Eyes of the Nation - Softcover

"The most extraordinary book of its kind to appear in memory." "This stunning book unleashes American History at its purest level." "A sumptuous visual chronicle of the life and times of America. The captions sparkle brightest, adding context while offering surprising information." "It breathes life into history." "A beautiful book." ...the most extraordinary book of its kind to appear in memory... -- Buffalo News ...this stunning book unleashes American History at its purest level. -- The Tattered Cover ...it breathes life into history.... -- USA Today ...a sumptuous visual chronicle of the life and times of America....the captions sparkle brightest, adding context while offering surprising information... -- The New York Times A beautiful book. -- Colin Powell A gripping and absorbing book whose words and pictures immerse you in the great sweep of American history. -- Walter Cronkite

Eyes of the Nation is a magnificent one-volume pictorial and narrative history of the United States, with more than five hundred exceptional illustrations, many reproduced here for the first time. Never before has America's past been made so intriguingly accessible, both to the eyes and to the mind. Eyes of the Nation features seven chapters of lucid historical commentary by the distinguished historian Alan Brinkley. A bountiful narrative-in-pictures is 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 encounter of Europeans and Indians, through colonial days and the founding of the nation, industrialisation and westward expansion, and the catastrophes and transformations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, bringing us, finally, up to the present day. Thanks to the brilliant art selections by picture editor Vincent Vigra and the Library's curators, every stage of the nation's development, every swerve of its fortunes, assumes arresting visual form. In addition to abundant and well-captioned illu