I BOUGHT THIS BOOK BECAUSE I HAVE BEEN AN ART LOVER SINCE I WAS A KID. PART OF THE ENJOYMENT OF ART IS HAVING AN INTERPRETATION TO GO ALONG WITH WHAT YOU ARE SEEING. THIS BOOK WILL EXPLAIN WHY EXPERTS VIEW CERTAIN WORKS OF ART AND PROCLAIM THEM "GREAT". IT TEACHES PRINCIPLES OF ART FROM PAST AND PRESENT PERSPECTIVES IN A UNIQUE, 3-DIMENSIONAL WAY. IT ALSO INCLUDES INTERACTIVE ACTIVITIES SUCH AS A MOBLILE YOU CAN BUILD AND EVEN CHARACTERS THAT YOU CAN PLACE IN THE PAINTING TO UNDERSTAND CONCEPTS SUCH AS VANISHING POINT AND HORIZON LINE. EVERYONE WHO HAS SEEN MY COPY HAS BECOME ENGROSSED IN IT. EVEN THE PEOPLE WHO DIDN'T KNOW THAT THEY LIKED ART!

I am one of the artlessly clueless. This book, and the others in the series, have all been wonderful fun, which is why they are also wonderful learning tools for beginners. Low stress, major payback, and marvelously intelligent all the way through. They won't make you an expert, but you'll have a good time and be better for it, too.

A beautifully designed pop-up book that's a MUST for any collector. Very educational and interactive.

I have very incidentally came across to this book when there was no internet, or any of these technological virtual capabilities. It was the spring of 1986, when a friend of mine called me up and said "there's something I saw in the bookshop at the film theatre, which is just for you. You must not miss it". It was the Istanbul Film Festival days, and the 'thing' I must not miss was a book, called 'Spaghetti Westerns - Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone' by Christopher Frayling. I went and saw the book on the shelf. I was stunned when I turned the cover page to see what's inside. There it was a two page wide picture of Lee Van Cleef, in 'Colonel Mortimer' costumes. That famous artistic Van Cleef pose, looking out deadly with his Angel Eyes, waiting for Indio for 'La Resa Dei Conti'. As soon as I saw that picture, even without reading the book, I said to myself this guy must have the same feelings as I have towards Leone's movies. Eversince then I have been reading that huge 284 pages book with full of interesting details and analysis. Every time I read it, I feel as if I am learning new things. I still refer that book quite often. He has also done television documentaries on Leone and Morricone for BBC. Christopher Frayling is very well known academician in the UK. He is the rector and the provost of famous Royal College of Art in London. I personally had the chance to meet with him, and had in-depth interviews on Sergio Leone. . There's no doubt that he is one of the most knowledgable people on Leone. He has also just finished a bulky book on Sergio Leone's biography. He is planning the release around the fall of 98. He has years of deep experience about the Spaghetti Western genre. This book is the second edition to the first one, and a "must have" for all spaghetti western genre with lots of interesting details, profound analysis, and stills. I believe that it satisfies both theoratical scholars as well as film buffs. It is a book that sc! ientifically, and emotionally justifies the quality of Spaghetti Western film genre, which has been humilitated and overlooked by many film critics as ersatz film genre. Get the book, read it, read it once more, and then evaluate the genre afterwards. A lot of vista is waiting for those who hadn't read it yet. The book also contains details on the cut scenes of Leone's westerns, as well as their box office revenues. The section I must enjoy is the one on the influence of Spaghetti Westerns on American Western films. And, a last recommendation is: reserve one of the best spots of your library, which can be easily accessable for your future references. Get this book quickly, and wait for the soon-to-be-published "la grande finale": "SOMETHING TO DO WITH DEATH - The Life and Films of Sergio Leone"

VIVA LEONE !! VIVA FRAYLING!!!

This book is a wonderfull display of british artwork, it is also extremely informative and a trully usefull and pleasurable book to have. I can not recomend it highly enough.

