Title: “Pictures & People: A Search for Visual Truth and Social Justice”

Author: Joan Liffring-Zug Bourret

About the author: Joan lives in Iowa City, where she and her husband, Dwayne, own and operate Penfield Books. Joan has been a photographer for more than 60 years, and her work has been published and collected widely.

Synopsis: The memoir contains more than 130 black-and-white photographs, some of them iconic images of women’s roles in the last half of the 20th century. Also included are the groundbreaking photos of the birth of Joan’s first son, a photo essay hailed as one of the most important of the 1950s. The book relates the author’s personal memories, including the civil rights movement and efforts to integrate housing and schools in Cedar Rapids.

Ron Moore

Reviewer:

Ron Moore of Cedar Rapids is a risk management consultant. A former three-term Cedar Rapids school board member and past board president, Moore has visited 50 countries. He and his wife, Maud Moore, have two adult daughters.

Joan’s life has been filled with excellence as a freelance photographer, and her photos — actually works of art — have earned many awards. For those of us who participated in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, this memoir brings back the participants of that effort as well as other social justice causes later. In “Pictures and People,” Joan shares her public relationships and her most personal ones. She tells of her concerns for the rights and welfare of people who have not been as fortunate as many of us. It is a privilege to be invited into such a rich and productive life.

What books are on your nightstand?

• “Odyssey of the Heart: The Search for Closeness, Intimacy, and Love” by John Harvey, psychology professor emeritus at the University of Iowa
• “500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars” by Kurt Eichenwald
• “Bull by the Horns: Fighting to Save Main Street from Wall Street and Wall Street from Itself” by Sheila Bair
• “How Children Succeed; Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character” by Paul Tough
• “Team of Rivals; The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln” by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• “Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World” by Tracy Kidder

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