5 out of 5 stars
A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.
In December 1972 the astronauts about the Apollo 17 took a photo of the Earth. They were around 18,000 miles away at the time on their way to the moon. This image titled the Blue marble has become one of the most reproduced images in the world. It shows just how magnificent our tiny planet is and also just how fragile it is too.
The new book, Earth From Space, aims to show how our planet looks now using the latest high-resolution camera fitted to satellites. Split into four sections, Movement, colour, pattern and change, these images are just jaw-dropping. There are images from all over our planet on some of the most spectacular sights, both man-made and natural that they have found, from river deltas, to brand new islands created by volcanoes, a network of rice paddies to the latest technology in finding whales. There is an image showing the tidal range around Mont Saint Michel and even more spectacular the flow of current from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.
This is an amazing coffee table book with a solid five stars. I’m all out of superlatives for the images which really work in this large-format book. The text that accompanies them is useful but is primarily there as a foil for the photographs really. Some of the colours of the places that they take are amazing, not sure how much enhancement they have had though. It is also a timely reminder that we live on an amazing planet and we are as much as a part of the ecosystem as the microbes that permeate all levels of the world. There is no plan(et) B; if we ruin this one, we are all doomed.
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