How do you call a book America the Beautiful and NOT put an enraged-looking eagle on the cover?

Photo mosaic of some of the wildlings from Joel Sartore’s Photo Ark.

Another photo mosaic created with Joel Sartore’s images for this second volume in the series.

This overview of extinct, critically endangered, endangered, and threatened species photographed by Joel Sartore for his Photo Ark project features a Florida panther on the cover.

Himalayan monal pheasant by Joel Sartore.

Printed case with a clear acetate dust jacket screen printed in white ink.

This second edition of the official book of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum features an image of Reflected Absence, the memorial designed by Michael Arad.

This is Emma, a chocolate Labrador retriever, photographed by David duChemin, who told us she was “a very good dog.”

Cover image by legendary photojournalist David Douglas Duncan.

This was one of the first covers I was allowed to design in my early tenure at NatGeo, and it wrongly gave some people the impression that I had a sophisticated sense of restraint. Image by Taxi/Gettyimages.

Cover photo by Mario Testino

Photo by Nick Nichols

Cover photo by Peter Stewart.

This cover was difficult to clear photo rights for, but we had to have that image of Farrah Fawcett.

Charming humpback whale photo by Brian Skerry.

Cover photo by Sandro Vannini. This image file is so big you could probably print it on the side of a bus, and it would be the coolest bus in town.

Slipcased with silver foil, silver fabric endcaps, metallic silver rhumb lines, and a triangle thumb cut. May have come out the same year as the first iPhone.

Slipcased with emboss, triangle thumb cut, charcoal fabric endcaps, and silver foil.

Gold foil border. Photo of the South Rim at sunset, Grand Canyon National Park by Tom Till.

Image of Neil by Miller Mobley, black hole artist’s concept by European Space Agency, NASA and Felix Mirabel. Spaghettification artist concept (objects stretching and becoming elongated as they get sucked into a black hole) by Neil!

Cover collage photo taken by Mark Thiessen of a bunch of letter-writing paraphernalia owned by various members of the design and photo departments at National Geographic.

I took this photo of an old typewriter that belonged to the book’s editor while sitting on the floor of my office. It is hard to take a picture and type a letter at the same time, but by god, I did it.

Angry eagle (all eagles are angry, all the time, it’s science) artwork by world’s foremost raptor portraitist David Quinn.

Center photo of Sharbat Gula by Steve McCurry.

Cosmic Journey graphic by Sean McNaughton, Samuel Velasco, 5W Infographics, Matthew Twombly and Jane Vessels, NGM staff, Amanda Hobbs.

Shortly after this book came out, we were alerted that someone had taken the pattern I created for the cover, removed the author name and our company logo, and used it on tee shirts and belt buckles being sold on ebay. I was mildly flattered but our legal department felt differently.