History.
The point for local history organizations is not only to preserve the past but make it available in the present day. Picturesque California is a slim volume based on the elaborate and rare 1888 leather-bound original edited by John Muir. It ran to 478 pages and more than 800 illustrations, some of them tissue-guarded photogravures. The current 36-page book reproduces two sections focused on northern California.
A clean first edition of Picturesque California, The Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Slope sells today for several thousand dollars. Most of us will never have a chance to see it. So I'm grateful for this inexpensive excerpted edition and happy such a reasonable facsimile exists at all.

Aired Sunday September 21, 2008 at 10:55 am and Wednesday September 24, 2008 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

Mendocino, A 19th Century Village By the Sea photography and text by Janet Ashford. Self-published. Paperback $15.95. ISBN 9780961996840.
Contact the author: www.jashford.com
Self-publish a paperback book: http://www.lulu.com/en/products/paperback/
Start With a Scan: A Guide to Transforming Scanned Images and Objects into High Quality Art by Janet Ashford and John Odam. Peachpit Press paperback Second Edition 2000. ISBN 978-0201710977.
Images of America: Early Mendocino Coast by Katy M. Tahja. Arcadia Publishing paperback $19.99. ISBN 0738559466.
Arcadia Publishing's website: www.arcadiapublishing.com
The 1906 Earthquake on California's North Coast, A Collection of the Reminiscences of Survivors and the Scientific Reports That Followed by Sylvia E. Bartley. Fort-Bragg-Mendocino Coast Historical Society and Mendocino County Museum paperback $12.95. ISBN 0974893455.
Northern California in Artwork & Prose, from the late 19th Century Classic Picturesque California edited by John Muir. Introduction, design and layout by Sylvia E. Bartley. FB-MCHS paperback $12.95. ISBN 978098177908.

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