Amazon.com Review
In
Full Moon, one of the best science photography books ever published, Michael Light presents a voyage in images to the Moon and back. Light took NASA's master negatives of photos taken by
Apollo astronauts and scanned them electronically. The resulting pictures are so vivid they seem more clear than real life. Light orders the photos sequentially, selecting the most arresting images from each mission, to create a truly cinematic experience. In the first section, depicting blastoff, you can almost feel the violent shaking of the rocket as it strains to escape Earth's gravity. Then you
see the quiet stillness of weightlessness, the astronauts' view down at a perfectly silent Earth, boundless oceans contrasting with bright white clouds. A spacewalk adds vertigo--the astronaut looks fragile and very alone as he floats outside his capsule far above his home planet. Then comes the waiting, as the long voyage toward the Moon continues.
As you watch the cratered surface get closer and closer, you have no sense of scale until you see the miniscule silver and gold lander dropping gently to land on the Moon. Leaving the cluttered interior of the capsule in bulky, awkward suits, the astronauts bring delicate tracings of color--gold on the lander; red, white, and blue on the spacesuits' flag patches--to this black-and-white world. Five huge gatefolds in this section give you indescribable views of the intricately scarred surface of the Moon.
You return to space for the reuniting of the lander and capsule, and a repetition of the tedious journey back home. Finally, you watch a chaotic splashdown in the riot of colors that is Earth.
A nice section in the back of the book explains each photo with a detailed caption, and an essay by author Andrew Chaikin (A Man on the Moon) adds more written context to this stunning visual experience. The book is printed on very high-quality paper, with matte black frames for the photos and a gorgeous, wordless cover. Every space fan should have a copy. --Therese Littleton
From School Library Journal
YA-A San Francisco artist and photographer has pulled together 129 stunning, black-and-white and color photographs from 32,000 previously unavailable pictures of the Apollo missions. He has lovingly put them together to form one continuous moon voyage. The photos, mostly taken by astronauts, show fiery, explosive liftoffs; gorgeous, striking earthscapes; astronauts floating by their single umbilical cords in space; hauntingly beautiful moon shots; and many alternate shots recognizably from the first moon landing. An essay and a section explaining when, where, and by whom all the photos were shot are included. A terrific addition for libraries that need tie-ins with science, photography, history, or creative curricula.
John Lawson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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