Electronic Flash, Strobe
Harold E. Edgerton
The MIT Press, 1987, 398 pages
ISBN 0-262-55014-8

This book is a highly technical survey of electronic flash technology, written by one of the pioneers of the field, Harold Edgerton.

I have to confess that I have only read a few parts of this book. It was written by a scientist for other scientists, so much of it will be overwhelming and incomprehensible to a layman. Even Chapter 2, "Theory of the Electronic Flash Lamp," which is an introduction to the field of electronic flash for beginners, will be a challenge for anyone who is not a scientist.

If, however, you are willing to go through the book, skipping over all of the formulas, charts, circuit diagrams, and technical discussions and instead focusing just on the general descriptive parts of each chapter, you can learn a lot about electronic flash.

The book contains a few photographs made with short-duration electronic flash, but these are small and there aren't very many of them. People who are only interested in seeing Edgerton's famous photographs should look elsewhere.

This is an impressive book, but I can't really recommend it to the average reader. I bought my copy just as a souvenir when I visited a museum in Edgerton's hometown.