Albert Arthur Allen's works in the book are from the 1920's. I had a poster at home of one of his pictures, but never made the connection until I got the book. The pictures are in the style of artist's studies, with full frontal nudity. This actually got him continually in legal problems since that type of picture was forbidden in the time of Comstock and his fellow travelers seeking to make the world safe from such 'disgusting immoral pictures'. Most of the women are Caucasians and the background reading material in the book makes some interesting observations as to how he categorized his models.
It is relatively easy to find posters of his works in galleries and art shops, and even in mail order catalogs. They are relatively innocent now, but 'evil' for the 1920's, at least to some people. This book is a very good look into the early days of the 20th Century and the photography of the nude. The quality of the pictures and the book is very high. As a historical perspective of the female nude in photography, this book is highly recommended. The pictures are figure studies, and those seeking erotic pictures should look elsewhere. However, one must be thankful for daring photographers such as Mr. Allen, who blazed the trails for future nude photographers. His work was in a different vein than that of Weston.

This book covers the history, social situation and product of Albert Arthur Allen. Albert Allen worked in the 1920s and his book and photographic work reflect the concepts of beauty at that time. The hairstyles and props as well as the figures reflect the times. This was a time period when nudes in sculpture and painting were okay but in photography it was not considered art but generally considered pornography. Albert Allen forged ahead in spite of all of this. The first part of the book covers his work, ideas (although many of them were quite strange) and photographs that are of an anatomical guide style. Full frontal and rear photographs of what are mostly slightly overweight models by today's standard of beauty but consistently in line with concepts of beauty during the 1920s. While a fascinating read and study of Albert Arthur Allen, most of the photography is very average by today's standards. Then again there were some series that showed true genius in artistic composition and use of light. A fine example of this is the Alo Studies taken from 1916-1923. They resemble Maxfield Parrish's work but with nudes. Instead of a study of nudes like most of the rest of the book they are a study in composition, light and art. If you study Albert Arthur Allen as an artistic study or his life as a study of where photography of nudes as an art form has come from then this is an excellent book. Even as a study in sociology this is an interesting book to see how concepts of beauty and acceptance of nude photography as an art form have changed over the years. His concepts of sociology, culture and racial differences and how they affected his photography are fascinating to read.

Albert Arthur Allen's Premiere Nudes is a 'must' for any collection following the history and presentation of nudes in photography: it opens with a general history of American nudism and follows Allen's contributions and many different images in particular, packing full-page black and white images throughout.

= Honest to God, 40 years later
Reviewer: didaskalex from Raleigh, NC United States

Honest to God, 1963
If there is anything to be said in evaluation of this book rests with the fact that it is still alive and controversial. These are positive signs, since whatever the late Bishop of Woolwich meant, was in true honesty to the audience he came to address, even though he was not certain about how faithful was he to the tradition, ways of thinking or personal relation with the Deity he intended to be honest to.

John A. T. Robinson
The author was an outstanding thinker who wrote 25 books, of which honest to God was one of his early writings. He came to the lime light when he disagreed to a ban on lady Chatterley's Lover in Britain. He quotes D.H. Lawrence, 'The plumed serpent' in ch.6; (The new Morality). The greatest impact of this slim book which revealed no breaking discoveries, was only its promotion of the essential tension in religious thinking between tradition and change, (Ch.1: Reluctant Revolution) .

Inspiration for Honest to God
Although what Robinson wrote was not unknown, since most likely that he read the then recently published D. Jenkins book 'Beyond Religion,' when confined to his house due to a back injury that stranded for some weeks. His book was inspired by the same thinkers were common to both and most mid century theologeneration: Barth, Tillich, and Bonhoeffer. Robinson further enriched the clash with supporting quotations from Catholic leaders of Nouvelle theologie, De Lubac, and E. Congar, in addition to his favorite existential Jewish philosopher M. Buber.

The Debate
Soon after, that little book was discussed everywhere, by all the Byzantine minded lay theologians, while members of the organized religious institutions took the case to condemn or few times supports the Bishop, who by definition of his office discerns the reality of the faith of his Church. These were gathered, edited, and printed in a book entitled, "The Honest to God Debate, including the Church of England, C.S.Lewis, R.P.Hanson, and R. Bultmann. J. Robinson commented, complementing the positive reaction, writing under the subheading: Theology and the public, "It is a safe assumption that a best seller tells one more about the state of the market than the quality of the product !"

