Rooted in the Mississippi Delta, the blues sprang from the spiritual music and field hollers of slaves, spinning a cultural thread that followed the great black migration from South to North.
Recalling the seminal years of the blues, convicts pick cotton at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. The cadence of singing field-workers shaped the blues’ musical structure.
— From "Traveling the Blues Highway," April 1999, National Geographic magazine
Cutting a swath of lights from the upper reaches of Harlem down through the heart of Manhattan, Broadway beckons to the starstruck like a blazing theater marquee.
A big-city subway, a rural county fair, Monument Valley, Central Park, a simple family restaurant: These are the scenes of America at its best captured as only National Geographic can.
From South Carolina to North Dakota, take to the open road and see pictures of what the United States has to offer intrepid travelers who venture off the beaten trail.
Welcome to the fast-paced, high-priced, freezing cold world of Tokyo's Tsukiji. To merely call it a fish market would be the same as calling the Grand Canyon a ditch.