In his latest book, war reporter Joe Sacco holds to the adage that one picture is worth a thousand words. Sacco has won an American Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Ridenhour Book Prize for his work as a documentary cartoonist. Here, he has created a record of July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme in World War I, generally regarded as the most horrifying day of the war, and the moment of the world's encounter with modern warfare. The book is in panorama format. It accordion-folds out to reveal a single long, narrow black and white drawing on heavyweight cream-colored paper which records the events of the day from beginning to end, left to right. The image is a continuous bird's-eye view. Each human figure is roughly one inch in height. The figures are detailed (the artist must have worked originally at a larger scale, and the printed book is a reduction). Viewers can recognize hundreds of individuals and specific events as the battle unfolds within the panorama. Sacco's style here is meticulously literal and documentary. The drawn images provide more emotional distance than photographs could, allowing readers to look closely at the details of events. The panorama format provides a more objective lens than a collection of close-up photographs, as well as a more unified sense of each individual human moment within the larger context of war. The book comes in a slipcase with notes on the drawing by the author, and an essay on the Battle of the Somme by Adam Hochschild. It will be useful to a variety of professional and general readers with interests ranging from military matters to humanitarian issues to journalism to history to both fine and popular art. Annotation ©2014 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Read Less