"In 1900 the stereograph was king. Its three-dimensional optics created a virtual presence for the viewer. Millions of Americans, especially schoolchildren, absorbed ideas about race, class, and gender from such 3D images ... Drawing on an enormous, rarely seen collection of some 300,000 stereographic views spanning the first decade of the twentieth century, Michael Lesy presents nearly 250 images displaying a riot of peoples and cultures, stark class divisions, and unsettling glimpses of daily life a century ago ... Haunting views of the early twentieth century's most significant events at home and in the farthest reaches of the world-war, rebellion, industrial revolution, and natural catastrophe-flank pictures of the last remnants of the premodern natural world. Lesy's evocative essays reassert the primacy of the stereograph in American visual history. He profiles the photographers who saw the world through their prejudices and the companies that sold their images everywhere." -- From the publisher.

Preface -- A short history of virtual reality: being in more than one place at one time -- The news: ten years of war and disaster -- Society -- The last stereograph company: Keystone View's progressive education -- The new world and the old -- The Middle East and the Holy Land -- The war photographer -- India and the Far East -- The natural world -- The steamer in the Fjord.