Silver Prize Winner in Documentary Book Category  —2022 PX3 Prix de la Photographie, Paris Bronze Medal Winner Documentary Book Category ―2022 Budapest International Foto Awards Bronze Medal in Oversized History Book Category  —2022 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards Bronze Medal in Non-Fiction Book Series Category (with  The Neutron's Long Shadow  and  Weapons of Mass Destruction ) —2022 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards Silver Prize Winner  in Documentary Photography Book Category —2021 Tokyo International Foto Awards The twentieth century was both the brightest period in the evolutionary journey of humankind and the darkest. Heir to four centuries of discovering what the mind can do, humanity used that growing awareness to virtually end the timeless cycles of famine and epidemics of disease, to invent and mass produce countless labor and lifesaving technologies, and to discover nature's most intimate secrets. These are magnificent accomplishments. And yet, these same miraculous gifts were placed in the service of chauvinistic ambitions that twice plunged the world into paroxysms of death and destruction on unprecedented scales. This is the great enigma of human existence, its agony and its ecstasy. Triumph and Tragedy traces the course of the scientific, industrial, and cultural revolutions that set the stage for humanity's deadliest century. It describes the political movements that sponsored the development of a new generation of weapons enabled by the newly available technologies and how governments mobilized their populations to fight a new kind of war, one dominated by machines. Rare historical photographs bring the story to life and give the personalities a human face. The weapons themselves are shown in brooding, high-resolution detail using advanced, stochastic half-toning in a gallery chapter with over a hundred of the author's award-winning photographs, serving as reminder and metaphor of our brilliance and folly. THE 20th CENTURY WAR MACHINES TRILOGY by photographer and Cold-War physicist Martin Miller puts into perspective the dark side of humankind's headlong rush into modernity and invests it with visual impact. Triumph and Tragedy , the keystone volume in the series, describes how the five-century rise of science and technology, coupled with the social and political upheaval those changes wrought, resulted in the deadliest century in all human history. The Neutron's Long Shadow  relates and illustrates the uncertain development of the atomic bomb in WWII. Weapons of Mass Destruction  immerses the reader in the chilling rise and fall of the truly apocalyptic nuclear-weapon arsenals during the last half of the century. As its title suggests, Miller's blunt, gorgeous photographic history of twentieth century war machines is as pained as it is impressive, as its parade of mighty tanks, planes, cannons, and more—all shot by the author in vivid black and white—stirs both awe at humanity's power to create and disquiet at its zeal to destroy. "In studying this long sweep of history, one cannot help but be struck by the extreme spasms of violence and destruction that occurred in the twentieth century," Miller notes, before considering, in several persuasive text chapters, the forces that brought about this era of "unprecedented calamity": mass production, improved mass transit, crucial cultural and scientific developments, and, fascinatingly, the improvements in public health that allowed populations to surge. The third book in a trilogy on twentieth century war weapons (after The Neutron's Long Shadow and Weapons of Mass Destruction ), Triumph and Tragedy lays out a clear, compelling history of the development of war technology, with welcome attention paid to the political, economic, and cultural currents powering a series of international arms races before, during, and after the World Wars. Miller appreciates that war machines aren't produced in a vacuum, and his attention to sneaky business like the self-serving relationship between Bethlehem Steel and the secretary of the U.S. Navy during the Cleveland administration is welcome and clarifying, as is his depiction of the deployment of these weapons by often reckless actors working from perceived national interests. Miller supplements this rich material with accounts of the changing nature of war, often with telling quotes from the people who lived and died in the shadows of these machines. The star, though, is Miller's photography, plus a host of well-selected archival images and documents. He offers a succession of marvelous photos, often beautiful and barbarous at once, the killing machines looming and unmanned, the gray bolts, treads and gun barrels mute testament to our ingenuity-and appetite for power. Takeaway: This beautiful, outraged photographic survey of twentieth century war machines will dazzle and challenge fans of military history. Great for fans of: Weapons & Warfare of the 20th Centu