2 comments about Under Antarctic Ice: The Photographs of Norbert Wu.

1. This is undoubtedly the most spectacular book ever written about the natural history of Antarctica. Wu's photographs are spectacular, and the text is a brilliant mix of scientifically accurate descriptions laced with thoughtful prose. If you're just looking for a picture book about Antarctica, this book will satisfy your every need. If you want to *learn* something about Antarctica, you'll treasure this book!



2. This book is chock full of incredible photographs of the wonders of Antarctica. Any Diver, Swimmer, Marine Biologist or lover of the oceans will enjoy this book, its incredible photographs and well written text will add to your understanding of the underwater world of Antarctica. When people think of the southern continent, they picture the stark white ice fields and distant mountains. This book will let you see and appreciate the amazing life that goes on under the ice along the coasts. A rich and diverse ecosystem that very few have ever pondered, much less seen. You will be in awe of the amazing array of animals seen in this book. Penguins, Jelly Fish, Whales, and all manner of critters...

2 comments about Best of the National Air and Space Museum.

1. Great photograghs with well written copy. This book makes me want to go to this museum and see first hand the items displayed. Highly recommend!!!



2. i'm an engineer- worked rocket motors, and various satellite programs. this book was recommended by associate after visiting the museum at Langley. The pics are super, with short descriptions, and moderate on the tech. It's an amazing pulse of this wild history, and mostly is from America's lineage. St. Louis, Mercury, Atlas, and up to current Shuttle. There's also the SST, and unique turn of the century early birds. A fine read to be shared with a youngster (my son 10, digs it), or for the history or engineering buff. amazon has it cheaper than at the museum.

No comments about Tony Oursler: 1997-2007.

5 comments about Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed.

1. This is a beautiful book illustrating the different ways cultures reform the body and for what reasons. It is just like actually visiting an exhibit at a major museum. But this you get to take home and enjoy over and over. The photos are plentiful, full color, large and professional. The text is not overly scholarly, but informative and intelligent. It does leave me wanting to delve deeper into the subject intellectually.



2. To read this book reveals not only plenty of interesting and quite often surprising information on fashions past and current but its text and pictures are highly complementary. In addition a lot of the provided information gives insight into social structures of the centuries referred to - and once more it is proven that fashion is one of the quickest instruments to testify social and historical changes to the world.



3. Extreme Beauty is a wonderful book that celebrates the Metropolitan's equally brilliant exhibit about fashion and it's different preoccupations with the body. The exhibit was magnificent, and the book truly honors the tone and feeling of it, while being extremely informative in it's own right. The book is divided into different chapters such as neck and shoulders, waist, chest, etc. Each chapter features photos of the garments displayed in the original exhibit, as well as additional historical drawings and photographs of the various fashions and cultural trends that have celebrated the parts of the body. And, as promised in the title, the book explores the cultural foundations of bodily transformation and mutilation(?) through everything from extreme corsetry, [..] footwear and peircing to the tribal women who use metal rings to actually elongate their vertebrae. Harold Koda's insightful and meticulously researched commentary is just the icing on the cake. This is a must for any fashion library, but also of great interest to non-fashionistas.



4. Sentient humans with brains as well as bodies have always been fascinated by the way we adorn ourselves and why. Once we can get past the cultural anthropology of fashion, and the fads that make it a billion-dollar world industry, we can dig down to discover the roots of historical and current adorned beauty, and EXTREME BEAUTY does this . . . beautifully.
   It is pleasing--in an era in which physical beauty and adornment typified by fashion have been roundly rejected by most of the jeans-wearing public--to find a book that lets beauty out and helps us exercise our sense of mystery and wonder, based in no small part on human sexuality and attraction. Harold Koda (curator of the Costume Institute at New York's Met) has mounted a show and created a book with marvelous insights and passion, and the illustrations are wondrous--consider, as a case in point, Thiery Mugler's 'Chimere,' with its savage eroticism.
   One could quibble with Koda's arbitrary division of the body into 'neck and shoulders,' 'chest,' 'waist,' 'hips' and 'feet,'
   and his exclusion of the fascinating face/head/hair perplex, and the hands, with their magical touch and allure. But this book and its illustrations will become a benchmark by which human adornment is judged, and is a keeper of power and importance.



5. Harold Koda's Extreme Beauty surveys concepts of fashion and beauty. Koda considers the evolving, changing strategies of beauty around the world, focussing on different body parts and how they are accented and displayed through varying uses of clothing and cultural perception. Black and white and color photos of unusual fashion choices and styles make for some eye-opening insights.

No comments about How to have a Museum with Brains: John Cotton Dana and the Making of a Democratic Culture for America.

1 comments about Pottery by American Indian Women: The Legacy of Generations.

1. Susan Peterson has done a fabulous job highlighting the matriarchs (Nampeyo, Maria Martinez, Lucy Lewis, Margaret Tafoya), matrilineal line (Fanny and Dextra Nampeyo, The Lewis Women, Lu Ann Tafoya, Nancy Youngblood Lugo), and avant-gard (Alice Cling, Nora Naranjo-Morse, Jacquie Stevens) women artists who have maintained and expanded this ancient art form into the 20th-century. This retrospective featuring innovators of Native American pottery is a beautifully-illustrated book and a must for anyone interested in this art form. You will not be disappointed. Buy it while you can in the clothbound edition.

No comments about Monochromes: From Malevich to the Present (Ahmanson-Murphy Fine Arts Books).

2 comments about Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen.

1. The book, "Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen", is the catalog for an exhibition that has just opened. The first two reviews provide perspectives and understanding that are quite different from those offered in the preceding review from Publishers Weekly.

