This album is part confection and part social document. Cohen presents photographs capturing various aspects of American life taken between the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th; next to each photograph he juxtaposes a contemporary photograph of a comparable or in some instances the same scene. Manhattan's skyline in 1876 was shorter in building height than it is today but more crowded in terms of ships' masts and sails around its watered periphery; a Union cavalry trooper in the Civil War wears a different uniform than today's soldier but the look in his eyes is much the same; and a 1928 photograph of a bootleg liquor bust near the U.S.-Mexico border seems a far more romantic affair than a present-day heroin bust in San Francisco. The then-and-now comparison gives the viewer a sense that the good of technological and social progress is often debatable. ISBN 0-06-250176-3: $40.00 (For use only in the library).