Robert Hughes begins where American art itself began, with the Native Americans and the first Spanish invaders in the Southwest; he ends with the art of today. In between, in a scholarly text that crackles with wit, intelligence and insight, he tells the story of how American art developed. Hughes investigates the changing tastes of the American public; he explores the effects on art of America's landscape of unparalleled variety and richness; he examines the impact of the melting-pot of cultures that America has always been. Most of all he concentrates on the paintings and art objects themselves and on the men and women - from Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins to Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe, from Arthur Dove and George Bellows to Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko -awho created them. This is an uncompromising and refreshingly opinionated exploration of America, told through the lens of its art.

Professor Carney analyses Frank Capra's life as well as the broad cultural context of his films.

To honor the 100th birthday of America's internationally preeminent photographer, Paul Strand, the National Gallery of Art presents a collection of his most profound photographs and outstanding images demonstrating Strand's purity of vision. 113 black-and-white photographs, 30 duotones.

For this remarkable volume, Mora and Brannan immersed themselves in the vast archive at the Library of Congress and emerged with unknown treasures. Theirs is a new view of the achievement of the FSA photographers--the most comprehensive in print--that gives them their due as the creators of a new American photographic vision.