With nine additional photos, a larger format, and an expanded, up-todate timeline, this is the new and revised edition of Joel Sternfeld'sWalking the High Line, which documents the overgrown elevatedfreight rail line above New York's West Side before it was transformedinto the cherished High Line public park in 2009.In the dark days following the September 11 attacks in New Yorkin 2001, Joel Sternfeld came to Gerhard Steidl with the hope ofquickly making a book. For the previous two years Sternfeld had beenphotographing the abandoned railroad and working with a group, theFriends of the High Line, that wanted to save it and turn it into a park.Powerful real estate and political interests seeking to tear it down andcommercially develop the land beneath it were using the chaos of theperiod to rush forward their plans.Steidl agreed and six weeks later there were finished books inNew York. It was a small volume but it played a crucial role in allowingNew Yorkers to see for the first time the beauty of a secret railroad inall the seasons. Like the photographs made by William Henry Jacksonin the 1870s of Yellowstone that led Congress to establish a nationalpark, the pictures proved pivotal in the making of the High Line park.The poet-keeper of the High Line is the photographer Joel Sternfeld.Adam Gopnik