The photographs of David Plowden, David McCullough once said, "confer a kind of immortality on certain aspects of American civilization before they vanish." In this, his nineteenth book on the American scene, David Plowden, as usual "one step ahead of the wrecking ball," again turns to a part of American culture that was once commonplace but is now in danger of being lost or, at best, forever transformed.

With his photographs of barbershops, general stores, schoolhouses, feed mills, Main Street scenes, and picket-fenced houses, as well as the barbers, customers, librarians, schoolteachers, and postmasters who inhabit them, Plowden has created a vivid portrait of "Small Town America" that will be instantly recognized - and mourned - by all Americans.

And his poignant, engaging text, grounded in his memories of his own small town upbringing and populated by characters he has met in the course of his work, brings to life the essence of the small town experience.

Plowden does not focus on one particular town or area. Instead, he has traveled through nineteen states, from Rhode Island to Idaho, turning his cameras eye onto those elements that epitomize - or once epitomized - small towns across the country, recording "only what he sees," as David McCullough puts it in his Introduction, "exactly as is, never dressing the set, never rearranging, never moving even the least bentwood chair, lest, as he says, he disturb the dust." Neither has he sought to show every single aspect of small town life - an impossible task, for American small towns are unique unto themselves, and as Plowden is the first to suggest, "To try to encapsulate whatever constitutes the small town life in a few pages would be folly." Rather, the town captured in these pages is a composite of many parts; a fabrication in which are emphasized both the generic aspects that were once common to all towns and those that are in danger of disappearing.