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Book reviews for "Alain" sorted by average review score:

Daddy Sleeps (King Daddy Books)
Published in Hardcover by Henry Holt & Company (September, 1992)
Author: Alain Le Saux
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good for teaching ESL
The book consists of two-word sentences beginning with "Daddy."
This makes it a good book for teaching about third-person verbs.


Decorating With a Paper Cone
Published in Hardcover by John Wiley & Sons (09 August, 1996)
Authors: Alain Buys and Jean-Luc Decluzeau
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Decorating With A Paper Cone
Having just joined the world of cake decorating, I have found that the book have expanded my skills through detailed step by step examples. It also have enhanced my design ability to create more interesting cakes. What a great find that I cannot do without.


Delacroix
Published in Hardcover by F Hazan Editions (1993)
Author: Alain D. Hureaux
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The fellowship of the colors
We are lucky that so much of DELACROIX's art is still around, lightly spread throughout the world: the only lost works are "Cardinal Richelieu saying mass" during the sack of the Palais Royal in 1848, the decoration of the Salon de la Paix at the Paris Hotel de Ville during the Commune, and "Justinian drafting his laws" during the fire at the Conseil d'Etat in the Palais d'Orsay in 1871. Taken in by anything new that the paint suppliers were selling, DELACROIX made bad choices in canvas and paints: the Romantic "Battle of Nancy," the Classical "Boissy d'Anglas at the National Convention," and the exotic "Moroccan chieftain receiving tribute" suffered from using bitumen, just as "Barque of Dante" has from going over fresh spots. Yet he thought of painting as storytelling with the richly vigorous colors of Peter Paul Rubens and of Paolo Veronese's "St Barnabas healing the sick." He was the only great Western artist to leave masses of manuscripts, as journals, letters and published articles, so we can walk our way through his sketches and writings to the finished products of the master colorist of people, landscapes, buildings, and animals: "Louis-Auguste Schwiter" standing, as his only full-length portrait, inspired by Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds; "Charles de Verninac," in two Thomas Lawrence-style expressive bust portraits, with a carefully worked face, large brushstrokes, sketchy background clothes, and subtly agreeing colors; and his last, "Alfred Bruyas," with a Hamlet-like head melancholic, meditative and languid in a harmony of greens, browns and blacks. He was also a master landscapist of few painted landscapes, such as "Banks of the river Sebou," his only salon-shown landscape; "Sea at Dieppe," Impressionist in subject and technique; and "Still life with lobsters," with John Constable-type smooth varnish obviously brushstroked and with a David Wilkie-type lobster right out of "Chelsea prisoners reading the gazette of the battle of Waterloo." But most of his landscapes backgrounded his historytellings, such as "Natchez" and "Ovid among the Scythians": his history style of adding expressiveness and framing scenes was Richard Parkes Bonington-like in being more entertaining and picturesque than heroic, such as in "Henri III at the deathbed of his favorite mistress, Marie de Cleves" and with "Henri IV courting Gabrielle d'Estrees" and in seeming neartransparent watercolor-like by varnish made with copal, such as in the richly colored "Charles VI and Odette de Champdivers" and "Louis d'Orleans showing his mistress Odette de Champdivers." His building decorations harmonized balanced colors with finely drafted figures while getting architecture, light and paint to work together: at the Palais du Luxembourg's cupola harmonious light and vigorous colors dealt with the architecture by background landscape in blues and greens, central sky cloud-filled, and figures fleshtoned against bright reds, blues, greens, ochers, oranges, and whites; and at the Salon du Roi half-domes lighted figures clustered on the bottom as well as the landscapes and skies topwards in intense blues and greens. My sculptress mother used to say, and my artist sister keeps on saying, that artists see the world first in blacks and whites, with perfect examples in the DELACROIX tigers, lions, and horses changed into blacks, grays, and whites particularly showing color mastery. In fact, the author describes these animals as Romanticized in character and power by the very play of color and matter: Theodore Gericault- and Antoine-Jean Gros-influenced "Wild horse," as my special favorite; "Tam O'Shanter" rapidly brushstroked into a horizontally elongated horse, rider and witch in the "Derby at Epsom" style of Gericault; and "Royal tiger" and "Lion of the Atlas," as his two most successful lithographs, along with the dramatically white counterpointed "Macbeth and the witches" lithograph haloing the former and turning the latter into "phantoms of obscurity." So Barthelemy Jobert's is the book to read, in this beautifully clear, masterful English translation: he owns up to only talking about fitting DELACROIX into what went before, and I wish that he would write a sequel fitting the artist into what came after. Any readers looking for comparison reading might find helpful and interesting DELACROIX: THE LATE WORK, Loys Delteil's EUGENE DELACROIX, EUGENE DELACROIX: SELECTED LETTERS, 1813-1863, Michele Hannoosh's PAINTING AND THE JOURNAL OF EUGENE DELACROIX, Lee Johnson's DELACROIX PASTELS, and Editor Beth Segal Wright's THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO DELACROIX.


