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Summary: A passion for landscapes
Review: During my years as book-review editor of Sierra Magazine (1987-1994), I had the good fortune of meeting Mike Light, who then was a fledgling photographer, fresh out of Amherst, soon to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. He struck me as deeply impassioned in his love of landscapes, but in photographing them, he moved well beyond the early, romanticized images of the sort made famous by Ansel Adams. Mike wanted to record how landscapes influence people, overtly or unconsciously, through their challenges and their inherent sensuousness. Mountains, deserts, prairies and, yes, moonscapes, draw explorers to them irrevocably. They people's ideals, and test them at every turn, nurtur them in some cases, and at other times crush them. But Mike wanted to show the flip side of that, how we in turn shape the land, molding and shaping it even as we cherish it.Mike began exploring with his cameras, traveling the country, snapping images of what his mind saw, and eventually he produced a photo-essay called Ranch, depicting in stark black and white the rugged terrain of an old, still-working ranch in the Santa Barbara hills.Mike's new book, Full Moon, with its stunningly beautiful images culled from years (literally) of painstaking digging through NASA's heretofore publicly unseen images, reveals the eye of that young man so in love with the adventure of exploring Earth's -- and now the moon's -- sensuous surfaces, textures, as alluring as any body.In piecing together a photo-narrative of a space adventure, Mike reveals how the lure of the unknown shapes our dreams, exciting us to achieve noble goals, or to perish trying. Full Moon shares with Mike Light's earlier book, Ranch, the fascination with light and shadow across rugged, nearly barren terrain. It makes clear the irresistable urge such otherworldly landscapes inspire in us adventurers, challenging us to explore and somehow 'conquer' those terrains, leaving our footprints, tire tracks, machines, memories.Full Moon ranks as one of, possibly THE most stunning photo-art book I've seen in my many years of reviewing/perusing landscape photography books. Mike Light's accomplishment ranks with those of earlier photographers who assembled exhibit-format books to inspire and instruct. He has taken a subject everyone thought they knew well, taken us in for a close-up look, and shown us how little, in fact, we actually knew.
Rating: 
Summary: The best space picture book ever
Review: This is a fantastic book! Who would have thought to use actual NASA negatives, a little photo technology, and presto, create a stunning book of Apollo photos? This is a great addition to anyone's personal library. However, I was slightly dissappointed. It says that the author wanted to avoid the more famous pictures, like the one of Buzz Aldrin on the moon. But why? I think the famous ones need to be seen like you are actually there instead of yellowed fourth and fifth generation duplicates more than the "never-before-published" photos. Other than that small dissapotinment, you ought to get it.
Rating:
Summary: Simply brilliant
Review: This is a superb pictorial record of man's journey to the moon.The photographs are simply stunning, detailed, and beautifully bound. Simply brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: Full Moon
Review: A voyage to the Moon & back: a stunning, mysterious, elegant sequence of 145 photographs-most of them never before published-selected from 32,000 taken by the Apollo astronauts & preserved in the NASA archives. Chosen by Michael Light & arranged to show us a composite voyage, infinitely more immediate & moving than any special-effects simulation we have seen, these breathtaking photographs reveal the experience of space travel in all its audacious splendor. Here is the baptism by fire at liftoff; the vertiginous experience of space-walking; the utterly incomparable emptiness of the lunar landscape. We see the Moon's surface irrevocably changed by the arrival of men & their equipment; & the glowing blue ball of Earth, indescribably beautiful at such enormous physical & psychological distance. Wonderful in the truest sense of the word, Full Moon makes astronauts of us all, allowing us to see one of the most extraordinary journeys of all time through the eyes of the men who made it.
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Summary: STUNNING!
