Even though everybody is already aware that history repeats itself, there is unexpected encouragement in Mr Warren’s book for a belief in the adequacy of our own generation and of the Federal constitution to meet the conditions of our day. His sketch of the depressions of the past and his descriptions of the attempts at legislative adjustment of the relations between debtor and creditor have an immediate bearing upon present conditions and upon future developments of our national economic life. He has examined each of our previous periods of economic depression by way of the vigorous debates on bankruptcy that have stirred the various Congresses at such times. He points out that one of the striking features of them all has been the increase in the scope of the demands for relief through the exercise by Congress of its power under the bankruptcy clause of the Constitution. This entirely new method of approach will make the book of the greatest interest to the general reader of history as well as to the student of economics and to the lawyer.

In Human Documents, Robert Gardner introduces the work of photographers with whom he has worked over a period of nearly fifty years under the auspices of the Film Study Center at Harvard. Their images achieve the status of what Gardner calls “human documents”: visual evidence that testifies to our shared humanity. In images and words, the book adds to the already significant literature on photography and filmmaking as ways to gather both fact and insight into the human condition. In nearly 100 images spanning geographies and cultures including India, New Guinea, Ethiopia, and the United States, Human Documents demonstrates the important role photography can play in furthering our understanding of human nature and connecting people through an almost universal visual language.

Author and cultural critic Eliot Weinberger contributes the essay “Photography and Anthropology (A Contact Sheet),” in which he provides a new and intriguing context for viewing and thinking about the images presented here.

With photographs by Michael Rockefeller, Robert Gardner, Kevin Bubriski, Adelaide de Menil, Christopher James, Jane Tuckerman, Susan Meiselas, and Alex Webb.