5 comments about Bomb the Suburbs.

1. I have to admit that when I first picked this book up at City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco I was totally freaked out by the title and cover...Now, what's that old cliche....Right?. This book should be required reading for all high schoolers across the country because it speaks the language for today's student.
   
   I wish more people could read this book because people could realize how to utilize hip-hop and youth mobilization as a tools to help solve the issues that are occurring throughout the U.S. today.
   
   Upski grew up in one of my most favorite neighborhoods in the world, Hyde Park, which is located in the South Side of Chicago. You can tell that the neighborhood had a big influence upon him because he understands the benefits of surrounding yourself with other cultures. After reading his calls-to-action, I was inspired to start an AAU Program in the ABLA Homes on the West Side of Chicago in order to utilize athletics as a tool to attract inner city youth to community center programs. This book also started me on my path to explore the revitalization of public places in inner cities.
   
   Check it out...Implement change in your neighborhood now.



2. When I picked up this book I was expecting an in depth study on race relations and the segregation that exists in our cities. I was expecting some discussion about the suburbs being for whites only and the ghetto being for blacks only. What I got was a collection of articles and interviews piled together with no main purpose. The 2 or 3 articles about race are very good and very observant. However, the rest of the book seems to be a collection of stories about Upski. He talks a lot about graffiti(and how down he is), but has no argument as to why it is good or bad. This book is worth getting only because of a few articles, besides that it's mainly Upski talking about how cool he is.



3. hip hop is a cult. if you're not a practicing member of this cult then you probably won't enjoy this book. if you're not from chicago then you'll probably enjoy it even less. it's very local. i like Upski (he uses his brain!), but this book just wasn't that good. i didn't like the part about bombing the rich suburban areas. i think there should be a place where people can expect to elevate to without being forced to be bombarded with graffiti. graffiti is for cities. it looks stupid and out of place in the suburbs. just cuz Upski likes the cities and loathes the suburbs does not mean everybody else shares that view. people are presently free to live wherever they want (if they can afford it) and if they want to move away from the ghetto they shouldn't be bullied into having the ghetto brought to them.



4. This is one of the greatest books I've ever read exploring the ideas of race and identity. Upski says things other have been afraid to. The book should be required reading for introductory English and Sociology courses at universities.



5. I read this book about 3 years ago. The reason I'm submitting my opinion at this late date is that I just saw the author on C-SPAN as a participant in a panel discussion sponsored by the Chicago Hip Hop Initiative. I was astounded that people still take this man seriously --- that activists in the audience would rise obediently from their seats when he, guru-like, flourishes an "uplifting" gesture. Well. at least that was good for a laugh, as is this book. The best thing this book accomplishes is to draw a distinction between hip-hop culture and money-driven rap "culture" --- in the latter case, "culture" is more accurately interpreted in the biological-lab sense of growing a bacterial culture in a Petri dish --- poseur "thug" kultcha. A couple of the other reviewers are under the delusion that the author is representative of some variant of anarchism. Well. NOT my kind of Individualist Anarchism, the thoughtfully reasoned non-violent kind associated with Henry David Thoreau, Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, Voltairine de Cleyre, B. Traven (author of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and "The Rebellion of the Hanged"), and James T. Farrell (author of the "Studs Lonigan" trilogy). Not even the dubious, self-proclaimed "anarchism" of Noam Chomsky (I may clench my teeth when I read Chomsky, but I can take him seriously --- whereas "Upski" I dismiss as naively amusing).

No comments about Greening Your Home.

2 comments about Borromini.

1. This book is good for its written content, but lacks good accompanying photography. The photographs are grainy, but if you can move beyond that Anthony Blunt has definitely done his homework on Borromini.



2. This book offers an excellent introduction both to the architecture of Francesco Borromini and the architecture of the Italian Baroque. Particularly useful are the comparisons between antique and renaissance architecture (particularly Michelangelo). An indispebsable book for anyone interested in Baroque or Italian architecture in general.

1 comments about Architecture in Italy, 1400-1500 (The Yale University Press Pelican History of Art).

1. This book is considered to be "the great survey" of early Renaissance architecture, and is, in fact, the only one that has ever been written covering the subject (except for a 1998 book in Italian that is really more a collection of articles). I find this lack of surveys rather surprising as Renaissance architecture is one of the most well-loved subjects in art history, and I would think that specialists, students, and laymen would demand a simple World of Art kind of treatment of the topic. The Pelican series generally does not provide this type of clear, thesis-driven introductory text, and Heydenreich's book is no exception. It is a collection of facts--a catalog of "this building was built then and it shows influence from that and the architect was so-and-so"--with minimal interpretation and explanation (we generally don't even learn what details indicate that "this" building was influenced by "that" one). A great deal of familiarity with the material is required on the part of the reader, so the text entirely failed my mission of gaining a broad understanding of quattrocento architecture. If you are well-versed in the topic and are looking for a reference, this book may be helpful; if you're looking for elucidation, it almost surely won't be. The most Heydenreich seems to be able to say about the style of buildings or the reason they were compelling to their contemporaries is that they were "perfect" and "beautiful," terms I have heard altogether too frequently (and too frequently unexplained) from Renaissance art historians. I regret that I have no better book to recommend in Heydenreich's place.

