Rating: 
Summary: Suan Sontag feels her own pain
Review: And that's about it. She's a racist with a brilliant mind, and therefore most adept at propoganda. This book, as well as the rest of her work, to some extent and another profoundly reveals this.
Rating:
Summary: Suan Sontag feels her own pain
Review: And that's about it. She's a racist with a brilliant mind, and therefore most adept at propoganda. This book, as well as the rest of her work, to some extent and another profoundly reveals this.
Rating: 
Summary: Timely and Powerful
Review: As I watch the constant war show on CNN, am I a spectator experiencing war vicariously as entertainment, and if so, should I not be watching? On the other hand, if I choose not to watch am I hiding from reality and turning my back on the soldiers who after all represent me?If you experience any kind of discomfort with the constant coverage, then Sontag can offer some guidance. She concentrates mainly on photographs rather than video, but this enables her to draw comparisons between the present and past conflicts. Her elegant potted history of war photography from the Crimean war to today is in some ways a rebuttal to the notion that the ubiquity of media renders modern war substantially different to historical war. If video footage defines our experience of war, photographs become our memories, and this is no less true now than in the 1860's. If this sounds dry, then I do the book an injustice. First of all, Sontag is able to maintain page-turning readability without sacrificing scholarship. Second, even the most careful reading won't take more than 3 hours. Third, her arguments are forceful and in some cases passionate. I found "regarding the pain of others" erudite, persuasive and strangely moving.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting and Timely
Review: I couldn't help but wonder what Susan Sontag would have to say about a friend of mine, and the manner in which he gets his daily news. First thing, each day, when he gets to work, he logs into his computer, surfs to Yahoo, and looks at a slide show of all the top news photos for the day. He never reads any articles. At most he reads a caption or two, but mainly he looks at the pictures. How many others perceive the world through Yahoo slideshows? It's a bit scary. I think Sontag would agree that many people view the world primarily through the images they receive through the media. In her revealing book, Regarding The Pain of Others, Susan Sontag examines the many issues associated with the photography of warfare, genocide, and atrocity. She discusses the history of such images, why they are produced, the importance of the viewer's perspective, censorship, and many other related topics. In presenting her ideas, Sontag moves through a wide variety of history and literature ( Plato's Republic, the Crimean War, the Khmer Rouge, the Nazi concentration camps, Bosnia). Oddly enough, there are no photos in the book. Many photographs that are referred to are described enough to understand what is being said, but the actual photos would have been a much better addition. (Most of the photos referenced are well known and can easily be located online.) It would have been revealing to know why no photos were included. Many insights regarding war and photography are put forth. Some seemed like just well explained common sense, others were revealing. As a photographer, one concept that was mentioned, I found very profound. I've often wondered why photography hasn't been replaced by video in the manner in which photography displaced painting. Although video certainly dominates the entertainment industry, photos haven't disappeared and they continue to thrive. Sontag asserts that a photograph is the basic visual unit of memory. We remember in terms of photos much easier that entire video sequences. Certain events in our life, for example, the Apollo 11 moon landing, are recalled through the photographs we saw of those events. Although you will probably want a video of your wedding, it is certain there will be photos. For that reason, there will always be a place for photographs. In fact, you might have noticed during the recent coverage of the war in Iraq, many of the television news channels would play sequences of still photos. That is how we remember visually, in still images. My only complaint is the book's size, 126 pages, seemed small compared to the cost. Also the font and spacing are a bit large (remember that trick when writing school papers?). I had the feeling that some greedy marketing person was in the loop somewhere. Once I began to read though, my disappointment with book's size went away. I recommend this thoughtful work and hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
Rating:
Summary: WELL-WRITTEN, TIMELY & THOUGHT-PROVOKING
Review: I don't know why this book isn't at the top of Amazon's Susan Sontag's list of publications. It was very hard to put it down until I got to the end. It could use another chapter on the type of photos being shown from Iraq (a second edition?) and I'm sure her comments would be very interesting. What I really like about the book is, with the exception of the cover, there are no illustrations to distract us from what she's trying to get across and what she's trying to get across is, as she states, illustrations--sketches, paintings, photos--do not help us, unlike the written word, to UNDERSTAND, not only to feel/observe.
