There are more than 770 spellbinding images—chosen from the 50,000 plus pictures that were reviewed—within these pages. They show the significant events and people most responsible for shaping our world and culture during the last 100 years.
Many are classic photographs from Life, burned deep into the memory of this nation; others are remarkable prints not seen for generations. Together they create the ultimate Life book—the most fascinating pictorial history of the last 10 decades ever published. LIFE: Our Century of Pictures was shaped by Richard B. Stolley. One of Life magazine's most distinguished editors, Stolley has spent almost five decades covering and analyzing the major events of our time.
The book spans the century in nine epochs. Each is introduced with an essay by a notable historical commentator.
In each is a special section, called Turning Point, that traces an event or trend from the beginning of the century forward. And each epoch closes with a Requiem, which recalls some memorable individuals who died during that time.
The worlds of politics, science and technology, and the arts, as well as the lives we led at home and at work—all are explored and brilliantly captured within these pages. LIFE: Our Century in Pictures is history as you've never seen it before—a book to be savored time and again, a book whose images will grow in depth and meaning as we move into the next millennium.
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It's not just a grab bag of 770 arresting, touching, scary, funny, alternately famous and unfamiliar images. It tells a semi-coherent story by breaking up the century into nine "epochs," each introduced with a brief essay by a leading intellectual light (David M. Kennedy, Paul Fussell, and Garry Wills do especially well). There are fun facts aplenty: did you know Columbia Pictures' Lady Liberty-like logo was inspired by a debutante in an anti-Hun propaganda poster? Or that Ike almost chose Margaret Chase Smith instead of Nixon? Each epoch gets assigned a "Turning Point," sometimes a defining moment or a flashy burst of upbeat cultural documentary to offset the sometimes stark violent-event photos. The World War I section breaks up the black-and-white trench-fighting scenes with a quickie history of the American musical, pages as radiant as a rainbow. Each chapter ends with "Requiem" photos of people whose passing is still news.
The layouts are often superb: you have to open the book to see how perfect a Mondrian looks next to a photo of college girls doing patriotic calisthenics that transform them into a similarly energetic grid. There are heftier historic-photo collections, like Bruce Bernard's true test of coffee-table construction, the 1,120-page Century: One Hundred Years of Human Progress, Regression, Suffering, and Hope. But you're not going to find a more popular book of its kind than Stolley and Chiu's. --Tim Appelo
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