Southerners Baldwin (author of books about the South, most recently, A Gentlemen in Charleston and the Manner of His Death) and Turk (photography, Atlanta College of Art) laud the mantel as "our domestic alter." The photobook features some 200 b&w images of Southern homes (not just mantelpieces) drawn from the Library of Congress's Historic American Building Survey catalog and its website, from farmhouses to a mansion whose owner may have been the model for Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind. Design comments on each house are compiled in a concluding chapter. Annotation ©2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)