Taschen's 'National Geographic: The United States of America' Collects 700 Images Across a Century

Key facts

• National Geographic: The United States of America is published by Taschen and curates more than 700 images from the National Geographic archives.
• The collection charts a century of growth and change across the United States, from Alabama to Wyoming and Alaska to Wisconsin.
• Until the 1920s, National Geographic stories focused on American industry, agriculture and public works before giving way to images of Americans at leisure.
• Thomas Kennedy, the magazine's director of photography in the 1990s, said there was an aspirational aspect to how National Geographic viewed and covered America.
• For most of the 20th century, editors portrayed America's best self-image through white middle-class and middle-American sensibilities, reinforcing idealized narratives familiar to schoolchildren.
• Featured photographs include Blaze Starr in Baltimore (Maryland, 1972, Robert W Madden) and the Mayflower II entering New York Harbour (1957, B Anthony Stewart).
• The Historic Alabama Theater in Birmingham, Paramount's showcase movie palace, opened in 1927 and is photographed by Susan Seubert in 2014.
• At Mammoth Cave's Booth's Amphitheatre, actor Edwin Booth delivered Hamlet's soliloquy in 1876, giving the chamber its name; a National Parks Service guide is shown there in 1964.