George F. Thompson

George F. Thompson Publishing develops and brings to publication books of lasting value on a wide range of subjects for readers from all over the world. GFT Publishing continues the long-standing efforts of George to advance our understanding of the places and spaces that surround us – urban, rural, social, and wild – through well-conceived, smartly written, elegantly designed, and beautifully produced books. Books by George, since 1984, have won more than 100 top editorial awards and prizes, including multiple best-book honours in 31 academic, artistic, and professional fields. Books by George emphasise the necessary connections between art and science, the local and the global, the individual and the group.

Central America in the Crosshairs of War Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9781960521019
Pub Date: 30 Nov 2024
Illustrations: 90 photographs by the author (49 color; 41 b/w), 6 historic photographs, 7 montages (5 color; 2 black-and-white), 2 documents (1 color; 1 black-and-white), and 1 color map
Description:
During the 1980s, the Reagan Administration financed and directed wars against popular movements in El Salvador and Nicaragua that left more than 300,000 dead and countless more wounded. Vowing to block “Soviet expansion,” the U.S.
Tibetan Memories Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781960521064
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2024
Illustrations: 72 black-and-white illustrations, including 61 duotone photographs by the author
Description:
This is the first book to present the stories and portraits of ordinary Tibetan women and men in exile, in their own words. It includes gorgeous photographs of the lands they embraced in Ladakh, where they fled after the Chinese annexed Tibet in 1959.To meet the people and make these photographs, the Johnsons traveled throughout Ladakh, visiting many villages, and interviewing dozens of people.
A Hard Walk through Solitude Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9781960521033
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024
Illustrations: 84 illustrations, including 27 graphite drawings and 55 color photographs by the author
Description:
The volcanoes on the Alaska Peninsula and the fifty-seven volcanoes that project into the Aleutian Islands form the northern rim of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Many are in Alaska’s national parks, monuments, and preserves. They continue to erupt, creating new Earth surfaces, and the deposits of lava, pumice, and ash ejected by these volcanoes create primeval ground: a true wilderness where few people on Earth other than volcanologists have traversed.
Landscapes of Hope Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 176
ISBN: 9781960521040
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2024
Illustrations: 84 illustrations, including 73 color photographs by the author and 11 color maps
Description:
At a time when division, polarization, and antagonisms pervade the United States, here is hope for the future. Landscapes of Hope shows how people from all walks of life and backgrounds can come together, talk and work out details, compromise, and do something special for generations to come: safeguarding 900,000 acres of spectacular wild country in Utah.Perched on the western edge of the Colorado Plateau, the Greater San Rafael Swell spans 8,000 square miles in south-central Utah and showcases a rich tapestry of landscapes.
The Long Ride Home Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781960521026
Pub Date: 24 Sep 2024
Illustrations: 133 photographs (99 color and 4 black-and-white)
Description:
The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America is the first book to tell the story of the Black cowboy experience in contemporary America. Although Black cowboys have been a fixture on the American landscape and frontier since the nineteenth century, few people are aware of their enduring contributions to the history of the West and how their unique culture continues to thrive today in urban as well as rural areas all over the country.The book features Ron Tarver’s beautiful, compelling, and often surprising contemporary images of African-American cowboys that not only convey the Black cowboy’s way of life and its rich heritage, but also affirm a thriving culture of Black-owned ranches and rodeo operations, parades, inner-city cowboys, retired cowhands, and Black cowgirls of all ages, too.
Children in Iceland Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 96
ISBN: 9781938086526
Pub Date: 01 Jul 2024
Illustrations: 47 color photographs by the author
Description:
Iceland is best known for its stunning scenery and majestic landscapes. When photographer Nancy Libson first visited Iceland for a hiking trip some twenty years ago, she immediately fell in love with the country and its dramatic landscape. She vowed to return again, camera in hand.
Picturesque Palestine, Sinai and Egypt Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 192
ISBN: 9781938086533
Pub Date: 10 Apr 2024
Illustrations: 112 color and 23 black-and-white illustrations
Description:
This book is a beautiful and engaging presentation of drawings and letters by John Douglas Woodward, (1846–1924), a prominent American artist/illustrator during the 1870s and 1880s. He was on assignment for New York publisher D. Appleton and Co.
