Our selection of photography books this year is top heavy on the past -- Pittsburgh long ago to places in contemporary America that have seen better days.

Among these, photographer Charlee Brodsky's "I Thought I Could Fly" goes beyond the boundary of these pictorials with piercing descriptions of ordinary people battling mental illness. Its powerful images seem to be as key to the work as her words.

On this page, we present a selection of images from these books.

-- Bob Hoover, Post -Gazette books editor

The wide-open spaces can still be found in this country, many of them full of moldering relics of the past, as witnessed in Eastman's vivid color collection, subtitled "The End of Main Street, Diners, Drive-Ins, Donut Shops and Other Everyday Monuments." This is in St. Louis.

Founded in 1795, this rural county west of Albany, N.Y., is dotted with the abandoned, ruined buildings of its agricultural past.

The starkness and beauty of these black-and-white pictures are both poignant and compelling.

A professor and photography curator at Carnegie Mellon University, Brodsky has sought to use her art in conjunction with text on a variety of subjects, including a personal examination of post-industrial Homestead with Judith Modell.

Here she has gathered short pieces written by people affected by struggles with mental illness in their lives or families and uses her own skills to illustrate them in black and white.

This is from an essay titled "Edith's Difficult Daughters."

Meislik is media curator at the University of Pittsburgh's vast Archives Service Center.

In this handsome album organized by date, she offers many seldom-seen views of the town. It's a fine addition to the various 250th anniversary celebrations. (One point: Her caption of a photo of Forbes Field "sometime between 1907 and 1913" should read "1909" because the park wasn't built until that year. At right is a 1920s view of Fifth Avenue, Downtown.

The selection of photos from the LTV Steel Collection shows steelmaking's heyday, including images from Otis Steel, one of the first mills in the country to use the open hearth process. This image shows an Otis employee in a blast furnace casting house. Otis, founded in the late 19th century, was purchased by Jones & Laughlin Steel in the early 1940s.

A retrospective of the master photographer's work dating to the 1890s, this volume works as both a biography and history of Steichen's craft. This photograph is of actress Gloria Swanson.Founded in 1795, this rural county west of Albany, N.Y., is dotted with the abandoned, ruined buildings of its agricultural past.

The starkness and beauty of these black-and-white pictures are both poignant and compelling.

Founded in 1795, this rural county west of Albany, N.Y., is dotted with the abandoned, ruined buildings of its agricultural past.

The starkness and beauty of these black-and-white pictures are both poignant and compelling.