This book is available from Amazon.Com for $15.96 (plus shipping and handling).
This is a book about the social history of barber shops and the barber shop experience in America.
On each left-hand-side page is a large black and white photograph of the interior of exterior of a traditional barbershop; these are "Life"-magazine style photos, beautifully shot, that capture the barber shop experience. These are all modern photos, about half showing exteriors of shops, the other half either haircutting photos or interesting details of interiors. This book is not useful for finding a, say, a haircut picture to take to a barber of a specific style; it is more about the barber shop tradition in general.
The right-hand-side pages are filled with text; chapter titles include "The Ways of the Barbershop," "Through the Eyes of a Boy," "Of Tonics and Smells," and "Barber Poles." The text provides a great deal of interesting information about the history and practices of barbering in America, but again, is not an illustrated encyclopedia of hairstyles.
The author is a psychotherapist who has been taking pictures of barber shops for years, and his writing develops the themes of barber shops as a masculine American experience and the encroachment of the stylist/unisex shops into the grooming practices of American men. The author also writes a great deal about the barber shop as a vanishing entity, which he supports with statistics, but which I personally question. There is also a lot of very interesting information packed in and a number of anecdotes and quotes from a variety of sources about barber shops. This is an excellent book for those interesting the social/cultural aspect of barber shops and barbering, but it is not a book for those looking for pictures of haircuts (although, there are quite a few action shots but not necessarily of buzzed styles).
Thanks to the reader who wrote this review and recommended this very interesting book.
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