Live, Laugh, Celebrate

Live, Laugh and Celebrate provides a fine collection of celebrations personal and public from around the world, offering a fine blend of photos and essays profiling over 150 images - some never published, others form National Geographic's archives, to celebrate rituals from around the world. The result is a lavish display suitable for any coffee table or general-interest lending library.

National Geographic's `live, laugh, celebrate' is a coffee table book made to make you smile even as you look at the cover of a bride's feet in high top pink tennis shoes. The photographs inside range from 30 + year old black and white to never before published colour photos. Pictures are from around the world and are labeled so that you have an idea of what is happening in each. They become extraordinary as you look at them because they do show everyday life in special ways: a dinner table from above, a 1958 bar mitzvah, children waiting for cotton candy seen through the haze of the candy threads thrown up from the machine. All these are everyday celebrations that you realize as you see young parents holding a young child - that is a celebration, and you begin to smile as this book makes you understand the everyday celebrations of life. Some are the special once in a life time celebrations like the Naval Academy graduates tossing their caps into the air to celebrate their graduation; and not just weddings, but the bride carefully brushing her teeth before. Yes this will make you realize the fun of life. It does show pictures from around the world, but that makes it all the family of man in the 3 parts of the book: cycles of life, around the world and life of the party. It's a lovely book to have for yourself or to give to another to celebrate.