Lambda Award finalist Patrick Nathan (Some Hell) brings vulnerability and clarity to current events through the lens of art criticism in Image Control: Art, Fascism, and the Right to Resist, a book somehow both infuriating and comforting. His cri de coeur challenges insidious assumptions that surround the single image. "Photographs don't speak; they are used as speech. Photographs don't mean; they are imbued with meaning." As media, both social and traditional, distill themselves into image-based reportage, truth becomes ever more elusive. As an example, Nathan carefully unpacks the photo emblazoned on Time magazine in 1998 that solidified Matthew Shepard as a gay martyr, but a figure whose story is in truth far more complicated than that single image. This is a book both political and personal, searing and humbling, a rare and inspiring instance of cultural criticism in which the author willingly and necessarily interrogates himself as well. --Dave Wheeler, associate editor, Shelf Awareness