The idea of choosing the Wonders of the World can be traced all the way back to the 5th century, B.C., when the Greek historian Herodotus of the Halicarnassus listed seven must-sees, the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt and six other constructions that long ago vanished from the earth. In this deluxe new LIFE book, Wonders of the World, the editors return to the sites of the original Seven Wonders and then keep right on traveling around the globe--eventually visiting in words and pictures seven-times-seven Wonders, plus one more. There are old Wonders here and a new list offered by the New7Wonders Foundation, a Switzerland-based organization that conducted an online poll that saw more than a million votes cast for the world's greatest Wonders. There are man-made Wonders and natural Wonders. There are obscure Wonders and famous Wonders. The amazing stories behind your favorites are recounted as LIFE goes to the Colosseum, to Stonehenge, to the Great Wall, to Machu Picchu, to the Taj Mahal, to Easter Island, to The Acropolis and the Vatican and back to the Great Pyramid. We travel into outer space for a close-up look at the International Space Station, and into the sea for a sensational vantage on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. We go to the summit of Mount Everest and down into the mile-deep Grand Canyon in Arizona. We could not choose between the world's tallest waterfall, 3,212-foot-high Angel Falls in Venezuela, or that which is arguably the world's most awesome, Victoria Falls on the Zimbabwe-Zambia border--so we went with both. Fifty Wonders in all, each more wondrous than the last. A reader cannot help being amazed and inspired by what man's industry has built through time, and what sublime Wonders nature has graced us with. This a book Herodotus would have loved! And then comes the big bonus: The 7 LIFE Wonders. We were sure that some of these fabulous sites were suitable for framing, and so we went to the vast LIFE archives and picked pictures of some of the most wonderful Wonders taken by famous LIFE photographers. Using a technique we developed in our 2009 book The Classic Collection, we inserted prints of these places in the last section of our book. Better yet: When you remove the prints to frame them, the image stays on the page, sp your lovely coffee-table book remains intact. For these wonders, a wondrous book.

What is Life? Where did it come from? Why does it end?

“A poet celebrates the wonders of nature in a collection of essays that could almost serve as a coming-of-age memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted—no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape—she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance. “What the peacock can do,” she tells us, “is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life.” The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world’s gifts. Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy. Praise for World of Wonders Barnes & Noble 2020 Book of the Year An NPR Best Book of 2020 An Esquire Best Book of 2020 A Publishers Weekly “Big Indie Book of Fall 2020” A BuzzFeed Best Book of Fall 2020 “Hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year.” —NPR “A timely story about love, identity and belonging.” —New York Times Book Review “A truly wonderous essay collection.” —Roxane Gay, The Audacity

Here we have an endless stream of exotica-exotic living things growing from the ground and exotic critters of all shapes and sizes, crawling, bounding and flying around. As LIFE's editors put it in their introduction: "This is a wild book. In its pages we have animals as big as trucks and plants as big as small towns. We have flowers that dance for our pleasure and flowers that shyly hide underground, flowers that can kill animals and flowers that can heal animals. We have a teeny tiny bird that is directly descended from T Rex and a truly enormous bird that can't fly but can run 45 miles an hour. We have a lizard king that could rip you apart and a lizard princeling that walks on water. This is a wild, wild book." It is indeed. It is a book that is focused on life at the far fringes-the biggest, toughest, gentlest, rarest and weirdest species. It ultimately creates an astonishing image of the world around us, a world more diverse and sometimes strange than even the most imaginative reader might have expected. Accompanying the remarkable photography, which is always LIFE's hallmark, are descriptions of each subject that will fairly boggle the mind. Did you know that a carnivorous plant's trapping mechanism often doubles as its stomach, or that an elephant seal can hold its breath for up to two hours when diving in the sea? There are as many amazing facts in these pages as there are sensational pictures. And as with earlier volumes in LIFE's Classic Collection series, Wonders of Life comes with a bonus feature: Five photographic prints from the famed LIFE archive that can be extracted, framed and hung on your wall. When the print is removed, the exact picture is still there on the page beneath, so your deluxe coffee-table book remains intact. It is, as the editors write, "an elegant trick worthy of the dancing flower, and one that our readers have come to expect-and greatly enjoy." Travel along then, around the globe and to the depths of the oceans, as LIFE celebrates the wonders of life-each of them wondrous almost beyond belief.

Attractive illustrations invite coloring book fans of all ages to visit 27 man-made wonders. Included are India's Taj Mahal, the hanging gardens in ancient Babylon, the Mayan temples of Tikal in Guatemala, the Abu Simbel in Egypt, England's Stonehenge, the colossus of Rhodes, the pyramids, the great wall of China, the leaning tower of Pisa, and more.

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and all sorts of mysteries attaching to them, have intrigued people since the second century BCE. Why were these particular creations chosen and when? And why did the ancients want to draw up such a list in the first place? What were the technical and cultural factors involved in the creation and listing of the Wonders? The Seven Wonders still rival many of the phenomenal products of both nature and mankind in their size, majesty, and beauty. Six of them no longer stand, having been destroyed by natural disaster or by human intervention. From the Pyramids at Giza to the Colossus of Rhodes, from the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, from the Temple of Ephesus to the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World have never ceased to fascinate down the ages.

World's Greatest Wonders is an illuminating visual guide to 30 stunning man-made and natural wonders—with annotated 3-D reconstructions and cutaway models from various stages in human development that allow you to journey right to the heart of each of them. We live on a unique planet. The only one that we know of that has life. Amidst the budding civilizations and testaments to human creativity and ingenuity, great geological and ecological diversity have surrounded us since humans took their first steps. The Earth has developed into a truly astounding place to live. The clash of the natural forces that sculpted earth’s surface for millions of years has been supplemented by the great creative spirit of human beings, who have built their own wonders. We have before us a whole world, our own to explore and discover, to find and revel in the natural paradises created by the patient hand of nature as well as the astonishing constructions imagined by the genius of humankind. You just have to look around and take in the spectacle. The wonders: Stonehenge, Pyramids of Giza, Valley of the Kings, Petra, Acropolis, Terracotta Army, The Colosseum, Teotihuacán, Nazca Lines, Chichen Itzá, The Moai, Angkor Wat, Machu Picchu, Forbidden City, St. Peter’s Basilica, Taj Mahal, Empire State Building, Sydney Opera House, Antarctica, Galapagos Islands, The Amazon, Iguazu Falls, Sahara, Virunga National Park, Kilimanjaro, Anjajavy, Himalayas, Niagara Falls, Grand Canyon, and Tongariro. See the best of human and natural creation in the World's Greatest Wonders.