This book is one of the 2 most desirable and collectible books on classical guitars (the other one is: Collection of Fine Spanish Guitars from Torres to the Present by Urlik, Sheldon). The figures are superb and the text informative. The hard cover edition is better in the following senses:

1. The hard cover edition is a limited edition (6000 copies only).
2. It is like a textbook which can be opened fully on its back. Easy for reading and scanning.
3. It's got a hard protective slipcase

However, getting the softcover edition might be your choice for its price and availability.

If you are a lover of guitars, specifically classical guitars, you owe it to yourself to purchase this book. There is nothing else like it. Great photography, details on some of the best guitars from some of the best makers...Romanillos, Smallman, Bernabe...They are all here. Inclusively, the book covers players (Williams, Bream, Segovia) as well as an in depth look at wood and the guitar market today. Great stuff and at ..., an incredible bargain.

Any lover of the classical guitar cannot help but appreciate this gorgeous collection of instruments, as well as the way in which they are displayed on the pages. Filled with information about the guitars and their construction, the luthiers, and which players'CDs you can hear them on, I highly recommend this fine edition. I take issue only with the subtitle "A Complete History", as the guitars are based on a single collection of instruments, owned by Russell Cleveland, and not necessarily what any other person would consider "Complete". That fact does not diminish my enjoyment of this exquisite book one bit.

I'm medical student from Hong Kong. I find it very useful in preparing Problem-based-learning tutorilas. The interpretation of the laboratory results are the most useful. It helps me understand more in the PBL cases.

Simple and delightful , filled with nice illustrations this book is necessary to every doctor not only clinical pathologists and laboratorits but everyone who handles daily with ambulatory and infirmary pacients. A must in every uptodate doctor or even meddicine students bookshelf.

This reference receives from all reviewers the top recommendations for comprehensive, concise, understandable presentations. Every laboratorian needs this reference. The 20th edition is due in February, 2001.

(My only complete reading of Dubliners was from this version.)

1. What makes Dubliners so amenable to an annotated edition is that it is essentially an immediately accessible work of fiction - Joyce's only one, (the Portrait's a little trickier).

The multiple place and character references make up a significant portion of the narratives - lose these settings, and you're not left with the virtuoso, stand-alone subtle psychological complexities of either the Portrait or Ulysses to gnaw on.

2. Is it "Margaret Mary Allicott"? I forget the spelling. Apologies. A reference is made to her in Dubliners... Buck Mulligan refers to her in Ulysses as "Margaret Mary ANYcock".

Without annotations, what can you make of that? Who was she?

The annotated Dubliners points out that MMA was a figure of considerable religious veneration in Dublin at the time. Icons of her were to be found in many homes. She would drink only dirty washwater, and ate only the pus from her numerous sores:

Neglecting the body = Sanctity = turn of the century Dublin morality [! ]

The annotations permit you to enjoy not only the bizarre character of the Zeitgeist, but also appreciate the Buck's nasty pun.

3. My point here is that you can only appreciate these sorts of references WITH annotations. And you can easily imagine that the instances are numerous.

The pictures & annotations are not "a key"; rather they breathe life into a good collection of early Joycean tales.

4. A fun copy. And remember, these stories were originally read by people who DID understand the references and allusions.

The only readable version of Dubliners and heartily commended to all wishing to enjoy and appreciate these heartwarming yarns of a city's moral and psychological twilight: paralysis, disillusionment, and collapse.

Survey sez: "Marvellous".

The voluminous notes gave me a richer understanding of this work. The book is beautfully laid out and much easier to read than other "annotated" books. I wish the author's would tackle ULYSSES next.

I found several copies of the book, new and unused, for sale at Heffers bookstore in Cambridge, UK.

The drawings, photographs, and newspaper clippings provide a first hand sense of what Joyce's Dublin was like then. Like a mail order fountain pen, whose newspaper advertisement from Christmas 1903 is reproduced in the book. Maybe Gabriel Conroy bought one. I've never used a fountain pen - to me the advertisement is a subtle reminder of how distant Joyce's Dublin is from us now.

