This is a great book for the Russel Wright collector who wants to know more of the backstory and history of the man and the pottery. But do not confuse this book with a collector's guide. This book will probably not help you to decide if a piece is RW or not, and certainly will not help in pricing or deciding rarity.

This book is a great compliment to the exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt, but more than that. The information here is not more of the same, of what's already been said about Wright in other books. Although some overlap is necessary to tell his story, there are many new details of his design life and philosophy, and marvelous photos of some of his products and drawings, not seen other books. There are also great pictures of Mary as well. I feel that this book was very sensitively done and that all involved in creating it (and the exhibit) deserve applause. It would be hard to imagine any R.W. fan not loving this book.

I found this book at a used book store not knowing much about it. I've been studying Shotokan Karate for almost 5 years, and I'm trying to expand my library. This book has some interesting points, especially in the section about mental aspect of karate and some of the exercises. The style seems to be shotokan, although there's no mention of it. Lots of pictures and drawings. I really wonder though, who is A. Pfluger?

This book probably deserves 3 1/2 stars but since I've got to go with round numbers I'd say 3 is closer to the truth than 4. I may have been influenced by the fact that I have read an awful lot of stuff on Cezanne, but I don't think so. This book was put out to coincide with an exhibition that has "finished/unfinished" as its theme i.e.-when is a painting truly "complete". The idea wears a bit thin after 400 pages. The book starts off with essays by about 5-6 people that take up the first 120 pages. The last couple of essays are interesting and contain some good ideas but the first several essays pretty much say the same thing over and over (many of Cezanne's paintings that were not actually finished are "complete" from an artistic standpoint) and if a couple of these essays had been left out no harm would have been done. The same point is hammered home in too many of the "mini-essays" that accompany each painting and sometimes the contributors get a bit carried away in seeing genius and "completion" in even the works that are clearly failures not only by Cezanne's own standards but also, I think, by the standards of the intelligent layperson and probably also of many art historians. The book does get high marks, though, for many high quality color reproductions and the Cezanne lover will be sure to find his/her favorite genre well-represented. You get many portraits as well as landscapes and those luscious still-lifes (my particular favorite). One of the interesting ideas contained in the book is that the reason the still-life seems to be the category where Cezanne really excelled is that the subject was the one best suited to his temperament. He was an extremely slow worker and did not like changes in the "motif". For example, he did not like it when human sitters would move and he did not like changes in the weather and in light conditions as the changes would make him rethink what he was doing and oftimes start over or have to make corrections. With the still-life Cezanne could arrange things just the way he wanted and could use artificial flowers that would not wither as he worked, etc. Also note that the book contains many works in watercolor, which is a medium that Cezanne excelled in. If you are not familiar with his watercolors I think you will be pleasantly surprised...