SELECT PRESS COVERAGE

   Great Americans: Famous Names, Real People, by KK Ottesen

Great Americans has been featured prominently on the Today Show, CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’s All Things Considered, Public Radio International, Eye on Books, Fox Morning News; as well as in newspapers and magazines across the country, including The San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times, Chicago Sun Times, Entertainment Weekly, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, New York Observer, In-Style Magazine, and Reader’s Digest.  Below are a few examples.

  

Robert Siegal talks with KK Ottesen, photographer and author of the book, "Great Americans," which features photos and stories about Americans across the country who have the same names as famous Americans.  Siegal also talks with three of the people featured in her book:  Al Capone of Franklinville, N.J.; Marilyn Monroe of Des Moines, Iowa; and Pastor Abraham Lincoln of Chicago, Ill.  Listen Now.

Al Capone works in a South Philly food distribution center; Emily Dickinson studies chemistry at a Quaker college; Greta Garbo, born in Italy, is a divorced cancer researcher living in Kentucky. From John Adams to John Wayne, Ottesen reveals, through b&w photographs and informal interviews, the people who share their names with giants in American history and culture. It's a cute idea whose end result could have been merely clever, but Ottesen's subjects are fascinating. Paul Revere, founder and pastor of the Embassy of Heaven church, tells of being evicted from his land by the Oregon National Guard; in response to Ottesen's question, "What does it mean to be an American?" (a question she asked all her subjects), Revere says, "Ha ha ha. A bunch of people who have fallen asleep who haven't got a clue what's going on." To Rosa Parks, a mother of three who also holds down two jobs, being an American means "we get our freedom. We have the freedom to go anywhere that we want to go." There are sad parts--Herbert Hoover admitting that his days are "dark. I don't have a very good outlook on the day anymore...  haven't been happy since the wife went away"--and humorous bits--Farmer Homer Simpson saying that people "used to call all during the night: 'Is Bart there?' I finally figured out that it was on television... Don't care nothing about television, just the ballgames"--and lots of food for thought. People were surprisingly open with Ottesen, and their stories are compulsively readable...

In KK Ottesen's rewarding new photo essay, "Great Americans," Babe Ruth is a woman - an 84-year-old former flight instructor from Lansing, Mich.  Homer Simpson is a 74-year-old farmer in Loundon, Tenn.  Edgar Allen Poe, 47, runs a water treatment plant in Comanche, Okla., and plays a little guitar on the side....

These lives are quieter than the ones attached to their better-known namesakes, and in many ways they're more poetic.  The message couldn't be simpler, says Ottesen:  "The whole point is, everyone has a story."

On the Fourth of July weekend, it's good to be reminded what makes America great -- folks like Muhammad Ali, Langston Hughes, Elvis Presley, Gertrude Stein, Martha Washington.  Writer/photographer KK Ottesen has gone in search of America's best and brightest and found them alive and well.  Thanks to the Internet, she has found one great American in every state who shares the name of another famous American and she has gone in search of whatever homespun wisdom they might have to offer....

"Great Americans" is a book that both embraces and transcends its clever concept.  At first, the reader is drawn by the humorous juxtaposition of the familar name with the unfamiliar face, but the stories are well worth reading.  These great Americans, no matter what their names, are folks just like you and me, glad to be alive and going about their business, whether you're Frederick Douglass in Manassas, Va., drinking a little too much while he's out of work, or Homer Simpson, a 74-year-old farmer in Loudon, Tenn., who took his sweet time realizing what all the fuss was about and why he was getting phone calls from people who asked, "Is Bart there?"

Every picture does indeed tell a story in this fine book -- sometimes inspiring, sometimes sad, but always true to the heart of the heartland."