"Earth Then and Now: Amazing Images of Our Changing World" Review

by Fred Pearce

Firefly Books
Hardcover
$39.95 or as low as $30.98 from Amazon.com

The inexorable changes that our world is undergoing is both remarkable and intimidating. We are all aware of the impact of technological advancements in medicine, computers, and other fields, but the profound changes that the Earth itself has experienced over the past 100 years is breathtaking. Author and photographer Fred Pearce confronts our sensibilities with dramatic images of these changes as seen in this coffee table book of "then and now" photographs. The pictures show city scenes, buildings, and both natural and manmade landmarks from all over the world that have been deeply affected by the passing of time. The book mixes both ground-based and satellite views of the Earth to show these changes. Pearce covers several natural disasters like the Alaska Earthquake in 1964, the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington in the 1980s, and Hurricane Katrina's impact on New Orleans in 2005. He also manages to find amazing changes in cityscapes from Asia, Europe, and the US, and there are many examples of the possible effects of global warming on the Arctic icecap. Each of these before and after sequences is accompanied by a brief caption of facts relating to the images. It's a fascinating journey through time and space that lets you step back and take in the world from a unique perspective through a series of beautiful photographs.