Pages of History: Celine and National Geographic

Barry Iverson is a former TIME Magazine photographer covering the Middle East for 27 years from 1981-2007. He photographed all of the major events of the region for a quarter century, including such paradigm changing events such as the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, the takedown of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the aftermath of September 11, coup d’etats, archaeology and famine. His work has also been published in such wide-ranging publications as National Geographic, New York Times, Life, People, Geo, Paris Match and Stern.

Iverson is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1985, after two years of research at Harvard University and the Harvard Semitic Museum, he won a Fulbright Scholarship to research the history of photography in Egypt, and concurrently taught photography at the American University in Cairo during the 1985-86 academic year. Iverson has produced several fine
art portfolios, including The Tour, Still, Egyptian Desert Views I & II, Cairo I & II, Antiquity, Egyptian Portraits, Comparative Views of Egypt, Aged, The Cinders of Gawhara Palace, Sand & Stone, Comparative Views of Harvard. Iverson has published Comparative Views of Egypt (1994), and Egypt 1900: The View Through Postcards (1993), and written the biographies of photographers Van Leo (of whom Iverson was largely responsible for the transfer of his entire archive to AUC), Riad Chehata, and the Leavitt Hunt/Nathan Baker photographic partnership.
 

This month's book is Celine by Peter Heller. Celine is not your typical private eye. With prep school pedigree and a pair of opera glasses for stakeouts, her methods are unconventional but extremely successful. Working out of her jewel box of an apartment nestled under the Brooklyn Bridge, Celine has made a career out of tracking down missing persons nobody else can find. But when a young woman named Gabriela employs her expertise, what was meant to be Celine's last case becomes a scavenger hunt through her own memories, the secrets there and the surprising redemptions.

Gabriela's father was a National Geographic photographer who went missing in Wyoming twenty years ago and while he was assumed to have been mauled by a grizzly his body was never found. Celine and her partner set out to Yellowstone National Park to follow a trail gone cold but soon realize that somebody desperately wants to keep this case closed. Combining ingenious plotting with crystalline prose and sweeping natural panoramas, Peter Heller gives us his finest work to date. Books will be available to check out at the front desk.