Book excerpt: In the late nineteenth century, wood-engraving was the principle medium of illustration employed by publishers. From this beginning, print collector Bill Brandt goes on to recount the story of the Society of American Wood-Engravers. He reveals the medium's intricacies, the controversies sparked between traditional wood-engravers and America's New School, and the international acclaim rightly bestowed on these innovative American artists. The lost art of interpretive wood-engraving comes to life in Brandt's detailed account. Using tools the size of dental instruments, the movements talented and resourceful men and women engraved award-winning works of art - both interpretations of famous masterpieces and striking original works. The fifty prints reproduced on these pages, scanned from Brandt's extensive collection with most produced at full size, highlight the astonishing skill and painstaking craftsmanship required of a wood-engraving artist of the golden age. The author profiles many leading personalities on the American wood-engraving scene, including Alexander Anderson, William J. Linton, Anna Botsford Comstock, General Rush C. Hawkins, Timothy Cole, and Elbridge Kingsley, whose revolutionary direct-from-nature wood-engravings were created in rural New England from his horse-drawn sketching car. Includes over eighty illustrations.Brandt tells how the Society of American Wood-Engravers burned brightly for almost twenty years, and then faded away in the early days of photoreproductions. Readers, glimpsing the warm glow of a remarkable era, will take pride in this little-known period of American art history.