Customer Reviews

LIFE Legends: The Century's Most Unforgettable Faces (Life Magazine)

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Legends is an art book; displaying noted celebrities from the past century. It is a fun read, but more of a coffee table book for the star and starlet buff. The photographs are good, taking from nearly a full page to even double page spreads, but it is the captions that go with them that had the most appeal to me. Some photos are themselves famous, while others show well-known people in their not so-well-known lives. The captions are comments about the subject, often by their peers but occasionally by themselves. Not only does this give you a new insight to the person photographed, but to the speaker as well. I particularly liked the examples where person A comments on person B only to find elsewhere in the book person B commenting on person A! A lady friend of mine, who has this book, tore the full-page picture of Katharine Hepburn and the accommodating full-page caption with it. The caption quoted Hepburn on how she lived her life: " . . . I've just done what I D___ well wanted to . . . " My friend hung these up in her apartment to inspire herself.

I had written a review before, but will repeat the same. The books (I had ordered 8) came shipped in a box, with each book carefully protected with plastic. Excellent product and service.

As a history and political buff, my complaint against this book is that it includes too many entertainment types and many others that did much more to change the world are excluded. The leaders whose photos appear in this collection are:

*) Adolph Hitler
*) Winston Churchill
*) Franklin Roosevelt
*) Fidel Castro
*) Douglas Macarthur
*) Mao Tse-Tung
*) V. I. Lenin
*) Joseph Stalin
*) John F. Kennedy

To me, the most glaring omissions from the leaders were Dwight Eisenhower, Japanese Emperor Hirohito, Ho Chi Minh and Benito Mussolini. Eisenhower was the most important Allied military man in World War II and a two-term president of the United States. Militarily and politically he was far more important that Macarthur could ever aspire to be. Hirohito was the leader of the Japanese Empire that tried to conquer all of Asia and managed to survive on the throne after his nation was completely defeated. Ho Chi Minh led the small nation of North Vietnam to victory over the mightiest military force in the world and completely changed the American body politic. Finally, Benito Mussolini was the first of the Fascist dictators, while the country he led was weak; his influence on the world was strong, there is debate as to whether the Nazis could have taken power in Germany without the Italian model.
While I understand the reason for the inclusion of so many glamorous entertainers and enjoyed seeing their photos, I also firmly believe that there were many other people that were far more unforgettable and made a greater impact on the world than most of the entertainers depicted here.