The "Smoke and mirrors" reviewer misses the whole point of this marvelous book, that Christ himself got beyond the strictures of rules and law and admonishes all of us to do the same. Bishop Robinson reminds us that Jesus' message is love, not ritual, and that by loving all and everything we do not OBEY God, we express Him profoundly in the world and EXPERIENCE Him by living His essence (God is love).

I was so amazed to discover a Christian Bishop encouraging us to go beyond being Christian, Jew, or whatever, beckoning to an end of "theism" simply by living lives of love----be we monk, mogul, or movie star. It is so liberating and fulfilling to love; how odd that some of us could not want this fulfillment, hungering instead for strictures of do's and don'ts, for ecclesiastical structures of power and authority, for form over substance.

As the Bishop understands so well, love integrates, enlarging and completing anyone who will love. On the other hand, hatred, and the divisiveness of sect, cult, nationalism, and every other sort of "ism" isolate one into smaller and smaller corners of reality. We cannot fully know God or His creation if we are not willing to extend love to every person, indeed everything our life presents to us.

Thank you Bishop Robinson for so eloquent and loving a book.

I first read this book in the mid-70s after a few semesters at Bob Jones University and it confirmed the rightness of my decision to move on from fundamentalist and conventional Christianity, including the parochial Catholicism I grew up with. Robinson's book helped me in the personal journey from Sunday school and catechism piety to an authentic adult spirituality. Adults everywhere have been making the same move over the past thirty years and it is helping our religions to grow up as well. Read this book and join the movement from the pious pablum of traditional religion to the savory sustenance of adult spirituality

The literary equivalent of an musical b-sides and rarities compilation, this is a collection of musings on, and extracts from, early versions of the novel of '2001' - Clarke directs the reader to Jerome Agel's then-forthcoming, now-equally-out-of-print 'The Making of Kubrick's 2001' for information on the making of the film. As such, your enjoyment of this is going to depend on your opinion of Clarke's novel (which, without the film, would probably be out-of-print too), and whether you want to read disjointed chapters from early drafts. As glimpses into an alternative '2001', one that Kubrick might have filmed, it's priceless; as entertainment, it's less interesting. Like the other 'hard sci-fi' writers, Clarke is best at the science bits, and a short segment from an alternative finale, one in which the four surviving Discovery crewmembers explore a deep hole in the side of Iapetus (although, oddly, it's only referred to as 'Jupiter V' - perhaps they hadn't named it yet), is fascinating. The talky bits were never his strong point, though, and the pre-flight glimpses at Earth in the year 2001 are full of people not so much conversing, as delivering little scientific monologues at each other. As with everything else Clarke has written, none of the characters have any actual character - although it's possible that this is hyper-realism as, let's face it, most people in the real world are bland, dull and interchangeable, especially when they're at work, and Clarke's characters are always at work. Disappointingly, HAL doesn't appear at all. The other main strand personifies the monolith in the form of Clindar, a tall, noble alien who comes across as an insufferably self-righteous riff on Klaatu from 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'. One shudders to think how camp the film would have been if this had been filmed. And there are a couple of descriptions of alien landscapes and societies which are quite evocative but have a habit of repeating themselves.

There's a reprint of 'The Sentinel' as well, but if you're going to the trouble of ordering this from Amazon (it took about a month for them to find and post it to sodden, freezing, miserable London, which wasn't much slower than a normal order) you've probably read that already. In summary, then, if you're reading this you're either buzzing with curiosity or you're me, and if you're a fan of the film, the book, or Clarke it's essential. You'll probably buy it, read it once, and never read it again, though.

I highly reccommend this book to you if you enjoyed the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (or the movie, for that matter, but read the book version of it before you read this.) It consists of chapters that were originally written for the book, but were not used. Also included are occasional musings by Clarke on the making of the book, and behind-the-scenes glimpses at the making of the movie. He kept a journal during the entire 4-year process of the making of the works, and some of them are excerpted here. It's interesting to see some of the ideas that were thought up, but abandoned. For instance, what became HAL was originally a walking robot; the initial "Dawn of Man" scenes involved an actual alien, and there are numerous alternate endings (all of them every bit as ornate as the one we're all familar with.) This is sort of the literary equivalent of the movie industry's "The Making of Kubrick's 2001" (which I also reccommend.) A highly worthy buy for the fan.

I have been looking for this out of print gem for almost 15 years! I placed my first order with Amazon.com eight weeks ago, and, as a lark, placed an order. And here it is in my hot little hands!

This is a great service -- I'm *sorry* about the mom and pop bookshopes, but survival of the fittest and all that!

