Nonfiction Book Reviews
One Digital Day by Rick Smolan
Times Books, May 1998.Hardcover, 223 pages.
ISBN: 0812930312.
Ordering information:
Amazon.com.
Beautiful photographs from
photojournalists worldwide
highlight this visual look
at the microchip-laden world in which we live.
The book features over 200
full-color photographs each
taken on the same day, July, 11, 1997,
by 100 of the world's most talented photojournalists,
to show how the microchip has
impacted our world.
The impact of the microchip has
been swift and far-reaching. As
Intel Chairman Andy Grove
states in his foreword in the book,
"They change how existing products
function and allow the creation of new
ones. In the aggregate, they change how
we live, how we work, how we entertain
ourselves and how we are able to imagine --
and thus create -- the world our children
will inherit."
The book was produced by Rick
Smolan, founder of Against All
Odds, a company specializing in large-scale
photographic projects and
who created the prize-winning
"Day in the Life" book series.
Smolan sent the 100 journalists
around the world to record how the
microchip has affected entertainment,
health, sports, business, education and
other aspects of our daily lives.
Photo editors then sorted
through nearly 80,000 images to
chose the final photographs used
in the book.
One Digital Day is a masterpiece of photojournalism that shows how quickly technology has infiltrated all aspects of our lives. It also gives hints at what the digital future will be like. A beautiful and thought-provoking book which will make a conversation piece for the coffee table.
The Uninvited by Nick Pope
Overlook, July 1998.Hardcover, 316 pages.
ISBN: 0879518782.
Ordering information:
Amazon.com.
This look at the outbreak of alien abduction reportings
by British Minister of Defense worker Nick Pope may soften
even a skeptic's arguments. Pope provides accounts from
reported abductions that he himself has investigated while
on the job for the British government. His research has
convinced him that there is more
to many of these reportings
than mere delusion on the part of the abductees. The book
provides an overview of alien
abduction and includes
unsolved cases, abduction theories
and discussions of prior research
into the phenomenon.
Pope, author of the popular Open Skies, Closed Minds, provides another thought-provoking tome on the subject of alien abductions with The Uninvited. Known as the real-life equivalent of the X-Files' Fox Mulder, Pope writes with authority because of his work for the British Government's Ministry of Defense investigating UFO sightings. About the unsolved cases of alien abduction Pope writes, "If they were true -- if just one case was true -- the implications for the human race would be profound and disturbing." And, according to Pope, who went in a skeptic and came out a believer, the truth is out there -- and it's quite disturbing.
Return to the July 1998 issue of The IWJ.
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