Space Posters & Paintings is a 14.5" x 10" art book that collects a wide range of NASA posters and art from the 1960s to the present day. Some of the posters were commissioned by NASA and some were created independently creating a satisfyingly diverse collection that includes dramatic scenes of past and future space missions, detailed visualisations of space technology and mock travel posters to fascinating extraterrestrial destinations.

An entire section is devoted to the visionary works of NASA's pre-eminent artist, Robert McCall, and his daughter, Catherine, provides a touching tribute as an introduction. His work always captures the adventure and spirit of NASA's remarkable endeavours in a very striking way. She describes how his work needed to be scientific and accurate but became increasingly more fantastical as he got older with greater artistic license taken to depict futuristic spacecraft and space scenes. In this book, many of his paintings occupy double-page spreads including his 1974 picture of the Apollo-Soyuz linkup which is a particularly familiar image to me as I have been using it as computer desktop wallpaper!

Also included in this collection is art from numerous other artists showing NASA's early Gemini and Apollo missions, humanity's first steps on the Moon, images of rockets, the Space Shuttle and other NASA spacecraft. Accompanying these factual, real-world pictures are JPL's, whimsical and stylistic retro space tourism posters and an amusing collection of menacing 1950s-monster-movie-style posters depicting the mysterious “dangers” of outer space such as Dark Energy and Zombie Worlds.

What I find most satisfying is that most of the pictures are full-page with no white borders to showcase the art to its best effect. All the captions are collected together at the end of the book so as not to interrupt or detract from the pictures. I think this is a format a lot of art books should adopt. The result is an entertaining, educational and inspiring 70-page collection for less than the price of four NASA posters bought individually. A must for any space enthusiast with a bookshelf tall enough to accommodate it!