Warning - It's tempting to spend more time reading the notes and annotations than reading Joyce himself.

We returned in Feb 2003 after 3 months of independent travel in Turkey. We were there mostly to visit archeological sites and ruins, and we traveled with several other books. Nothing, however approached the exhaustive, invaluable and often overwhelming information that the Blue Guide provided us with.

There are many guidebooks that provide basic information on accomodations/restaurants/etc in TK for the casual tourist who will primarily be visiting Ephesus and the other major sites on the Aegean Coast of Turkey. There any book will do, and if you are traveling with a TK licensed guide this is one of the books that they will have had to master in the grueling University program that allows them to become licensed tour guides.

But if your interest in Asia Minor takes you even slightly off the well-trodden path, the Blue Guide is indispensible. I can't imagine understanding places like Boðazkale,Seleucia, Letoön, Xanthos,Iassos,Miletus, Stranoniceia without either this book or a licensed guide.

There is often little in the way of informational signage at the important yet lesser visited sites, and compared to other countries ,there is little published information available in book form at the sites other than glossy tourist-photo books.

I can not recommend the Blue Guide too highly to the specialist visitor to Turkeys rich archeological past.

The first thing to understand about Blue Guides is: they're not for everyone. In particular, they aren't for people who only want to have to take along a single guidebook when they travel. Although in recent years the series has begun to include some fairly sketchy data about hotels and restaurants, information about where to stay, eat or shop has never been the raison d'etre of this series. Rather, the purpose of the Blue Guides has always been to provide accurate and astonishingly comprehensive information about the history, architecture, art history, and literary associations of the countries or regions each guide covers. For those purposes, the Blue Guide has no peer. (The series has also always been distinguished by the abundance and excellence of its maps, city plans, and museum floor plans.) If you want to travel, miss nothing of any interest or significance, and come back with your mind much enriched and primed for further reading and exploration, then you're one of the people Blue Guides are written for.

Traditionally, Blue Guides were known for being authoritative and reliable, but the writing was typically understated and restrained. That began to change a few years ago, and now -- just as with the New York Times -- Blue Guide authors no longer shy away from writing marked by local color, word pictures, and individuality. At the same time, the series retains its old virtues of exhaustive research, accuracy, and comprehensiveness.

Bernard McDonagh, the author of the Blue Guide: Turkey, is the Michelangelo of the new model Blue Guides. He began by authoring a volume for the series on Turkey's Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, which was widely acclaimed, and then expanded it to cover (almost) the entire country a few years later. I say "almost" because this volume covers Istanbul only in summary fashion, since there is another Blue Guide volume (by the estimable John Freely) that covers that great metropolis in microscopic detail.

The Blue Guide: Turkey's comprehensiveness immediately distinguishes it from the competition. The coverage of the best-known sites like Troy, Ephesus, or Aphrodisias, of course, is superb: Ephesus merits 22 pages, along with one full-page and another two-page plan of the site and its environs, and Aphrodisias gets 10 pages. But lesser-known sites like Assos, Priene, and many others that might receive a paragraph in most guidebooks are also covered in detail, usually with an excellent plan. Indeed, the book includes no less than 45 site plans of archaeological sites, including such relatively obscure ones as Nysa, Labraynda, Limyra, Sillyum, Sura, and Uzuncaburc.

For years, the secret behind the Blue Guide's comprehensiveness was its authors' willingness to mine obscure archaeological excavation reports and 18th and 19th century traveler's accounts for nuggets of information that would have escaped the less diligent. McDonagh lifts the veil on this technique, often quoting at length from the impressions of visitors from centuries past. And these are anything but tedious: for example, we have Lord Byron's observation that "The Troad is a fine field for conjecture and snipe-shooting, and a good sportsman and an ingenious scholar may exercise their feet and their faculties upon the spot . . . .", or Pliny's report that the tombs in the necropolis at Assos were made from stone containing "a caustic substance which consumed the flesh of bodies placed in them within 40 days," or the 18th century antiquarian Richard Chandler's recollections of sharing quarters with a Greek family in a sepulcher located amidst the ruins of Iasus.

