Our firm is the largest video production company in North America. We have reviewed every instructional book on the basic of producing good videos. Video Camcorder School is the best illustrated (color) and the easiest to understand. As such we furnish a copy to all new franchisees as well as reference for new franchisee classes.

Although those with a passion for the 'fruit of the vine' will especially enjoy this book, it will definitely be valued by anyone who appreciates humor as dry and as crisp as an excellent chablis.

The quotes, jokes, and one liners are priceless -- unlike many a bottle of expensive wine. And Kushner's own running commentary reads like stand up comedy at its best.

Now that many of us are quietly eschewing French wines (that are not really better than many other wines but which did, until recently, possess a certain 'snob appeal') we may well wonder what to bring to the next party or get-together that will impress a hostess with our 'sophistication, worldiness and overall sense of 'cool.' This is the answer. Bring a copy of this book together with a bottle of Californian (or) Virginian (or) Spanish (or) Italian (or) Australian, (or) Chilean wine, and you will not only make a tremendous hit with the host or hostess, but by reading excerpts from the book aloud, you'll be assured that the party won't be dull.

I was required to buy Visual Anthropology for my Visual Sociology class my sophomore year of college. This is one i didn't sell back to the bookstore after the class was over because it is so useful. It is a great book to help a person learn how to use a camera as a research tool and get the most out of it.

This is a moving, true account of a man inspired to share the gospel message. At age 17 he literally gives all that he has and dedicates himself to preparing for missions in inland China. World events, war, romance, adventure, and a singular devotion of a special family to their Savior are hallmarks of this brief paperback. I strongly recommend the book to anyone interested in Christian missions and those who need to be inspired; you, too, CAN make a difference

This is an amazingly helpful and concise guide to the often complex and daunting world of patents. Mr. Dickinson's book has made my work and research much simpler. I wish someone had written this book sooner. Kudos to the author

The wholesale looting of the Baghdad Museum on Apr. 11-12, which U.S. troops did nothing to prevent, has lent a fresh plangency and interest to this remarkable new book about history, culture, museums, caretakers, theft, corruption and the dogfights between the West and Islam over antiquities vastly older than either culture.
In two days in Baghdad, thousands of priceless treasures up to 5,000 years old have disappeared into the pockets and pickup trucks of larcenous mobs. However the Bush administration's Iraqi adventure is seen a century from now, the loss to human history and culture it occasioned is probably irreparable. Artifacts older than Abraham the patriarch have been stolen, ruinously dispersed, probably destined to be melted down for modern bangles. They will exist only in photographs, if at all, for the mobs destroyed the museum's archives as well, according to the New York Times.
Donald Malcolm Reid, a professor of history at Georgia State University, has assembled a very clear, comprehensive account of another, longer, more complex process of ruin, preservation and expropriation. In this sharply written, poignantly illustrated and lucidly organized book, Reid describes how Egyptian civilization was rediscovered by Europe after Napoleon invaded the place in the early 19th century, and how its treasures were first plundered, then exported, then preserved by Europeans who generally regarded the country as their own private piggy-bank. The living Egyptians they encountered were, in their eyes, little more than ignorant Muslim fanatics.
But they weren't. As Reid makes clear, a handful of enlightened Egyptian scholars were fascinated by the Pharaohs and were proud of their land's past. One, named Rifaa al-Tahtawi, wrote a history of ancient Egypt in Arabic in 1868 after studying the land and its monuments for nearly 35 years. Even earlier Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti, another scholar, had warned of the dangers of a European invasion of Egypt when Napoleon arrived with his armies in 1798. His words could come from an Iraqi citizen interviewed on CNN today:
"This is the beginning of a period marked by great battles; serious results were suddenly produced in a frightening manner; miseries multiplied without end, the course of things was troubled, the common meaning of life was corrupted and destruction overtook it and the devastation was general."
Worse was to come. Napoleon brought with him a remarkable entourage of scholars headed by the brilliant libertine, Vivant Denon, and the result was the monumental "Description de L'Egypte," one of the most beautiful multi-volume works of art and science ever published, a work so gorgeous that collectors commissioned special bookcases decorated with gilt sphinxes to hold it, and nothing but it.
But the result of the Napoleonic expedition, and its "Description," was ruinous, as Reid makes clear. A kind of Egyptian gold-rush opened up within the conquered country, and British and German scholars and diplomats descended on Egypt like locusts, determined to rescue it from itself ' and take home as many antiquities as possible in the process. The Rosetta Stone was one of the earliest spoils of war, found by the French, captured by the British in 1801 and today in the British Museum in London. (Americans arrived too late: Not until 1924 did the University of Chicago set up a permanent bureau in Cairo.)
After the first rampage of looting ' perhaps because the antiquities were so infernally heavy to transport, perhaps because the Europeans thought they'd be occupying Egypt in perpetuity ' another, subtler form of sequestration followed. The French Egyptologist, Auguste Mariette, decided it might be a good idea to set up a museum of antiquities in Egypt itself. It is the ancestor of the modern Cairo Museum, but Mariette was opposed to letting native Egyptians inside:
"Egypt is still too young in the new life which she has just received to have a public easily impressed in matters of archeology and art," he explained.
This is one of many ironies that enliven Reid's text, and this book can be read on several levels, as a history of archeology, of politics and warfare, of culture, of prejudices and superstitions, both Egyptian and European, Western and Islamic.
Reid tells it all very clearly, and unflinchingly. Egyptians were finally allowed into their museum in 1915 and could get in free on Tuesdays. Some rubbed up against the antiquities "as a cure for various ills," and the Baedeker guide counseled European visitors to avoid the museum on Tuesdays when "Arab visitors of the lower classes" flocked in.
Some very famous Egyptologists, among them E. A. Wallis Budge and Gaston Maspero, emerge from Reid's pages in all their roguish glory, as brilliant thieves and snobs. Maspero's 13-volume "History of Egypt" now fetches fancy prices on abebooks.com and Budge's treatises ancient Egyptian religion are available in Dover paperback reprints. Reid exposes their thefts and prejudices very artfully.
This is above all a magnanimous book, an attempt at making restitution in ink for what has been stolen in stone. It is hard not to sympathize as Reid quotes the Egyptian scholar Ali Mubarak, who issued a huge 20-volume topographical encyclopedia of Egypt in 1887, with this humble, honest preface, expressing Arab humanism at its best:
"We look upon these works but do not know the circumstances of their creation, we wander through them but do not know who made them... But it is our duty to know these things, for it is not fitting for us to remain in ignorance of our country or neglect the monuments of our ancestors. They are a moral lesson to the reflective mind, a memorial to the thoughtful soul...
"For what our ancestors have left behind stirs in us the desire to follow in their footsteps, and to produce for our times what they produced for theirs; to strive to be useful even as they strove."

