Showcasing a vast range of titles, from fashion to reportage, and high-end design to counter-cultural fanzines, this collection offers an insight not only into the work of the most influential art directors, publishers and designers of the last century, but into the way that we perceive and represent ourselves and the culture in which we live; our interests, concerns, and aspirations.

Vols. for 1871-76, 1913-14 include an extra number, The Christmas bookseller, separately paged and not included in the consecutive numbering of the regular series.

"Beautifully written in an engaging style, this book provides a new perspective on turn-of-the-century American culture that nuances and complicates our vision of that historical moment. I have no doubt that it will become a classic text in American studies, the history of American art, and the study of visual culture."—Kathleen Pyne, author of Art and the Higher Life: Painting and Evolutionary Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century America "Michael Leja, one of our most original and acute historians of American art, has written an indispensable and lively study of what we might call the modern anxiety of seeing. He traces our inherently skeptical view of the world back to the turn of the last century, a golden age of hucksters, swindlers, quacks, humbugs, rascals, cheats, and confidence men, and shows how artists as diverse as Eakins and Duchamp fit into this new culture of suspicion. Leja's book breathes fresh life into the period."—Michael Kimmelman "Bringing together the strangest of bedfellows-paintings by Thomas Eakins, spirit photographs, William Harnett's still lifes, occult philosophies, Duchamp readymades-Leja uncovers a deep culture of suspicion and skepticism in America around 1900. As Americans grappled with the complexities of modern life, 'seeing was not believing,' he argues in this deeply researched and brilliantly provocative study."—Wanda M. Corn, author of The Great American Thing: Modern Art and National Identity, 1915-1935

Inside this book are short biographical sketches about the many artists represented in the Library of Congress' Swann Collection compiled by Erwin Swann (1906-1973). In the early 1960s, Swann, a New York advertising executive started collecting original cartoon drawings of artistic and humorous interest. Included in the collection are political prints and drawings, satires, caricatures, cartoon strips and panels, and periodical illustrations by more than 500 artists, most of whom are American. The 2,085 items range from 1780-1977, with the bulk falling between 1890-1970. The Collection includes 1,922 drawings, 124 prints, 14 paintings, 13 animation cels, 9 collages, 1 album, 1 photographic print, and 1 scrapbook.

Throughout his life Peters depicted the ordinary places and people of America. From Rochester to Rockport, Peters made an amazingly coherent group of fascinating, masterful American pictures.