The great delight and ornament of this volume, are McDonagh's reflections and word pictures, which grace the text the way similes grace the Iliad. A sampling follows.

"In summer the view from the temple [of Athena at Assos] is one of the most beautiful in W Turkey. Across the calm waters of the Bay of Edremit, Lesbos, homeland of the first settlers ion Assos, is clothed in purple haze. Far below lies the little harbour, from which St. Paul sailed on his missionary journeys, while on terraces cut into the steep slope of the hill the ruins of the ancient city protrude like sun-dried bones through the maquis."

"Miletus is not one of the most attractive sites in SW Turkey. During late autumn, winter, and early spring much of the area is an unpleasant morass. In summer this becomes a drab brown wilderness covered with thorny scrub. A sense of profound melancholy broods over the ancient city, a feeling of abandonment and decay that is accentuated by a monotonous landscape little relieved by the occasional tall clump of reeds or the jagged stump of a ruined building."

"The dervishes no longer dance in the semahane. The sema is now held in a high school gymnasium in another part of Konya. Presented as an exhibition of folklore, for some it is nothing more. However, others find it a moving religious experience. The dervishes who take part in the sema today live in the world. They are bus mechanics, teachers, schoolboys. They are no longer obliged to submit to the extended novitiate and strict discipline of the past. Yet, when they dance, the air becomes charged with a feeling of great spirituality and the spectators forget the bleak setting in which the sema is being held, are no longer conscious of the icy temperature and discomfort of the unheated arena." "The attraction of Ulucinar lies more in its delightful situation and relaxed atmosphere than its historical associations. To stand on the bridge over the small river and watch the fishermen land their catch, to swim from the clean beach of the Arsuz Hotel, to enjoy an excellent meal on the terrace within a few metres of the sea, these must be sufficient reward for even the most demanding traveller."

Whether you're a first-time visitor to Turkey or a veteran -- or even an armchair traveller -- you could hope for no better companion and guide than Bernard McDonagh.

This book has it all. If ever a book crossed the lines of genre from a working guide for a professional in his field to an interesting read for the inquisitive mind, this book is it. This book is for the professional who has anything to do with a murder scene or wrongful death situation. This book is for everyone who watches television because "Entomology and the Law" is the marriage of a great murder mystery crossed with an investigatory courtroom drama. This book is for every litigator who wants to effectively use the law of scientific evidence in the courtroom. This book is for the layman who wants to know more. You see, it's about bugs. Gross bugs. Flys actually, and the fact that flys can be accurately used to identify the time and location of death. Interesting? Yes. Easy read? No. Necessary read? DEFINITELY.

ENTOMOLOGY AND THE LAW is the definitive book on forensic entomology we've been asking for. Kunich and Greenberg are an
unbeatable "Dream Team" when it comes to combining the law and the science. Everything anyone might need to know about forensic
entomology is in this book. For the scientists/expert witnesses, the "Father of Forensic Entomology", Dr. Bernard
Greenberg, provides a meticulous, highly detailed, and comprehensive guide to using insect-related evidence to determine the time of death in homicide cases. No one in the world knows more about the science and practice of forensic
entomology than Dr. Greenberg, and he has memorialized his decades of research and experience in this volume, the crowning achievement of his unsurpassed career. And for the attorneys who litigate these difficult cases, and who must either prepare or cross-examine the expert witnesses, Law Professor and Harvard Law School graduate John Kunich spells out all of the intricacies of the law of scientific evidence, use of expert witnesses, and specific strengths and weaknesses of forensic entomology evidence in court. ETOMOLOGY AND THE LAW will be indispensable for litigators and scientists all over the world, because of the information it contains on admissibility of scientific evidence in nations other than the United States. Even laypersons will enjoy this book, especially the millions of viewers of the hit television show "C.S.I. (Crime Scene Investigation)," which often features forensic entomology in its dramas. What a rare and sublime union of law and science this book is!

