Gaining a Yard: The Building of Baltimore's Football Stadium

Doug Kapustin is probably the finest photographer the Baltimore Sun has ever had. Jon Morgan, writer, tends to be slotted as "sports" but he knows a whole lot about state and city financing, NFL franchising, comparative stadiums around the country, cost overruns, "Builders pitting game plans against the clock" and so forth and so on."Gaining a Yard" is much more than a football story. It is an entire chronicle of a major public works project on the order of the Transcontinental Railroad, the Hoover Dam or the Empire State building. There is also an extensive section on the LED scoreboard and video system -- why the Ravens stadium is much more than state-of-the-art compared to other stadia around the country.I've had this book mailed to my nephew about to start with a very prestigious college. I packaged it with "Cathedral: The Story of its Construction" by David Macaulay."Gaining a Yard" should be required reading for anyone involved in any type of major building or public works project anywhere on the globe in the future.

This is one of the most outstanding photographic documentations of the construction of a modernn sports arena. What makes it so very special is that the human aspects, the people actually involved in the design and building of the stadium, are made an integral part of the picture story. The excellent narrative by Jon Morgan is an absolutely perfect complement to Doug Kapustin's prize winning photography. This book is a must for every professional or amateur photographer, sports fan and architect.