This is the description of the book.

A picture-rich field guide to American photography, from daguerreotype to digital. We are all photographers now, with camera phones in hand and social media accounts at the ready. And we know which pictures we like. But what makes a "good picture"? And how could anyone think those old styles were actually good? Soft-focus yearbook photos from the '80s are now hopelessly—and happily—outdated, as are the low-angle portraits fashionable in the 1940s or the blank stares of the 1840s. From portraits to products, landscapes to food pics, Good Pictures proves that the history of photography is a history of changing styles. In a series of short, engaging essays, Kim Beil uncovers the origins of fifty photographic trends and investigates their original appeal, their decline, and sometimes their reuse by later generations of photographers. Drawing on a wealth of visual material, from vintage how-to manuals to magazine articles for working photographers, this full-color book illustrates the evolution of trends with hundreds of pictures made by amateurs, artists, and commercial photographers alike. Whether for selfies or sepia tones, the rules for good pictures are always shifting, reflecting new ways of thinking about ourselves and our place in the visual world.

Blue Skies, Green Hell, a thriller written by a bush pilot's wife, is a riveting tale setin the 1950s when pioneers of the sky flew single-engine aircraft over unforgiving wilderness and impenetrable jungle in Venezuela. Marilyn and Frank live in a place called the last frontier on the Orinoco River where he establishes a multi-aircraft service that flies supplies and medicine to remote and inaccessible communities. Together they challenge the odds and take the exhilaration of flying to new heights. Their world is fierce weather with no weather reports, aircraft with limited range radios, and planes with six basic instruments. A search and rescue effort ends when they make a forced landing in no man's land. A flight to Miami turns sour as their twin-engine C-46 conks out over the Caribbean. Best friends die in fiery crashes. Aston age Indian appears where he shouldn't be. This is drama from the cockpit of vintage aircraft.