No comments about Covers of Gold: Collectible Sheet Music--Sports, Fashion, Illustration, & Dance.

1 comments about Fearless Fosdick: The Hole Story.

1. "Fearless Fosdick", a ruthless parody of Chester Gould's "Dick Tracy", was one of Al Capp's many brilliant creations within his comic strip masterpiece "Li'l Abner". It was also one of the funniest things ever to appear in the funny pages. Fosdick, a skinny, hatchet-jawed detective who is frequently riddled with enormous bullet holes (hence the title of this book), is the ideal of Abner Yokum and every red-blooded American boy, and stars in their favorite comic strip, within the "Abner" strip itself. Fosdick endures a world of corruption and his seventeen-year engagement to the beastly Prudence Pimpleton in order to slaughter members of the criminal underword for twenty-two-fifty a week.

   This handsome paperback from Capp's faithful re-publisher Denis Kitchen picks up where an earlier volume left off, collecting a handful of Fosdick stories (and one about Fosdick's fictional creator, Lester Gooch) from the late fifties and early sixties, as well as a few of Fosdick's "Wildroot Cream Oil" ads from the period. Dave Shreiner's commentary is, as always, insightful and intelligent.

1 comments about Las horas de Margarita de Cleves.

1. To those for whom the study of medieval manuscript illumination is an obsession, the name of James H. Marrow is well-known. Currently a professor at Princeton, Marrow has contributed enormously to the study of the medieval "book arts" over a long period of time,and he is particularly specialized in the story of Dutch book illumination.Marrow's excellent reputation needs no legitimation,but,if it did, the present text would more than satisfactorily achieve that end.AS HORAS DE MARGARIDA DE CLEVES/THE HOURS OF MARGARET OF CLEVES,published in Lisbon in 1995, describes and analyzes the format and meaning of a beautiful,turn of the fifteenth century personal "book of hours" belonging to Margaret of Cleves,second wife of Albrecht of Bavaria,Count of Holland(d.1404).The book serves as well to offer a splendid introduction to the subject of medieval books of hours in general.Marrow's gifts as teacher and writer are clear and manifest in his elegant prose style,his ability to provide a great deal of factual information, interesting and substantiated hypotheses about the identity of the manuscript's artist-The Master of Margaret of Cleves-and in his succinct yet satisfying aesthetic analyses of the eleven miniatures which mark the beginnings of the manuscript's text divisions.The CLEVES manuscript currently resides in the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Portugal and appears to have a hitherto under-appreciated importance in the history of Dutch manuscript painting in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. That problem may well have been eliminated by Marrow's present work.This splendid piece of work and contribution to the endlessly fascinating story of medieval book painting is very modestly priced and easily accessible. Although there are two significant flaws in the physical structure of the book (an annoying bi-lingually organized page layout and very poor binding), the manuscript reproductions in b/w are fine,and the color reproductions are simply breathtaking and on scale with the originals.One truly feels that one has the original in one's hands.The footnotes and bibliography are excellent and helpful as are the appendices filled with relevant documentation.For those interested in medieval art and manuscript illumination, this is a book to be treasured and enjoyed.

1 comments about Censorship And Interpretation.

1. This is a critical treatment of the relationship between author and authority in the society of early modern England. Patterson explores the delicate balance between the state's need to control writers and their need to communicate with a contemporary audience on subjects that may not meet with state approval. Her thesis is that the need for indirection, encoding and encryption are fundamental to the literary impulse. A very fine book - essential reading to all students of literature.

No comments about The Cambridge Illuminations: Ten Centuries of Book Production (Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History) (Studies in Medieval and Early Renaissance Art History).

No comments about The Making of Medieval Forgeries: False Documents in Fifteenth-Century England (British Library Studies in Medieval Culture).

2 comments about Classic Muscle Car Advertising: The Art of Selling Horsepower.

1. I have Mitch Frumkin's first two books, and I must admit this one is better, picture wise. His first two contained just b&w photos and not much text. This book is wall to wall color, which really brings the ads to life; some ads are even reproduced in their original size. Very cool - A+ on that account. However, this book contains much more text, which should have been a nice compliment to the ads, but unfortunately, there are a number of errors. Yes, I realize that one person cannot possibly know every little detail, and we are constantly finding out new facts about muscle cars, but if you have the ads in front of you, and hopefully the magazines they came out of, you should know the correct years of the cars and the dates the ads ran. In other words, model year 1971 cars were not advertised in late 1969.
   
   Also, I feel a number of historic ads were left out in this publication that should have been included. For example, there were several ads that were pulled by the manufacturers almost immediately after they ran, because they were considered too contraversial. None of these are here. Maybe Mitch wanted to offer the public some fresh material. The problem here is, his first two books are out of print. Quality used copies are going for good money and are becoming hard to find.
   
   Aside from those two nick-picky points, overall, it is a cool book. Would make a great gift. Buy a really nice used copy, you won't be disappointed.



2. I was impressed by Muscle Car Mania and Son of Muscle Car Mania but Mitch came up trumps this time as we benefit from colour print - the best way to see the psycadelic Plymouth ads of the 60's. If you like muscle cars buy this book.

1 comments about Perspectives on American Book History: Artifacts and Commentary (Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book series).

1. This is a book whose time has come! Never before has such an interesting set of essays on American print culture been collected in one place. It was a stroke of genius to supplement it with a CD-ROM. In this way the book in itself is a testament to the amazing journeys American print culture has taken!

   The editors have done a terrific job of ensuring readability and compatibility throughout the essays included here. At [money], it's not exactly a steal, but still worth every penny. Destined to become the benchmark against which all other books on the topic are measured.

No comments about Miller's: Collecting Modern Books.

No comments about Hit List for Young Adults 2: Frequently Challenged Books.