Customer Reviews

100 Suns

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is an amazing photograpic document about a strange time in American history.

It is somewhat personal to me as I was one of the 900 Marines 2 miles from the HOOD detonation on July 5th, 1957. I did not know until I read the caption in the book that I was present at both the largest, and first hydrogen, bomb exploded in the US.

I hope to hell we never see any comtemporary photos of atomic explosions. The photos in this book ought to be enough for all time.

I received this as a surprise gift for my birthday this year, as I have a fascination with the history and science of nuclear weapons. If I had known about it, I probably would have purchased it myself.

For those of you that like the feel of a solid book in your hands, "100 Suns" will not disappoint. The 208 pages contained within are high-quality, thick photo pages. Each photo is displayed over the entire page and are of excellent quality. There are no wordy descriptions written across the photos, or at the bottom of the pages. All information is noted in the rear of the book, where there are short descriptions of each bomb test that is documented in this book.

A previous review stated that if you have seen "Trinity & Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie" that there is nothing new here. This is true in the respect that most of these tests are covered in that documentary. However, "100 Suns" allows you to examine the photos and reflect upon them in a way that film does not allow. Additionally, the book shows pictures of the people involved in the tests (soldiers and such), which is an aspect that the "Atomic Bomb Movie" does not tap into in depth.

Overall, this is a great piece of photo history that will also fufill a role as an excellent coffee table book.

Some books stay with you.

They have a way of creeping into your consciousness, with reminders of what you read or saw, etched in your memory, nudged back to the surface by a thought, a comment, or simply because you can't seem to stop thinking about them.

Michael Light's "100 SUNS" is one such book, and compelling to the point I feel it important to write about here.

The book documents two decades of U.S. nuclear testing through 100 unreal, yet so very real, photographs. Half are of the desert land based tests, the others are of tests performed over the ocean. Most are of the mushroom clouds, but many show the military personnel that observed these detonations.

The photographs, simply put, are stunningly beautiful and terrifying all at once. In general they gradually depict increasingly powerful explosions, from the first nuclear test, Trinity, that began mankind's nuclear era, to the megaton monster tests in the Pacific Ocean.

Each photograph is detailed at the back of the book, which while inconvenient, does at least keep the photo pages uncluttered and focused on the images. The images are identified by the test's name and the tonnage. The names of the tests are unremarkable, certainly intentionally given what they identified, yet image after image gets burned into your mind, not soon to be forgotten. A time line of the nuclear arms race helps pull all the visuals together.

These are reminders of terrifying destructive power that used to be a daily reality, and that today, with the concern that nuclear bombs might get into the hands of terrorists, is once again a force of human nature that cannot be neglected. The arsenals of the nuclear powers grew at remarkable rates until anti-proliferation treaties, and anti-testing treaties were enacted. Yet, although the last tests occurred a decade ago, Russia has given indications it continues to see strength in a nuclear vision, while at the same time, the need to secure all of the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, and the materials to produce nuclear bombs, has never been greater. Today, there is worldwide concern about North Korea's and Iran's nuclear ambitions. Will any of today's concerns become the basis for nuclear catastophes in our future?

So look for this book. Take the time to read about each image. Contemplate what it all means. I suspect you won't easily forget it.

I appreciate the nature of these images more having read Richard Rhodes' "Making of the Atomic Bomb" many years ago. Without a doubt, what is documented here is the overt potential for total global annihilation by nuclear hellfire, but what is also documented are the direct descendants of one of the most impressive scientific and engineering achievments of all time.

Knowing that these images represent the ability to destroy on a massive scale, one might find it hard to divest themselves of their instinct to be horrified and shun these pictures, but if you can do so, I think you'll find a great collection of some of the most stark, eerie, organic and beautiful images of our recent secret history. The fact that these pictures were taken for documentation purposes, rather than those of art, makes the dichotomy between the beauty and the horror of this book even more apparent.

Well worth the simoleons.

This is a very handsome volume, with images every bit as beautiful as the subject matter is terrifying. Shown are mushroom clouds from near and far, in black and white and in color, and soldiers hunkered down and bracing themselves against the burst in the distance.

There's the seemingly harmless--and innocently named--Little Feller I (#46), a "mere" 18-ton-TNT-equivalent delicate puff rising from the barren Nevada desert, captured 40 seconds after detonation.

And then consider Bravo, the largest single nuclear explosion ever. At 15 megatons--the equivalent of 15 million tons of TNT--it released in an instant more energy than all the ordnance spent in World Wars I and II combined.

The list of captions in the back of the book provides interesting data about each test and makes a nice tidy summary of our government's Cold War excesses. Light's book includes a chronology of developments in the nuclear era, including year-by-year counts of Soviet and U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiles. It is noteworthy that, during the hottest years of the Cold War, when the U.S. public was being warned of a widening "missile gap" with the Soviet Union, we always had a greater number of warheads, often as many as ten times more.

Andrei Sakharov once wrote that a very large nuclear war would be a calamity of indescribable proportions and absolutely unpredictable consequences, with the uncertainties tending toward the worse. As a university student I have collected over the years many dozens of nuclear test photographs and with each viewing, it is possible for a person to change. This collection of photographs is nothing short of beautiful, but at the same time horrifying in its capabilities. If you read through this book, you will not come out the same person.

A wonderful piece of work. The author thankfully did not over-politicize nuclear weapons or U.S. nuclear testing policys, and the reader is left with incredible pictures and factual commentary. The book does not so much tell a story as it presents for the reader a dangerous time in American history for reflection. Thankfully, we are still here to reflect on these ominous, but nonetheless beautiful pictures. I think perhaps John Foster Dulles has been vindicated.

A very beautiful book presented as large prints, stunning photographs detail the very primal and mythological nature of the nuclear explosion. There is nothing to compare these photographs to in their grandness they make brilliant destructive weapons seem almost beautiful in their conception. An amazing work, the photos are large the way they should be and you will not find a similarly themed coffee table book anywhere. A true gem.

Seth J. Frantzman

If you're buying this book to have beautiful photographic prints of the major nuclear tests, you will definitely be disappointed, as I was, by the book's very poor format/layout. The overwhelming majority of the photographs are printed in such a way that the image is split apart where the paper joins the spine of the book. In other words, you get maybe three-quarters of the photograph on one page, and the remaining quarter on the facing page. What's worse is that many of the photographs are split right in the middle, so the image is completely ruined. I can't believe that they were so stupid as to produce the book in this way. If I had know it was this bad, I wouldn't have wasted my money.

I couldn't put it down. The photos are excellent, the info in the back is captivating, and I hope there is never another nuclear explosion to photograph!