Japanese football fan during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Group E match between Japan and Costa Rica at Ahmad Bin Ali Stadium on November 27, 2022 in Doha, Qatar. (Photo by Dylan Martinez/Reuters)

Japanese music duo Ami and Aya arrive for the Christian Dior Fall/Winter 2023-2024 ready-to-wear collection presented Tuesday, February 28, 2023 in Paris. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP Photo)

Singapore's Sophia Jin Wen Ho competes with the ball in the individual qualification and team final rhythmic gymnastics event at the Arena Birmingham, on day seven of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, central England, on August 4, 2022. (Photo by Paul Ellis/AFP Photo)

Militia members march in formation past Tiananmen Square during the military parade marking the 70th founding anniversary of People's Republic of China, on its National Day in Beijing, China on October 1, 2019. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Kacey Musgraves and Gigi Hadid attend the 53nd annual CMA Awards at Bridgestone Arena on November 13, 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Charles Pulliam/Reuters)

Steve Kent skis through Times Square during a snowstorm, Monday, February 1, 2021, in the Manhattan borough of New York. (Photo by John Minchillo/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.