It might be debatable how useful the text is thirty-four years later (pleasant and informative without being overly dense), but this is a lovely book to flick through, with perhaps one or two hundred beautiful photographs, all with informative captions. You won't comprehensively learn about US geography, history and culture from one coffee table book, but it's a decent overview, and may be useful to keep to refer back to when reading actual textbooks. Don't be put off by the fact this came out in 1979, before today's digital photography explosion had even been dreamed about. The photos are of extremely high quality for their time, now having a pleasantly nostalgic aspect for me at least, and the subjects are expertly chosen.
NB My copy is called
The Beauty of America, not
The Love of America.