Norman was not responsible for how his work was used in the ads so his efforts on occaision get ruined by messy design, just have a look at the 1936 Cream of Kentucky bourbon ad on page 47. Generally though the advertisers wisely let his paintings do the job they paid him for.

The most surprising work to me were his paintings of children used on Kellogg's Corn Flakes boxes in the mid-fifties, they even carried his signature. I wonder how much a good condition box is worth now?

This is most likely the only book of his commercial work available so it worth adding to your Rockwell library.

However, this book is /the/ must-own book for anyone who studies Navajo language or culture. Its thoroughness (somewhere over twenty-five thousand entries, I think) is astounding.

Biographism is always a dangerous thing. When it deals with an epoch such as the Russian Art of the beginning of 20th Century it can be even more difficult to understand what really happened (something that I really do not believe is possible anyway).Russian Art of the period is a very hard subject, mostly because of the continuing changes that recent facts produced to the reception of these phenomenae.

The book of Robert Williams manage to deal with the subject in a rather pleasant way but it is almost impossible to agree with its main hipothesis: the work of three generations of Russian artists (generation can be a questionable term) could be explained based on the difficulties of these artists to reach the er... fame. Sometimes it does not explain anything at all, but help the reader to join some information dispersed among a great number of reference works that no doubt Williams had the patience to search.

Sometimes this neo-positivist procedure gives place to some forced affirmations that can be of doubtful comprovation.

Nevertheless I think William's book is fundamental. Read it without taking account his obssession to relate each part of artist's works with their lifes, and you will have a good panorama of the period with a human accent that sometimes lacks on other books of art history about the same period.