Rebecca Zurier is reading:

AMERICAN ENCOUNTERS: ART, HISTORY, AND CULTURAL IDENTITY

By: Angela L. Miller, Janet C. Berlo, Bryan J. Wolf, and Jennifer L. Roberts

The reach of this lavishly illustrated textbook extends beyond the classroom, as should its readership. A sweeping story of encounters between Native American and colonial artists, homegrown talent and cosmopolitans, builders and materials, and highbrows and lowbrows at the crossroads of five continents, it presents the bumptious pageant that has inspired a new generation of scholarship on the history of American art. Sidebars explain everything from Moundbuilders to Modernism but what shines are the original research and interpretive passages that bring to light dozens of lesser-known creators while helping us see old favorites anew.

(Rebecca Zurier is Associate Professor of the History of Art at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Picturing the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School.)