Each of the 260 brilliant photographs in this marvelous collection is unique. Some are alive with bright colors and sparkling highlights, others evoke softer, quieter moods in muted hues and subtle gradations. Where one summons a vast, still land scape that fades into distant silence, the next vibrates with the energy of a charging bull or an exuberant child at play. But whether they show us crowded city streets or empty wilderness, all of these arresting pictures share one compelling quality: a sure sense of place that pulls us into the flame and turns an image into an experience.

 Every great place has its own special spirit, and every photographer represented here exhibits a rare gift for capturing it.Encompassing all seven continents and more than a century of superb photography, their work does more than see,it perceives--and invites us to share the wonderful magic of discovery.

 Mere words--even superlatives--don't do justice to this extraordinary book; its 260 breathtaking photographs defy description and demand to be explored with the same inspired intensity that they bring to their wonderful portrait of our world. Culled from among the millions of images in National Geographic's vast visual archive and capturing a dazzling variety of scenes from every corner of the Earth, Wide Angle is every bit as panoramic as its title suggests, a superb collection of landscapes and cityscapes, familiar views, and unknown vistas alike brought to new and vivid life.

 In these pages we visit every continent and the oceans that both separate and link them, in the company of some of the world's early photographers to such modern masters as Sam Abell, William Albert Allard,Jodi Cobb, and many more. Each of the book's twelve chapters focuses on a particular region, its natural splendors and wildlife, its peoples and their cultures;each is introduced by a thoughtful essay by Ferdinand Protzman, who reflects upon the art of photography and its many layers of meaning.

 Here are big-city streets awash in neon from New York to Sydney, dusty North African towns, and the long-deserted ruins of Machu Picchu. One spread discovers a camel caravan on a lonely trek across the immense, empty Sahara Desert while another captures more than two million Hajjis worshiping at Mecca's most sacred shrine. Two cheetahs are frozenin mid-leap; a stork wings its way across the frame in a pastel composition worthy of Hokusai. Every vision is arresting, unique, unforgettable.

 A companion, volume to Through the Lens and In Focus, Wide Angle completes a magnificent trilogy that spans the globe and sweeps across more than a century of dramatic photography to show us ourselves and the world around us in all its wonderful wealth of glories great and small.

Introduction

East & Southeast Asia

Oceania

Central & South Asia

Middle East

Central & Eastern Europe

Northern Europe

Western & Southern Europe

North Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

North America

Central & South America

Polar Regions