Born from a desire to follow the seasons across America and find lyricism in contemporary American life despite its dark histories, American Prospects has enjoyed lasting acclaim. Its pages contain unexpected emotion, despair, tenderness and hope. Fear is expressed through beauty, sadness through irony. Strangely, the society it seemed to anticipate has come into being; its insights reflect the present.
 
 
 
Often out of print, Joel Sternfeld's seminal book returns here to the format of the original 1987 edition. Its now-classic images, alongside previously unpublished photographs, examine a once-pristine land cared for by Indigenous peoples who needed no lessons in stewardship, now occupied by diverse peoples seeking salvation through late capitalism's difficult paths. The result suggests a vast nation whose prospects are inseparable from global ones, an “adolescent of the world”, unaware of its strengths, full of idealism and frequent failures. These images see everything without passing judgement.