Eyes of the Nation: A Visual History of the United States - Softcover

Virga, Vincent

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1593730357 ISBN 13: 9781593730352

Publisher: Bunker Hill Publishing Inc, 2004

Synopsis

An incomparable visual history of the United States--engrossing in its narrative, pictorially sumptuous, and exhilarating(if occasionally sobering) in its epic sweep across five centuries. Never before has America's past been made so intriguingly accessible, both to the eyes and to the mind. Eyes of the Nation profits from seven chapters of lucid historical commentary by the distinguished historian Alan Brinkley, but at its core is a bountiful narrative-in-pictures drawn from the millions of maps, prints, photographs, posters, manuscripts, motion pictures, and other treasures in the Special Collections of the Library of Congress. In vivid and inclusive fashion, the book proceeds from the first encounters of Europeans and Indians, through colonial days and the founding of the nation, industrialization and the western expansion, and the catastrophes and transformations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, right up to the present day. Thanks to brilliant art selection by Vincent Virga and the Library of Congress's Curators, every stage of the nation's development, every swerve in its fortunes, assumes arresting visual form. In its audacious and sophisticated approach to the show-and-tell of history--as visual as it is textual, as thorough as it is irresistibly anecdotal--Eyes of the Nation is without peer. Vincent Virga has been called America's foremost picture editor. He has researched, edited, and designed picture sections for over 150 books, most recently for Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton, as well as the full-length photo essay, The Eighties (with a foreword by Richard Rhodes), Eisenhower (with Michael Beschloss), and Summer, an anthology. He has published three novels, Gaywyck, A Comfortable Corner, and Vadriel Vail. He is also completing a book exploring maps as cultural documents with the Library of Congress titled Cartographia: Mapping Civilization. Since the Special Collections were established in 1897, the Curators of the Library of Congress have played a crucial role in acquiring and maintaining the Library's collections, particularly those that document the American Experience. Eyes of the Nation is the first book for the general reader on which the Curators have collaborated. Alan Brinkley is Provost and Professor of History at Columbia University. His previous books include Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression, which won the American Book Award for History, and The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. His essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in the American Historical Review, the Journal of American History, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, and other publications.

About this title

Review:

The Library of Congress is the largest library on earth, with more than 111 million items. Eyes of the Nation's nearly 400 lavishly illustrated pages take the reader into the vaults of the library to see such priceless relics as Thomas Jefferson's draft for the Declaration of Independence, James Madison's handwritten "Notes on Debates on the Bill of Rights," and Abraham Lincoln's manuscript of the Emancipation Proclamation. And not only the obvious artifacts of American history are featured. Also included are maps so old that cartographers drew sea serpents cavorting in the ocean waves, a galley of Leaves of Grass with Walt Whitman's handwritten corrections, and a poster advertising the Grateful Dead at San Francisco's Avalon Ballroom.

Besides the abundant and well-captioned illustrations, each chapter is introduced by an essay by historian Alan Brinkley, a professor at Columbia and winner of the National Book Award. Brinkley's text could stand alone as a solid, balanced overview of American history. It also adds essential structure and context to the book's parade of images. Eyes of the Nation is a rare combination of ravishing visuals with substantive, carefully conceived text and structure. For anyone interested in the vast American experience, it's nearly impossible to open its pages without being drawn in.

From the Publisher:

"A beautiful book--Vincent Virga has harvested timeless treasures from the Library of Congress and Alan Brinkley has brought them to life with vivid prose."
--General Colin L. Powell

"A gripping and absorbing book whose words and pictures immerse you in the great sweep of American history."
--Walter Cronkite

"It's a dazzling cornucopia of Americana...I can't think of a better seasonal gift, though it's more than that. It's a collector's item."
--Herman Wouk

About this edition

• Publisher: Bunker Hill Publishing Inc
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1593730357
• ISBN 13: 9781593730352
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416