The book starts out ok with the biology part however the spiritual aspects of aliens just made me bored and it took me 6 months to finsih the book.

Arthur David Horn is certainly not one to shy away from a controversial topic. In fact, this Yale-educated anthropologist basically gave up his professorship at Colorado State University in order to write this gem of a book. How much better would the world be if more academics and scientists wouldn't shy away from such controversial opinions?

The thesis is problematic at best. For starters, we pretty much have to go back and revise pretty much everything that materialistic science has taught us about humanity's origins, evolution, theology, and spirituality. Let me say at the outset that I certainly do not believe in the author's thesis - that extraterrestrials were a guiding force in human evolution. While the author obviously has some familiarity with the Jungian concept of the collective unconscious - he makes a reference to it in his work - psychology is almost completely neglected throughout the rest of the text. He also makes no references to cutting edge theories such as Holographic Mind Theory, which would account for many of the experiences present in this book.

It is clear to me that all of "extraterrestrial encounters" in this book can be written off to psychological projection. For those of us who have no doubt that the Jungian "collective unconscious" exists, it is easy to see how these alien types - "greys" and "lizzies" - arise from group psychological projection into the collective unconscious. After all, even if extraterrestrial life WAS in existence somewhere else in the rest of the universe, how likely is it that they would have also evolved into bipedal humanoid type creatures with human characteristics? It seems more likely that we would have a hard time even RECOGNIZING intelligence if we saw it (for example, dolphins have been shown to be just as if not more "intelligent" than humans, they just evolved in a different way. If we can't communicate with other intelligent species on our own planet, how could we be expected to contact intelligences from other planets?)

Books could be written on this - and indeed, one has (the excellent "The Archetype Experience" by Gregory Little, out of print but available through amazon.com or other out-of-print search engines, does an excellent job of following through Jung's writings on UFO's and understanding these alien archetypes as products of a modern day myth that helps us make sense of our world.) Obviously, there are other problems with this thesis as well, that need not be delved into here. (Another excellent text is "Rare Earth" by Peter Ward, which offers scientific speculation for the unfeasibility of life on other worlds.) Horn also references a lot of other UFO researchers whose research has been shown to be dubious at best (Sitchin, von Daniken, etc.) In short, the evil-extraterrestrials-controlling-humanity hypothesis is best understood as a modern-day myth, first outlined by Jung, as a way for people to make sense of an increasingly hostile and downright creepy world.

But despite all of these shortcomings, I still give this book five stars. Why? For starters, Dr. Horn is a true humanist and his love for humanity shines through in this book. Whether or not it is "true" should be beside the point - the fact is that he is offering a way for people to understand the world in a life-affirming manner. Like other rogues like Terence McKenna and David Icke, he is merely offering up a radical way of possibly rethinking the world. This book will get you thinking, but take it more as a myth or parable.

To put this book into context, I would also highly recommend "The Holographic Universe" by Michael Talbot (which can show how things can be projections of collective human minds and still be "real" in the physical objective sense) or any of the books of Stanislav Grof and Carl Jung. But as far as one of those interesting texts that you just can't put down once you start reading, I can't recommend this enough (aside from a particularly weak chapter on why human beings can be so bad without even being influenced by aliens!)

The material presented in this book gives a good introduction to the best available reasons to believe that what we now would call extraterrestrial beings were involved with Earth's origins and may have mixed some of their genetics with ours.

Sitchin's view on the 12th planet may not be quite correct, but his basic message should not be obscured by his bad astronomy. He does successfully point out that maybe those "gods" of yesteryear were physical DNA-based primate beings who were not human. Based on the oldest available texts, this seems a very reasonable viewpoint.

Billy Meier is a modern contactee. He has been widely discredited (perhaps 'smeared' might be a better word) but I and others believe he was actually telling the truth. However, you don't have to believe that to get something out of Dr. Horn's book, however, the information is there if you want to consider it, which I think is a fair presentation.

Gordon

This is a fairly entertaining book that established Clarke as "the inventor of the communications satellite."

Islands In The Sky is certainly not on par with such later Clarke masterpieces as 2001 or Rendezvous With Rama, nor is it intended to be. This very, very early Clarke novel is just about the only work in his entire canon that seems to have been written with the teen audience in mind. The protagonist is of the "coming of age" age that is commonly featured in such stories, and Clarke uses this to narrarate the story in a slightly condescending, naive tone that is appropriate for such a character. It's quite different for Clarke, who usually writes in such a philosophical, poetic style. It reminds a lot of Robert A. Heinlein's many excellent juvenile novels. As such, this book, while far from being Clarke's best work, this book serves as an excellent introduction to Arthur C. Clarke's incomparable canon, or to the wonderful world of science fiction.

