Magnum Photos Bruce Davidson used this couple for his “East 100th Street” series, in 1966.

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Modern-day revolutions and photography go hand in hand, and chances are Magnum Photo's photographers have been there, documenting the scene as camera-toting witnesses to history on the move. There is no shortage of visually engaging history lessons to be discovered in a slew of new books featuring works by Magnum's illustrious roster, whose photographs capture the ebb and flow of life in constant flux and conflict during the 20th century.

In the second half of the 19th century, the United States produced Walt Whitman, a poet who loved the world in all its forms and manifestations, from the grandeur of its oceans and mountains and the exuberant energy of its cities to the fragile lives of the humblest of his fellow earthborn creatures: And do not call the tortoise unworthy for not being some thing else, Whitman writes in a line from “Song of Myself,” America's most powerful and spiritually awakened poem.