Street Cat Tales and Tangled Times Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 184
ISBN: 9781938086984
Pub Date: 10 Mar 2024
Illustrations: 210 color illustrations: 125 photographs and 85 digital montages by the author
Description:
In his award-winning book, American/True Colors, Stephen Marc presents one of the most comprehensive photographic surveys ever conducted about America and Americans. For his efforts–the survey includes both the Obama and Trump presidencies–or his artistry, and for his unique African-American perspective, the Independent Publishers Book Awards gave American/True Colors its 2021 Gold Medal for the Best Book of the Year in Photography.But Stephen Marc was not finished with telling the American story.
Varanasi Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 160
ISBN: 9781938086960
Pub Date: 31 May 2023
Illustrations: 110 color photographs
Description:
Varanasi, also known as Kashi and Banaras, is a city in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh dating to the 11th century B.C.E.
More than Scenery Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 240
ISBN: 9781938086953
Pub Date: 31 May 2023
Illustrations: 166 photographs, 4 maps, and 1 historic illustration
Description:
Janet Pritchard’s romance with the American West began with horseback riding, watching movies, and hearing her dad’s dreams of being a cowboy. When she began to spend adolescent summers in Wyoming during the 1960s, her world changed forever, as she fell under the spell of natural wonder in the shadow of the Grand Tetons. Only later did she recognize her feelings as a response to what nineteenth-century Romantics called the sublime.
Park Place Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 104
ISBN: 9781938086946
Pub Date: 31 May 2023
Illustrations: 64 photographs
Description:
The National Park Service was established by an act of Congress in 1916 to “preserve unimpaired the natural and cultural resources and values of the National Park System for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.” This directive to protect wilderness yet provide accessibility to it without somehow compromising the integrity of the natural resources seems to be a self-fulfilling contradiction and an arena for conflicting priorities.In Park Place, photographer David Heberlein explores the tension between access and enjoyment and preservation of America’s public lands.
The Uyghurs Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 248
ISBN: 9781938086991
Pub Date: 15 May 2023
Illustrations: 128 illustrations: 116 duotone and 8 color photographs by the author and 4 historic maps
Description:
In 1998, Kevin Bubriski was fortunate to spend time with the Uyghurs in Kashgar, their ancient city on the Silk Road in Xinjiang, China. While there, he made unforgettable photographic portraits and street scenes that reveal a haunting beauty and sense of the past in old Kashgar. Bubriski was drawn to the faces of ordinary people and their daily lives, with the intent that through photographs mutual understanding between people might be fostered.
Oceano Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 156
ISBN: 9781938086922
Pub Date: 31 Mar 2023
Description:
Climate change is the great existential reality of our time. How we approach this crisis will affect life on Earth for present and future generations. In spite of our collective ideals, irreversible damage to the environment is imminent and represents urgent local and global concern.
Travels across the Roof of the World Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 280
ISBN: 9781938086939
Pub Date: 20 Oct 2022
Illustrations: 228 color photographs, 18 line art maps, 1 full-spread map
Description:
Travels across the Roof of the World provides a sweeping yet intimate view of the breathtaking peaks, splendid valleys, and extraordinary people of this vast region, from the Pamir Mountains in Kyrgyzstan through Afghanistan's fabled Hindu Kush, the Karakoram in Pakistan, and the Great Himalaya Range that stretches across northern India, Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan. Unique in scope among photo books on the Himalaya, Travels across the Roof of the World chronicles William and Anne Frej's more than twenty pilgrimages throughout the area spanning forty years and 3,000 miles through some of the world's most remote and difficult-to-reach country. Inspired by the devotion to the practice of Tibetan Buddhism they encountered in the villagers they met on their first trek to Nepal in 1981, they set out on a quest to document Asia’s highest peaks as well as the lives of the resilient people living in these remote mountain communities.
Inland Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 184
ISBN: 9781938086915
Pub Date: 28 Sep 2022
Description:
The Schuylkill River flows more than 100 miles from the mountains of the Pennsylvania Coal Region to the Delaware River. It passes through five counties - Schuylkill, Berks, Chester, Montgomery, and Philadelphia - and its valley is home to more than three million people, yet few are aware of the hidden ruins and traces left by a pioneering 200-year-old inland waterway: the Schuylkill Navigation. Some of it is literally buried in their own backyards.
Occupying Massachusetts Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 100
ISBN: 9781938086892
Pub Date: 28 Sep 2022
Description:
Occupying Massachusetts: Layers of History on Indigenous Land is an art book that engages with history. Featuring photographs of dwellings and vernacular structures found in rural Massachusetts, the book is a meditation on the human occupation of land, with an emphasis on the long presence of Indigenous people and the waves of settlement by people from other countries that began during the early 1600s and continues today.Utilizing a muted colour palette, Matthews's photographs of both structures and historical markers are subtle and haunting.