The words "National Geographic" are likely to conjure up scenes of faraway lands and exotic customs, but as generations of readers can testify with delight, the magazine has always paid generous attention to the fascinating people and places found closer to home. For over a century National Geographic writers and photographers have made America their beat, and this glorious volume collects the very best of their stories and images. On Assignment USA is a vivid, extraordinarily engrossing celebration of a changing nation -- its states and cities, its history and heroes, its natural disasters, scientific triumphs, and above all, the people who give the United States its unique spirit.

But it's much more as well: It's also the "story behind the story," an inside look at the precepts and ideas that have shaped National Geographic's coverage of the U.S. and an up-close portrait of the photographers and writers who have made the magazine a colorful, revealing mirror of America.

From the Texas border to Alaska's coast, from Hollywood to Manhattan, this wonderful book crisscrosses America to create a spectacular panorama. Captured in stunning photos and sparkling prose, here are glittering cities and lonely prairies, majestic rivers and magnificent mountains, along with every kind of human endeavor and accomplishment. Here are firsthand descriptions of the deadly eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 and of the devastation of Hurricane Andrew in 1992. You'll fly with America's sweetheart. Amelia Earhart, alone across the Pacific in the 1930s -- and witness man's landing on the moon three decades later. You'll go to powwows with Native Americans, travel the nation with migrant beekeepers. You'll explore every aspect of the American experience.

This is at once an illustrated omnibus of one hundred years of life in the United States and an inside look at the classic journal that has chronicled the American century with such an observant and wide-ranging eye. Come with National Geographic -- On Assignment USA. [close]