Unforgettable Images: Images That Have Changed Our Lives

The Hindenberg disaster. Andy Warhol’s Campbells Soup Can. Marilyn Monroe standing over the subway grating. The first step onto the Moon. These powerful images have left an indelible impression in our collective mind’s eye. This mesmerizing little volume celebrates these and hundreds of other artistic and cultural touchstoneswithout actually reproducing them. Each page is devoted to a single image, with a caption providing its title or description and the date that it was created. Just that information evokes the image vividly. The page itself is blank. Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother. The album cover of Sgt. Pepper. A man facing a row of tanks in Tiananmen Square. Arranged in chronological order from 1900 to the present, these images are a testament to the enduring impact of photography, art, and the imageas well as to the graphic precision of our shared memory bank. It’s also a great pop quiz on cultural literacy.