Published in 1980, this book provides a comprehensive summary of the various VideoDisc systems expected to soon hit the market. Besides discussing CED and LaserDisc, the book also covers the less well-known VideoDisc formats like TED, VISC, VHD, Thomson-CSF, I/O Metrics, ARDEV, and Optidisc. This hard cover book and its soft cover counterpart were the only general VideoDisc books to features CED's on the cover.

This book, written by a vet, is an good overview of the genre of Vietnam Veteran films. After reading this one will realize exactly how stereotyped Vietnam Vets have been over the years. These depictions (crazed nuts, maladjusted losers, one man armies) are those that most likely escape most film goers. Another interesting aspect of the book is that the author breaks with other film critics and gives a good mark to the much-slammed John Wayne movie, The Green Berets, since it was the only film for quite a while that portrayed Vietnam soldiers as anything other than psychos. This book is probably best suited for those interested in the Vietnam War and film buffs.

This book has some good illustrations for re-enactors to make replica weapons, but you should know that this is just a re-release of Osprey's Viking Hersir 793-1066 AD. This release has a different title and different cover, so I was misled into buying it again, but I am returning it. If you don't have Viking Hersir, I suggest you get this book. It's not very in depth, but does give a good overview of various aspects of the Viking warrior.

I first saw Gray Morrow's art in Creepy magazine in '66. He was one of their top artists, along with Frank Frazetta, Jack Davis, Al Williamson, Reed Crandall, and Angelo Torres. Some of Morrow's drawings and paintings from that era are reprinted here as well as much other work I had not seen. He was a better (and more versatile) artist than I realized, since his paintings for Creepy were not quite as powerful as Frazetta's at the time, but his career evidently took many turns, and he did a wide variety of work for comic, movies and advertising, eventually developing a polished, assured flair for snazzy, hip, dynamic renditions of pulp themes: spies, detectives, spacemen, cowboys, glamor girls, horror, fantasy and adventure. Large, vibrant color reproductions, interesting biographical info on the man and his contemporaries in '60s New York, make this book desirable for nostalgic baby boomers as well as aspiring commercial artists who want to gaze at great technique. Wish it had more pages, but at least they only show the good stuff.

I guess I'd just expected the CD-ROM to cover everything. It did covert enough to give the going.

This beautifully illustrated book was issued to accompany the 1998/99 major travelling exhibition of the same name.

It focuses on some of the different stages of Warhol's career starting with his fashion illustrations and shop window-dressing from the fifties and early sixties. It then goes on to the 'Factory' style of the sixties and the nightclub and celebrity scenes of the seventies and eighties.

'The Warhol Look' is packed full of wonderful images and photographs, not just by Warhol but also by other artists, designers and photographers. This is especially true of the middles section Covering the sixties. Many forgotten images and magazine spreads are illustrated, providing extra clues as to how mainstream culture viewed Warhol and his associates.

Perhaps the most illuminating parts of the book are devoted to Warhol's fascination with transvestites and Warhol's side line of modelling. The essays accompanying the latter especially provides a fresh insight into Warhol the man and Warhol as a mirror.

The book provides yet more conclusive proof of Warhol's influence on mainstream fashion, art, design, and even, with 'interview' magazine publishing. It examines his links with the downtown avant-garde and underground scenes of the sixties and his distancing from it after his shooting in 1968. It then illustrates his growing obsession with celebrity and fame in the seventies and eighties.

Overall, this is a wonderful book for all Warhol fans, and for anyone interested in fashion, design and the various New York downtown scenes in between 1950's and the 1980's.

This is a good book for those who would like to learn more about the cultural aspects of the Old Testament. It covers all aspects of warfare and has numerous photographs and illustrations. I found it very rewarding.

Here at last is a look at how social change happens at the street level, literally. As her native South Africa struggled violently toward the end of apartheid, Susan Collin Marks was a peace committee volunteer on the streets of Cape Town area communities.

Most of the attention on South Africa in the early 1990s was focused on President DeKlerk and Nelson Mandela, but both men knew they could not build any lasting solution if the people were not ready. Through Marks, we learn what really happened on the local level, such as the police who had to learn a whole new way of law enforcement, and the bitter youths who slowly came to realize that talk could bring more change than chants and threats. Of course, this is no fairy tale--there are plenty of setbacks and brutalism along the way of this story. Yet as heartbreaking as the violence Marks relates is, she also reveals many quiet and refreshing successes. Indeed, no one was more surprised to discover the effectiveness of conflict resolution that the contestants themselves.

By the time the new constitution was in place, the people were ready to give it a fighting chance, instead of fighting. The ad- hoc resolutions effected by local peace workers like Marks bought time and space, and often something more -- aggrieved parties learning to forge their own nonviolent solutions. Given the very real possibility of the entire country otherwise exploding, that was no small achievement.

This is not a great book in and of itself, but it is Morrison's first entry into what have become some great waterfall guides. This book took a large area and tried to tell a lot about it. His later waterfall guides basically superseded this book, and limit themselves in geographic area. "Waterfall Walks and Drives in the Great Smoky Mountains and the Western Carolinas" and "Waterfall Walks and Drives in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee" are the two latest versions of his guides, and both are excellent. ...

In 'Greek and Roman Philosopy After Aristotle', there is and extended excerpt from 'Octavius' by Marcus Minucius Felix. Its summary of pagan Roman views on Christianity was so dead-on accurate, I just had to read the whole thing. Unfortunately, the Christian response isn't as incisive as as the attack. It is primarily a defense of the idea of a single creator god, coupled with the idea that Christians are restrained, ethical and good people. Jesus is not really menitioned at all. Felix's view might be called "Ethical Monotheism". The second work in the book, Justin Martyr's 'First Apology' is very revealing of 2nd century Christian thought, and touches on many practical and philosophical issues, not only regarding Christian practice and paganism, but Jewish uses of Greek philosophy. This book is quite a find. While it is not a new translation, it is a modern, idiomatic, if somewhat oversimplified, rendition of the translations contained in the hoary, 130-something year-old 'Ante-Nicene Library'. Portions of 'Octavius', and Justin Martyr's 'First Apology" are rearranged, to a degree, on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis, and other portions are relegated to appendices, but both works are present in their entirety, and a bit more logical, to modern readers, than the originals. At the price of $..., you'd be silly not to check these accessible, yet ancient works out. See what they were thinking in the 2nd century. They won't bite!