Barry Lopez

A FEW HOURS AFTER THE JAPANESE BLITZKRIEG AT Pearl Harbor, a Czech national, a combat pilot who'd been shot down over the French Alps in 1918 by a German flying ace, rapped briskly at the door of an apartment in Birmingham, Alabama. A handsome young woman answered. The man, dapper......

Los Angeles River, westValley, circa 1955 (top) andthe same location today. In 1911, a huge public auction of farm machinery and implements marked the end of the 40-year reign of King Wheat in the Valley. Four years later, William Mulholland's water surged through a network of steel and cast-iron pipe,......