This is a slim but beautiful catalog of part of the collection of the Powerhouse Museum in Australia. The shoes themselves are all in color and clearly photographed, the pictures ranging from a couple of inches to an entire page. A few of the smaller ones were a trifle hard to see and would have benefited from being enlarged.

There are also a number of historic photographs, mostly black and white, as well as color reproductions of paintings and advertisements to add historical context.

The introductory matter explains the history of the collection and gives an explanation of shoe-making. The shoes are mainly arranged chronologically with a few introductory paragraphs relative to the period. All the shoes are labelled, but details are give in a Shoe-List section in the back. Of particular interest is the section on Australian shoes which is a valuable supplement to more general histories of shoes. There is also a list of further reading. ( )