Police officers react as they attempt to detain a protestor near the entrance to Downing Street, during an anti-racism demonstration in London, on June 3, 2020, after George Floyd, an unarmed black man died after a police officer knelt on his neck during an arrest in Minneapolis, USA. Londoners defied coronavirus restrictions and rallied on Wednesday in solidarity with protests raging across the United States over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died during an arrest on May 25. (Photo by Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP Photo)

Alexis kneels with his baby at a protest in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement in Dakar, Senegal on June 9, 2020. (Photo by John Wessels/AFP Photo)

A cemetery worker dig new graves at the Xico cemetery on the outskirts of Mexico City, as the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak continues in Mexico, June 10, 2020. (Photo by Edgard Garrido/Reuters)

A man raises his fist as a group of Black Lives Matter marchers approached Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza ast the beginning of a Caribbean-led rally, Sunday, June 14, 2020, in New York. Protests have grown since the May 25th death of George Floyd, a black man who died inn police custody in Minneapolis after a white police officer pressed his knee into Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes. (Photo by Kathy Willens/AP Photo)

In this photo released by the Alaska National Guard, Alaska Army National Guard soldiers use a CH-47 Chinook helicopter to removed an abandoned bus, popularized by the book and movie “Into the Wild”, out of its location in the Alaska backcountry Thursday, June 18, 2020, as part of a training mission. Alaska Natural Resources Commissioner Corri Feige, in a release, said the bus will be kept in a secure location while her department weighs various options for what to do with it. (Photo by Sgt. Seth LaCount/Alaska National Guard via AP Photo)

American actress and model Megan Fox attends The 2021 Met Gala Celebrating In America: A Lexicon Of Fashion at Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 13, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images)

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.