Window Seat [Paperback]

Although "Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air" by Gregory Dicum is more of an undersized coffee table book than serious writing, people like me are going to get sucked into this tome like the air through a jet turbine. You see, I, and apparently many more people than I previously thought, comprise an oddball group of travelers who actually relish the view from 35,000 feet and who always double check their reservations in advance to make sure, absolutely and unequivocally sure, that we have reserved a widow seat on our flight. Yes, we are those annoying people on the transcontinental flight where you have to call the flight attendant: "Sir, will you please pull down your widow shade....?" As one of my few fellow window seat freaks once put it, "Are you kidding? The view over the Grand Canyon is worth the hassle and cost of the flight alone!"

Therefore, the seminal concept of "Window Seat: Reading the Landscape from the Air" is exiting enough. As one who has actually taken small binoculars and maps on flights, the mere thought of a book that would help guide me along designated flight patterns was enough to give me shivers of anticipation. Upon reading a brief review in the New York Times Book Review, the book immediately went on my list.

But don't toss the topographic and Rand McNally highway maps just yet, my fellow window seaters. Apparently, we may have a monstrous case of buyer beware here. The book clearly lacks much of what many would anticipate,i.e. window seat pictures and interpretations thereof. In fact, the majority of the book contains cropped satellite photos scaled to approximately 35,000 feet or greater. Although the pictures are of exquisite quality, they are not window seatpictures, and do not necessarily offer window seaters good insights as to what they may observe on say, their twelfth trip from Houston to Orange County, California.

The book is laid out according to geographical province: the Great Plains,the Pacific Northwest, the Northeast and so forth. The emphasis is on specific features, however, with much importance given to natural phenomena such as mountains, glaciers, lakes and rivers. Human made features such as farm acreage, manufacturing, refining as well as petroleum and mining operations are also depicted. Several major metropolitan are beautifully presented from cropped satellite photos. The accompanying text may be judged as annoyingly simplistic, but the glass may be half full here. This book could easily be read and understood by late elementary - early middle school ages.

So my criticism of the book remains guarded. Window seaters need to pause for a collective breath here; what we fantasize may not be realizable. Realistically, what do you normally see at 35,000 feet looking out the window, even on a clear ride? Whitish blue, with a few outlines, brief flashes of reflected light on water, an interstate cutting through a brown desert. I almost suspect that if Dicum had submitted true window seat pictures to editors he would have been rebuffed.

Conversely, many, myself included, have done cross country pictures from low altitude prop aircraft, but as with the satellite pictures, these do not effectively present the window seat world at 35,000 feet. Perhaps a true window seat project would be an immense undertaking, requiring permission to traverse frequently used flight paths with a converted commercial or private airline, retrofitted to take aerial photography at various and sundry angles.

So Dicum may be appealing to our best flight experiences. Oh, if I could have recorded what I saw taking off from John Wayne to Minneapolis, that one clear day. A "braked" steep takeoff. A grand sweep over the Pacific Ocean and subsequent view of Orange County then Riverside County, both Interstates 15 and 5 clear as a bell, all the way back to the ocean itself. Up over Mt. San Jacinto and northeast to the Colorado River and then to the Grand Canyon.

"Sir, will you please lower your shade....?"

".....No.... thank you"

This is a wonderful and desperately needed book, as evidenced by the fact that passengers are asked to close their window shades when flying over the Rocky Mountains so people can watch an insipid "altered for air travel" movie. And by the fact that most people do in fact close their shades and ignore what until a century ago was denied to all humans, a view of the Earth from miles above.

I did thumb through this book at a bookstore and bought it instantly. The satellite photos along with descriptions seem very helpful for interpreting landscapes from the air although I have not yet taken it on a flight.

It is not a technical book and would be suitable for intelligent teenagers, but unless you can already identify and explain moraines, eskers, drumlins, kettle ponds, and spillways and understand how 100,000 years of glacial action formed the lowland landscapes we see from the air, you will probably find this book educational as well as enjoyable. (The book will of course offer only a first introduction to these and similar matters.) The photos themselves are worth the price of the book.

(If you really love aerial photography, consider also getting a book such as EARTH FROM ABOVE by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, which is beautiful, educational, and more expensive.)

Okey dokey . . . this isn't a collection of low elevation aerial photographs. that's true. Some of the "reviewers" have taken great umbrage at that, as if it is deceitful and naughty of the author to have used the title he did -- at least the part before the colon. But, y'know what? There are windows EVEN in the ISS (a nearly three-foot optically-correct viewing window in the International Space Station), and this book makes incredibly effective use of satellite and high-orbit photographs (many of them technically "images," since they're not on film) to give us a knowing sense of how to analyze the world around us -- from the air.

And what a sublime gift that is! Dicum makes every image fit four or five different uses and purposes. The analysis is both accurate, which is nice, but also inspiring and tempting, which isn't something that can be said of every "overhead" book. The maps and explications are great, and the intelligence that goes into this struck me as inspiring. The perfect combination would be this book and, let's say, Erwin Raisz's fantastic, yet precise, landform maps (still available; try Google), which show the spine and design of the entire North American continent (and, in other sheets, several others). "Reading the Landscape from the Air" is exactly what this book's about, just as the works of JB Jackson or Michael Parfit or Grady Clay are about learning to look and see.

That said, this is kind of how-to guide, worthy on its own, but especially so for students of the land. I'd use it in a class. If you want pretty pictures (gorgeous ones), buy the fat (yet reasonably priced -- and wow, do I mean that!) *Earth From Above: 366 Days* by Arthus-Bertrand, or some of Georg Gerster's mind-blowing books. They specialize in near ground, often oblique, aerial photography, which gives an unparalleled sense of immediacy and omniscience. This book's instead about doing, seeing, thinking, and enjoying, and learning to understand what surrounds us -- all delivered from a high-elevation view that yields context, which is all-important in seeing from above. The privilege of high-sight is perhaps our greatest gift from the 20th century. This book, nicely produced at an incredibly affordable price from Chronicle Books, is a sweet and affordable work.