In its brief compass, War Images offers much more than the title suggests. While providing incisive commentary on specific images of war over the past two centuries, it makes a compelling argument for the centrality of visual literacy to civic education today. The reader will find in Sassower and Cicotello two very informed and reliable guides, who bring the complementary skills of the theorist and the practitioner of art to the complex and often emotive issues that surround the depiction and interpretation of war. No one should ignore their call to incorporate counter-imagery and counter-contextualization into the mainstream of critical political discourse.

Steve Fuller, Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology, University of Warwick, author of Nietzschean Meditations: Untimely Thoughts at the Dawn of the Transhuman Era

Sassower and Cicotello's book makes a powerful claim: that images, often contrived images, have become our way of mediating reality. Without doubt war and its horrors is real. Yet no image of war comes without an interpretation, an element of contrivance. Some interpretation is intended; but the intended can be subverted by the observer. The critical approach to images is fraught with difficulty and uncertainty. The authors show that image makers and image disseminators try to exercise control but they no more can than their audience can.

Ian Jarvie, York University