TIME History's Greatest Images

Book excerpt: Here is a book that indelibly captures the human pageant through the remarkable art of photojournalism. After all, we live in a visual age, when history is both made and experienced through photographs, from the flag raising at Iwo Jima to the thrill of the first footstep on the moon. Now TIME has gathered the most significant and influential photos in history in a magnificent volume that celebrates the art and craft of photojournalism: Great Images. Here are scientific breakthroughs, political upheavals and social revolutions, from the first photographs of an embryo in a human womb to the indelible images of America's Civil Rights movement. Here are sailors kissing nurses, a single man defying a Chinese tank, firefighters raising the American flag over the ruins of the World Trade Center. Based on a highly successful 2000 book, this new edition has been completely updated to add the most significant pictures of the last decade, from hanging chads ands the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.