Telling America's story in pictures is a particularly American thing to do. We're a visual people, and U.S. history can seem like an epic newsreel set to a jazz and rock-'n'-roll sound track.
Telling America's story in pictures is also something Time has been doing exceptionally well for all of our 84 years. And this week we are publishing America: An Illustrated History, a mesmerizing 272-page book that charts the great sweep of the American narrative in rich and indelible images.
Our editors pored over the archives of Time and Life magazines, the collections of the U.S. Library of Congress and of...