Reuters news agency has captured the first six years of the 21st century in Reuters: The State of the World, a series of captioned photos that span modern life from the new millennium celebrations through the terrorist attacks and on to recent Academy Awards ceremonies. The section that documents our century’s most formidable tragedies the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the destruction of New Orleans, fanatical attacks on New York and Madrid will be, for many readers, the book’s most important contribution as those events seem largely to shape the new era. The State of the World also spotlights world religions, emerging technologies, recent political conflicts and popular culture. For some, the book’s most powerful images may be those that ultimately need no interpretation: Pope John Paul II releasing a dove; a Bavarian church surrounded by satellite dishes nearly as high as its onion dome; a rabbi looking at a Hebrew memorial defaced by a swastika; a sneakered foot running down a street chased by a frothing bull; Julia Roberts smiling. A related website (www.stateoftheworld.reuters.com) features slideshows of the book’s images and profiles of the 227 photojournalists who took them.
Valiant Women is a vital and engrossing attempt to correct the record and rightfully celebrate the achievements of female veterans of World War II.
