Pictures of you - Rory MacLean

The 20th century took history out of the hands of historians and gave it to photographers. In Pictures of You, best-selling author Rory MacLean (Stalin's Nose, Berlin: Imagine a City) draws on the world's largest archive of amateur photography to discover ten real lives, one from each decade of that century. The first killing of the Cold War, the dying hopes of a doomed aviator, the ghosts of Native America at Alcatraz, Chairman Mao's most timid lover; ten journeys in time, ten forgotten voices that echo down from the past, ten intimate stories that mirror our own."A delicately beautiful book, haunting in its effect. Superb." Alexander McCall Smith "Stunning! A unique virtuoso exercise in empathy, narrative and imagination." Jan Morris