I'm the surviving author. We wrote the book in the early '60's as a reaction to the street English grammars that were being written then. We wrote it somewhat tongue in cheek, with the purpose of a student's enjoying the sentences even if he or she did not learn any grammar. It is now being published by Wayside Press, and has been in print for nearly forty years. I still think that it is good.

This must by far be the best and most comprehensive book on Viennese Actionism available until now. As I understand from the colophon, even after 35 years the publisher was unable to find a printer in the UK that was prepared to agree to produce the book without excluding "some of the photographs". A shocking fact indeed, in my opinion. Fortunately, the remaining pictures are very good. In combination with the text a very enlightening book on the workings and especially the real intentions of this art movement, which has been feared, incriminated and/or discredited far too long now. A healing book.

I was getting really worried about the Y2K problem. I picked this book out from a shelf of Y2K books because it looked like it would have lots of practical advice and it didn't seem alarmist to me. The book surpassed my expectations. I now feel confident that I can be comfortable in my own home in the event of power outages and other service disruptions due to Y2K or any natural disaster. The authors present advice in an easy to understand, sensible way based on their own experience. The book made me think about simple steps that I can take to be prepared. Even if Y2K turns out to be no big deal I'm much better prepared for the next big storm.

This newest edition of "Zhukov" is a must for anyone that has an interest in the Marshal's career and/or an interest in the former USSR military machine and how it operated. After years of false and censored information on Zhukov and the Soviet military, "Zhukov" brings to light the the personalities (and incompetence) of such Soviet individuals as Stalin, Khruschev, and Breznev. The book helps show how these 'leaders' (through their low level of intelligence and maturity) helped stunt the growth of the USSR as a nation. Most importantly, the book brings to light the actual accomplishments of Marshal Zhukov (ie. Moscow, Stalingrad, Berlin, etc.) and how much of a role he had in the planning of these operations. From these accomplishments of the Marshal, one can see how 'cults of personalities' were able to appear in such magnitude in the former USSR. The book is a fast reader and highly enjoyable. Read it if interested in WWII from the Soviet perspective.