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Strange Days, Dangerous Nights: Photos from the Speed Graphics Era | 
 enlarge | Author: Larry Millett
Creator: John Sandford
Publisher: Borealis Books
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $17.66
You Save: $12.29 (41%)
New (13) Used (8) from $17.66
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 116955
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 218
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.2
Dimensions (in): 11 x 10.4 x 1
ISBN: 0873515048
Dewey Decimal Number: 070.4909776581
EAN: 9780873515047
ASIN: 0873515048
Publication Date: October 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New: ships immediately, including via priority or international mail.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 A MN Must Own! November 20, 2006
Just a GREAT book! Great photos and written very well! A good mix of shocking and light hearted pictures.
Larry Millet is a gold mine! August 7, 2006
Larry Millett has put together so many amazing books on the history of the Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Strange Days, Dangerous Nights is my favorite. If you like photography, history, journalism or any combination of the three, this book is for you. Amazing photos with beautifully written descriptions bring you back in time to the 1940's-1960's.
A flash of light and instant fame for every body April 24, 2006
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
One advantage of this fascinating book is that you'll see these photos in about the same quality as the original prints. The readers of the two St Paul dailies only saw them printed in a relatively coarse screen but here they are presented in 175dpi on quality paper. The old Speed Graphic captured every detail with its in-your-face blinding flash.
The photos in the eight chapters show an intriguing look back to life in the city from 1945 to 1965, plenty of crime scene stuff (a few are very graphic if your are worried about seeing such photos) but also the regular city newspaper fare, celebrities, civic functions, public gatherings, kids having fun and plenty of sports coverage. An interesting chapter covers the changing face of St Paul, as old buildings are torn down to be replaced with new commercial units and suburbs.
Larry Millet does an excellent job of captioning the two hundred photos (mostly one to a page) not just a few words but two hundred or so for each image and his intro is a succinct review of the importance of news photos to local and city papers across America decades ago. Books about such photos from this period do rather concentrate on sensational crime and blood because they are mostly missing from today's papers. Millett explains that back then the press and the police enjoyed a cosy relationship and mostly didn't ask too many awkward questions about the police version of events. The papers got access to crime scenes for graphic photos and the cops had their faces in the morning editions for fighting crime. TV covers it all today but really gets no closer than the yellow crime-scene tape.
Many of the photos in the book are specific to St Paul but there a plenty that show a past America that applies to any city and so is a good visual record of news focussed events. My only criticism is that I would have expected to see some small thumbnails of pages from the papers showing how the photos were used with their headlines. The essential visual thing about tabloid papers are the headlines and eye-grabbing photos that pull the reader into the story. Apart from that I thought the book was first class, beautifully designed and printed with a really strong editorial content.
BTW I noticed that some reviewers expected to find background information about the Speed Graphic camera, the book is not about the camera but what it produced. There is a ton of information about the camera on the Graflex website, just put the name into A9 or Google.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.
The subtitle is: Photos from the...era June 4, 2005
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Ok, the photos are not from New York or L.A.,but the photos strongly evoke another time and how incredibly different newspapers are today. Would any contemporary paper show pictures of suicides or actual crime scenes before the blood had a chance to dry? The book isn't all dark, scenes from everyday life like padgents and contests are shown as well. I give this five stars because I felt i was transported to another time and had a great sense of how people lived, laughed, cried and in many different ways-died.
A St. Paul, Minnesota Classic! May 8, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Growing up in St. Paul in the 1950s, this book is a classic. The photography is sensational and the copy humorous and accurate. The book captures the culture and era of the 50s and 60s. I witnessed many of the events pictured in this outstanding volume.
My brother was a photographer at one of the colleges in St. Paul and he used a Speed Graphic camera. He often followed fire trucks and squad cars around the streets of St. Paul and took equally fascinating photos. He sent me this book as a gift and I have not been able to set it down. The cover photo alone is worth the price of the book.
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