Form-3 Books

This book of essays is one of the most entertaining musings on family life (with several great side trips -- such as a hilarious piece on quitting smoking) that I've ever read. Several of the essays were so funny, that I was crying while laughing. I had to read several of them aloud to my husband because he felt so left out of the jokes.

High marks to this absolutely hysterical collection of tales from the domestic frontier!

Patricia Pearson's outlook on life and daily events are expressed in this series of essays written on such topics as fast food, therapists, haircuts, social dos and don'ts and much much more. Take a look at the lighter, funnier sometimes sad side of life through the eyes and thoughts of Pearson, a columnist and writer for publications across the nation. This satirical look will leave you wanting the next installment from this brilliant author. You will never look at life the same, which may not be a good thing, if you aren't ready for change. A Must Read!!!! ****

Book was in the condition it stated. Prompt delivery. I will use this seller again.

I purchased this book in my never ending pursuit of sholarly discourse on Japanese Buddhist sculpture. It is one thing to study sculpture and painting. It is quite another to understand it in the context of history and the architecture that housed it. Enlightening, to say the least, and meaningful reading. Its coverage of Buddhism and Buddhist art in Japan is noteworthy.

The most appealing book on the subject I ever read. Very fine reproductions, excellent comments, splendid background information. A must for everyone who's interested in modern art history!

In my opinion Arte Povera was the most interesting art movement in the 20th century. This book includes many art movements, explanations, artists involved, plenty of pictures and it is held together in a great quality book. I recomend this book to anyone right or left brained.

These botanical paintings of flowers that have been cut in half are exquisite and botanically accurate; the patterns that they make are fascinating. A most unusual way of looking at flowers.

Arthur Harry Church, scientist, painter, and teacher, left an incomparable legacy of botanical illustrations. His work, which has often been compared to that of Georgia O'Keeffe, is to this writer just as visually and emotionally compelling.

The vibrancy of Church's work may be due, in part, to his disciplines - he saw his subject with a scientist's mind and an artist's eye whether it was an abundant flower from the Oxfordshire country or a rare specimen from South Africa. His cross-sections and diagrams leave no doubt as to his teachery thought processes or his artistic vision.

This rare volume holds much previously unpublished material from the archives of London's Natural History Museum as well as 100 illustrations, each imbued with a rhythmic vitality.

Undoubtedly, "The Anatomy Of Flowers" will be appreciated by those with an interest in botanical prints and those who enjoy the striking clarity of the art nouveau.

I first became aware of the impact of photography on abstract art when I commissioned a portrait. Expecting to be told to sit, instead I was encouraged to strike poses that meant something to me. The artist followed me around with a Polaroid camera. We discussed what the camera was showing, and tried different poses. Eventually, I found one we both liked. Then he made copies of the Polaroid and began using a marker to crop and adjust the work. Later, when the painting was finished, I could see a memory of the Polaroid but the actual painting was quite different in image and execution of color and materials. When I asked about this, the artist told me he had first trained as a photographic artist and liked to work back and forth between the two media. Very interesting.

With that experience, I was delighted to see this fine work on the impact photography had on Symbolist artists around the turn of the 20th century. This is a catalogue also for a traveling show that is just about to close at the Guggenheim in Bilbao. The closest location to me was Dallas, so I would have missed the show otherwise.

The catalogue is much more heavy duty than most such efforts. It is dominated by essays rather than by images, although it is generously illustrated.

The subject is well-chosen because these artists were heavily interested in expressing the interior essence of the subjects rather than their outward appearance. Dorothy Kosinski's opening essay on Vision and Visionaries is a wonderful summary of the show. After introductory essays by Elizabeth Childs on The Photographic Muse, Douglas Nickel on Photography and Invisibility, and Ulrich Pohlmann on Photography as a Study Aid, each artist has an essay describing his use of photography. In order of appearance are Moreau, Degas, Rodin, Gauguin, Khnopff, Rosso, Mucha, Munch, von Stuck, Vallotton, Bonnard, Vuillard, Brancusi, and Picasso. Some of the artists may be unfamiliar to you, as they were to me. But it's a good excuse to learn about them.

What I learned from the book was a greater appreciation for the creative process. For example, I might admire a figure in a painting, but seeing it in the context of a photograph of the model makes me appreciate it more. Because this way I can see what the artist added, which gives me clues as to what the artist wanted to express that I might have missed. And the transformations are quite substantial and impressive.

Naturally, not everyone used photographs simply as models. The sculptors tended to use photography also to display their work in more powerful ways. For example, the lighting effects on Rodin's and Brancusi's finished works are quite stunning . . . adding elements that would be unseen otherwise.

