This book captured all those essential moments in time, & the title said it all, really. It started from year 1942 & ended in 1999. Just like the movie, Pleasantville, it started with B&W pictures but as the technology gets better & more viable, colour pictures took over but still, never underestimated the raw drama & power of B&W pictures, though. The editing of this splendid coffee table book is quite clever by segregating it into various eras describing the technology & techniques available during that time (involving taking, printing, transmitting the pictures) & then, drawing a parellel with what's going on in this world right there, right then. I didn't appreciate the intensity of the pictures when I was younger but as I'm older now & sitting through reading thru this book, it brought back many memories, some good, some bad. And this book is also clever enough to provide time graph with more pertinent pictures to run us through the time passed. It's quite emotionally draining & disturbing at times to read that some photographers risked it all including their lives just to share the moments with the rest of the world, & how much the pictures affected some photographers here that they took away their own lives. All & all, this is a book that celebrates humanity, abhors at evil that humans would do to one another, reminds us all of the vulnerability against Mother Nature, the appreciation of simple things in life, & so forth. A very engaging book & worth reading. Highly recommended.

Considering the last edition of Moments: The Pulitzer Prize Photographs came out nearly 20 years ago, it's great that somebody saw fit to update this book to include the stupendous photos that have won the Pulitzer in the last 20 years, like Kevin Carter's photo of the starving Sudanese girl and Charles Porter's photograph from Oklahoma City. And the narratives about each photo, coupled with the technical details in the back, make this book still a cut above a mere exhibition of the winners.

But apparently they must have had some trouble tracking down copies of the older Pulitzer winners for this edition, because the reproduction on some of them is, well, kind of crappy. For a few of them, it looks like they literally took flatbed scans from the pages of the old book and used them in this one; in some of them, like the 1955 winner, you can actually see the pixel lines!

It's still a fantastic book on the whole...I guess I'm just a little disappointed that a book cataloging some of the most important news photographs of the 20th century has such mediocre reproduction in places.

Hal's done a great job of behind-the-scenes reporting for this book. The photos are good, too. But if you want a look at a museum-quality catalogue of these photos, try going to Newseum.org and looking at the online store for their book, The Pulitzer Prize photos...

Mr. Topping has found the perfect setting and period for a China novel; it's hard to imagine a more romantic and exciting time in recent Chinese history. That's why I'm all the more disappointed in his effort, which is almost, but not quite, a flop. His grasp of history is spot on. That is to be expected--he was there at the time. But the book's characters are so superficial and shallow as to cause the reader near complete despair. His dialogue is so cheesy that for just a moment I thought I had nodded off into an old wartime drama on the AMC channel. For those of you who are students of China, the book's protagonist will certainly remind you of people you may have run across. You know the ones--those with a exoticized, romanticized westerner fantasy of a China that never existed. Those people never last long in the field. Unfortunately, that is precisely who Mr. Topping gives us as his China 'hand'. And of course, the gorgeous educated, cultured native girls all swoon for him.

Mr. Topping lived in China during a very tumultuous time, and I hope one day he will write his memoirs of the period. His real-life China story certainly would make infinitely better reading than what he has offered here.

In sum, the book is a perfect example of a 'plane book', (or 'train book' if you are afraid of air travel). It should see you nicely to your destination, but then you will want to pass it on.

I was looking forward to reading this book for quite some time before I bought it. The story and the history was excellent; the descriptions vivid. I could hardly put it down. But, Mr. Topping is a newspaper man, and his journalistic style sometimes came through in the dialog between characters, and often sounded like he was quoting an interviewee.

All in all, it is a definite must have for any one with an interest in Chinese history and fiction.

Anyone interested in Chinese History will enjoy this historical novel. Also, anyone who enjoyed the films Farewell my Concubine or To Live will enjoy this story. Or if you have read this book and not watched those films, check them out. Sun Yatsen had a great dream for China. Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong battled for many years for the Mandate of Heaven, for the right to rule China and continue the work of Sun. Though this book is fiction, it does a great job showing the time period and discussing the events. I recommend reading this book and also reading the non-fiction Great Wall of China: 6 Presidents and China. This is a fine novel.

Pavlik wrote a great part of this book in his Palm, as himself said. It must be true, because only by this way somebody can write a book about such an exciting subject with so little intelligent speech.
This book it is only a collection of facts and figures for rookies, not for people interested in new media and journalism.