"Ghost towns are magical places. More than empty buildings, more than decayed curtains flapping in vacant windows, more than tumbleweeds rolling down bare streets, they were once living communities of people. Whether sunbathing on an isolated beach on the north coast of a Pacific island, clinging tenuously to the side of a mountain in the Rockies, sprawled across bone-dry desert, or tucked deep in a corduroy wrinkle in the Appalachian Mountains, ghost towns are life interrupted. People's dashed hopes and broken dreams remain in these abandoned homes, deserted storefronts, and crumbling ruins. Hundreds of photographs bring these rickety relics to life, as Ghost Towns touches the past, celebrates the present, and resurrects a fragile, forgotten history." --