Builder

And Craig Whitney, the author, is clearly a talented researcher. I can only imagine the thousands of hours he put into going over every conceivable concert program, book, and letter relating to his topic. I can just see him poring over his voluminous notecards laboriously putting together each paragraph of this documentary of the history of the organ in America.

Only problem: it's BORING. Is it the story itself which is boring, or his telling of it? Probably a little of both. I'm giving the book three stars to try to show how much I value the scholarship that went into the tome while at the same time I can't recommend the flaccid narrative and tone.

There are certainly dramas in the history of the organ in America that could have been played out much more, well, dramatically here. Something beyond, Player A was a good organist, got famous, had some personal issues, then died. Organbuilder B had some good ideas, built some good organs, then died. Some people thought organs should be like X, but then there were other ones that thought they should be like Y.

This is still a useful book for those wanting to flesh out their knowledge of US organ history, but far from a must-read.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone even remotely interested in the pipe organ. Whitney has a very easy writing style to read, often incorporating definitions of the organ terms he uses as he goes along. He also includes a glossary of other terms at the end for further clarification. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

And just as an end note, I believe that those who review books online (such as Bob Myers, July 14 2003, below) should remember that this is a chance to voice OPINIONS. Nobody can judge an opinion, such as his statement that this book is "boring." But it would be much more accurate for him to state that this book is, in HIS opinion, boring... rather than possibly giving someone who would very much enjoy this book the wrong idea before they even read it.

Whitney has done a remarkable service to the world of pipe organs. For those of us who play the organ "All the Stops" contains a rich history of the instrument over the past one hundred years and it is told by an author who is an unabashed organ fan and player himself. Reading this book is like witnessing a tug of war on several levels. There is a battle of organ builders about whether or not to use tracker or electropneumatic action. Wars rage with regard to pipe vs. electric organs. How good are European organs when compared to organs in America? How much input should an organist have with regard to a particular organ being built? As Whitney underscores, the organ world is a rather elite one with egos and tempers as big as the instruments on which organists play. And all of this takes place under the shadow of two men....E.M. Skinner, one of the most successful organ builders of all time and the larger shadow of Johann Sebastian Bach.

The most enticing chapters of "All the Stops" contain the mini-biographies of and the rivalry between the two best-known organists of the twentieth century...E. Power Biggs and Virgil Fox. The playing styles and personalities of the two couldn't have been more different and Whitney does a nice job in setting the two up in conflict. Biggs and Fox represented two different likes and dislikes of organs as well with Biggs preferring the European sound and tracker action and Fox opting for a larger, more romantic style. One of the key points that Whintey makes is that earlier in this century organists promoted the bigger, romantic organs only to have that phase pass as a generation ago the smaller, brighter tracker organs became more favorable. That tide has turned yet again.

It is hard to believe that not too long ago thousands of people turned out for organ concerts....numbers that today would not be seen. But if Craig Whitney is correct, that tide is also turning. The pipe organ has no instrumental rival and its modern story is well-told in this book.

I have benefitted greatly from Gerstel's step-by-step, commonsense advice. My little business is now profitable and pleasurable.

I hope Dr. Sahelian would consider updating this great book with the latest findings about creatine. Great book none the less.

this book is worth it's price, i took the advices, tried it and i gaied 4 pounds of lean mass in three weeks.

While the book in no way operates on the level of a "how-to" manual, now that I've started down that owner-builder road I'm encountering landmarks familiar to me from reading "A Place of My Own," like the tension-bordering-on-hostility that exists between architects, those artisans of the abstract, and builders, who inherit the sometimes unenviable task of turning fanciful "funny-paper" blue-prints into tangible structures of concrete, wood, and glass.

If you are interested in learning some architectural history, and something about general carpentry while being entertained, this is a nice find. Pollan has a very entertaining and engaging writing style.

Another thing I like these tapes was that the conversation part is suitable for intermediate level of students: not too fast and not too slow. The dialogues really made a good introduction to French conversations.

I did not give 5 stars because first, there are few faults between the book and the tapes. Sometimes the dialogues in the book do not completely match with those on the tapes. The second thing is that I feel the author should make more exercises on the tape for us to practise verb conjugations, a great part contributing to conversational fluency. The third thing is that the pause should be placed between the English translations and the French sentences, not after the English and the French sentences speaking right one after the other.

Anyway, these tapes are great bargin! The most important part of the language is to speak and listen, and these tapes does both! As I have tried some other tapes before, they are either not satisfactorily made, or does not worth their prices.

It covers all essential topics, has a friendly conversational style, using many of the same voice actors as Pimsleur and Barron's courses, and employs realistic real world statements and dialogs to highlight and explain the use of verbs in ALL tenses. The only drawback is that it is still on cassette tape, not CD Audio, but hopefully Living Language will remedy this soon.

If you're beginning with French this is an invaluable asset, much more realistically useable than the massive "every French verb on earth" books of conjugation tables. If you already have some basic French skills you could use this set alone to significantly improve your speaking and conversational skills.

This book is practically the same, except I also like how it has a little history of the words on the bottom of every page. I like it the pictures are really big so they stand out in your mind. But, and this is a pretty big but: the pictures themselves are pretty bad. Almost every picture is of a person with a huge smile. So it is hard to discern the words in your mind.

I wish there was a more discussion and comparison/differentiation of the kind of space that these 3 were talking about and a more indepth analysis of their ideologies. Guess we have to wait for someone else to take that risky venture.

It is well written, entertaining and true. As a teacher, I would recommend it to architecture students as mandatory reading, best if read in the second or third year of their college years.

Even as it is a basic book, I have it on my night table.

There's a Polish saying that to be a man one has to plant a tree, raise a son, and build his own house. Well, I've got the tree part down, and I'll settle for raising a male beagle, but at some point I'm going to get out of apartment dwelling and build a house. When I do it'll be made of stone, so I picked up this book. Reading it was a bit of fantasy for me, but from what I can tell it's quite instructional with many great photographs to back up the text.

It details how to make a correct foundation, how to build archways, and also has nice tips about how much mortar to make and how to control the logistics of construction and supplies. It also has dashes of humor.

If you're going to make a stone house, or need info on the process for a book or project, I suggest this title to help you out.

-- JJ Timmins