Boston An Extended Family

Bill Brett is well connected. Partly this is because he has been a society photographer for the Boston Globe for thirty years, but mostly, we suspect, it’s because he’s one of the nicest people on the planet. Also, his camera somehow makes people-from the high and mighty to the man and woman on the street corner-look good. His first book, Boston, All One Family, sold a remarkable 16,000 copies in four months in late 2005. His new book promises to reach a similar readership. Again, Brett brings us the celebrated (Ben Affleck, Tom Brady, and, to show that Boston does “extend” a ways, a wonderful candid shot of Walter Cronkite on Nantucket) and the powerful (politicians, bankers, lawyers, CEOs). But here again too are the quiet leaders of nonprofits and neighborhood organizations, the men and women who really make the city tick. Combined with the first volume, Brett’s work offers intimate views of nearly five hundred leaders of greater Boston-in their homes, in their offices, in their element-at the beginning of the twenty-first century. One hundred years from now, these two volumes (which are indexed as one at the conclusion of the new volume) will be a unique and indelible record of this city in our time.