Bridges

December 15, 1997
The unusual size of this album--a foot and a half long by a half-foot high--evokes the elongated structures that it extols. To illustrate the dozens of bridges Dupreselects, she uses two-page spreads, featuring a beautiful black-and-white photo, often a vintage nineteenth-century image, and pairs it with a page of inset pictures and text summarizing essential facts of design, construction, and history. Eye-catching book design is the essence here, and although bridge enthusiasts have more detailed sources of knowledge, such as Henry Petroski's "Engineers of Dreams" (1995), they will demand a visual feast at some point. Dupreserves up the celebrity spans, naturally, but she also displays bridges that don't loudly brag about themselves, for instance the humble iron-truss bridges one sees in rural America. Because of its shape, this book will be hard to shelve so displaying it seems to be the best option--and the cover of the Brooklyn Bridge in its cathedral-like magnificence ensures that many patrons will stop in their tracks and look. ((Reviewed December 15, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)