“The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon, center, exits the water during the Chicago Polar Plunge, Sunday, March 2, 2014, in Chicago. Fallon joined Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the event. (Photo by Andrew A. Nelles/AP Photo)

With temperatures soaring and summer well underway, countless Americans will be spending their Independence Day weekend at the beach. Here we revisit some classic images from the turn-of-the-century to the 1930's of vacations by the sea, from Coney Island to Santa Monica.

While communism, collectivism, worms, dry rot and casual looting failed to destroy the majestic wooden churches of Russia, it may be ordinary neglect that finally does them in. Dwindled now to several hundred remaining examples, these glories of vernacular architecture lie scattered amid the vastness of the world’s largest country. Just over a decade ago, Richard Davies, a British architectural photographer, struck out on a mission to record the fragile and poetic structures. Austerely beautiful and haunting, “Wooden Churches: Traveling in the Russian North” (White Sea Publishing; $132) is the result. Covering thousands of miles, Mr. Davies described how he and the writer Matilda Moreton tracked down the survivors from among the thousands of onion-domed structures built after Prince Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988.

A stunning photographic collection featuring portraits of people from 30 countries and the food they eat in one day. In this fascinating study of people and their diets, 80 profiles are organized by the total number of calories each person puts away in a day. Featuring a Japanese sumo wrestler, a Massai herdswoman, world-renowned Spanish chef Ferran Adria, an American competitive eater, and more, these compulsively readable personal stories also include demographic particulars, including age, activity level, height, and weight. Essays from Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham, journalist Michael Pollan, and others discuss the implications of our modern diets for our health and for the planet. This compelling blend of photography and investigative reportage expands our understanding of the complex relationships among individuals, culture, and food.

A model presents a creation from the Blonds Fall 2020 collection during New York Fashion Week in the Manhattan borough of New York, U.S., February 9, 2020. (Photo by Caitlin Ochs/Reuters)

In this photo taken Saturday, February 14, 2015, Benjamin Miller, 20, from Georgia, in the US, is gored by a bull during the “Carnaval del Toro” in Ciudad Rodrigo, Spain. An American youth is recovering in the intensive-care unit of a hospital in western Salamanca after being savagely gored during a bullfighting festival celebrating Carnival, officials said Sunday. Surgeon Enrique Crespo said he was called to operate on 20-year-old Benjamin Miller from Georgia, who had been gored and tossed by a large fighting bull on Saturday, the first day of nearby Ciudad Rodrigo's “Carnaval del Toro”. (Photo by Jose Vicente/AP Photo)

A eunuch dances during a rally to mark the congregation of thousands of eunuchs from different parts of India, in Jammu, India, Friday, March 13, 2015. The term eunuchs is used in India to describe transvestites, transsexuals and others who identify themselves as neither male nor female but as a member of a third gender. They traditionally survive by begging, dancing at weddings or blessing newborn babies and are frequently subjected to discrimination. (Photo by Channi Anand/AP Photo)

A man carrying a sailfish walks through Hamarweyne district in South Mogadishu on March 25, 2015. (Photo by Carl De Souza/AFP Photo)