The project began with an online question posted on Life's website in 2003 and The Digital Journalist: Can photographs create the same historical effect as literature?

"[1] Life determined that "a collection of pictures that 'changed the world' is a thing worth contemplating, if only to arrive at some resolution about the influential nature of photography and whether it is limited, vast or in between.

[1] The book was edited by Robert Sullivan and picture editor Barbara Baker Burrows, and published by Time, Inc. Home Entertainment.

Wong's 1937 photograph of a lone child crying at a demolished train station on "Bloody Saturday" as representative of the entire bombing of Shanghai.

Margin notes document the circumstantial background of many photographs, as well as instances where the images have been accused of being staged.