The historian Bernard DeVoto said of Taft: "For one man to produce two books so original and fundamental, so comprehensive, so authoritative, and I may add so delightful—surely this is one of the most remarkable scholarly achievements in our time.
"[4] Taft's extensive papers, documenting the research he did in all fields, were donated by his children to the Kansas Historical Society.
For the first three years of his life, he remained in Japan, where his parents were serving as missionaries, but when he was three, his family moved to Rochester, New York.
Taft also attributed his interest in this field (and American art more generally) to his early reading of an account of John C. Fremont's western explorations.
[3] In various chapters, the book details the science and art of daguerreotypes, tintypes, carte de visites, stereographs, and more modern developments.
[3] Francois Brunet, Professor of Art and Literature of the United States at the Paris Diderot University, praised Taft's work as grass-roots historical research.
[12] This book concentrated on those artists who traveled to an as-yet largely unsettled West to create observational drawings from life.
[citation needed] Taft devotes chapters to little-known illustrators, such as Frenzeny, Tavenier, Möllhausen, and Zaugbaum, praising those artists who actually witnessed the scenes they portrayed, and presented it as accurately and in detail as possible.
[12] Taft used the same techniques as in the photography book—doing primary research, contacting relatives of the artists, tracing down pictures in out-of-the way libraries, and scanning old newspapers in western towns.