Best of Book History Online

Product Details

From Publishers Weekly
Nominated through on-line votes and selected by Life editors, the 100 images in this compendium cover unforgettable moments in "The Arts," "Society," "War & Peace" and "Science & Nature." The photographs are all striking-whether visually or viscerally, artistically or emotionally-but many are difficult to look at. As Gordon Parks writes in his introduction, "these images helped push us toward a change." And so it's possible to revisit the moments when a white crowd in Indiana cheered at the hanging bodies of two black men, when grieving members of AIDS activist David Kirby gathered around his deathbed, when the 1937 bombing of Shanghai left a train station destroyed and a single bloody child alone amidst the wreckage. There are a few lighter moments-the Beatles arriving at JFK in 1964, the American Olympic hockey team celebrating their 1980 landmark victory over the "Soviet machine"-but over all, this gathering of photos shows our darker hours. There's little here that hasn't been reprinted numerous times, but it's a stirring collection nevertheless.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

a lifetime of memories
this fabulous book was full of the greatest photos ever to be seen between two hard covers!!! one great memory after another one great trip after another one great bit of knowledge after another!!!

Great book
Everyone should have this book,,,I bought it for my grandfather for
Christmas..The large print was a plus. He could not stop thanking me.

Makes you think
I found this book really interesting and the fact that it has the full photos but also has a blurb about each of them makes it more interesting than some of the National Geographic books which only have the photos.

Some of the images will be well known to all generations who pick up the book, and some I found myself learning about for the first time. One particular photo which stood out for me was one in Jackson, Mississippi where a crowd of white citizens are abusing and taunting a black girl who is sitting at the counter of a cafe. The pain in her face is amazing and it is interesting to think how far we have come from 1963 when that photo was taken.

There is of course the Tiananmen Square and the fall of Iraq, but there are also photos of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the first ever moving picture.

Overall the book is a great keepsake if nothing else, but I'd recommend it as a coffee table book because a lot of the photos will definitely get people talking.