I worship Sergio leone. I've been a huge fan of his films since my childhood in the late Seventies. I've always wanted/needed a weighty, fact-filled bio-reference to illuminate his here-to-fore mysterious life/career. This is that book. More detailed than the expensive, picture-packed Italian book on Leone, S.T.D.W.D. will stand for a long time as the essential Leone tome. Literate, balanced, and exhaustive, this book is a triumph in every respect.

There aren't too many directors who could inspire me to read a 576-page tome about their career. In fact, apart from a handful of auteurs to whom I'm still trying to speak and the dozen or so who have opened their hearts to Cashiers du Cinemart, there aren't too many directors I'd even like to read about. Yet, of all directors-past and present-it's only Sergio Leone's name that I've been scanning for when I troll the "directors biographies" section at Borders Bookstore. Sure, sure, maybe it'd be fun to read a nicely done work on Fritz Lang or Kenji Misumi but it's Leone who presents me with the biggest challenges.
This Italian mastermind helmed a handful of films, nearly all of which would rank among my favorites. More than creating some damn fine work, Leone's style influenced untold filmmakers. His films were operas powered by the music of Ennio Morricone. His dialogue's sparseness made it all the more powerful. Leone didn't shy away from embracing the language of cinema and creating his own dialect.

Remarkably, though Leone's filmography can be tallied on both hands, the breadth of rumours and conflicting stories are enough to easily fill Frayling's tome. Luckily, Fraying isn't above questioning the veracity of his subject. While never denying Leone respect, Frayling doesn't shirk his journalistic duty to present as many facets of the fiery, passive-aggressive auteur as possible.

Something to Do with Death takes its sweet time to get moving (I had to skip the second chapter and skim a few others before getting to the real "meat" of the book) but, once it gets going, there's little that can deter the reader from delving into the life of a truly enigmatic talent. (ISBN: 0571164382)

I cannot understand the first review of this book. I understood this book to be a biography of Sergio Leone, not a story about Spaghetti Westerns so I was pleasantly surprised when the author began by desribing the whole cultural background of Mr Leone. The book is certainly not without emotion, but the author has attempted to provide a detailed and unbiased insight into the life of Mr Leone.

Had the book been more "humourous" as per the intial reviwer thoughts, this would have diverted from the objective of a biography, as I am sure Sergio's life was not just fun all the time, no offense to the first reviewer ("You smell like a pig already, lets try not to make things any worse" Tuco's guard "The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly")

Mr Frayling has obviously researched his subject in a fantastically detailed way, constructing a clear picture of his life, not just by his films, but by the people around him. This is evident in that Sergio himself contacted Prof Frayling after reading his earlier book on Spagehtti Westerns as it contained information about Sergio's father that even he hadn't previously known.

Check out Cenk Kirals site for Sergio Leone info (he was thanked by the author in the book)

[This is a review of the Dover thrift Edition of 'The Hound of the Baskervilles'] Dover Thrift Editions have done a lot to get me to read great literature: classic lit at an *incredibly* affordable price (at the time I'm writing this review the book retails for a *buck fifty*...even if it goes up, that's still one of the best book values you'll ever find!).

Dover's no-frills approach (generic jackets, inexpensive paper) belies the classic range of their thrift editions, and this is one of my favorites: Conan Doyle's best-known Sherlock Holmes adventure, genuinely chilling and moody. If you haven't read it in a long while, you might have forgotten how well-drawn and detailed this is. Conan Doyle's characters, dialogue, cliffhangers (Chapter Two's end is, in my opinion, one of English lit's best example of suspenseful cliffhangers that will have you flipping the page), setting and the suspenseful climax have made this a mystery classic for over a hundred years. If you're familiar only with Nigel Bruce's humorous but bumbling portrayal of Doctor Watson, you'll enjoy the *true* Watson of the novel...intelligent man of action, trusted by Holmes to investigate the scene ahead of him.

The price makes this an excellent gift (aw, at this price, go ahead and pick them up a few more Dover Thrift editions, including 'Six Great Sherlock Holmes Stories') or a great book to take on a trip (at this price, you can afford to give it away to a fellow traveler when you've finished).

