Massachusetts 24/7: 24 Hours. 7 Days. Extraordinary Images of One Week in Massachusetts.

Though the idea behind Smolan and Cohen's sequel to their bestseller America 24/7 is a little gimmicky--thousands of photographers make digital""visual memoirs"" during one week in May 2003 and send them to the authors, who organize the top images into 50 state-by-state books--the results are nonetheless impressive, and less Hallmark-ish than one would expect. Sure, there are plenty of images of happy weddings and cute children, but the authors have clearly tried to make their book representative as well as uplifting, so that one gets a feeling for the diversity of a state as well as for its shared values. There is a moving, down-to-earth photograph, for example, of a Rehoboth father embracing his adopted son before he goes to school. A few pages earlier, another image shows a mother talking with four of her five sons, all of them living in a homeless shelter in Pittsfield. And the section on work covers everything from a woman performing Reiki on a 12-year-old German shepherd and clowns performing at a children's hospital to a lightkeeper polishing the salt off a lighthouse and two men mounting a run-flat tire at an auto dealership in Natick. The photos are uniformly excellent and there are plenty of shots of Massachusetts icons, like paddlewheel swan boats and Plimoth Plantation.