2 comments about Victorian Architectural Details: Designs for Over 700 Stairs, Mantels, Doors, Windows, Cornices, Porches, and Other Decorative Elements.

1. We've been working on rehabilitating a Transitional Victorian circa 1909 and have had this book for a year or so. Much of this ornamentation is grander than what is appropriate for our house, but this is a teriffic reference book for us and for me as a professional remodeler/restorer. True, there is no text, but I find the illustrations full of information when pored over carefully. One particularly helpful detail is that each profile within an illustration is provided with a cross-section to help gauge its massing and proportions. Oh, if only we had the lumber available to feasibly replicate all these great details! If you're considering this book, trust me, it'll be the best ten bucks you'll ever spend for your reference library.



2. The photo on the cover is a good sample of what is in this 1873 catalog reprint - many drawings of stairways, cornices, fireplaces, windows. It even has storefronts, 2 barns, and gazebos. It has a few house layouts and exterior elevations, and plaster cornices and ceiling designs. We are building a Victorian house, and the ceiling designs are ones I think I can replicate with Millwork and paint. Lots of neat ideas to ponder and show our carpenter. There is no text - just the index and the plates themselves.

1 comments about The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft.

1. The movie screen, the TV screen, and the computer screen have become part of our everyday experience - substitutes for the architectural window that frames a view, and for the frame around a painting. But only in the last two decades have multiple screens become familiar. Typically film and TV both display a single frame on a single screen, despite other possibilities. What does it mean to "frame" an idea or experience using the new digital technologies? How does it change our "perspective"? Anne Friedberg takes up these issues with extraordinary theoretical sophistication and an impressive knowledge of history.

No comments about Grand Designs Handbook: The Blueprint for Building Your Dream Home.

4 comments about Radical Reconstruction.

1. One of the first architectural books I bought, because it was different. I didn't know who he was at first or if he was an architect. I thought comic would be a great branch into architecture. This books show many of this theoretical project that is base of a post-apocalypse society. This book displays his great hand work skills. He used mediums of color-pencil, ink sketches and some very powerful chip-board models. 85% of the book is artworks. There are some texts on this philosophy for his reasoning if you would believe it or not. I went to his lecture at SciArt and his new stuff is just as similar in style to his older works in his book. I no longer regard Wood as much of an architect or nor a artist. This book was good in time of my interest in the subject, but now it has no resourceful information.



2. Lebbeus Woods is perhaps unequalled, and definitely the most imitated renderer in the architectural world. With that said, this book is just a shadow of his masterpiece, "Anarchitecture: Architecture as a Political Act"

   I recommend this for thos who already know Woods and can't get enough of him, but as an introduction, definitely read Anarchitecture.




3. lebbeus woods bites. Get real.



4. lebbeus woods' visions cross the border between real and apocalyptic. his highly evocative renderings are rooted in his surrounding environment, but they move us to the realm of fantasmic architecture. brilliant.

5 comments about Modern Exterior Ballistics: The Launch and Flight Dynamics of Symmetric Projectiles.

1. McCoy's book is phenomenal if you seek the essentially pure theory and mathematical characterization of "real," differential equation-based ballistics. The book starts with the simplest form of ballistics calculations, the basic parabolic gravity-only point-mass trajectory everyone encounters in a basic physics course, and then slowly works up from there, all the way to the full six-degrees-of-freedom model (three positional dimensions of motion plus the three rotational dimensions of the spinning, wobbling projectile,) accounting for gravity, frontal air resistance, crosswinds, lifting forces, forces due to the projectile shape, Coriolis force (the consequence of Earth's rotation,) and even rocket forces if the "projectile" is actually a self-powered one. McCoy goes into the simplifications one can make to compute with only a point-mass projectile model (no rotational motion) and I most liked this approach for my own uses. He divides the work into chapters, with each new one adding a level of generality to the model(s) involved. This organization makes it very easy for the reader to choose the level of complexity and accuracy most desired. I was very impressed with McCoy's development of envelope curves, those being the curves of absolute flight limits of a projectile, giving the total interior region that a fired projectile could possibly hit.
   
