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Put out each weekday by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. If there's one thing NASA does well, it's collect great photographs. Whether it's a neat lunarscape from the Apollo archives or the latest shot of hurricane Isabel taken by the astronauts on the space station, APOD not only shows the photo but explains what it is you're seeing. Fantastic. From This is True for 21 September 2003 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Steven DickRobert JacobsConstance MooreBertram Ulrich List Price: $50.00 Amazon Price: $15.00 Editorial Review: NASA launches a yearlong celebration of its 50th anniversary in the fall of 2007, and Abrams is privileged to publish this visual history of its many achievements in manned and unmanned space travel. Written and edited by a team of experienced NASA staffers, and illustrated with many unpublished and rare photographs from the voluminous NASA archives scattered across the country, America in Space offers an unparalleled vision of half a century of exploration and discovery. The story of America’s space age is told with more than 400 carefully selected images. The story begins in the 1950s with intrepid test pilots venturing ever faster and higher, and opens out into the now-legendary Mercury and Apollo missions of the 1960s that made astronauts into national heroes. The space shuttle era shows us what everyday space travel might look like, while grand vistas of the universe expand our sense of wonder. The large format of the book captures both the human drama and the vast scale of NASA’s projects. America in Space is a photographic record of the greatest adventure of our time.  By: Robert DinwiddiePhilip EalesDavid HughesIan NicholsonIan RidpathGiles SparrowPam SpenceCarole StottKevin TildsleyMartin Rees List Price: $50.00 Amazon Price: $31.50 Editorial Review: Unparalleled look at the Universe and all its wonder! -- Setting off from the heart of the Solar System to the outer limits of the known cosmos, this comprehensive visual guide by Robert Dinwiddie takes an unparalleled look at the Universe and all its wonders. -- You'll learn about the forces and processes that underpin the cosmos, and consider such fundamental questions as when and how the Universe began and what the future may hold. -- Universe boasts spectacular star charts that provide the clearest possible reference to the planets, stars and other heavenly bodies that can be seen from Earth. -- Hardcover, 512 pages.  By: Martin Gray List Price: $35.00 Amazon Price: $23.10 Editorial Review: Acclaimed photographer and anthropologist Martin Gray spent the last 20 years on an amazing pilgrimage: he visited 1,000 sacred sites in 80 countries around the world. His journey unfolds in a remarkable compilation of images that reveals just how devoutly pre-industrial cultures everywhere worshipped and respected our Earth. From the Western Wall to the Great Mosque of Damascus, Mt. Olympus to Assisi, Tibet’s Potala Palace to Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, Teotihuacán in Mexico to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, these are the awe-inspiring places from which all the world’s great religions sprang, along with our finest culture, art, and architecture. Gray’s stunning photographs and fascinating text provide unique insight into why these powerful holy places are the most venerated and visited sites on the entire planet. Maps adapted from the National Geographic Society show the locations of all the sites presented, and a thorough appendix includes a comprehensive list of over 500 of the world’s sacred sites.  By: Brian Curtis Amazon Price: $39.37 Editorial Review: Perceptual drawing, in which one renders the physical world as it appears to an observer, is the focus of this new text for the introductory drawing course. Drawing from Observation offers a balanced mix of hands-on technique and perceptual theory while making a compelling argument for the long-term value of studying perception-based drawing.  By: Jonas Bendiksen List Price: $35.00 Amazon Price: $23.10 Editorial Review: This culmination of a fascinating seven-year photographic journey takes viewers through the countries and enclaves once held in orbit by the immense gravity of Moscow, the nucleus of the Soviet empire. Now each region is on its own in a chaotic political environment, sometimes without diplomatic recognition from neighbors, much less the international community. Abkhazia, an unrecognized country on the Black Sea, was once the natural pearl of the empire, where bellicose generals and productive factory managers came to relax. The spacecraft crash zones between Russia and Kazakhstan reveal a Soviet-inflected version of the entrepreneurial spirit. In Transdniester, a breakaway region of Moldova that survives by functioning as a giant black market for illicit traffic in all manner of goods, from leftover Soviet munitions to bootlegged booze, Bendiksen was expelled on the grounds that he was a "protagonist in an international spy ring." These 62 hauntingly beautiful and often arresting color photographs unsentimentally reveal the often grim circumstances in these half-forgotten regions, uniformly poor and polluted, and often politically unstable. We may not hear much about them today, but we will certainly hear more as the fall of the Iron Curtain continues to reverberate throughout the region. |
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