Moments: Pulitzer Prize Photogr

This book sold for $ 25. when it was new in 1982, and still packs an emotional punch. Contains some of the most famous images from the civil rights struggle, the JFK years, the Viet Nam war, rescues and disasters. These are the photos that took your breath away when you first saw them in Life and Look.

Holding this volume--"Moments: the Pulitzer Prize Photographs"--in your hands is akin to holding a family memory album, an album that reflects tragedy, celebration, hallmarks, horror, travesty, and a myriad other national emotions right before your eyes. Open the book and revisit those memories captured--there!--in the moment! Dan Rather writes the foreword in his inimitable style: "[A] look at Sheryle and John Leekley's collection of 'signposts along the way' reminds us that the sinew and bone, the emotion, of the story is right there in the photographic image" (8). As you turn from page to page to examine very famous photographs of national history, you will learn a little more what makes our national character. The volume begins with the first Pulitzer Prize photograph: "Battle on the Picket Lines," 1942, Pete Brooks, Detroit News, a photo "capturing in a startling way the fury and the power" of breaking a picket line. One of the first truly recognizable photographs is raising the flag at Iwo Jima, 1945, Joe Rosenthal. Each photo fills one page with the opposite page explaining the background, historical significance, photographer, and impact. Would you think a photographer would "shoot" a subject from the rear? That's what Nat Fein, New York Herald-Tribune, did with Babe Ruth. A nation knew instantly his #3 on the back of his jersey in "the King of Clout, the Sultan of Swat," 1949, taken two months before the Babe died. "A Miracle," 1954, was taken by a tourist with a Brownie camera. The "miracle" was the cab of a diesel hanging off a bridge, ready to drop, and does seconds after rescue of the passengers. A joyous photograph "draws more response than any photo every published in the Washington Daily News," (44)--"But, Sir, the Dragon." A tiny little boy steps in the street to get a better view of the meandering floats of the Chinese New Year parade in Washington, D.C., 1958. A policeman spots the boy stepping into the street and he bends down to the boy in the spirit of safety. Who doesn't remember "Live...from Dallas," 1964, the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, or the shooting of James Meredith in Mississippi, where he integrated Ole Miss in 1967? Or the photo that led to the disillusionment in the Vietnam War? "Democracy and Freedom?", 1969, shows the shooting of a Viet Cong by Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, Vietnam's national police chief. Eddie Adams of AP took this photograph with a telephoto lens. In 1971, "A God-Awful Scream" captured the nation's conscience in the shooting of several Kent State students protesting the Vietnam War. Who would have thought National Guardsmen would be given live ammo to use on their own countrymen? Images of floods, mental institutions, bayonetings, napalm burning of childen in Vietnam, live births, hostage taking, return of soldiers from the war, cross burnings, integration friendships, racial attacks. Signature photographs which tell our nation's history, or part of it, are h

This books contains the Pulitzer winning photographs from 1942-1977. These are truly some of our greatest pieces of photojournalism, and it is great to see them all in one place (with a great page-length essay on each). This is a book that should definitely be updated periodically, and it is. So go for one of the later books that have more of the photos. And enjoy, see some of the best photojournalism ever done.