Rating:
Summary: meandering
Review: I found this a difficult book to read.The author uses long meandering sentences frequently enough to distract attention;and her thesis is unclear.The author also tends to make generalising statements,with no evidence to back the statements up.The book does not say anything new;I was disappointed overall.
Rating:
Summary: Ambiguous, Flighty, and Very Difficult to Follow!
Review: I really wanted to like this book, but it was so long-winded and unfocused. I felt that I was being pulled through the dark forest of the author's mind rather than the concrete experience of other people's pain. If she had written this as a journal it would have made more sense-maybe?
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting points, but what is her "argument"?
Review: In my experience, a non-fiction book on history, sociology or politics generally does one of two things. It reports and/or it opines. However, it seemed to me that this little essay, though making a number of interesting observations about war and photography, did neither. Indeed, virtually the whole time, I kept waiting for her ultimate opinion on the issue to come out. By the end, I never saw it. And yet, in the very first sentence of her acknowledgments (and elsewhere therein), she refers to "the argument of this book." Even after reading the laudatory reviews of this book, I couldn't tell what others perceived the "argument" to be either. I am assuming that her "argument" has something to do with the effect that photography has on war. For example if I had to guess (and if it turns out that I am totally off base, it wouldn't shock me), it may be that too many photos of the suffering of others may numb the senses to it and thus should be discouraged. Or maybe, she is making the exact opposite "argument"--that we don't see enough such photos and thus people can't really appreciate how horrible war is. In addition, whatever her argument, is she suggesting that we as a people do something different than what we do now, or is she simply offering neutral observations on the way of the world as it exists now? I have no doubt that others smarter than I could answer all of these questions, but I would have appreciated a little synopsis of her self-described "argument" so I knew what it was.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting points, but what is her "argument"?
Review: In my experience, a non-fiction book on history, sociology or politics generally does one of two things. It reports and/or it opines. However, it seemed to me that this little essay, though making a number of interesting observations about war and photography, did neither. Indeed, virtually the whole time, I kept waiting for her ultimate opinion on the issue to come out. By the end, I never saw it. And yet, in the very first sentence of her acknowledgments (and elsewhere therein), she refers to "the argument of this book." Even after reading the laudatory reviews of this book, I couldn't tell what others perceived the "argument" to be either. I am assuming that her "argument" has something to do with the effect that photography has on war. For example if I had to guess (and if it turns out that I am totally off base, it wouldn't shock me), it may be that too many photos of the suffering of others may numb the senses to it and thus should be discouraged. Or maybe, she is making the exact opposite "argument"--that we don't see enough such photos and thus people can't really appreciate how horrible war is. In addition, whatever her argument, is she suggesting that we as a people do something different than what we do now, or is she simply offering neutral observations on the way of the world as it exists now? I have no doubt that others smarter than I could answer all of these questions, but I would have appreciated a little synopsis of her self-described "argument" so I knew what it was.
Rating:
Summary: The politics of suffering
Review: In this insightful essay, Sontag springboards from an analysis of "Three Guineas" by Virginia Woolf into a discussion about the effects of photography and televised imagery on modern culture and ideas about war and violence. Weaving excerpts from works by Leonardo da Vinci, Plato, Wordsworth, and others, including her own previous work "On Photography", she leads readers on a journey into our own psyches and ways of thinking and viewing the world, and pushes us to examine with conscious knowledge the usage of images. I was especially taken with the idea that it is entirely human to turn away from these pictures of suffering, which are often used as a form of entertainment in the modern world. Sontag rightfully doesn't offer answers or platitudes, but instead indicates a welcoming of our own humanity's foibles as a way to deal with the obligations of conscience and the limits of sympathy.
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