Pictures of people

In this generously illustrated chronicle of the life and work of prolific painter and bohemian eccentric Alice Neel, Pamela Allara shows how portraits from a career that spanned the 1920s to the 1970s constitute a virtual gallery of American cultural history. While some of Neel's portraits graced the covers of publications like Ms. and Time, most of her subjects were unknowns - the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the oppressed.