LIFE Magazine will forever be an element of the American cultural landscape. It hasn’t been around as a weekly newsmagazine since 1972, but that hardly seems to matter. It’s survived in various iterations since then, including monthly issues and Internet content, but LIFE seems to belong in a different era – when life was simpler, and the news stories of the day could be captured and distilled down into one single iconic photograph.

Of course, this sense is based on pure myth – that somehow, issues were just less complex 50, 60 or 70 years ago. They weren’t, but it’s a testament to the power of photography and the brilliance with which LIFE photographers harnessed that power when you look at the magazine’s coverage of the civil rights movement or the Vietnam War.

The photos that appeared in LIFE over the years have transcended their place as simply pieces of journalism and become pieces of art. (Not to downplay journalism whatsoever, but it’s a true feat when photographs meant to illustrate the news for that day or that week are still recognizable decades later.)

So with that idea in mind, the folks at LIFE have published The Classic Collection, a large-format hardcover filled with 100 of the magazine’s most immediately identifiable images. The photos are presented in a kind of art gallery format, with one photo to a page, and no writing. Caption information appears in regular intervals on its own page, so as not to distract from the pictures themselves.

It’s an appropriate format – these photos are gorgeous. Journalistically, they tell the kind of stories we print journalists would need hundreds of words to convey, and artistically – well, what’s more artistically meaningful than the human experience?

The book is broken down into four sections – People, Places, Moments and The Sunny Side of Life, but almost all of these shots are about the people in them. From the revealing portraits of celebrities like Madonna, Ernest Hemingway and the Beatles to the heartbreak of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination and dead babies in the midst of a war to the jubilation of Harry Truman over that misprinted newspaper, these are the pictures that tell the American story.

All of these photos are likely available elsewhere, but what The Classic Collection offers as its main selling point is the ability to remove 25 of the photos as glossy 8X10 prints. Underneath the removable pictures is that same photo, keeping the book intact even if you do decide to remove any or all of the prints.

The Classic Collection will probably be more appealing to those who are looking to hang iconic photographs on their walls, but even if you don’t have any use for the removable prints, the book still exists as a perfect coffee table book – that is, if anyone purchases those things any more.

The photographs in LIFE Magazine over the years range from the heartwarming to the incisive to the just plain silly, but they all share in common a technical brilliance and a wealth of meaning. They deserve to be remembered.