This book began with an idea and a moutain of photographs. The idea was to compile a history of popular culture as reported by PEOPLE magazine since its founding in 1974. the photographs would be the vehicle for telling the story. They wound up showing us the way, as pictures so often do if editors will only listen with their eyes. My colleagues and I spread the pictures, thousands of them, around a big conference room, on the table, the chairs, teh floor. We walked around and through them, debating what approach to take to this mass of material, peering at the images - and listening to them. Then it became clear. Simply do the book the way we had lived the years, day by day, year by year, beginning to end.
People Weekly Celebrates People: Teh Best of 1974-1996

In 1974, two out of five of our fellow Americans were as yet unborn, but Elvis was demonstrably alive. We were all in Archie Bunker's family, Nielsen-wise, and cheering on Charles Bronson in Death Wish. CD stood for Civil Defense, not a five-inchy wafer of music. And just as Lennon and (Groucho) Marx informed our lives, so Lenin and (Karl) marx held sway over the monolithic Soviet bloc. Few periods in popular culture have been as full of triumph and craziness, highlights and low lifes, novelties and nostalgia, as full of mind-spinning change as the past two decades.

On the scene to record it all with a sharp but sympathetic eye: PEOPLE Magazine, a robust 22 this year. PEOPLE has published more than 100,000 photographs and 33 million words, many of them focused on teh stars of film, television, music and the other plastic arts. Going beyond this celebrity world, the magazine has also reported on ordinary people whose extraordinary experiences made them, if only briefly, household names.

here, then, is the best of the popular culture of thsoe years - heroes and villains; winners and losers; the funny and the sad and the heart-warming - brougth vividly to life by way of more than 400 photographs and evocative text. Revisit the period year by year and rediscover (or see for the first time) who and what happened when. Like the hit 45s of our youths, these pictures and words are sure to trigger cherished memories.

You can even turn the book into a kind of parlor game: When did J.R. Ewing get his? Phil donahue don a skirt? Tatum O'Neal cop an Oscar? Burt and Loni marry? Lady Diana Spencer become a Princess? Warren Beatty deep-six his black book? And Jim Carrey banana-peel his way to Hollywood's summit? Those answers and more lie within. Enjoy your trip into the lively past.

There is only ONE COPY available and with the holidays just around the corner this is an excellent and memorable gift.