LIFE America: A Visual History--From Then to Now

"Life America" tells the story of the country's extraordinary history in pictures, often contrasting the past and present - the then and now. Before there were the buildings, there was the land - and in the first section "Life's" editors travel the country exploring what was there before the coming of man. From the heights of Denali to the depths of the Grand Canyon, from the Virginia coast when it was the exclusive domain of Native Americans to the cave dwellings of the mysteriously lost Anasazi civilization in the western deserts, the land as it once was is re-imagined. And then the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the rise of the great cities, the issues - women's rights, urban unrest, civil rights, child labor, the Great Depression - all are chronicled in the iconic photography of Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Dorothea Lange, and "Life's" own Margaret Bourke White, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gordon Parks, and others.