Full Moon

Full Moon

by Michael Light

Format: Hardcover, 244pp.
ISBN: 0375406344
Publisher: Knopf Alfred A
Pub. Date: October  1999

ABOUT THE BOOK

From The Publisher

The most thrilling of all journeys — the missions of the Apollo astronauts to the surface of the Moon and back — yielded 32,000 extraordinarily beautiful photographs, the record of a unique human achievement. Until recently, only a handful of these photographs have been published; but now, for the first time, NASA has allowed a selection of the master negatives and transparencies offsite to be scanned electronically, rendering the sharpest images of space that we have ever seen. Michael Light has woven 129 of these stunningly clear images into a single composite voyage, a narrative of breathtaking immediacy and authenticity that begins with the launch and is followed by a walk in space, an orbit of the Moon, a lunar landing and exploration, and a return to Earth with an orbit and splashdown. Graced by five 45-inch-wide gatefolds that display the lunar landscape, from above the surface and at eye level, in unprecedented detail and clarity, Full Moon conveys on each page the excitement, disorientation, and awe that the astronauts themselves felt as they were shot into space and then as they explored an alien landscape and looked back at their home planet from hundreds of thousands of miles away.

Reviews

From Barnes & Noble, Inc - Vicki Powers  

Let's face it: We're incurable browsers. But sometimes our habit of casually flipping through the pages of a book works against the magic that the author put there. For example, rummaging through the stunning photographs of Full Moon might give one a sense of lunar beauty, but unless we begin at the beginning and slowly turn those big folio pages towards the left, we won't realize that Michael Light has constructed not just an eye-feast, but a visual voyage to the moon. So, perhaps if you see one of us book people indulging in a quick random sample of this luxurious book, you might stroll over and let them in on our secret.

 From Publishers Weekly

A photo of the northern hemisphere of the Moon, uncanny in its clarity of detail, beckons readers as it wraps around the jacket of the astonishing Full Moon by Michael Light. The clarity comes from the photo having been taken not on Earth but from space, during the Apollo 15 mission. On the 30th anniversary of Apollo 11, which first sent humanity to the lunar surface, Knopf will publish what stands as the definitive public record of our earliest visits to the Moon. In addition to the cover photo, the book presents 56 other b&w photos and 72 full-color photos, all at least full page (five 45-inch gatefolds are included as well), captioned toward the back of the book. There's also a ruminative essay about the Apollo program by Andrew Chaikin ("A Man on the Moon"), and an informative one about the photos by Michael Light (Ranch) — who spent four years selecting from NASA's 32,000 photos taken by the lunar astronauts, only a scattering of which have been previously published, to create a dramatic photographic diary of a composite lunar voyage. With its stunning images of the Moon, the lunar surface (often with unexpected signs of human presence: a footprint, a white-clad figure, a rover), space vehicles, astronauts, and the Earth from the Moon — this elegant, thrilling book, a high-water mark in the art of illustrative science, takes readers on a voyage to remember.

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