Durham -- Where Visions Become Reality

by Tom White (foreword)

When Riverbend Books teamed with the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce to publish this book, the first thing we came to love about the city was the mouth-watering barbeque at Bullocks. By the time we took the last photograph nine month later, our love for the city had blossomed far beyond mere culinary favorites. It is one of the joys of publishing picture books on American cities that our job is to scope out the best a community has to offer, to sample it all (though never enough to completely satisfy), and tell our readers about it through exceptional photography. But in Durham, we had a problem. With so much going in, and only so many pages, the challenge was not what to photograph, but in making the often wrenching decision about what to omit. There is so much to Durham, a city so wonderfully, visually rich. The neighborhoods, the campuses of North Carolina Central University and Duke University, the festivals, and the fascinating, eclectic array of performing and visual arts. Few cities in America boast a public school as challenging as the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics or a cultural focal point as unique as the Hayti Heritage Center. Should your tastes run to the past, there are great historic sites, such as Bennett Farm; and should your eyes be fixed on the future, there is the internationally acclaimed Research Triangle Institute (RTI), Indeed, at RTI alone one could spend weeks photographing the stunning array of technology and research that marches on every day on this amazing campus.

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001