My first sci-fi book. Embedded in my memory. Bought by a parent at a rummage sale some time around the early 70's. Lost it. Now I've ordered it for my 8-year old son (who reads more than I do).

I really liked this book. Though he is a dentist and not a scalar of asian philosophy, I leanred a lot from this book and helped me to change my attitude towards the world (well, especially with people around me) He reviews not only one type of idea or philosophy but go though several different ones. So that I think it's good for the people who doens't believe in one religion (ex. Buddism), but want to help themselves though Estern way of thinking.

I am new to Eastern Philosophy and this was a great introduction. For the past year, I have been searching for books that give a concrete explanation of Zen, Taoism, and Confucianism and how it is applied to living stress free. This book is it!

thousands of years of Eastern philosophy into a blissfully easy to read book filled with clear definitions and gems of insight about Taoism, traditional Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, and Confusianism. Certainly one of the best antidotes for stress begins with reading this book. So many Westerners are overwhelmed with esoteric writings about the Eastern philosophies that they give up. This book is perfect as a primer for basic understanding between East and West doctrines and ideals ; Dr. Sokoloff "speaks our language" and makes us want to continue to learn more of the esoterica of these 4 philosophies. Hats off to the "Zen Dentist".

The Price is a well thought out story of human growth. It is a story of family relationships, particularly one that has collapsed over the years. When forced to come together once and for all, the brothers reunite and are able to find some common ground if any over the price of their own old furniture which is to be sold to a dealer. Far more prominent in this novel is the lesson that relationships need love and attention to flourish, and one cannot put a price on them. This book is fabulously written by the famous author, Arthur Miller who has also written such reknown plays as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible. If you didn't pass up a chance to read those classics, you won't want to pass up a chance to read this one.

When talking about this play, arthur miller said "I don't write plays to conform to critical essays. I write about what interests me. That is my strength and that is my limitation." Yes, it had a very similar plot to DEATH OF A SALESMAN, but the character's, specifically the main character, were very different, which changed the theme of the play. I loved it. It made me think...got me more involved then death of a salesman did. It took serveral readings to get the full jist of it. Victor's sacrifice was for love: it didn't matter if there had been no love in his family--he brought love to it.

Miller's play surrounds the moral development of two brothers: one a dutiful policeman (Victor), the other a successful yet selfish surgeon (Walter). Their most recent encounter takes place during the sale of family furniture and heirlooms -- post a long and silent gap in their relationship catalyzed by an angry family breakup that completely separated the brothers.

During their encounter, Arthur Miller poignantly brings out each brother's personal ethics, and what moral debts each feels the other owes. The 'furniture' and it's price to be sold, which is their central concern (in addition to dealings with the only other two characters in the play - an appraiser (Solomon) and Victor's wife (Esther)) , is merely a bargaining object between the two - a prop - with which each may discover more fully the other's thoughts and ways of being, and somehow, at the end of the day, find some sort of salvation in each other.

Miller's play does have room for updating the "Say! What a swell..." type of older american-english diction for flow. This may be especially encouraging to those who may find some of the colloquialisms inappropriate.

The reader must keep in mind that this is not a novel, and really should not be read like one, word for word. This is more a basic screenplay type, where improvisation by actors who truly understand the characters - and Miller's intent - will ultimately bring the true and dramatic color to a wonderful and thought-provoking story.

The book is very detailed and comprehensive, but it is not easy to read and probably not suitable for beginners. Specifically, it does not provide complete examples with inputs, code, and output. There are also plenty of typos and small errors.

Still, in all fairness, this is a very comprehensive book with lots of topics not covered in other books. Also the paper is of good quality. Probably every advanced user should go through the book to pick up on things other books leave out.

This is a very good Perl book! For beginners, intermediates or even advanced programmers in Perl. The book takes you from the basics to advanced applied Perl programming concepts.
The book manages what many others fail to do: It might be the only Perl book you ever need. If you worked through this book, additional information is readily available on the Internet. This book is comprehensive enough to cover everything you need to know about the Perl language to write large scale 'mission critical' applications.
Admitted, if you already own the O'Reillys 'Learning Perl', 'Perl' and 'Perl Cookbook' this book will not contain many news. However, it is written very well and it is understandable, something I cannot always say about the 'original' Perl books or documentation.
If you do web programming, a logical addition to this book is 'Professional Perl Development' which offers lots of good information on how to design sophisiticated web applications.

