LIFE : Our Century in Pictures 909.829 LIF

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LIFE Our Century in Pictures909.829 LIF

• Dana Weyhing
• Winter 2004
• Library 150

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Bibliographic Citation

• LIFE our century in pictures / edited by
  Richard B. Stolley, Tony Chiu deputy editor and
  writer. Boston Little, Brown and Company, .
• vii, 424 p. col. ill. cm.
• A Bullfinch Press Book
• includes index
• I. Title. II. Stolley, Richard B. III. Chiu,
  Tony. IV. Life Magazine. V. Bullfinch Press
  Book.

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Arrangement

• Chronologically arranged from 1900 to 1999

Indexing

• Standard alphabetical index of important terms
  (which are in this case people and events)

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Scope

• Covers all the most famous people and events in
  the 20th century

Currency

• This serves a historical purpose so therefore
  currency is not really an issue.

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Intended Purpose

• Historical pictorial reference to all the biggest
  stories of the 20th century published in Life
  Magazine.

Additional Purposes Served

• Each section of the book is introduced with an
  essay by a notable historical commentator.

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Authority

• About the AuthorRichard B. Stolley is Senior
  Editorial Adviser at Time Inc. A native of Pekin,
  Illinois, and graduate of Northwester University,
  he began practicing journalism at age 15. After
  working at three newspapers, he joined the staff
  of the weekly LIFE magazine in 1953 and for 19
  years covered events and personalities throughout
  the world. Most memorable among these stories was
  the death of President John F. Kennedy Stolley
  discovered and obtained exclusively for LIFE the
  famous Zapruder film of the assassination. In
  1974, he was the founding editor of People
  magazine. After eight years there, he was named
  editor of the monthly LIFE and then editorial
  director of all Time Inc. magazines. He assumed
  his present position in 1993. (from Amazon.com)
• Physical Format
• Book only

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Impressions

• It's not just a grab bag of 770 arresting,
  touching, scary, funny, alternately famous and
  unfamiliar images. It tells a semi-coherent story
  by breaking up the century into nine "epochs,"
  each introduced with a brief essay by a leading
  intellectual light (David M. Kennedy, Paul
  Fussell, and Garry Wills do especially well).
  There are fun facts aplenty did you know
  Columbia Pictures' Lady Liberty-like logo was
  inspired by a debutante in an anti-Hun propaganda
  poster? Or that Ike almost chose Margaret Chase
  Smith instead of Nixon? Each epoch gets assigned
  a "Turning Point," sometimes a defining moment or
  a flashy burst of upbeat cultural documentary to
  offset the sometimes stark violent-event photos.
  The World War I section breaks up the
  black-and-white trench-fighting scenes with a
  quickie history of the American musical, pages as
  radiant as a rainbow. Each chapter ends with
  "Requiem" photos of people whose passing is still
  news.

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Examples of Reference Uses

• What did Rudolf Valentino look like?
• What did James Watson and Francis Crick (the men
  who discovered DNA) look like?
• Who is Louise Brown?
• Answer the first child born of an egg fertilized
  outside of the mother
• When did Cabbage Patch Kids appear on the market?
  Where did their names come from?
• Answer 1983, and a birth registry from Georgia
  in 1938.