Early in his career as reporter/photographer/editor for the Keowee Courier, Ashton Hester became fascinated by the volumes containing issues from past years of the paper, which was founded in 1849. He began compiling a weekly column containing news highlights from the corresponding dates 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, etc., years ago. He first titled the column "From the Past" but eventually changed it to "Looking Back," which is also the title of this book and two previous "Looking Back" books. The first book highlighted the years 1888, 1907, 1911 and 1914, and the second, 1915, 1918, 1924 and 1935.