Famed documentarian Burns offers some of his favorite photographs of the United States, while MoMA photography curator Sarah Hermanson Meister offers context. With 251 four-color images by lens masters both known and unknown.

Documentarian Burns (Country Music: An Illustrated History) presents a stunning collection of photographs chronicling American history from 1839 to 2019. In the book's intimate introduction, Burns traces the roots of his "life's calling" to seeing his father cry for the first time while watching a movie after his mother's death from cancer ("I understand instantly the power of film and the safe harbor it permitted him to have"), and explains the camera movements he uses to bring still photographs to life in his documentaries. The black-and-white photographs are presented one per page and captioned only with the date and location, fostering the viewer's deep engagement with each image. (Comprehensive illustration notes appear at the end of the book.) It's a powerful and moving collection, ranging from the obscure (a 1903 photo of the first Japanese American baseball team in the mainland U.S.) to the famous (Robert Frank's 1955 image of passengers on a segregated trolley in New Orleans). Celebrity faces--Charlie Chaplin, Mark Twain, Johnny Cash--appear in unguarded moments, alongside natural wonders--Niagara Falls, Yellowstone National Park, Bryce Canyon--and evidence of racial violence, including a formerly enslaved man's scarred back and the aftermath of the 1911 lynching of an Oklahoma mother and her son. Visually arresting and expertly curated, this is a must-have for fans of Burns's documentaries. (Oct.)

Photographs are the lifeblood of Burns' landmark documentary film series. In this deeply personal volume, he pays tribute to pictures that have particularly inspired him as he asked, "Who are these strange and complicated people who like to call themselves Americans?" Burns' moving introduction is followed by curator Sarah Hermanson Meister's orienting essay in which she observes, "Photography has always been in the hands of many." This plurality is key to the power of this evocative and mesmerizing chronological collection of images by photographers unknown and renowned. A portrait of Isaac Jefferson, born enslaved at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, leads to stark images of the Civil War and the civil rights movement. Classic American landscapes from humble farms to the Grand Canyon are matched by images of factories, mines, and skyscrapers. Portraits dominate, with historic figures--Lincoln, Marian Anderson, Robert F. Kennedy, Ruby Bridges, Sandy Koufax, César Chávez, and John Lewis--interspersed with unnamed people at home, at work, protesting, and celebrating. Burns' distinctive photographic history, replete with illuminating backstories for every image, encompasses America's multitudinous beauty and dynamism as well as its tragic failures to realize its ideals.

In the filmmaker and author's latest photo book, the triumphs and tribulations of the American spirit take the stage. In his introduction to this remarkable collection of images, Burns shares early memories of his father, a cultural anthropologist, building a darkroom in the basement of their home in Newark, Delaware. According to the author, his father guided him to his life's calling, perhaps unwittingly. A short time later, following his mother's death, Burns witnessed his father weeping for the first time while watching a movie. "I understood instantly the power of film and the safe harbor it permitted him to have," he writes. This book, he notes, "was conceived and created in the spirit that assembling photographic evidence of our collective past might help heal our divisions." In a narrative that spans the years 1839 to 2019, Burns presents the work of various photographers one by one on a black background with a short description of the year and location the image was taken. The author follows the individual images with relevant notes, providing further detail about each image. Among the captivating photos are a self-portrait by photographer Louis Daguerre; the exposed, bloody back of an enslaved man; the first national monument, Devil's Tower, which many Native peoples consider a "sacred place"; a plane piloted by the Wright Brothers; a group of Sioux on a reservation in North Dakota; an ominous cloud that formed at the beginning of the Dust Bowl era; a tree-lined back road in the Mississippi Delta; Ernest Hemingway working in his studio.; a soldier locked in an embrace prior to shipping out overseas; a Black man drinking from a Jim Crow--era water fountain; Jacqueline Kennedy receiving the flag following John F. Kennedy's funeral; Coretta Scott King at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.; and Rosa Parks at the age of 80. A moving tribute to America's rich and complex history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.