Book Review

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First up is Joanna Cohan Scherer's book, A Danish Photographer of Idaho Indians, which covers Benedicte Wrensted in Pocatello in the 1890's. A Danish Photographer features wonderful studio photos of Shoshone and Bannock Indians as the frontier closes and reservation life becomes a way of life. Scherer's book shows both good pictures of Native dress, as well as the force of acculturation, sometimes side-by-side in surprising ways. A Danish Photographer of Idaho Indians is Scherer's 20-year long search to identify these found photographs. Her long, hard journey has culminated in this glowing volume, which speaks of years gone by.

Scherer was the editor of the Smithsonian's 20-volume bicentennial handbook of North American Indians.  A Danish Photographer of Idaho Indians is published by University of Oklahoma Press and is $29.95 clothbound.

Now is the Hour by Tom Spanbauer: Catholicism, Pocatello, the '60s - words not often thrown together. Tom Spanbauer puts them all together anyway, in his fourth book, to show the strain of living in small town America in the shadow of that dark decade, the '50s. And yes, the '60s happened in Idaho and people were ready for them, but not everyone. Spanbauer shows the problems, the pain and joy of discovering your true self, confusion, discord, disorder, and the flight to a sanity of sorts - all these things and more await you in Now is the Hour. After reading Spanbauer, you will know exactly why people wanted to go to San Francisco with flowers in their hair. Clothbound, $26.

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