Decade

A successor to Phaidon’s award-winning CENTURY: One Hundred Years of Human Progress, Suffering, Regression and Hope (1999) – described by American Photo as a ‘veritable road map’ of the twentieth century’s seminal events – Decade provides a startling visual overview of the last 10 years in world history. Adhering to the same standards of historical accuracy and scholarship as its predecessor, this book offers a sensitive anthology of 10 years in photography that will appeal to readers of all ages and interests.

Decade presents 500 engaging photographic images, both iconic and idiosyncratic, selected by acclaimed photo editor Eamonn McCabe and arranged in strict chronological order to tell the story of the first decade in our new millennium. The shorter historical span of this book, compared to CENTURY, allows this sequence to embrace developments in art, architecture, sport and technology alongside key moments in international political affairs, so that the reader encounters surprising moments from our history alongside those familiar from coverage in the mass media. Global in scope, these photographs tackle subjects ranging from the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11 to the AIDS epidemic blighting Africa, from the first tests of the Hadron collider at CERN, Geneva, to the death of the King of Pop, Michael Jackson. Award-winning documentary photography sits alongside the new ‘citizen journalism’, which has seen ordinary bystanders capture historic events equipped with nothing more sophisticated than a mobile phone camera. Each image is accompanied by both a short descriptive and an extended, historical caption, to provide a wider context within which to understand these often beautiful, always surprising, photographs.15 historical and thematic essays are also included, exploring the events, trends and social phenomena that have characterized the decade.