I was equally interested in the use of x-rays and microscopic pictures to reveal what cannot be detected by the eye, and expand the range of images that can be considered. Photography of motion also picks up elements that can never be posed otherwise, like a rider on a racing horse.

Photography also became a form of communication for these artists. Gauguin used photographs to keep in touch with Paris in both directions while in Tahiti. Picasso was able to carry around with him the classical examples that inspired him, without needing to revisit the original. These references also communicate to us more about what he had seen and wanted to portray. It expanded my understanding of his early works to see these connections. His classical roots are much deeper than I had realized.

Interestingly, the artists usually tried to keep their use of photography a secret. Some even railed against photography, while using it in private to assist them. Many of them eventually learned to make their own photographs, but many relied on the talent of fine photographers to help them.

The question that kept running through my mind was how artists are using the Internet now in ways that will not be documented and understood for another 100 plus years.

Enjoy this wonderful and thought provoking book that will expand your access to art!

Dorothy Kosinski's Artist And The Camera: Degas To Picasso explores the ways in which influential artists from the period put a new medium to use in painting and sculpture. This accompanies a traveling exhibition but stands alone as a solid survey of artistic explorations at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

Assyrian sculpture is one of the highest points (as is gold jewelry discovered in Nimrod, so called Nimrod Gold) of Assyrian art. Animal depictions especially are vivid, powerful and rather realistic, which is a rare occurence in those times. The Russian writer Ljubimov wrote in his book about ancient art, that if there were only one sculpture of this nation (The wounded Lioness) discovered we would know that the Assyrians had great art and thus the great soul. This book's fime illustrations prove Ljubimov's point.

As for depicting the ancient Assyrians as cruel looters, etc, they have not done anything what was not customary during those times and they were not as cruel as the Bible depicts them. The Bible was written by a nation which was conquered by Assyrian, that's why we hear tales of Assyrian cruelty for more than 2500 years already. But writers of the Bible have done the same things to the nations they conquered - khanaan, etc. So stop it already!

Can't you just enjoy beautiful art without spilling out your ingrained historical hatred?

Most of the sculpture described in this book is to be found in the British Museum, which indeed is where I purchased Dr. Reade's book. However, "Assyrian Sculpture" should appeal to a broad audience, especially those of us who have been following recent events in Iraq and would like a brief overview of this country's ancient imperial megalomaniacs. Even as we pulled down monuments to Saddam Hussein, so did successive dynasties of Assyrian kings loot the palaces of their predecessors and proclaim their own glory. Visitors to their palaces were forced to view a procession of triumphalist scenes, depicting the king at war, his exploits in the hunting field, and his status as exalted by Assyrian gods and genies.

For almost three centuries, until 612 B.C., the small kingdom of Assyria dominated the Middle East, its empire at one point extending from Iran to Egypt. "Assyrian Sculpture" relates the story of those years in sculpted stone, and more rarely in glazed brick, and offers its readers a glimpse of a long-lost civilization.

The archaeological discovery, starting in 1843, of a wealth of artifacts from the ancient Assyrian Empire brought to the attention of Europeans a form of artistic production that was unique and unexpectedly striking to many contemporary eyes. Roughly comparable arrays of ancient Assyrian artifacts found by both French and English excavators and transported with great difficulty to Europe, were put on display almost simultaneously in the Louvre and British Museum, starting in 1847.

The first archaeologists to explore ancient Assyrian ruins were Paul-Emile Botta, a French diplomat, and Austen Henry Layard, an adventurous English lawyer. In the mid-nineteenth century they both explored mounds in and near present-day Mosul, a city in northern Iraq that embraces the site of ancient Nineveh. Between the two of them, they uncovered the remains of five Assyrian palaces.

One, excavated by Layard in Nineveh, was the "palace without rival" of Sennacherib, perhaps the greatest of the Assyrian kings. The inner walls and courtyards were lined with two miles of sculptured stone slabs depicting the king's various campaigns, from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean. It was under his rule that a system of canals and aqueducts brought water fifty miles from the Zagros Mountains to the parks, orchards, and gardens of Nineveh.

Within the palace Layard discovered thousands of clay cuneiform tablets, constituting the world's earliest-known comprehensive collection of written knowledge. In the chapter, "Biblical History in Assyrian Sculpture" the author states that although there is little direct evidence for the historicity of the biblical accounts that emerged from Layard's excavations, they did confirm that "the early history of Palestine, as recorded in the Bible, was more than a work of fiction."

