Forget about making America great again—in terms of sheer beauty, the country has always been amazing. And now there’s a book people can buy that is “armchair traveling at its best,” in the words of Reuel Golden.
Golden has edited National Geographic: The United States of America, a massive, gorgeously illustrated book that offers a state-by-state tour of the 50 states and the District of Columbia over the past 100 years. Collecting over 700 images from the archives of the D.C.-based National Geographic and accompanied by narrative captions and prefaces, the doorstopper chronicles American places over the last century from the jazz bars of New Orleans to the ski slopes of Colorado, the Hollywood Hills, the streets of Manhattan, a river baptism in Mississippi, and much more.