Inspirational photographers

One of the first photographers I fell in love with was Richard Avedon. He was a fashion photographer in New York who did some really beautiful portrait work. His book of portraits entitled "In the American West" impressed me a lot when I found in my second year of college. I miss being near a college with a large collection of great photo books. I just did a quick search on ebay for copies of the book and found them going for about $200. I love the internet because you can quickly find all kinds of photographers to inspire you but you really miss a lot of the nuances of photography that you can get from a really well produced photo book. I have a 30 inch monitor with a little over 4 million pixels but it doesn't compare to the detail you find on a large photo book.