   This book provides an immense background of everything needed to develop your own ballistics programs and could even provide enough material to do some original research in the field, but I would definitely contend that this book isn't for everyone. In particular, you need to have a very strong mathematics background, including linear algebra and differential equations, and one would do best with some numerical analysis background as well. McCoy does give some detail about various numerical methods one could use to advantage when doing the calculations with a computer, but not quite enough to actually get you started if you weren't already significantly familiar with standard single-step Runge-Kutta and multi-step differential equation solvers. Further, this book does contain a lot of typos and small errors buried deep in the equations, so you need to be able to follow the development well enough to catch them. Essentially, you need to be able to understand the methods used in higher math quite well, use McCoy's initial modeling, and then re-derive his equations on your own, with his derivations as guidance. Also, I think the typesetting of equations is done poorly in general, so it is often somewhat difficult to read them and keep his notations straight.
   
   This book is well worth its price, and the knowledge contained in it is probably nearly unavailable anywhere else these days. Ballistics is an old, but very technical and complicated field, and few people study it extensively any more, so I think it has become somewhat extinct in academic circles. This is unfortunate, for it is magnificent and rewarding, and McCoy's book is an opus dedicated to preserving this wonderful field of hard-won knowledge. The study of precise ballistics modeling and trajectory prediction was the first "big" problem that spawned the development of the digital computer, and the first true calculus problem ever solved by any mathematician was the shape-of-minimum-resistance ballistics problem, solved by Sir Issac Newton. McCoy's book is a grand survey of mid-20th century ballistics knowledge, complete with graphs, photographs, high-speed shadowgraphs from the ranges at Aberdeen Proving Ground, and references to the original authors and studies done by the military and other technical institutions.
   
   You will not regret the purchase of this book, especially if you want to understand the real theory and know how to calculate real ballistics trajectories for all kinds of projectiles at various speeds, not just watered-down, oversimplified, inaccurate, textbook-friendly versions of them. I'm even considering buying myself a second copy, just to be sure I will always have a mint-condition copy available!



2. As a ballastician, I must say that this book is a MUST HAVE for any professional in the field of exterior ballistics or the enthusiast with some knowledge of basic physics and high level mathematics. McCoy was a world renowned expert in the field of exterior ballistics throughout his 30 year career with the US Army Ballistic Research Lab (BRL) - this comes through in the pages of this book without a doubt. There are many excellent examples taken from McCoy's (and others) work with the BRL. All should take note, the book has many small typos peppered throughout both the text and figures. The errata pages can be printed off of several well maintained websites which can be found by searching on the title of the book.



3. This is a great book, but full of typos and edition errors of all types.
   The errata ( you can find it in Internet ) is 20 pages long.
   The book, as it stands now, is of very limited use.
   Better wait the Dover edition.



4. Certainly McCoy's book , Modern Exterior Ballistics, is the result of years of work at the Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Grounds. The book contains some excellent shadowgraphs of projectiles in flight. The historical background is alone worth the price of the book. The hard core computational capability of the modern desk top computer has been over shadowed by its use as an internet station, word processor, game platform etc. Nevertheless, most of the approximations given in this book are easily side stepped by a "brute force" integration of the equations of motion be readily and easily achieved with such software as MATLAB or TrueBasic and I am sure with C++ if that is your choice. The important point here is that most of the approximations given in McCoy's book are methods that for the most part have been entirely superseded by the capability of readily available computer languages. To employ such methods makes no greater analytical demands of the reader than, say, to follow and use the analytical approximations such as the approximation for flat trajectory. McCoy does make some concession to computer analysis with a BASIC program for projectile drag. However, on the whole the book is not quite modern, but more suited to computational conditions as existed in 1975. Unfortunately, with the passing of Dr. McCoy, the task of brings this otherwise good book up to 21 century standards would have to done by others.



5. This is ballistician's dream book. It describes all of the introductory and some advanced material pertaining to modern ballistics in wonderful detail, and the example problems are useful and illustrative. There is a wealth of information, such as drag coefficients and functions, form factors, and a beautiful derivation of the MPM yaw of repose that do not appear anywhere else in my experience. The experimental and computer generated plots are beautiful and informative.

   Unfortunately, the book is also full of typographical and other errors, such as having the wrong variable in a place in several equations, having variables simply missing from equations or from an explanation in the text, having the wrong headings in some of the tables, repeating figure numbers on different figures, or even having multiple missing words in some explanatory paragraphs that make the sentences into hard to interpret giberish. Some of the citations,for instance in Chapter 9, do not appear in the Bibliography at all (Chapter 9 has references numbered up to 16 in the text, but only 10 appear in the Bibiolgraphy).

