Rating: 
Summary: Searing and Unforgettable
Review: I have never felt compelled to write a review before but having, a few hours ago, looked at each photograph in this book in our local bookstore, and still consumed with the images I saw, I am writing to tell you that it is impossible to view these photographs without being viscerally seared. While we all know of these horrors their sheer magnitude renders them hard to assimilate: it is therefore generally easier and so much more comfortable to forget about them as people do with the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the killing fields of Cambodia and so on. Each photograph in this book shows a heart-breaking human tragedy that completely personalises the horror and thereby forces us to become emotionally involved with those who suffer. This book should be in every public library.
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Summary: How many more.......as the world looks on.
Review: I have only but seen a few of the pictures yet my heart is hardened with sorrow and grief. Thinking it could have been me, wondering why it was not me. My tears stream down my face knowing there is little I can do. But the pictures are too hard to ignore...yet I see hope. James has taken a great step to help heal their wounds....but it is time we too took a part to help lessen their pain. Because if it were you and me.....we would only hope that they will hear our cries and share in our pain. For no man is worth living like that.
Rating:
Summary: I can't believe myself
Review: I'm not really reviewing this book, I'm reviewing myself, my reaction to the book. Because there is nothing that is not perfect about this book. It's stunning. Dazzling. The only thing that's wrong is my reaction to this book. I wish I could make myself read part of it every day, because I know that if I don't look at at least one picture, I'll forget the books entire impact. I have that ability, to just wipe sad things from my mind. That's probably the sickness that grasps the American people as a whole: the ability to just forget, no matter what they've been shown. They can just forget, and go on living as if each day in the safest country on earth were an adventure. But if I do read this book, I go insane. I'm infused with an unquenchable desire to DO something. Doesn't matter what. I'm that way, too. I need to fill the void that these pictures create in me with action. But what can I do? That is my mantra. What can I do for thousands starving, being beaten, sufering at the hands of others, nature, themselves. The answer is nothing. I can do nothing. I want to apologize to every person in this book for my uselessness. I as an individual can do nothing. But I as a group can do a lot. I as a group of people can accomplish anything, and I think that as well every time I read this book. I think that if I were part of a group, I would be able to help. So I want to apologize for not being part of a group yet. I'm sorry I can do nothing, yet.
Rating:
Summary: I can't believe myself
Review: I'm not really reviewing this book, I'm reviewing myself, my reaction to the book. Because there is nothing that is not perfect about this book. It's stunning. Dazzling. The only thing that's wrong is my reaction to this book. I wish I could make myself read part of it every day, because I know that if I don't look at at least one picture, I'll forget the books entire impact. I have that ability, to just wipe sad things from my mind. That's probably the sickness that grasps the American people as a whole: the ability to just forget, no matter what they've been shown. They can just forget, and go on living as if each day in the safest country on earth were an adventure. But if I do read this book, I go insane. I'm infused with an unquenchable desire to DO something. Doesn't matter what. I'm that way, too. I need to fill the void that these pictures create in me with action. But what can I do? That is my mantra. What can I do for thousands starving, being beaten, sufering at the hands of others, nature, themselves. The answer is nothing. I can do nothing. I want to apologize to every person in this book for my uselessness. I as an individual can do nothing. But I as a group can do a lot. I as a group of people can accomplish anything, and I think that as well every time I read this book. I think that if I were part of a group, I would be able to help. So I want to apologize for not being part of a group yet. I'm sorry I can do nothing, yet.
Rating:
Summary: holocaust meant nothing in retrospect
Review: If you have the courage to look at these photos then you have the courage to say we've learned nothing from history, all the countless books and films and discussions,seminars and the millions in erecting museums have meant nothing. Why? It seems we don't care if children are hacked to death,or we allow whole nations of people to starve,or be tortured, to withstand humiliation being the victims of the new globalization schemes of the world's power brokers.Nachtwey allows his truthful images to speak for themselves,from the barren lands,the forsaken lands of the world that god has forgotten about.Somalia,Sudan,Rwanda,India,Bosnia,Chechyna,but it really doesn't matter where this occurs, the fact that it does right now, everyday. On artistic terms as others here have said these photos transcend the artistic frame, and given a forever deeper meaning to what art can express of the human spirit. These images also speak of the past, asking the pathetic question where have we come, or does anyone care.
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Summary: Inferno
Review: Inferno is an extraordinary document of war and strife during the 1990s - Rwanda, Somalia, Romania's orphans, Bosnia, Chechnya, Untouchables in India - expressed in brilliant and often shocking images.
A document of war and strife during the 1990s, this volume of photographs by the photojournalist James Nachtwey includes dramatic and shocking images of human suffering in Rwanda, Somalia, Romania, Bosnia, Chechnya and India, as well as Kosovo.
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Summary: Brings out emotions that have been hidden
Review: Like many other reviewers, I think this collection of photos is beyond words. It may sound cliche to say this book brings out emotions inside you that have been hidden or you never knew existed, but it is true. I heard about this book and had seen a few of the images from it in a TIME issue from sometime ago. I found a copy and looked through it..... I could not stop and finally took the copy and bought it... It had seared itself into my mind and I needed to own a copy because I could not ever let myself forget that the images inside this book are real and to forget they exist or happen would be like losing part of my humanity. Highly Recommended!!!
Rating:
Summary: Brings out emotions that have been hidden
Review: Like many other reviewers, I think this collection of photos is beyond words. It may sound cliche to say this book brings out emotions inside you that have been hidden or you never knew existed, but it is true. I heard about this book and had seen a few of the images from it in a TIME issue from sometime ago. I found a copy and looked through it..... I could not stop and finally took the copy and bought it... It had seared itself into my mind and I needed to own a copy because I could not ever let myself forget that the images inside this book are real and to forget they exist or happen would be like losing part of my humanity. Highly Recommended!!!
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Summary: Photojournalism par excelence
Review: Look! I am photojournalist myself. I was in Eritrea, Sudan, Northern Ireland, there was a 10 days war in my home country in June 1991. I met Mr. Nachtwey personally and he sat down and chat with me for an hour. He is diferent with his aproach to human from other photographers who feeds theirs ego with quasi art and self assigments. Nachtwey showed us how should photojournalism think on human not just to look photographically through your vallet. Bravo! Excellent book
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Summary: Reminder: Inferno
Review: Luis Bunuel once said, and I paraphrase: "Where is the kindness and intelligence that will save man?" I applaud "Inferno," and at the same time note that it serves as a reminder to us Americans to look at our own backyards: East Los Angeles, South Central L.A., the Bronx, Harlem, Cabrini Green... all are centers rife with pain. HUMAN pain. It takes work: mentoring, mentoring, mentoring. As Luis Rodriguez ("Always Running") has said: "To know (these young people), you have to walk with them." Young people need elders in ways that empty political rhetoric, Pokemon, MTV, and Hollywood cannot and will never compensate for; the HUMAN ways. Let's begin healing ourselves, maybe via mentoring, transmitting the spirit of entrepreneurship or teaching literacy and the vast freedom of books to Black and Brown kids in East L.A. and South Central. Let's do the practical, never glorified work! For in that spirit, we find an added bonus: we see love in action, right where it counts.
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