   On a somewhat different note, the binding of the paperback Pelican books is shoddy at best. By the time I had finished this book, which I did read cover to cover despite really disliking it (it's only 151 pages anyway), all of its pages were falling out!

2 comments about Classic Houses of Seattle: High Style to Vernacular, 1870-1950 (The Classic Houses Series).

1. 
   This book covers the basic styles of homes seen in the SEATTLE areas, from around 1879 to around the 1950's.
   
   Many of the earlier homes have since been destroyed, so the author had to rely on archival photos. All those photos are, of course, in black and white.
   
   Then the author did a wonderful research job by showing the following architectural styles from the early 1900's to the 1950's.
   
   The reason that I give this book a 4-star,rather than a full 5-star rating, is because I wish the author had shown more photos of the LATER homes discussed, & that are still available in Seattle. Instead, the author showed one photo (mostly) of the later homes, when she surely could have included a few more photos of the LATER homes, since they are still available for photo-taking.
   
   The photos of the available (modern) homes, are all in black and white also ---not in color. I suppose the author wanted to show continuum throughout her book, so she chose to show all the book's photos (even the modern photos from 2004-2005) in black and white.



2. I'm the third owner of a 1908 house in downtown Seattle that has survived relatively unmolested. I was looking for details of how the house should have been decorated in the period and how I could make small changes to the house to make it functional, yet remain honest to the period. The book is great at showing the history and architecture of each period with nice photo examples inside and out. I only hoped there would be a little more detail about how to find an architect that specializes in restoring these types of homes.

2 comments about Public Toilet Design: From Hotels, Bars, Restaurants, Civic Buildings and Businesses Worldwide (Trends in Architecture).

1. Sit and congitate on where you might be if you werent sitting where you were. There are some great and not so great inspirational places to expurge your toxins.



2. while the majority of the WC shown here were created with a substantial budget, Public Toilet Design demonstrates a wide variety of styles and settings that can be inspiring (if you can imagine a public toilet being inspiring) for anyone in the design profession.

5 comments about Executable UML: A Foundation for Model-Driven Architecture (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series).

1. This book does a good job of giving the reader an idea of the potential of modeling, but it reads like the US tax code. After a while it is numbing. There must be a better way to teach these concepts to humans.



2. Having worked for an organization that has implemented a model-driven architecture technology approach to create highly robust software applications I can attest to the practical value of translatable models and the information and techniques in this book.

   I have always been a fan of the rigor and completeness of the Shlaer-Mellor methodology and this book distils this rigor into a profile of UML that hopefully will inspire a wider audience to look at the reality of creating executable and translatable models.

   I found the book extremely well written and very complete in its treatment of every aspect of the subject from basic UML ideas through to model compilers. Unlike many technical texts I found absolutely no fluff in this book - each sentence and section has been carefully worded to be clear, consistent and unambiguous - a breath of fresh air for a pedant like myself.

   I have used this book (along with Leon Starr's "Executable UML: How to Build Class Models") as a reference for my course development work on executable UML and found it invaluable. The table of contents and index are complete and well put together - something that I feel is crucial in any reference text.

   I highly recommend this book for anyone using UML for software development who wants to explore this new technology of building executable and translatable models - and have it explained clearly and comprehensively.




3. The review from "A reader" is erroneous. There is no review from "Leon Brooks," so it is unlikely there is any business relationship with a non-existent person.

   I imagine "A reader" meant Leon *Starr* who runs an entirely separate business from those run by either of the authors. Sure, we talk and refer business each other's way, but that is to be expected. Please delete "A reader"'s review.

   (If you know Leon, you'd know he says what he really thinks, even if--especially?--it's bad!)




4. Two events at the Object-Oriented Systems, Languages, and Applications Conference of 1996 were memorable for me. The first was the opening address given by one of the more insightful architects/designers of the 20th century, Christopher Alexander. And the second was a debate between Stephen Mellor (one of the authors of this book) and Grady Booch on the topic "Translation: Myth or Reality?". Six years later, with the addition of Action Semantacs to UML, the Model Driven Architecture initiative of the Object Management Group, and the publication of this book, it appears that Mr. Mellor is as persistent in his position that executable (and hence translatable) models are indeed a reality, as Mr. Alexander was that the resonance between the structure of a solution and the corresponding problem is a measure of the solution's quality. Good ideas bear up well over time.

