The Ultimate Book Of Lighthouses

The sheer beauty of the elegant, lonely lighthouses along our shores — and their unspoiled, scenic natural settings — has captivated our collective imagination. More than simply picturesque, the lighthouse has become an enduring symbol of salvation, fortitude, and heroic folklore. The Ultimate Lighthouse Book is a panoramic, lavishly illustrated history of these legendary buildings and celebrates the rich heritage of our ancestors’ courageous efforts to guide mariners through treacherous seas and storms. Over 200 color photographs are featured in this fully revised, expanded and updated edition.

The sheer beauty of the elegant, lonely lighthouses along our shores--and their unspoiled, scenic natural settings--has captivated our collective imagination. A celebration of one of America's purest landmarks, The Ultimate Book of Lighthouses is a must-have for any home.

The lighthouses of the Great Lakes, for so long guiding ships to safety across the rough waters, still stand as beacons to adventurous travelers. Rich with vintage and contemporary photographs, picturing the lighthouses inside and out, by day and by night, the book takes you into the fascinating history of the structures at Split Rock, Sandusky, Big Sable Point, Old Mackinac Point Light, and Marblehead Light, to name a few. Berger’s stories about keepers and their families, horrific storms, and even encounters with ghosts bring to vivid life the lost world of these historic lighthouses. A thoroughly engaging tour page by page, the book also makes travel to these destinations easy as well as edifying, with maps, directions, and a comprehensive appendix listing all the current lighthouses.

A celebration of the great American lighthouses, their keepers, their histories, and their ongoing stories For more than two centuries, lighthouses have helped sailors find their way through treacherous waters, guiding them home or taking them safely through passages on their way to adventure. These historic towers and houses form a sparkling chain of lights along our coasts, a reminder of the past echoing with adventure and mystery, a lure for travelers looking for a glimpse into a romantic past. Completely revised and updated, American Lighthouses offers more than just a tour of 450 beautiful and historic navigational beacons dotting the coasts and lakes of the United States. This fully illustrated, one-of-a-kind handbook details their history and architecture and provides full information on visiting or viewing them. Included are many endangered lights, threatened by erosion or lack of funding, as well as “ghost lights,” which are no longer standing.

Featuring more than 650 lighthouses located throughout the five Great Lakes, a lavish encyclopedia uncovers the history behind these noble structures, which helped guide thousands of sailors and now mostly serve as monuments to an exciting period in history and points of pilgrimage for maritime enthusiasts.

An illuminating history of both real-life lighthouses and the beacons of literature and art alike, shedding light on the multifaceted power of these liminal structures. Suspended between sea and sky, battered by the waves and the wind, lighthouses mark the battle lines between the elements. They guard the boundaries between the solid human world and the primordial chaos of the waters; between stability and instability; between the known and the unknown. As such, they have a strange, universal appeal that few other manmade structures possess. Engineered to draw the gaze of sailors, lighthouses have likewise long attracted the attention of soldiers and saints, artists and poets, novelists and filmmakers, colonizers and migrants, and, today more than ever, heritage tourists and developers. Their evocative locations, isolation, and resilience, have turned these structures into complex metaphors, magnets for stories. This book explores the rich story of the lighthouse in the human imagination.