Stunning images show America's history in pictures trends now
It is a stunning photograph that captures a celebration of liberty: New York harbor laden with boats, gun smoke rising into the air and from the top a newly-unveiled sight - the Statue of Liberty.
The photo - taken in October 1886 - when the United States officially unveiled Lady Liberty, a gift from the French that took nine years to build before it was deconstructed, shipped across the Atlantic and then reassembled in four months.
It is one of a series of images featured in a new book compiled by filmmaker Ken Burns Our America: A Photographic History, which takes a look at the country in its truest form over the last 200 years. The book, which spotlights various photographers, captures the soul of America at moments that helped shape the nation.
The collection also features the mind-blowing first self-portrait ever taken in 1839 of Robert Cornelius, an amateur chemist who worked in his father's gas lamp-making company in Philadelphia and who revolutionized exposure times in photography. It also shows the first photo of the US Capitol building taken in 1946.
It also features America at its worst, including the historic fight between the first African American world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson and the previously undefeated champion Jim Jeffries, who is white, on Independence Day 1910 in Reno, Nevada.
The fight - dubbed the Fight of the Century - went beyond just two incredible fighters going head-to-head, but the beast of racial discrimination lay at the forefront. As Johnson was black, many white Americans did not dub him fit enough to hold the heavyweight title and they summoned Jeffries out of retirement in an attempt to reclaim the title, which he failed to do. Johnson won in the 15th round.
All the images in the book, published by Penguin Random House, are considered Burns' favorites. The 69-year-old native New Yorker has been capturing America for four decades in films and is known for never shying away from the ugliness, which is evident in his new book.
