Yes, there is a faint whiff of cheese about this book, but perhaps that's unavoidable, considering that a good part of the target market is made up of nostalgiacs. Despite that, it's a terrific book, filled with stereographs that literally leap off the page at you when viewed with the enclosed viewer -- which also works just fine with any old stereocards you might have lying around in the attic. T.R. Williams was a commercial photographer who flourished at just the time (1850's) that 3-d photography became a craze, due to Victoria and Albert's endorsement at the Great Exhibition. One of his special projects was to document his little home town, Hinton Waldrist. Some 150 years later, the fruits of his labors have been brought to you and me by Queen's bassist, Brian May. It's a weird old world, isn't it? ( )

An extraordinary book, part stereoscopic adventure, part love song to a bygone Britain, this is far and away the most engaging volume in the history of photography, and of everyday life in the mid-nineteenth century I have ever seen. The stereo viewer is superlative, period-imbued, and foldable, and each frame is a paean to the strange presence of the 3D past. An added bonus is a bio of the photographer, with viewable stereos of the Crystal Palace in both its Hyde Park and Sydenham incarnations. ( )