The American Family
A History in Photographs
by Jeffrey Simpson
The Viking Press, 1976, 264 pages
ISBN 0-670-11817-6

This book is much more than just a collection of photographs. The extensive and informative text traces the development of the American family, and how that development is reflected in photographs, in great detail. It's fascinating to read.

Of course, the main draw of the book are the photographs, nearly 300 of them, all reproduced in black & white. You might wonder if a book of family photos might be boring… in the way that a family photo album might be boring to someone who's not a member of that family, but that is not the case here at all. This is a wonderful collection of photographs that span a wide range of situations, from the whimsical to the intensely compelling.

The book does have one glaring flaw. This is a big book with square pages… and the text is set in a single column that spans the entire width of the page. This creates a "wall of text" that is quite difficult to read; I had to use a bookmark turned sideways just to keep track of where I was as I was reading. This is an amateurish mistake. Why the book designer thought this was a good idea – and why the proofreaders didn't scream bloody murder to get the text changed into two columns per page – is beyond me.

The layout of the photo pages, however, is excellent, and the lengthy captions are much easier to read than the main text. Each photo is numbered, and a complete list of photo credits is found in the back of the book, along with a bibliography.

Despite its abysmal text layout, this book is definitely recommended.