Familiar with his stories for years, I finally decided to buckle down and read one of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories of Sherlock Holmes, and "The Hound of the Baskervilles," the most famous of the novels, was the one I decided to pick up. To my surprise, I tore through it. It was a simple read, yet a complicated and satisfying mystery.

As with all the Holmes stories, his assistant Dr. Watson is charged with telling the tale of the bloody Baskerville curse. Sir Charles Baskerville, who was the charge of the family estate, has recently been gored to death by some sort of animal, and Sir Henry, the new heir to the household and the family fortune, fears that the mythic curse of a hellhound stalking the family grounds is true.

A strange twist occurs in this investigation, though, for it's not Holmes who goes to investigate the house. It's Watson, who studies the suspicious neighbors and staff, keeps close watch over Sir Henry and begins to notice that some very odd things are lurking about the moor.

Is the curse behind this killing, or is it a villain of flesh and blood?

The lead characters are defined well, and, though this is my first Holmes story, I understood the basics and the rhythm almost immediately. The narrative structure that Doyle is famous for is, as expected, charming, and the characters are well-defined. The mystery is properly twisted, and I didn't really guess the middle or the ending.

The best twist, to me, wasn't the reveal of any villain or method. It was the twist involving the shadowy figure on the moor. I didn't see it coming at all, and, when I read it, I realized that this old novel still had the narrative tools to surprise me.

It's a classic for a reason.

As a mystery writer with my debut novel in its initial release, I always appreciate the classics of the mystery genre. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works are among the best of the genre, and THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES is Doyle's best novel. Those readers expecting to find in this book the famous Holmes line about the dog that didn't bark will be disappointed. That nonbarking dog isn't here. It's in one of the Holmes short stories. What we have here is a moody work set among the moors with a strong and obvious Gothic influence upon Doyle by the mystery genre's founder, Edgar Allan Poe. Holmes and his supporting cast are all in fine form. The plot works, as does the setting and the tone. THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES has endured. It will continue to endure in the future. It is a classic that people actually read.

In this collection of stories ranging from Carter's discovery of the tomb to the abuse the Pharaoh's remains have been subjected to at the time of Professor Derry's autopsy in 1925, Frayling provides a vivid glimpse of the effect it had on popular imagination. The discovery itself has been sufficiently covered in other publications but the societal impact on film and literature is of considerable interest. So is the Forbes' theory about Tutankhamen's death as a result of a crushing injury to the chest. This assumption is, however, unlikely because the absence of the sternum upon which the theory rests, was in all probability a postmortem artifact and resulted from Carter's attempt to free the gold mask (which covered part of the chest) from the consolidated unguents which had been poured over the body in great profusion. On the whole the book makes a nice present for people interested in Tutankhamen.

Christopher Frayling's Strange Landscape (A Journey Through the Middle Ages) is a companion book to the BBC series. Having never seen the series I cannot compare the two (although having read the book I would be fascinated how this could possibly have worked on television). The book has a marvelous introduction (the best part) that looks at the concept of the Middle Ages in today's culture and then follows with a section on cathedral building, the Cathars and St. Francis, Abelard versus Bernard of Clairvaux, and Dante. It is a very selective and idiosyncratic look at the middle ages but still quite interesting, both in its selection and its handling of material.

this book is a must have. I recommend the book for film critics, sci-fi fans, designers, or anyone interested in this groundbreaking film.

Mr Frayling delivers a very entertaining analysis of the vampire in literature. I recommend this book as a starting point for deeper research

An interesting tracing of the historical and chronological development of the vampire in literature. It gives us an idea of Stoker's precedents and also his real place in the time line of vampire literature. Some extracts I found horribly funny, but an entertaining and informative read nonetheless. Good foundation for anyone interested in Gothic literature on anything on vampires.

Despite the childish cover, this book is an intelligent and entertaining assessment of the evolution of the literary vampire. Combining a short stories with essays and a lengthy introduction this book is invaluable to any fan of Gothic literature.