Barry Doyle’s “Dallas Iconography” is such a stunningly alive celebration of Dallas images that when the UPS man handed me the amazon.com box on my front steps in Chicago yesterday, I might have felt the box breathing in my hands.

Once inside, the dazzling journey of color, the combination of the craftsmanship and the artistry that jumped off the pages made me immediately want to book a flight to Dallas. And I didn’t even know I LIKED Dallas.

This book should be in every hotel room in Dallas. Featured at every civic event. Stocked heavily at every bookstore. If I lived in Dallas, I’d send one to anybody I’d like to have come visit. When you buy yours, you’ll want to put it out on the coffee table only because it’s too visually exciting to hide on a shelf.

“Coffee table” books are useful. Doyle’s is also beautiful. For most, that’s wonderful and that’s enough. Quick glimpses of beauty in our tumultuous world are appreciated by all. I have heard the music of Bill Evans and the music of Keith Jarrett described as “great background music for a quiet dinner.” And I wouldn’t argue. They’re not wrong. Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett music can be great background music. But if you listen harder to Jarrett or Evans, you’ll hear artistry.

In much the same way, if you look harder at Doyle’s work, you will also begin to see the artistry. I say “begin” because once you start looking at Doyle’s photographs, you find yourself wanting to go back and look again and again. Every time you look, you see more. Look really hard and you start to hear conversations. Stories.

Want proof? Take a look an image of Doyle’s that is not in this book.

Now, let me help you get started with hearing the conversations. Look at the image and think of somebody saying. . . .

“I TOLD you location was everything!”

Or. . . . .

“I KNEW we should have put in gas pumps too!

Or. . . .

“What time did you say the rush started?”

See what I mean? Look and then listen harder. You’ll hear your own unique conversation.

And every image in “Dallas Iconography” is like that. Look hard and the unique vision of the artist is so vibrant and alive that the image can prompt a conversation.

The book starts with the well known “Cityscapes” of Dallas. But through the vision of the artist, because true artists simply see things differently, Dealey Plaza and the infamous “grassy knoll” could evoke conversations of small towns, new beginnings, maybe even hope.

Cityscapes flow into artscapes, zooscapes, the particularly evocative “fairscapes” where the artist really kicks the character and feel of a state fair into high gear and where the book sends a message that this isn’t just a story about Dallas, this is a story about all of us. Including those of us, (who’s numbers are growing) living vastly different lives than the generation that proceeded us.

The book ends with “floralscapes,” where the full force of the artist comes shining through in images so sublime that most of us spend lifetimes searching for the conversations prompted by Doyle’s art.

In “A New Literary History of America,” the contemporary poet and, (full disclosure, friend of mine) Chris Wiman, a guy who knows more than a little bit about poetry, writes of arguably America’s greatest poet Robert Frost.

“Nothing is harder to recognize than radical originality manifesting itself in a common style. . . . . Frost’s originality lies precisely in (his) revealing, concealing kind of poetry.”

Barry Doyle’s “revealing concealing” originality can be seen in much the same way as Wiman sees Robert Frost. “Dallas Iconography” really is a beautiful coffee table book. It will make every Dallas civic booster proud. And that is wonderful. That’s enough.

But the book is also a collection of conversations with a true artist.

Conversations that will last.