My teacher read this book to me in class. It's excellent! Especially if you're interested in Social Studies!! You have to read this!!

Bernard Fitpatrick is a Minnesota man and was drafted in April 1941. He left for the Phillipines in September of 1941. He was captured when Bataan fell and eventually ended up in Japan. This is a good book, and is not unreservedly horrible. He tells of Japanese atrocities but also of human and good Japanese. The story is artlessly but engagingly told, and is a war memoir I am glad I had a chance to read.

As a student who is interested in pursuing illustration, this book is a golden gem for it is a rather thorough journey that is fun to dive into. While many other books similiar to this would simply showcase all the artists' body of work, this book reveals the creative struggle that James McMullan went through with each poster to create an image that met his client's needs. Reference photographs of his models and early color and pencil studies depict the story that is accompanied with each poster that describes McMullan's process. Sometimes an early draft of one of his posters didn't hit the nail with the director of the play: the character depicted in the image needed to look older and more angry, less naive. Whatever the case, McMullan would have to go back and rework. And in some cases, he might even start over with an entirely new idea and take a different road with the poster. With each poster, there's a different story, a different process, a different challenge. And none of the posters that are shown in here have been neglected for the book reveals it all. Above all, I appreciate James McMullan's conceptual talent with his posters that manage to create an image that defines the play as a whole. With this book, it is a pleasure to find the process behind these posters as well as being able to gaze upon their beauty.

Rarely is one able to glimpse into the world of a well-known illustrator. But, in this book, the illustrator James McMullan, takes us into his studio and explains just how he has created the 36 posters, over a 30 year period, for New York City's Lincoln Center. The full-page reproductions of McMullan's posters combined with his lucid prose makes this a beautiful and highly engrossing book. When I went to buy McMullan's book the bookstore clerk said, "this is the most gorgeous book in the store." Indeed, he was right.

Dennis Tamburello is pure genius. His clear writing simply brings St. Bernard to life in this scholarly portrayal. This goes down with "Ordinary Mysticism" as one of the biggest classics of our time.

intelligently written and great for everyone who loves st. bernard. books written by bernard are difficult to read, you really have to like this guy, he is very flowery and does not speak to us in our time. not contemporary. so in this book you only get small doses of bernard and it is very good. unlike leaders in the catholic church bernard does not shrink from giving priority to faith over good works. catholics today stress being good deed doers. god accepts us because of belief in Christ. this emphasis and other medieval thoughts present in bernard's mystical writings are a pleasure to read being examined by the scholarly author.

Bernard Knight has a way with words, to put it simply, as he takes the reader back to the twelfth century. With Crowner John de Wolfe as a most human protagonist, one becomes intimately involved in the life of the times. For those who wish to gain knowledge of this period and at the same time enjoy an intriguing mystery, The Awful Secret is the book to read.

Whatever else may be said about French intellectuals, French historians are the finest in the world. Their biases don't get as flagrantly in the way as is sometimes the case with British and American historians. They are less chatty than the British can often be and they are far less inclined to the grand, sweeping statement than the Americans. The best of them observe even French people and events with scientific detachment.

This new biography of Calvin could only have been written by a Frenchman and Bernard Cottret does a wonderful job. The Calvin who emerges here is a far more complex figure than the cartoon that other historians have drawn. Far from a firebrand, John Calvin was a remote, shy, almost withdrawn figure who had whatever offices he held forced upon him. Geneva had gone in for Reformed Protestantism long before he arrived there and Calvin's Geneva was far from the "theocracy" it is often caricatured as.

Calvin's faults are not papered over; Cottret does not attempt to hide his displeasure at the burning in Geneva of many accused of witchcraft or of the burning of Michael Servetus, for example. But in the case of Servetus which is dealt with extensively here, he points out that Geneva only did what the Roman Church would have done if it had the chance and that Calvin actually cooperated with the Roman Catholic Church in this matter, seeing Rome as less of a threat than certain radical Protestants, rather cutting the ground out from under those who believe Calvin was rabidly anti-Catholic.

All in all, Calvin is an outstanding book that I cannot recommend too highly.