An amazing book

I was combing through eBay looking for prints of some of my favorite local spots, when I found a beautiful print of La Berarde.  It was only $20 and I almost bought it immediately, but was so intrigued by it that I did a little research on it's provenance.  It turned out to be a litho by Thornton Oakley from 1927.  Unfortunately, it was a plate that had been sawed out of a book (Cloud Lands of France) by someone.  I think most people who like engravings know that many antique books get chopped up and sold individually by dealers.  Even large and very famous places like Graham Arader did it at one time.  It's called "Book Breaking", and I think it sucks.  Not as bad as breaking library books, but still pretty lame.  Anyway, the big argument that book breakers will make is that they make artwork that would be impossibly  expensive as a book accessible to  most people as individual plates.  i.e. very few people would be able to afford an atlas, but many people can afford to buy one print chopped out of an atlas.  I guess I can kind of buy it.  Anyway, as soon as I discovered that the Thornton Oakley print came from a book, I immediately decided to find and buy the entire book.  I was girding myself for an astronomical price, but within five minutes had found a first edition in very good condition for ten USD.  Thats right, a first edition book from 1927 with lithographically printed drawings for ten bucks.  I bought it immediately (and am thinking about trying to buy up more copies to keep them out of the hands of the book breakers).  A few weeks laster, I received it in the mail.  Let me cut to the chase: It is a revelation.  The drawings are beautiful.  The writing (by Amy Oakley, Thornton's wife) is fabulous  and contains much fascinating history of the region.  Last, but not least, I just fell in love with the story of a young American couple from Philadelphia arriving by boat and exploring some of our very favorite (and quite remote in 1924) places in the Alps.

Here are some terrible scans