Review: This book is absolutely incredible! The quality of the photos is simply outstanding, making the moon shot feel like it just happened yesterday not 30 years ago. It brought back all the goosebumps I felt as a highschooler when the astronauts first stepped on the moon. Presenting the pictures separate from the text makes you focus entirely on the visual before you. The foldouts are so impressive and encompassing. In addition, the essay answered basic questions about the space program brought up by the photos but kept it short enough to not read like a history book. This is a book I'll return to again and again. Already I have run after friends, book in hand, shouting, "Look at this one! Look at THIS!" A fabulous additon to anyone's library but most especially for anyone with even the slightest interest in the space program. It offers an artist's interpretation and presentation of a truly amazing and life-altering event.
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Summary: The Perfection of Apollo
Review: The moon landing is the greatest thing this country has even done and Michael Light, like no one before him, indelibly captures the glory and majesty of the Apollo program. Drawing from NASA's stock of thousands of photographs, Light takes us on a hypothetical moon voyage from launch to splashdown. The flames of a Saturn booster are juxtaposed with the unreal contrasts of the lunar surface. Such a collection of space photography is an unprecedented event. His achievement is all the more impressive when one considers that the photographs he has compiled were not strictly the work of professionals, but rather the work of astronauts -- scientists, pilots and engineers who captured the beauty of an alien world as well as any painter could hope to do.
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Summary: Simply the best!
Review: This is an art book par excellence. I know of no equals. The images are haunting and wondrous. You must own this book! But don't be duped into thinking that the color is accurate. It's largely an artifact of the composition and printing. Color on the Moon is very complex. See NASA's Lunar Surface Journal online for a good discussion of this issue.
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Summary: I'm flying high on a rocket in the sky
Review: This was made as a tie-in with a travelling exhibition of the photographs Light had selected and cleaned up (don't worry; he hasn't turned them into 'Star Wars: The Special Edition', the book explains that he altered the contrast and removed the crosshairs, but not from the original negatives, it must be said). The book compiles some of the pictures shown during the exhibition, including some of the clever multi-image panoramas which worked much better when they were five feet wide. As some reviewers have mentioned, there are a couple of interlopers from the Gemini missions, and the selection of pictures gets a bit monotonous during the middle section - the bit of the moon, ironically enough. Whilst many of the shots of mountains and craters are astonishing, a lot of the time the moon looks like a floodlit quarry at night, and if it wasn't the moon - the moon, for heaven's sake - many of the pictures wouldn't be of interest (compared to the landscape photography of Ansel Adams, for example). My only other criticism is that the combination of high-quality paper and black ink makes fingerprints show up as indelible greasy smudges, and you'll probably want to read the book with gloves (I'm not joking).
The rest is essentially as outlined elsewhere on this page; breathtaking images of the lunar landscape, and some interesting, rarely-seen shots of exhausted astronauts covered in stubble and lunar dust. And there's one striking shot of a photograph of one astronaut's family, dropped on the moon's surface - striking because it's the only spot of colour on a black-and-white planet. In the end that's what you'll remember; the lack of colour. Earth is indescribably beautiful.
Rating: 
Summary: Full Moon? I don't think so...
Review: Overall, a good book. But... Most of the pictures are really beautiful, but some of them are not that good, to be honest. The author even managed to select some pictures that were definitly out of focus, etc. Not that I don't appreciate this artistic side, but I would definitly have preferred the most perfect pictures available. And the selection also falls a little short! There are not so many pictures, considering that some of the first are not even about the Moon missions, and some are just duplicates of each other. And maybe it would have been a good idea to include some pictures from other Moon probes, such as the Ranger probes, or even the Soviet Luna probes (and rovers!), which are extremely hard to find (thanks NASA for keeping them out of reach!). It would have been, IMHO, much more interesting than some blurry pictures from the Gemini programme. You don't buy this book to learn something, that's for sure, even though the text at the end is quite interesting (thanks to Mr. Chaikin). You buy this book to get a feeling of what it was like to be up there. And you can actually get some of that feeling. It's just sad that it's the closest you can get, and probably will ever get.
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Summary: You'll Feel Like You're There!
Review: Once you've perused the pages of this book, you'll feel like you walked with the moonwalkers. It is absolutely beautiful. If you want to experience it for yourself, this is the book. They say one picture is worth a thousand words...this book proves it.
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