Dining With Proust
Published in Hardcover by Random House (October, 1992)
Authors: Anne Borrel, Alain Senderens, and Jean-Bernard Naudin
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A must for any intellectual cook
This is a beautifully photographed book and a great adjunct to anyone who has, or is presently reading Proust, or just interested in the Belle Epoque or reading Edith Wharton etc.


Ellsworth Kelly: The Early Drawings, 1948-1955
Published in Hardcover by University of Chicago Press (October, 1999)
Authors: Yve Alain Bois, Ellsworth Kelly, Harvard University Art Museums, and Harvard University
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Brilliant and important, breathtakingly original
It's so rare to find a scholar whose writing illuminates works of art rather than clouds with obfuscation. Bois brings so much to the table intellectually, and then with wonderful clarity and elegant prose he teaches us to see Kelly's work in a splendid, exciting way.


Essays in Love
Published in Audio Cassette by Chivers Audio Books (June, 2001)
Authors: Alain De Botton, James Wilby, and Alain de Botton
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A Brilliant Study
This is a kind of hybrid novel/philosophical study of romantic love. The plot is, on the surface, a rather conventional one; a man and woman meet and fall in love. Most of the book, however, consists of the narrator (the male lover) reflecting on each stage of the process, from initial attraction to the despair of love's departure. What is perhaps most striking about Essays In Love is how Alain De Botton manages to combine passion and intellect. He is able to adroitly mix a scholarly, intellectual analysis with truly felt emotions. He is also extremely perceptive regarding the often perverse nature of our emotions. For example, he illustrates the tendency of someone in love to feel less highly of the loved one if he or she reciprocates the feeling. From this book, I'd guess De Botton has a background in Western philosophy, as the bulk of the references are from this field. Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, and many others are quoted. Yet the book is never dry or academic; the rawness of the lovers' emotions is always there to keep our hearts as well as our minds intrigued. James Wilby, the reader, perfectly captures the ideas, feelings and nuances of the story.


The Essential Joseph Beuys
Published in Hardcover by MIT Press (30 May, 1997)
Author: Alain Borer
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Essentialy Essential Beuys
This book is a great introduction and overview of Beuys difficult and varied work. It contains many photos, which are enormously important to gain understanding of an artist whose work is frequently ephemeral and time based. There are also essays which touch on the myths surrounding Beuys, both of his own making and subsequent to his death. The relationship between this creating of a personal mythology and the materials he uses becomes evident.


Fractal Geometries: Theory and Applications
Published in Hardcover by CRC Press (August, 1991)
Author: Alain Le Mehaute
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Fractal Geometry: history and quirks
This introduction to fractal geometry first covers the history of fractals, both before and after Mandelbrot coined the term, and then explores the ways in which fractal geometry diverges from Euclidean geometry, including fractal dimension, morphogenesis, and measure uncertainty. A mathematical background is helpful, but not essential.


Globalization and the Small Open Economy (New Horizons in International Business)
Published in Hardcover by Edward Elgar Pub (30 September, 2001)
Authors: D. Van Den Bulcke, Alain Verbeke, and John H. Dunning
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An informative compilation of scholarly assessments
Collaboratively edited by Daniel Van Den Bulcke (Professor of International Management and Development, University of Antwerp, Belgium) and Alain Verbeke (Professor of International Business and Public Policy, Solvay Business School, University of Brussels, Belgium), Globalization And The Small Open Economy is an informative compilation of scholarly assessments regarding small, open countries and their economies in a globalizing economic system. Examining the role of government, environmental policy, investment and multinational management, Globalization And The Small Open Economy concludes that globalization offers more benefits than threats to economic growth to small nations. Individual nations looked at in close detail include Korea, Singapore, and Belgium in this fact-filled, persuasively argued and highly analytical economic commentary. Globalization And The Small Open Economy is a strongly recommended addition to academic reference collections and international economics supplemental reading lists.


A Good Man in Evil Times: The Heroic Story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes -- The Man Who Saved the Lives of Countless Refugess in World War II
Published in Hardcover by Carroll & Graf (09 April, 2001)
Authors: Jose Alain Fralon, Peter Graham, and Joss Alain Fralon
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Finally, The Recognition
It is regratable that great men are rarely aknowledge as so in life. Aristides de Sousa Mendes was no exception, but his acts were expeptional. This book was long due. It's finally here, it's very well written, a just tribute to a men of honour, and I thank the author for it.


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