Rating: 
Summary: Never Forget
Review: Some books stay with you.
They have a way of creeping into your consciousness, with reminders of what you read or saw, etched in your memory, nudged back to the surface by a thought, a comment, or simply because you can't seem to stop thinking about them.
Michael Light's "100 SUNS" is one such book, and compelling to the point I feel it important to write about here.
The book documents two decades of U.S. nuclear testing through 100 unreal, yet so very real, photographs. Half are of the desert land based tests, the others are of tests performed over the ocean. Most are of the mushroom clouds, but many show the military personnel that observed these detonations.
The photographs, simply put, are stunningly beautiful and terrifying all at once. In general they gradually depict increasingly powerful explosions, from the first nuclear test, Trinity, that began mankind's nuclear era, to the megaton monster tests in the Pacific Ocean.
Each photograph is detailed at the back of the book, which while inconvenient, does at least keep the photo pages uncluttered and focused on the images. The images are identified by the test's name and the tonnage. The names of the tests are unremarkable, certainly intentionally given what they identified, yet image after image gets burned into your mind, not soon to be forgotten. A time line of the nuclear arms race helps pull all the visuals together.
These are reminders of terrifying destructive power that used to be a daily reality, and that today, with the concern that nuclear bombs might get into the hands of terrorists, is once again a force of human nature that cannot be neglected. The arsenals of the nuclear powers grew at remarkable rates until anti-proliferation treaties, and anti-testing treaties were enacted. Yet, although the last tests occurred a decade ago, Russia has given indications it continues to see strength in a nuclear vision, while at the same time, the need to secure all of the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, and the materials to produce nuclear bombs, has never been greater. Today, there is worldwide concern about North Korea's and Iran's nuclear ambitions. Will any of today's concerns become the basis for nuclear catastophes in our future?
So look for this book. Take the time to read about each image. Contemplate what it all means. I suspect you won't easily forget it.
Rating:
Summary: AMAZING
Review: The subject is so dark and yet the images are so beautiful. Unfortunately I have no money to buy it, so I keep going into every bookstore I pass and must go in an drool over these 100 Suns.
Rating: 
Summary: How We Won The War
Review: These images of American above-ground nuclear tests are indeed terrifyingly beautiful, and beatifully terrifying. Seeing the massive energy of the atom unleashed, in the archetypical mushroom cloud, is an arresting experience no matter how long ago these photos were taken. The images are rather samey, save for some that show oddly botanical detail of some clouds, probably due to water vapor. The test blasts have retro-sounding Army code names like FIZEAU, YANKEE, BAKER, MAGNOLIA, and etc. There is no visual perspective-big and small blasts seem the same size due to different camera distances. Some images taken from high-speed time lapse films seem like giant bacilli. Some, irrespective of kilo- or megatonnage, seem like they are splitting the heavens. Hats off to all the servicemen who were subjected to these tests. It probably wasn't nice for the Pentagon to subject these men to these hazards, and I echo the wish that it never has to happen again. But I do appreciate their sacrifice, because I think it was well worth it. The author tosses in a sneer at the Strategic Defense Initiative in his end of book timeline. But Reagan understood that nuclear weapons could not be un-invented, only rendered obsolete. Like it or not, nukes are a fact of international life, and a wise leader will not try to wish them away. The author wants to evoke a Strangelovian mood, but it's too late for that. It makes a difference, whether nuclear superiority resides with free countries or tyrants, now as well as in the Fifties and Sixties. America's nuclear arsenal kept the Soviets and their proxies from gobbling up even more nations than they actually did. The fact that America won the Cold War is, once and for all, A Good Thing, and it was these weapons, along with the MAD doctrine, that helped win it. Better MET than red.
Rating:
Summary: How We Won The War
Review: These images of American above-ground nuclear tests are indeed terrifyingly beautiful, and beatifully terrifying. Seeing the massive energy of the atom unleashed, in the archetypical mushroom cloud, is an arresting experience no matter how long ago these photos were taken. The images are rather samey, save for some that show oddly botanical detail of some clouds, probably due to water vapor. The test blasts have retro-sounding Army code names like FIZEAU, YANKEE, BAKER, MAGNOLIA, and etc. There is no visual perspective-big and small blasts seem the same size due to different camera distances. Some images taken from high-speed time lapse films seem like giant bacilli. Some, irrespective of kilo- or megatonnage, seem like they are splitting the heavens. Hats off to all the servicemen who were subjected to these tests. It probably wasn't nice for the Pentagon to subject these men to these hazards, and I echo the wish that it never has to happen again. But I do appreciate their sacrifice, because I think it was well worth it. The author tosses in a sneer at the Strategic Defense Initiative in his end of book timeline. But Reagan understood that nuclear weapons could not be un-invented, only rendered obsolete. Like it or not, nukes are a fact of international life, and a wise leader will not try to wish them away. The author wants to evoke a Strangelovian mood, but it's too late for that. It makes a difference, whether nuclear superiority resides with free countries or tyrants, now as well as in the Fifties and Sixties. America's nuclear arsenal kept the Soviets and their proxies from gobbling up even more nations than they actually did. The fact that America won the Cold War is, once and for all, A Good Thing, and it was these weapons, along with the MAD doctrine, that helped win it. Better MET than red.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning and exquisite images
Review: This is a very handsome volume, with images every bit as beautiful as the subject matter is terrifying. Shown are mushroom clouds from near and far, in black and white and in color, and soldiers hunkered down and bracing themselves against the burst in the distance. There's the seemingly harmless--and innocently named--Little Feller I (#46), a "mere" 18-ton-TNT-equivalent delicate puff rising from the barren Nevada desert, captured 40 seconds after detonation. And then consider Bravo, the largest single nuclear explosion ever. At 15 megatons--the equivalent of 15 million tons of TNT--it released in an instant more energy than all the ordnance spent in World Wars I and II combined. The list of captions in the back of the book provides interesting data about each test and makes a nice tidy summary of our government's Cold War excesses. Light's book includes a chronology of developments in the nuclear era, including year-by-year counts of Soviet and U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiles. It is noteworthy that, during the hottest years of the Cold War, when the U.S. public was being warned of a widening "missile gap" with the Soviet Union, we always had a greater number of warheads, often as many as ten times more.
Rating:
Summary: Darkly beautiful
Review: This is an amazing photograpic document about a strange time in American history. It is somewhat personal to me as I was one of the 900 Marines 2 miles from the HOOD detonation on July 5th, 1957. I did not know until I read the caption in the book that I was present at both the largest, and first hydrogen, bomb exploded in the US. I hope to hell we never see any comtemporary photos of atomic explosions. The photos in this book ought to be enough for all time.
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