I find this book fascinating for several reasons. First, Hines has combed through flea markets and piles of other people's photos to come up with pictures taken in photobooths over the past 75 years. The pictures present a candid look at the history and fashion of the times. There are beautiful people, plain people, rich and poor. There are even little notes on the back of the strips of photos. The old-fashioned photobooths with film and chemicals and four shots per strip are, sadly, on their way out. They are being replaced by modern, more cost-effective versions with digital technology and laser prints. This book preserves a rapidly eroding piece of Americana. It makes you curious about the people in the photos, and, with the spare text in the book, you can almost fashion your own story.

I am enthralled with this book as a piece of history, an album of people we may have known or wish we'd known, and a fantastic project by a very persistent and devoted writer and historian.