Customer Reviews

What Matters: The World's Preeminent Photojournalists and Thinkers Depict Essential Issues of Our Time

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This book is a testament to a simple truth: the still photograph still matters. The stories here are carefully chosen to give the reader an intimate and truthful look at the most pressing issues of our time. The accompanying writing both complements and extends the story-telling ability of these images and the essays are excellent across the board, from Pulitzer-Prize winning author Samantha Power's passionate and vivid description of the genocide in Darfur to Jeffrey Sachs' story about a village in Malawi that accompanies James Nachtwey's images of poverty.


From a technical standpoint, the photographs are brilliantly reproduced and sequenced well, in a way that most poignantly and directly tells the story. This book is highly recommended both as a great read and a visual document of our times.

What Matters is an emotionally stunning book that challenges its readers to make a difference. It uses remarkable photography to expose issues like rampant consumerism in the US and China, child marriages in Afghanistan, the grim realities of AIDS in Tanzania, the roots of oil addiction in Nigeria and the lasting effects of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the Ukraine. While a wide-ranging book about essential global problems may be a daunting read, in the end it is also a testament to humanity's capacity for change. What Matters includes an extensive "What You Can Do" guide in the back, so maybe it can be a catalyst for the change that so many of us are hoping for.

Hard to see, impossible to turn away
Issues and images combine in 'What Matters,' a powerful and passionate new book

By Michael Zajakowski
Chicago Tribune Book Review
September 6, 2008

Great documentary photojournalism, squeezed out of mainstream newspapers and magazines in an age of shrinking column inches, has had a hard time gaining traction in other venues. Although it has found new life on web sites and in books, the age of the topical visual long form is in remission.

But nobody has told the 18 photographers in "What Matters: The World's Preeminent Photojournalists and Thinkers Depict Essential Issues of Our Time."

These are photo essays by some of today's best photojournalists following the great tradition begun over a hundred years ago with the exposés of New York tenement life by Jacob Riis. Through the doggedness of these photographers--who are clearly committed to stirring us out of complacency--all the power and passion of the medium is evident in this book.

David Elliot Cohen, who co-created the famous "Day in the Life" series of photojournalism books, had a keen eye in selecting the photo essays and coupling each with cogent commentary from writers such as Samantha Power, professor at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government; Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute and Columbia University professor; and Elizabeth C. Economy, director for Asian Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The book is an engrossing journey from pristine wilderness to glittering Rodeo Drive boutiques with stops along the way focusing on genocide, global jidad, child labor and AIDS victims in Africa, to name a few.

In a provocative bit of editing, James Nachtwey's searing photo essay about global poverty, "The Bottom Billion," is jarringly followed by Lauren Greenfield's "Shop til We Drop," a vivid but embarrassing look at another extreme, which is only slightly less shameful than the first.

Some of the pieces will break your heart, some will anger you. All will make you think. To channel your thoughts and feelings into action, the book ends with an appendix "What You Can Do," offering hundreds of ways to be a part of the solution to these problems.

Issues on topics such as global warming, genocide, disease, famine and poverty have commonly been seen in weekly news magazines in all their grainy, black & white horror. Sometimes it seems that the individuals who are producing those stories have an angle that they want to support through their work, which an audience may question. But What Matters cuts through that. You cannot argue with the lifetime works and objective viewpoints of so many eminent photojournalists and writers. The author has done a masterful job of pulling together recaps and insights in to many major events that occurred over the last 50+ years, that we all should have learned from, but, amazingly, still seem to be repeating.

This is a very well produced book, thought provoking in its intensity, and supported by an A-list of expert contributors.

The stories in this book could serve as a primer for being a globally-aware citizen in an evolving world. Despite the grim nature of some of these photos, the book's message is not one of despair, but of hope, as evidenced by the thorough "What You Can Do" section in the back.

Some of the most interesting work in the book is from photographers under most people's radar. Shehzad Noorani's Children of the Black Dust and Stephen Voss's Economic Miracle, Environmental Disaster both examine underreported issues with excellent photos and strong writing. The book's impact comes not just from the photographs, but the excellent writing that accompanies them. I highly recommend What Matters as a hard-hittng and opinionated book that is both journalistically-sound and passionate.

A picture tells a story better than a thousand words. The author presents socially conscious photographs. i.e.

o 5 cent rental rooms in 1889
o a 1968 Saigon street execution
o inside an ice cave up North
o the dwindling Penguin population
o glacial changes in Athabasca and Pasterze
o windmill farms

Each photo is presented in breath-taking color. The volume is worth the price of admission.

Wonderful book for our time and our generation to read. Was in perfect condition and came on time. Love it.

This is an exceptionally fine blend of excellent prose and superior photographs. It is a most compelling and at times very emotional book to read... The photos are dramatic and instructive, the short essays that accompany them offer lessons in the history and background of the photos. There are many warnings about the consequences of our behavior toward each other and our planet and insights about the future of humankind and our humanity.

When I saw this book on the shelves at the library, I was first intrigued by its bright blue spine. When I took it down, the cover photograph really took my breath away and I knew I HAD to see what this gorgeous book had to offer me. I can't tell you how happy I am that I took it home because, WOW, was this book phenomenal.

The book's description above really captures the essence of What Matters so definitely go back and read it if you haven't already. The book is a compilation of some of the most fantastic photojournalism I've ever seen, done by people who are genuinely concerned about these issues, and have put together a book that they hope will make a difference in some of these issues and inspire people to think about said issues, and even better, do something about them. The book flows excellently from pictures to text and back - it's put together similarly to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (which I also loved). The photographs are, of course, magnificent, but the writing itself is also pretty fantastic. The way the authors (of both the written pieces and the photographs) made these issues come to life, made them so clearly EVERYONE'S problems and not "their" problems, the way they made them so personal with stories and pictures, it was just amazing. I am doing an awful job of describing what I loved about this book because I found it to be so important and really just a necessary read. It is hard sometimes for me to articulate my thoughts when I feel so strongly about something like I do this book - it has made me somewhat speechless.

But really, I'm shocked that I hadn't heard of What Matters before; I think it can easily be considered one of the best nonfiction of 2008, and I'd really, STRONGLY encourage everyone to go pick it up. I will totally be buying this one when it comes out in paperback (hopefully, it does), because it's definitely something I'd like to have in my collection to read again and share with others.

Please read What Matters. You will not be sorry that you did.

After reviewing this book, and giving it as a gift. It will now be used as a supplement reading for a college course.