Life Magazine. "50 Years." (Fall, 1986) (This special anniversary edition has some of life's best images, which include a number of war photographs, including "Combat Coverage Across Five Decades of War." Photography by Robert Capa, Larry Burrow, and David Douglas Duncan are featured, along with a full page of the faces of 217 men killed in one week.)
Ambrose, Steven.
American Heritage New History of World War II
. New York: Viking, 1997. (Excellent contextual background of World War II, extensively illustrated)
W. Eugene Smith.
W. Eugene Smith: His Photographs and Notes.
New York: Aperture, Inc. 1969. (Moving collection of Smith's most important photo-essays, including Smith's notes and commentary. Of all of the photographers, Smith's images and accompanying words best express the theme of empathy, and form the emotional core of this unit.)
Aperture Foundation, Inc.
Robert Capa Photographs
.
Vicenza, Italy: Aperture, Inc., 1996.
Barthes, Roland
. Camera Lucida
. New York: Hill and Wang, 1980. (A philosophical essay on the nature of photography)
Burrows, Larry.
Vietnam
(Burrow's extensive work on Vietnam. He was killed there.)
Ed. by Cyma Rubin and Eric Newton.
The Pulitzer Prize Winning Photographs
. (Numerous war photographs are presented in this collection of news photos.)
Ed. by Steichen, Edward
. The Family of Man.
New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1955. (The most successful photography exhibit of all time, organized along universal themes. War is one of those themes.)
Ed. by William S. Johnson.
Master of the Photographic Essay: W. Eugene Smith.
Millerton, New York: Aperture, Inc., 1981. (Extensive collection of Smith's many photo-essays, including many war images from the Pacific War.)
Howe, Peter.
Shooting Under Fire: The World of the War Photographer.
New York: Artisan, 2002. (An extensive collection. The central thematic focus is the experience of the war photographers.)
Knightley, Phillip. The Eyes of War: Words and Photographs From the Front Line. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2003. (Extensive collection, including many taken since Vietnam, along with quotes.)
Moeller, Susan. Shooting War: Photography and the American Experience of Combat. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1989. (An excellent chronological history of war photography.)
Moyes, Norman B. Battle Eye: A History of American Combat Photography. New York: MetroBooks, 1996. (A chronological history of combat photography)
Orvell, Miles. American Photography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. (An exhaustive, yet not overwhelming, text on the history of American photography in cultural context.)
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1977 (A critical examination of the role of photography in our lives.)
Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador, 2003. (Nearly thirty years later, Sontag takes another look at photography's role in our lives. Images of atrocities have become common. Are viewers numbed to violence by the depiction of cruelty?
Thomas, Gordon. Guernica: The Crucible of World War II. (A moment-by-moment account of Franco's terror bombing of the Basque city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. The bombing inspired Picasso's
Guernica
.)
Trachtenberg, Alan. Reading American Photographs. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989 (A book about the process of "reading" photographs as history. Very useful in constructing detailed descriptions and analyses of photographs.)
United States Holocaust Museum. Liberation 1945 (Powerful images and testimony by American soldiers who liberated concentration camps)
Various Life Magazine cover stories, from World War II, Korean War, Vietnam