Friedman/Fairfax, 2001, $29.95 ($44.95 Canada), ISBN 1-58663-080-6, 160 pages, 12x11" hardback

This coffee table book contains the wonderful artwork of James Dietz, an obviously talented artist who shifts between ground, air, and sea subjects with ease. The book contains 88 color illustrations and 43 black and white sketches or preliminary studies.

Now Dietz is a very talented guy. And although I don't know much about art, I know what I like, and I like much of what I see. Indeed, while perusing the back of military history magazines, I see Dietz prints for sale at $150--the exact same image is inside this $30 book. So getting 88 of them is a bargain. Most are page-sized or slightly more, overlapping onto the next page.

Mind you, I would prefer to see the entire image on one page because spilling over to another page puts the gutter about a third into the image. This ruins brilliance, and the art director/layout person should suffer a multitude of paper cuts for doing this. Ideally, coffee table books should be like calendars-one image fills one page. Intact. Unblemished by curvature into the binding. As inspirational and untouched as the day the artist completed the painting. Because every time my eye hits the valley of disconnecting perspective, I realize I'm looking at a book, not looking at a scene.

Broze's prose is amiable enough, but let's face it, you're not buying the book for the text. I prefer the description to highlight the scene in the image, which most do not, or do so only in passing. Descriptions often focus on unit history, which is adequate, but the very best ones tell me about the scene. What is the scene from? Why is this vignette important? What made Dietz want to paint this action and not another?

One notable description is Maximum Effort. Granted, this is two pages of background interspersed with multiple sketches and progressive color paintings. But this collaboration of Broze and Dietz is at its best here. The USAAF never looked so good.

At the other end of the scale is The Last Hurrah, which I believe is the 2nd SS Panzer Division on the attack in mid-February 1943. Mostly, I just don't like the painting--the angles seem wrong, the tank mix seems odd, and I know nothing about what I'm looking at or what this action represents.

However, don't let one clunker dissuade you from the book. So many others really pull you in: Dunkirk (two-page spread), Too Late to Save the Day (MG 262), Hurtgen Forest, 29th Let's Go (D-Day), and Rommel Takes Command are some of my favorites.

I also lingered over many others too numerous to name, and indeed, went back to the book time and time again.

Portraits of Combat is an excellent coffee table book and well worth a look.

Quartet of Dietz Images