As a weekly magazine LIFE covered it all, with a breadth and open-mindedness that looks especially astounding today, when publications and websites tailor their coverage to ever …

You’re able to take life as it comes when you’re bound to a core belief that things are going to turn out all right. Above all, in the pages of the Winnie-the-Pooh books, there’s an overriding …

The following is adapted from the introduction to LIFE’s newcspecial issue 100 Photographs: The Most Important Pictures of All Time and the Stories Behind Them, available at newsstands …

The following is from the introduction to LIFE’s special tribute issue, Jimmy Carter: A Noble Life, which is available online and at newsstands. When James Earl Carter died at his home in …

Here, LIFE.com presents pictures made in the Nevada desert by photographer Loomis Dean shortly after a 1955 atomic bomb test. These are not “political” pictures.

LIFE magazine was fortunate enough to visit Cabo Blanco in 1959, when the club was still in its heyday. Staff photographer Frank Schershel captured the fisherman out at sea and along the …

When LIFE magazine visited Big Sur in 1959, the Esalen Institute was three years from opening, but the coastal community had long been attracting free-thinking types.

The following is excerpted from LIFE’s new special issue Michael Jordan: The Greatest of All Time, available at newsstands and here online. When it dropped in the mid-’90s, the 30 …

LIFE described the planning of the wedding as “a full-time job,” and Leen documented all that went into it. That included the dress shopping, the cake selection, the addressing of the …

In 1968 LIFE magazine summed up the appeal of French philosopher and author Albert Camus with a single sentence: “Camus looked directly into the darkness as saw sun—the human …