Looking at Photographs by John Szarkowski, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1973, Book, Illustrated)

I've been looking for books on photography that help me understand why one photograph might be considered "better" than another. For that purpose, this book is as good as any. Mr. Szarkowski doesn't answer questions so much as cause the reader to ponder the questions he raises. His taste is catholic, he is a wonderfully lucid writer, his is modest in the extreme and intelligent in the extreme. The book has 100 different photographs from 100 different photographs, and each photograph gets a page of discussion. The focus leans more to American photographers, but not exclusively so. The photographs selected are often not the one a given photographer is most famous for, so the book is not like a "Greatest Hits" album.
Although I own, and treasure, "The Photographer's Eye," a book with a similar format, I found this volume much more useful and thought-provoking. Szarkowski possesses a Zen-like calm which, could it be bottled, I would stock up on.