   Mr. Mellor, and this book, are not for the faint hearted. It is his position that building software systems should be more about engineering a solution than artfully handcrafting one, and that to do this, one needs a disciplined process and a rigorous and precise engineering tool: Executable UML. If you agree with this tenet, and accept its implied challenge--or just want to know where they will lead you--this is a book for you.

   In this book, Mellor and Balcer present a very lean and agile profile of UML and define the underlying execution semantics that enable it to be used as a valuable engineering tool for analyzing, designing, and implementing your systems. They also prescribe an engineering process to follow when modeling a software system, and thoughtfully walk the reader through this process and the various UML models with numerous examples and real-world experiences. If you use UML to model software, and aspire to engineer that software in the process, this book will give you a lot to think about and add significantly to your engineering tool chest.




5. If you have ever diligently tried to implement a software system using a graphical modeling technique such as UML, I suspect your first attempts,like mine, were less than satisfying. It probably went something like this. Starting with some shiny new UML tool you start drawing diagrams. After a while, things seem "squishy". It's hard to know exactly where to stop modeling. Some things have a clear correspondence to the implementation that you know you have to get to, but many, many other issues crop up that you decide you have to defer to the details of the implementation. At some point in time you convince yourself that you understand the problem very well and then just start coding the implementation. It can be a bit like the Twilight Zone. In the end you wonder just what all those diagrams, which are probably out of date with respect to the implementation, were for.

   Fortunately, Mellor and Balcer have given us some real help here. This book is a comprehensive presentation of how to give UML executable semantics. I feel that the emphasis on execution semantics is key. When you write code, you are able to execute it in your head and verify that you think it's correct. You may still make mistakes and introduce bugs, but the process
   is concrete. The same definiteness needs to be there when you are modeling. If the model is to be truly a more abstract representative of the system you are designing then you must be able the "execute" the model and predict how the system will behave in its ultimate implementation. And, of course, if the model is that definite then it should be possible to derive automatically the implementation from the model. All of this and much more is discussed in detail in this book. If you struggle, like I do, to deal with your systems problems at a higher
   level of abstraction, this is a book you need to read.

No comments about 1000x Architecture of the Americas.

No comments about The Rodin Museum, Seoul.

5 comments about Architectural Acoustics (Applications of Modern Acoustics).

1. Having read some architectural acoustics books, I can recommend this one as one of the best. It is an excellent resource. In fact, I should not have spent some of my money on some oldie books, which were cheap but not as good.
   
   This is an up to date book, and it is worth every penny you spend. If you are a student or someone interested in the topic architectural acoustics, it is a good resource but it has many formulas (sorry if you do not like physics).
   
   With it I have been able to specify to an architect who does not know hardly anything about acoustics how to correct his design for a contemporary church. I also recommend "Handbook for Sound Engineers" as a compliment to this book, for people that are trying to get the best of both worlds -- acoustics and audio. These are both good buys, and can help you very much. Remember that to be a good consultant you need to have a good library of books and this one would be an excellent part of your reference library.



2. The ultimate guide to architectural acoustics covering many topics in a single and nice priced book, It has everything covered and explained to a good level, my only complain is that only basic measurement techniques are explained. However it is a great complilation of knowledge in a single package.



3. In his preamble the author refers to the fact this book took him more than 10 years to write. Given the level of detail and the comprehensive nature of this book, this is not surprising.
   
   There may be better acoustical books available relating to specific niches of acoustics, such as Beranek and Barron's works on concert halls and there are certainly more simple introductions to the subject, such as Egan's book of the same name, but for anybody who doesn't mind grappling with some mathematical equations, this is definitely the best and most comprehensive book on this subject of the 15 or so that I possess.
   
   Like the author, I am also a practicing acoustical consultant and a lecturer in this subject. It's probably splitting hairs, but I suspect that my architecture students might not respond well to this book due to the fact that the illustrations are generally limited to fairly simple black and white drawings and the mathematical approach may intimidate some, but for other acoustical consultants and engineers interested in the field of building acoustics, I would definitely recommend this text.



4. I just received my copy, and have yet to dive into. However it appears up to date (2006) in that it covers modelling and auralization concepts. The scope of the book is expanded compared to Eagan's excellent text. Take a look at the table of contents on line for an idea of the topics.
   
   It appears to be well written. The mathematics of sound are covered. This should be a standard reference text for a general knowledge of architectural acoustics.
   
   July 2007 - I use this book as one of my primary references. It has excellent breadth and detail.



5. I have a copy of Long's Architectural Acoustics and have read a number of sections. The book is remarkably complete and Long has correctly embodied current literature. I recommend it for professionals and architects who have some mathematics. Leo Beranek