Customer Reviews

At Work in the Fields of the Bomb

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Del Tredici managed to compile this work just before the US tightened security around it's weapon fabrication plants. Unique and brilliantly researched you will see pictures of facilities that you will never see again. See where the uranium comes from - where it goes - and how it ends up as a war-head. A step by step guide. Tredici also includes harrowing accounts from doctors, test veterans and other persecuted persons who have come up against a stone wall in their struggle to seek compensation from radiation abnormalities. Unique and a one-off. Get your hands on a copy if you can! Well worth the search.

The photography in the book is all black and white, a medium becoming more rare each day. Each photo is telling and technically superior. The author creates a sense of scale of the effort it took to create the atomic bomb. The words of the book serve to explain and to elaborate on the photos. I like the book simply because I'm a photographer, and I enjoy visual communication through photographs. The book is mostly to be appreciated for the visual experience and the commentary of those the author has interviewed in relation to his photographs. If you'd like to see a tremendous example of excellent photography, dealing with the horror of the atomic bomb, check out "American Ground Zero" by Carole Gallagher. Gallagher's book is definitive on the human horror of the nuclear age. It includes photos of "down winders" people who lived in the states bordering our nuclear test sites. Tredici's book is a contender, but not nearly the work of author Gallagher.

This book starts out as a visual trip through the nuclear weapons industry. Not so much focused on the weapontry as the plants and the people, the photography is insightful. What is especially interesting is the second half; entitled interviews and field notes. Del Tredici shares with us the back stories he learned behind his excellent photography. While not a step-by-step guidee by any means, it nonetheless puts a face on the cult of the atom at the ground level.