   The bottom line: This is a GREAT BOOK if you are mathematically sound and don't mind deriving some of the equations yourself, and if you know enough to catch the errors and make the corrections. Don't get me wrong... I like the book a lot. It is well worth its price. Just be aware that you will have to work a little harder than usual to read and understand it.

   [...]

No comments about New China Architecture.

3 comments about US Strategic and Defensive Missile Systems 1950-2004.

1. Not very detailed, somewhat vague. The illustrations are very good, but not enough. A little pricey.



2. A very informative reference book for those interested in the history of the Cold War era and the follow-on efforts that remain in effect.
   
   This book, along with Rings of Supersonic Steel co-authored by Mark Berhow and Mark Morgan, can answer many questions for not only historians, but also for those who might have lived near some of these Cold War facilities without understanding what was there, nor why they were there.



3. This book is amazing.Im glad i own it as it has so much history about cold war missiles and then some.Very imformative book if your looking to learn about american missile systems from way back in the 1950's through the present.

4 comments about New York Interiors.

1. This is a review of the 1997 hardcover edition with a view of the living room/studio in the SoHo loft of sculptress Michele Oka Doner on the dustcover. The 42 residences are shown in alphabetical order, divided into two categories, New York City and Outside of New York - not just the city but the state - which includes Jersey City, NJ, and Greenwich, CT. There is a wide range of personal style presented, from the wonderfully chic Parish-Hadley decorated Park Avenue apartment of socialite philanthropist Brooke Astor, to the 2nd Street tenement of Hells Angels leader Steve Bonge which is decorated with old hubcaps, a neo-lined coffin, and a vintage Texaco gas pump. The Ridiculous to the Sublime is represented by Donald Trump's Trump Tower apartment with back-lighted onyx slabs backing fountains of small geysers - yes, behind the living room sofa - and more indiscriminate uses of gold-leaf detailing that you could imagine, to The Sublime illustrated by Bill Blass' Sutton Place apartment with handsome architecture and each object carefully chosen with the greatest sophisticated masculine taste. The translated text is sometimes stilted as well as inaccurate, but the photos are generally of high quality. The over-all Euro feel of the design of the book is more directed to a desire in invoke a stylish effect instead of a book that is comfortable to read, however. Although many would undoubtedly find hearty nuggets of interesting inspiration, this book will probably appeal mostly to New Yorkers.



2. The forty-two profiled homes featured in this book have at least one thing in common, if only one thing: money. Paragraph-sized introductions relate very basic information about the owners and the homes, while straightforward but revealing photographs are followed-up with some light descriptions.
   
   With the flip of a few pages we go from a 60's psychedelic Fifth Avenue swing-pad to the gritty textures and castle-like feel of a converted factory on Long Island, and it is this type of glaring disparity throughout that is part of this book's strength but more of a weakness.
   
   It's as if the author wished to celebrate the Upper-class abodes in this part of the world, and while the work avoids the homogeny that others in this oeuvre have fallen prey to, one is left with a lingering, indelible question about the interior design of most of these homes: But why? The majority are utterly unlivable ranging from kitsch-heaven to blatant storage receptacles for ill-fitting (if expensive) works of art.
   
   Examples include Brooke Astor's Park Avenue duplex which has an `ungodly-rich-old-granny' flower suffocation theme going, replete with innumerable treasures of art and sculpture; or there's Donald Trump's revoltingly ostentatious gold-dripping suite overlooking Central Park; one Wall-street broker's penthouse has a bench inscribed in large lettering with grade school truisms such as "Killing is unavoidable but nothing to be proud of," amidst a dozen others. The novelty quickly wears thin.
   
   These people, millionaires all, some of them billionaires, have the money to transform almost anything they can conceive into physical reality, and it is quite underwhelming what many of them come up with, indicating a poverty of mind and spirit in many cases. They can afford a Basquiat or Manet but lack the eye of an artist to bestow a sense of proportion or dignity to a room, something not even the contracted architects and designers can give.
   
   Despite these reservations, there are several well-designed rooms in the mix, and a few gems. The best of the lot is Steve Mensch's windowless Manhattan home that has nature sprawling up brick in a large, central courtyard and a sense of guilt-free luxury and calm. For glimpses of a home like this, this book becomes an asset to any library. -Mark Stark



3. This is a wonderful book, showing the range of styles in New York city. It contains many large and magificent pictures, and it is an experience to look though it. Anyone who is interested in interior design would love this book!



