Revolution in Hungary: The 1956 Budapest Uprising, by Erich Lessing, stands out from the field of fiftieth-anniversary publications most obviously due to its format. It is a beautifully produced, large-format book of photographs taken by Lessing, an Austrian-born photographer with the prestigious Magnum Photo Agency, who was only thirty-one years old in 1956. While many recent works on the Hungarian Revolution use hindsight and recently opened archives to finally make 1956 a part of history, Revolution in Hungary has an almost opposite effect—injecting 1956 with immediacy. “The really extraordinary thing about being in a city in the throes of revolution,” as Lessing remembered, “was that at lunchtime one could be in the middle of a shoot-out, then dart back to the hotel to see if there was anything to eat” (20).

The book opens with Lessing's memories of 1956 and the years leading up to it in Hungary, where he had been working for Life magazine. The first photographs in Revolution in Hungary are of the fortified border with Austria and of rural life in socialist Hungary: workers on agricultural cooperatives, peasants selling their wares at market, a Corpus Christi procession in Kolcsa led by the Archbishop József Grösz in May 1956 after his release from prison. The release of clergy and other prisoners seemed to signal a “thaw” in Hungary, as it did in Poland and the Soviet Union. After the procession, Lessing went to Budapest and photographed the young intellectuals of the Petöfi Circle as they met in ever larger venues with ever larger audiences to discuss the need for political change in Hungary.

Lessing was in Poland for Władysław Gomułka's showdown with Nikita Khrushchev and missed the drama of 23 October in Budapest, when demonstrating students announced their list of sixteen demands, including the departure of Soviet troops. He missed the riot at the radio station that evening after party secretary Ernő Gerő's speech. He also missed the most famous symbolic moment when demonstrators tore down the massive statue of Stalin. He made his way to Budapest in the midst of the revolutionary chaos of the next two days, and the photos from 25 October to 4 November make up the dramatic center of the book, entitled “The Revolution.” Though he missed the fall of Stalin's statue, Lessing took plenty of photos of young people with flags and guns dancing around the iron corpse, as well as jubilant crowds burning Soviet books, cutting the Socialist emblem from flags, and armed men and women at the Corvin movie theater and in the streets of the capital. These are photos of a hopeful but violent moment, and Lessing's photos show the corpses of the Hungarian secret police lynched by the crowd.

The next section of photos, entitled “The Failure,” shows the defeat of the Budapest Uprising after 4 November and includes photos of Soviet tank units in the city, urban destruction, and streets littered with chalk-covered corpses. The photos document cleanup work in Budapest and exhausted citizens lining up for food and supplies in the winter of 1956. Lessing photographed some of the tens of thousands of tired and homeless refugees who flooded across the border into Austria. Yet in one photo the determined faces of young men drinking tea at a refugee center reflect the street fighters they had just been.

The historical essays in this book further the effect of immediacy brought about by Lessing's beautiful photos and his own memories. The historian François Fejtö recounts the history of the failed revolution (bringing to light many of the contingencies of the moment), and the essay by political scientist Nicolas Bauquet reminds the reader of the shock that 1956 caused in the global context of the Cold War. Vivid photos by journalists like Erich Lessing allowed the whole world to witness the Hungarian Revolution and its suppression.

Probably the most poignant fact that comes to life in Lessing's photos is the youth of many of the fighters in Budapest (and for that matter of the Soviet soldiers as well). The literary essay by the famou Hungarian writer George Konrád beautifully highlights this aspect as well. For Konrád, like many of his generation, “the year 1956 is very possibly the most memorable year of [his] youth: the sudden fading out of fear and the unexpected upsurge in courage,” of the sort that makes him volunteer when a “young poet and translator ran across the corridor screaming: ‘Boys! Who wants a machine gun?’” (116). The combination of firsthand narratives and eye-catching photographs makes the book interesting not only for the proverbial coffee table but also as a supplementary text for college courses. Revolution in Hungary will reawaken the past for participants and worldwide witnesses to 1956 and give a jolt of recognition when younger readers see this historical drama brought to life through the photos and essays.