November 2020 was the twentieth anniversary of NASA so this book could be considered a sort of celebration of the event. The 121 color photos reveal a fascinating interior view of the module which, because of its size and weight limits, means that everything looks very basic and more or less devoid of any designed covering to hide all the technology.
A first impression is that there are cables everywhere, probably thousands of them to connect all the electrical systems. Next, you'll notice the racks of equipment crammed into small spaces with dozens of pushbuttons, dials and toggle switches each with the name of what they do in capital letters. Storage areas are stuffed with various white fabric bags tethered together so they don't float around in the gravity-less environment. I don't know if it was deliberate but there no shots of astronauts working (for twelve hours a day) or relaxing. The first fifty-six pages have five essays dealing with background to the ISS. One by the Italian astronaut Pablo Nespoli describes how he took some of the photos during his 313 days in space spread over several missions.
The book is the usual quality production from Damiani, printed with a 250 screen (to bring out the detail in the photos) on smooth matt art paper. In 2024 the ISS will be abandoned and destroyed in 2028 so this book will provide a visual record of this remarkable international achievement.
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