100 Photographs That Changed the World

Nominated through on-line votes and selected by Life editors, the 100 images in this compendium cover unforgettable moments in "The Arts," "Society," "War & Peace" and "Science & Nature." The photographs are all striking-whether visually or viscerally, artistically or emotionally-but many are difficult to look at. As Gordon Parks writes in his introduction, "these images helped push us toward a change." And so it's possible to revisit the moments when a white crowd in Indiana cheered at the hanging bodies of two black men, when grieving members of AIDS activist David Kirby gathered around his deathbed, when the 1937 bombing of Shanghai left a train station destroyed and a single bloody child alone amidst the wreckage. There are a few lighter moments-the Beatles arriving at JFK in 1964, the American Olympic hockey team celebrating their 1980 landmark victory over the "Soviet machine"-but over all, this gathering of photos shows our darker hours. There's little here that hasn't been reprinted numerous times, but it's a stirring collection nevertheless. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.