10．Lilliputian (微小的) figures -- firefighters stark against the grayish white dust that blanketed so much of lower Manhattan -- walk a path cleared of rubble near the base of the destroyed south tower in the days after the attacks. Aside from the still-staggering scale of the destruction, however, what truly astonishes in Peter Morgan's picture is the suggestion -- as one senses amid Roman ruins, for example, or in ash-entombed figures from Pompey -- of an entire civilization's wreckage. There is an ancient feel to the photograph that sparks a lingering question: Is this the literal end of the figurative "American Century"?
(Photo: PETER MORGAN/Reuters /Landov)