This is the most complete monograph on the work of W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978), one of the heroes of American photojournalism. Beginning in the 1930s, working for Newsweek and other magazines, he created poetic photo essays of enormous and lasting impact. Drawing from Smith's own archives and including illuminating texts, this comprehensive volume features more than 300 superb duotone reproductions of both famous and never-before-published images from his most important works. Smith's Life Magazine photo essays are represented by images created in the 1940s and 1950s including, among others, the landmark Country Doctor, Spanish Village, Nurse Midwife and Albert Schweitzer: Man of Mercy. Among his later independent works are the hugely ambitious series on Pittsburgh and Haiti from the late 1950s. His last project was the disturbing 1970s essay Minimata, on the consequences of industrial pollution in Japan.

The photographs were selected by photographic historian Gilles Mora and designer John T. Hill from the Smith collection at the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona.