Customer Reviews

God Bless Americana

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Obviously at other reviewer never took a car-trip vacation with his or her parents. I am a fan of Phoenix's work (So California in the '50s is his best), but I think I'm objective when I say this book captures a slice of Americana that many people would like to forget and the rest of us want to enjoy. It's funny and it's poignant at the same time. Don't be dissuaded by that other review. This is a book with charm.

This is the real deal. People's actual vacation photos of the America I wish was still out there to see on a road trip. The pix capture the genuine feel of the times without sentimentality or false nostalgia and Phoenix's commentary is a laugh-out-loud counterpart to the images. This is the best kind of affectionate satire. Hilarious, amazing stuff.

Phoenix has a good sense of everyday humor, and in the millions of Kodachromes Americans shot from 1940 to 1980 there is plenty of material to make fun of. But I think he missed an opportunity for a more serious look at the era of the home slide show, the role of Kodachrome in preserving American history and the need to preserve potential treasures in our attics and basements. I also have to say that I have sold many slides that were of better quality than those used in the book. What I got from this book was an urge to do one myself.

The photos are fun to look at...and interesting...the authors funny comments range from groaners, to chuckles, to laughs, to honest to goodness belly laughs! The only dissapointment I had reading it was that I was 100% sober...but still laughing my butt off!
I read this book in one sitting and plan on reading it again with a friend...and after a few beers. It makes you wish you could walk outside and be in the world the photos portray...and when you finish it you honest to God feel like you just got back from a vacation filled with laughs and crazy sights. Talk about a real escape from reality for a while!

Seriously, this book is fun! Put this one out on your coffee table when you are having a party and it will be the hit of the party...trust me...unless your friends are the kind of people who don't have a sense of humor...like a few of the others that reviewed this book.
One thing I love about his comments is that they poked fun at the people in the photos without ever Making Fun of them...he just kinda busts on them and if one of them was your mom you'd be laughing along with the author...nothing meanspirited.

Now I'm gonna go get a few beers and start reading it again!!!

This book as well as all of Mr Phoenix's works is a must read for all who remember better times and for those who forgot just what life in America was like before the negativity of todays culture.
It sings to the heart and gently nudges the brain of those who are old enough to have experienced an America that is,I'm sad to say, almost gone.If you are too young to remember then be careful.After reading this you may find yourself wishing to have been born earlier.Buying this book as well as all of Mr Phoenix's time-capsules of literature is a gift for the soul.

Author Charles Phoenix, while in a thrift shop, came across a box of 35mm slides and he became hooked on collecting other peoples discarded transparencies. Unfortunately most of the 117 chosen for his book should have remained discarded. Loosely based on a trip around America, (mostly taken in the fifties) they can be divided into two types, the straightforward record of a tourist site with aunt Bessie (or whoever) posing and the personal photos of an individual or group. This second selection produces the weakest photos because you don't have a clue about why the scene was captured on film.

Amateur photos are precious and personal to those who took them but of marginal interest to anyone else and also these photos, for whatever reason, had been junked by someone. Making them large, one to a page, with the date and a few pithy words, surrounded by too much white space does not make a very interesting book. This really would have been fascinating, I think, if there had been lots more, made smaller and perhaps laid out in a collage format with some road maps, tourist trinkets and other printed ephemera on the page plus a much more funnier commentary. Columnist James Lileks did it with 'The Gallery of Regrettable Food', a collection of ordinary food photos from fifties consumer ads and recipe books plus his own wry way with words produced a very funny book.