Drawing from the vast photography collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, American Geography charts a visual history of land use in the United States From the earliest photographic records of human habitation to the latest aerial and digital pictures, from almost uninhabited desert and isolated mountainous territories to suburban sprawl and densely populated cities, this compilation offers an increasingly nuanced perspective on the American landscape. Divided by region, these photographs address ways in which different histories and traditions of land use have given rise to different cultural transitions: from the Midwestern prairies and agricultural traditions of the South, to the riverine systems in the Northeast, and the environmental challenges and riches of the far West. American Geography also looks at the evidence of older habitation from the adobe dwellings and ancient cultures of the Southwest to the Midwestern mounds, many of them prehistoric. SFMOMA's last photography exhibition to consider land use, Crossing the Frontier (1996), examined only the American West. At the time, this focus offered a different way to think about landscape, and a useful way to reconsider pictures of the region. American Geography expands upon the groundwork laid by Crossing the Frontier, providing a complex, thought-provoking survey. Photographers include: Carleton E. Watkins, Barbara Bosworth, Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Mitch Epstein, An-My Lê, William Eggleston, Alec Soth, Mishka Henner, Trevor Paglen, Victoria Sambunaris, Emmet Gowin, Robert Adams, Terry Evans, Dorothea Lange and Mark Ruwedel, among others.

Award-winning photographer Matt Black traveled over 100,000 miles to chronicle the reality of today’s unseen and forgotten America. When Magnum photographer Matt Black began exploring his hometown in California’s rural Central Valley—dubbed “the other California,” where one-third of the population lives in poverty—he knew what his next project had to be. Black was inspired to create a vivid portrait of an unknown America, to photograph some of the poorest communities across the US. Traveling across forty-six states and Puerto Rico, Black visited designated “poverty areas,” places with a poverty rate above 20 percent, and found that poverty areas are so numerous that they’re never more than a two-hour’s drive apart, woven through the fabric of the country but cut off from “the land of opportunity.” American Geography is a visual record of this five-year, 100,000-mile road trip, which chronicles the vulnerable conditions faced by America’s poor. This compelling compilation of black-and-white photographs is accompanied by Black’s own travelogue—a collection of observations, overheard conversations in cafe´s and public transportation, diner menus, bus timetables, historical facts, and snippets from daily news reports. A future classic of photography, this monograph is supported by an international touring exhibition and is a must-have for anyone with an interest in witnessing the reality of an America that’s been excluded from the American Dream.

"Owen Dwyer and Derek Alderman examine civil rights memorials as cultural landscapes, offering the first book-length critical reading of the monuments, museums, parts, streets, and sites dedicated to the African-American struggle for civil rights and interpreting them is the context of the Movement's broader history and its current scene. In paying close attention to which stories, people, and places are remembered and which are forgotten, the authors present an engaging account of an unforgettable story."--BOOK JACKET.

"In this book, Susan Gillman uncovers the ways that geographers and historians, novelists and travel writers, used "American Mediterranean" as a formula from the early nineteenth century to the 1970s. She asks what cultural work is done by this kind of unsystematic, hypothetical, even open-ended comparative thinking. Although "American Mediterranean" is not a household term in the United States today, it once circulated widely in French, Spanish, and English. Gillman tracks two centuries of this geohistorical concept across different networks of writers: from nineteenth-century geographers to writers of the 1890s who reflected on the Pacific world of Southern California, and to literary writers and thinkers of the 1930s and 40s who drew on this comparative tradition to speculate on the political past and future of the Caribbean. As Gillman shows, all these figures grappled with the American legacies of European imperialism and slavery. Following the term through its travels across disciplines and borders, Gillman reveals a little-known racialized history, both long-lasting and fleeting, one that paradoxically appealed to a range of race-neutral ideas and ideals. American Mediterraneans adds and explicates a new element in the stock of race discourses in the Americas"--

The quest for resources, from farmland to gold to oil, has shaped much of U.S. history. Ensuing competition for these resources has had a tangible effect on both American geography and the environment. This book shows how American communities formed over time in response to environmental factors and how policy, culture, and day-to-day life in the United States is a response to the land itself. Also included is a look at modern debates over the best way to protect the environment while encouraging innovation, including the role of the EPA and other government organizations in regulation.

"Forget everything you think you know about the direction of the American economy, about our grow­ing need for foreign oil, about the rise of the service economy and the decline of American manufacturing. The story of the next thirty years will not be a repeat of the last thirty." One of the most respected voices on Wall Street, Meredith Whitney shot to global prominence in 2007 when her warnings of a looming crisis in the financial sector proved all too prescient. Now, in her first book, she expands upon her biggest call since the financial crisis.