Slideshow: The Best Photo Books of 2008

Right: Portraits from the Evangelical Ivy League
by Jona Frank (Chronicle Books, $35)
Frank's nuanced portraits of students at conservative Christian Patrick Henry College are not a bit judgmental. Though the students are inordinately well-scrubbed and dress daily in coat and tie, they are as committed to a liberal arts eduction -- albeit one that manages to reconcile Aristotle and Creationism -- as they are to placing God at the center of American culture and government. And they are more complex than you probably think, a view supported with interviews and documents. Some of the latter betray a naive ideological agenda, but others are surprising. One student's list of heroes includes Teddy Roosevelt and Susan B. Anthony along with Reagan and Bush; another's statement of principles includes "How much I have is not important" and "We are all growing, so be a good steward of what God gives you." If you remove the God from those beliefs, they are no less admirable. -- r.h.