I included this book in a Listmania I did on titles that took an overview of American photography in recent decades. It is, though, slightly different from the other books I mentioned because it sees photography as a much more creative experimental art. The 176 page portfolio section of the book starts with a Robert Frank work from 1952 followed by Lisette Model, Weegee, Helen Levitt, Saul Leiter, Andreas Feininger and so on. Included are 158 artists with a photo each but as the following years are covered the images get much more personal and subjective.
In the front of the book Andy Grundberg contributes a short essay detailing the changes in photography from the fifties and from the Whitney's point of view the interesting change (and increasingly so) was loss of distinction between photographers work and artists who took photographs. The museum, rightly I think, collects work that displays innovation whatever the photo medium, which now includes video and digital imagery. New technology will increasingly blur the edges of traditional brush art and photography.
The book's production is rather conservative in design but the portfolio section works well with each photo having generous margins. The matt art paper supports the 250 screen the images are printed in. Because of the very creative and personal nature of so many of the works I think the book might achieve an interesting stature in the future.