4. Ms. Wedekind portrays an interesting cross section of this city's interiors through selected homes and apartments. Unfortunately; she has done little research other than browsing through already published glossy spreads in periodicals. I did not find one interior that had not already been published and was disappointed by this volume after having seen her last on Paris. Hopefully, she will do a little research if she continues this series.

2 comments about La Maison de Verre.

1. I just received the book and had no time to read the text. The NY Times article in the summer covered the history of the house up until its current restoration. The photographs look a little as if they were from the "modern" era. Perfect perspective correction, focus on the details, rendering the home's atmosphere remarkably well. I especially like the color balance of the images. I disagree with the previous reviewer about the pictures. I can not imagine any different way to introduce this spectacular building. The black and white Polaroids (?) are a bit distracting. They may serve as spacers.
   
   The "modern" is an important stage of the Western culture and deserves our attention.
   
   Akos Szilvasi (Cambridge, Massachusetts)



2. This book simultaneously (and half-heartedly) documents the owner, the architect, and the building. The text is boring, the pictures are less than spectacular, and there is an extremely limited set of drawings placed in the back of the book as an after thought.
   Overall I am extremely dissapointed with my purchase, and if you are an architect or student of architecture chances are you will be too.

5 comments about Perfectly Painted House: A Foolproof Guide for Choosing Exterior Colors for Your Home.

1. I ordered this book on e-bay sorry amazon.....but it is the exact same identical book to another title under author's name " Painting your house inside and out".....just thought all should be aware...it's 1/2 the size but if you have the first book no need for the second. Way too general....not enough "foolproof" info. Good house photos but need more specifics.



2. Unfortunately "Perfectly Painted House: A Foolproof Guide for Choosing Exterior Colors for Your Home". (1) It wasn't any help in choosing the perfect color(s) for our home. We have a bungalow style home built in 1925 - there was only one color choice in the book for similar home(red) personally did not care for color. I was looking for siding color w/trim & door color choices i.e. 3 colors. (2) We do not plan on painting our house ourselves (many hints for doing same). Very disappointed in this particular book.



3. This is a great book for anyone serious about choosing paint colors for their house with professional results. A wide range of house styles and color combinations are presented. The book starts out with a brief step by step for choosing exterior paint color. It provides instructions for actually painting the house yourself. This is followed with page after page of gorgeous photos of painted houses, and it includes the paint color used for each house. There are very few resources available on the subject of choosing color for the exterior of the house. The book is truly the best I've seen.



4. I have two of Ms. Krims' books, The Perfectly Painted House and The Perfect Palette. We bought a Federal Style home built in 1820 in downtown Fitchburg, MA for my husband's psychology practice last year. We consulted the book and decided on the Phelps Putty color, but kept the shutters black (although your choice of gray was stunning and I may do that in the future). The color suggestions along with the pointers on painting cedar shingles in the appropriate way yielded great results and we have gotten many compliments. Our next project is our own home and I chose the Glastonbury combo for my main floor and the Marblehead for our downstairs. Clearly Ms. Krims' books have been used and enjoyed. Thank you very much!



5. Anyone using this book as a means by which to choose paint colours, is making a huge mistake. Like most books of this genre, it is candy for the eye - you may be inspired, but to go out and use the same colours as in the book is foolish.
   The homes featured in this book are mostly country, or traditional. Any paint colour you choose is dramatically influenced by the architecture of your home, the climate in which you live, whether it faces north or south, etc. The homes in this book seem to exist in isolation on snowy plains or country acreage unobstructed by neighbours, power-lines, garages, etc. She does not talk about size at all. For example: a tall skinny home, with little architectural detail, painted fire engine red will not look nearly as charming as a cosy cottage with heavy moldings and shutters. There is little mention of accent, or trim colours. It is a flimsy read - if you love the idea of a yellow home (as I do) you will only find ONE yellow house. There is only ONE red house. A better book would have shown pictures of 4 or 5 homes, in different styles, painted red, yellow, blue, etc. We're talking about photographs here - why not include more? A better option for house paint ideas is to drive around your neighbourhood, which shares the same light, climate, etc. as your own. Find a few houses you really like, then ask the owners what colour they used.