This is an excellent, thorough, fairly advanced book.

Until now, I was an o'reilly zealot, clinging to my camel book and my CD bookshelf as the Only True Word.

Finally, here is the first real competitor to that series of books, with a fresh approach to the language that shows that the authors really know what they are doing.

So far, the book has done a great job covering all my industrial-strength perl questions with _examples that work_ and clear, concise explanations of the methods and the context. I find that the examples are really applicable to my professional needs as a contract perl programmer.

There's a great section on object-oriented perl, as well as a good debugging section.

IMHO, This is the best perl book out in a while.

Generally unsympathetic to both Sade and his works, Lever adopts a strongly moralistic stance, preferring the easier way of condemnation to the more difficult task of comprehension. He also seems to be more interested in political history than in Sade's literature or ideas, and unlike Guy Endore and Francine du Plessix Gray, both of whom have the enviable ability to breathe life into the interesting characters who surrounded Sade and bring them before us as real and believable people, Lever lacks this ability, and his biography, though full, scholarly, and up-to-date, might have been a little more lively. Despite its shortcomings, the serious student will want to have this book for the sheer mass of information it contains in its more than six hundred pages, and for its excellent notes and bibliography. Those who prefer insights to mere 'facts' will find themselves better served by Annie Le Brun.

This book was my introduction to the Marquis de Sade. I was expecting (and hoping for) a narrative portrait of the cruel beast so often alluded to in popular culture and vernacular speech, along with a laundry list of his misdeeds. What I got instead was a fascinating life history of a man who was at best a product of his own culture and upbringing, an avaricious, often petty noble, who took the libertinage of many of the members of the Ancien Regime to incredible lengths; at worst he was a captive of his own twisted fantasies, a soul who arguably lacked the even the most basic of built-in moral "stop signs" that most members of society both acknowledge and use as guidance. The most interesting aspect of this voluminous work was the thorough narration of the familial, political and administrative twists and turns that Sade endured during his life. The accurate and detailed accounting of the buildup to the French Revolution was enthralling and unexpected. In summary, if I had thought I was beginning a nearly 600-page history of societal and governmental France, I doubt I would have made it past the Prologue. Having just finished the book, though, I can say that this is one of the most satisfying and informative reads I have ever undertaken.

Donatien Aldonse Francois, Marquis de Sade, had the dubious honour of being imprisoned by three entirely different French governments: the Old Regime, the First Republic, and the Empire. He also nearly survived them all, dying (in prison) in 1814. He wrote a fantastic amount - his first and most notorious book, The 120 Days of Sodom, was inscribed in microscopic writing on a gigantic roll of paper. Lever's biography steers carefully clear of both condemnation and canonisation, presenting the Marquis as an aristocratic anarchist - totally incapable of bowing to authority or of being "useful" in the robotic utilitarian fashion advocated by the Revolutionary authorities. Accused of no real crimes other than "immorality" and a rather trumped-up charge of assaulting a prostitute, he seems to have been incarcerated mostly thanks to the malignancy of his thoroughly unpleasant mother-in-law; and if Lever does not portray him as particularly likeable, he certainly comes across a!s having wit, plenty of principle and more than his share of guts. And it's hard for any writer to resist admiring a man who produced so much of interest under such adverse conditions. Lever has thoroughly studied the Marquis' letters (at one point he gives a hilarious list of the nicknames Sade bestowed on his wife) and the historical background, which makes for a long, fascinating epic, filled like the Marquis' books with power philosophy, lavatory humour and the invigorating crack of the whip.

Kay writes on this vital topic about sex, not to shock or offend, but to boldly equip you to experience God's absolute best for your life whether you are married or single - by understanding and obeying His will regarding sex. Listen in for biblical guidance to the questions you or someone you know is most likely struggling with.

Kay is the primary teacher of the inductive method of studying the Bible. This book helps you discover everything that the Bible has to say about sex. You will find what honors God and what dishonors God. It shows that God has designed us to enjoy sex but that it must be enjoyed within certain guidelines that God has established.

This is great for couples preparing for marriage, and for those who have made mistakes and want to get back on track in this area of their lives.

OH WOW!!! I bought this book as a reference to use for teaching my high-school bible study students about sex.... and ended up learning sooo much myself. Kay Arthur has a gift for explaining the Scripture in such a way that you realize.. this is what God says about this issue!! He means it for my good in spite of what my culture would tell me. Don't miss this beautiful explication of God's word as it relates to sexual intimacy. Your life will be better for having read this book.