Buy this book for its magnificent reproductions of Assyrian animal sculpture, for its fascinating biography of Austen Henry Layard, and for its concise overview of an ancient Mesopotamian civilization.

Note: There still exists an ethnic minority who call themselves Assyrians. They are a remnant of the Aramaic (or Syriac) speaking Christian community of northern Iraq, eastern Turkey, and western Iran.

Embracing the totality of Brion Gysin's output and influence was essentially impossible prior to the publication of this book. Weiss's study of Gysin's work and his long friendship with the writer/musician/visionary results pays off: opening the door to creative and intellectual explorations that continue reverberating to this day.

Gysin's work is so overlooked (and so hard to find) that he's assumed the reputation of a cult-figure within a literary movement his work helped create. Here, together in one volume, are excerpts from his most important writings. "To Master, A Long Goodnight" (a biography of the man who was the basis for Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery classic "Uncle Tom's Cabin"), published in 1946, is included along with his script for Burroughs's "Naked Lunch," written in the 1970s. There's a revealing selection of his cut-ups ("The Third Mind," a Burroughs collaboration); songs, set to music scores by Steve Lacy; as well as gallery notes and art from the 1960s. There are also five chapters from "The Process," the novel that synthesized much of Gysin's philosophy of belief, magic, art, and drugs in the service of self-discovery. Editor Jason Weiss has done a terrific job linking these disparate sources into a coherent whole without leaving the first-time reader feeling as though he were on a guided tour. The book is a great starting point for anyone interested in learning more about the roots of the beat generation.

This book has a series of tales from the Silk Road countries - China, Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan, and Afghanistan. They are easy to read and interesting. I have Afghan students and recently saw the Afghan treasures show at the National Gallery. This book goes along well with a teacher's unit on this area of the world. We don't teach much about Central Asia and I think we often don't much about it. This is a book that gives the area more life and interest in Central Asia.

This has been a favorite for our kids from about kindergarten on up, and perhaps even a bit earlier. In Bearfoot Book style, this book includes a full curriculum of art, geography, religion and history in the form of plain old good, engaging stories. The silk road slinks from China through the deserts of Central Asia and into the Middle East, and in this age when so much new history is being written in Central Asia and the Middle East the stories and the accompanying discussions will really help orient your kids to the broader world.

Among the stories that have struck our kids the most are "Monkey and the River Dragon", which should keep the kids laughing through the whole story, and "The Bride and the Horse's head", a story with more pathos and tragedy.

The art in this book particularly stands out, even with the high standards usually set by Barefoot Books, and the maps are a particularly colorful delight. Among kids books, this is one of the better selections when you are reading to children that span all the elementary school grades, as it has something of interest for the older kids as well as the younger ones.

This is a collection of 30 business-related articles published in newspaper and magazines in yr2002. Many of them in this edition are about ethics, e.g. questionable accounting practices, role conflict of auditors and financial analysts, overpaid executives etc..There are other topical subjects, e.g. influence of technology, free trade, globalisation, workplace diversity.

The editors have picked up many articles that raise insightful questions and issues. They provide ¡§behind the scene¡¨ information and personalities. Interesting to read casually. The stories talk little about making money or improving corporate performance. They are more about ethnics, fairness and justice. Some articles are openly critical about individual companies or persons.

This book is very enriching to readers who are not familiar with American business practices. For example, non-Americans can have a strong feel about how serious are antitrust investigations and lawsuits in The USA.. The coverage of industries is wide. In addition to popular businesses like IT, finance, manufacturing, you also have banana planting, ice harvesting, auctioning, religious organisations etc..

A terrific collection of well-written and fascinating pieces of business journalism. I picked this book up at an airport expecting to read just a few of the stories that looked interesting. I ended up reading the entire book cover to cover. Each story offers an insightful and interesting view of a particular business or industry. For anyone interested in the corporate scandals that seem to be erupting in the business world on a near-weekly basis, you will find yourself completely absorbed by this book in no time at all.

Everyone who has ever used a library should get this book - not just librarians. Even the back cover is funny. People will say "he's just a kid" (I'm 16) and "what would he know"? But I'm telling you - I KNOW what's funny, and this book IS too, too hilarious.

I never know that forwards and introductions could be like the ones in this book. My librarian never told me that even title pages could be used for more than just breaking up sections.

If you're looking for something really boring, you should NOT buy this book.

This book won't suit everyone - you need a sense of humor, and at least a little knowledge about libraries to fully appreciate the dry wit.

Love the great cartoons, too!