The following is from the introduction to LIFE’s special tribute issue, Jimmy Carter: A Noble Life, which is available online and at newsstands. When James Earl Carter died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on …

When LIFE magazine visited Big Sur in 1959, the Esalen Institute was three years from opening, but the coastal community had long been attracting free-thinking types.

This important truth is one that suffuses this collection of harvest-time photos taken during LIFE’s original run from 1936 to 1972. The crops being harvested in these photos include corn, wheat, …

LIFE magazine was fortunate enough to visit Cabo Blanco in 1959, when the club was still in its heyday. Staff photographer Frank Schershel captured the fisherman out at sea and along the shore.

The following is adapted from the introduction to LIFE’s newcspecial issue 100 Photographs: The Most Important Pictures of All Time and the Stories Behind Them, available at newsstands and online:

LIFE recalls the Orient Express of the last century through photographs made in 1950 -- evocative, atmospheric pictures from another time.

Explore 1960s within the LIFE photography vault, one of the most prestigious & privately held archives from the US & around the World.

In 1947 Jane Greer starred opposite Robert Mitchum in the film noir classic Out of the Past, and the success of that film helped earn her a place on the cover of LIFE.

The 2016 Nobel Prize was simply a crowning honor in an extraordinary life. Here are a selection of images from LIFE’s special issue Bob Dylan: America’s Greatest Songwriter.

LIFE’s coverage focused on the spectacle, the charity and the famous guests, which included Marilyn Monroe and her husband of nearly a year at that point, playwright Arthur Miller (see photos of their …