   Leah Ollman (LA Times, 11/18/01) comments that, "We want to know the world and have experiences beyond the ordinary. We want to extend our vision beyond its familiar capacity. These are timeless desires, born with the species. They thrive on wonder, ... 'Devices of Wonder' traces those impulses and the technologies designed to act on them during the past 400 years. Full of serious toys, marvelous instruments and art resonant with the theme of discovery, the show [and catalog] track a history of visual thinking, 'from the world in a box to images on a screen,'..."

   Speaking of both the exhibition and the catalog, the hard-nosed and insightful reviewer, Christopher Knight (Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2001) remarks that, "The Wunderkabinett is back, their show asserts--bigger, now nearly ubiquitous and considerably more far-reaching than any Baroque prince could ever have dreamed. Today's Wunderkabinett is sitting on your desk at home or in the office, or perhaps it's resting in your briefcase or on your lap." "Looking at wondrous things in a Wunderkabinett becomes the launch pad for the wonders of looking. Sight connects with insight. Mirrors facilitate reflection. Images are themselves ideas. ... Playful and unexpected connections get drawn. ... The show [and the catalog] is filled with these sorts of surprising delights, which can send your mind off in unexpected directions."

   ...




2. The book, "Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen", is the catalog for an exhibition that has just opened. The first two reviews provide perspectives and understanding that are quite different from those offered in the preceding review from Publishers Weekly.

   Leah Ollman (LA Times, 11/18/01) comments that, "We want to know the world and have experiences beyond the ordinary. We want to extend our vision beyond its familiar capacity. These are timeless desires, born with the species. They thrive on wonder, ... 'Devices of Wonder' traces those impulses and the technologies designed to act on them during the past 400 years. Full of serious toys, marvelous instruments and art resonant with the theme of discovery, the show [and catalog] track a history of visual thinking, 'from the world in a box to images on a screen,'..."

   Speaking of both the exhibition and the catalog, the hard-nosed and insightful reviewer, Christopher Knight (Los Angeles Times, November 19, 2001) remarks that, "The Wunderkabinett is back, their show asserts--bigger, now nearly ubiquitous and considerably more far-reaching than any Baroque prince could ever have dreamed. Today's Wunderkabinett is sitting on your desk at home or in the office, or perhaps it's resting in your briefcase or on your lap." "Looking at wondrous things in a Wunderkabinett becomes the launch pad for the wonders of looking. Sight connects with insight. Mirrors facilitate reflection. Images are themselves ideas. ... Playful and unexpected connections get drawn. ... The show [and the catalog] is filled with these sorts of surprising delights, which can send your mind off in unexpected directions." (...)

4 comments about Offbeat Museums: The Collections and Curators of America's Most Unusual Museums.

1. This book is pretty interesting in a wierd trivia, adventure-seeking sort of way. I bought it for my husbands high school academic team. He won't be able to use the entire book for them, as there is a lot of inappropriate material in the book: Picture of dead, naked woman [from Bonnie and Clyde Museum], the Mentruation Museum?, and a stripper museum.



2. This book is cool, I've been to two of the museums already and I'm adding the others to my TO DO list, but BE WARNED. This book was published in 1997 and a new edition is out. I wish I had noticed that before I put this one on my wishlist and received it. If you're interested in these crazy museums (and you really should be) get the updated version of this book and enjoy!



3. This book is a very good resource for those of you who are looking to break from the pressures of everyday life. Although it is unlikely that you will have the occasion to visit more than a handful of these museums, I think that it is still a great book for anyone interested in getting away and seeing what America used to be like before the Internet. Its short reviews of each museum (2-3 pages) make for very entertaining reading and give the reader a tour of the museums' highlights. As the previous reviewer mentioned, some of the museums are now defunct, an unfortunate end brought about by our fast-paced society. Still, just reading about these fascinating places should inspire the readers imagination. Try it out and if you don't go seeking odd museums in your town, perhaps you should ask yourself why. Again, as the previous reviewer stated, this can become an addicting hobby!



4. ...and I mean that both ways. The book is better than most books I have used to guide my travels, and offbeat museums are better than (on beat?) ones! As a frequent traveller, this book has guided me well to many of the locations. The descriptions are lighthearted but still in-depth. Its just plain fun reading. Everyone who sees it laying around has to pick it up and give it a read. My only complaint is the at least one of these museums is closed down now, and a few of the directions are a bit hazy. (I did however find every place I looked for!) But overall, even if you aren't planning on GOING to all these places, as I do, it's still a great read. (Be warned: Silly Museums are addictive)

2 comments about Departed Angels: The Lost Paintings.

1. This is a remarkable work about a remarkable artist - a real eye opener and worth every penny



2. The text and paintings here are revealing of Keroauc's soul as an artist tho without doubt his greatest paintings were done with words... and the numerous paintings and drawings reflect talent... however, most of the off the cuff pencil drawings are cartoonish and at times viewable for no more than 10 seconds. One thing he could rarily get right was a person's face, particularly the nose...very weird... The writer's pedantic analysis of Kerouac's work is alright at first particularly in setting the historical artistic context for modernist American painting, but begins to wear..and his assessment of Kerouac's work is inflated...There is no doubt Kerouac took his painting seriously. Paintings like The Eagle, the Ghost over Lowell at tenament dusk, the abstract paintings, the Clothesline, the woman with guitar and the pencil drawing of Buddha are all accomplished works..really quite surprising! (I would have liked to have seen his painting of Charlie Parker..but that is not in this collection). This book is recommended because, for once in the last ten years, we have some new insight into the man and his artistic vision.