John Sherwood (2) (1932–2016)

For more than two years, John Sherwood roamed Maryland's small towns and city neighborhoods, traveled Appalachian back roads, and sailed the Chesapeake looking for people whose work or way of life recalled the state's rich and varied tradition. Maryland's Vanishing Lives is his vivid account of the people he met on those journeys. Working in a country store or an old-time movie house, on a small tobacco farm or a weathered skipjack, Sherwood's subjects interest us as people, as stubborn show more survivors who have watched—sometimes defiantly, sometimes wistfully—as the world moved on.

These Marylanders' stories poignantly show what happens to family businesses and ordinary folk in the face of new technology, suburban sprawl, franchise outlets, and changing tastes. But Maryland's Vanishing Lives is also an engaging celebration of pride and craft, of the will to survive, and of a certain kind of luck - that the highway never came too close, that the family didn't sell the business, that sometimes, living and making a living can be the same thing. show less