Drawn from years of experience, Nancy Pina serves up all the right stuff for creating a healthy, happy relationship. Highly recommended.

"Chase Complete" more than lives up to its title; it is a comprehensive reference for the Chase collector and for anyone interested in the consumer products manufactured by Chase Brass in the 1930's and early 1940's. It is a meticulously researched book, richly illustrated by professional photographs of almost uniformly top quality examples. It is well written with wit and humor. No self-serving author-collector rhetoric here. Five stars for sure!

EXCELLANT! THE most comprehensive and thoroughly researched book on the Chase Brass & Copper Company available. Wonderful information on the history of the company and the industrial designers responsible for the innovative & modern designs. Also included are reproductions of original Chase sales brochures and the retail sales sites. High quality photography along with detailed identifications make this book extremely helpful to collectors. Looking forward to seeing the follow up book on Chase lamps.

As a collector of Art Deco, I really enjoyed this book. Very good photogaphy and very well written. The author did a lot of homework in preparing this. A great book for Art Deco collectors.

I have nearly every vintage purse book ever published and I must say this is definatelly the worst. Don't bother, save your money. The purse has virtually no information, other than "prices". Prices that are nowhere realistic. Pictures are plain and boring. You can see better purses at a thrift store. Wish I could get my money back :P

I am so happy that I purchaed this book! I own several books on collectables, including other purse books, and this is by far the best vintage purse book yet. The photography is outstanding-- very colorful and fun to look at. The information in the book is also accurate and useful. Donald-Brian Johnson obviously did his homework and presents in a casual yet informative way. If you plan to buy only one purse book in the future, this should definitely be it!!

Popular Purses: It's in the Bag! is a refreshing oasis in a world of often mundane collector books. Donald-Brian Johnson and Leslie Pina have done it again!! Ms. Pina's photos make this book a sheer delight to behold and Mr. Johnson's text makes learning about mid-twentieth century purses a rewarding experience. The book is obviously well researched and contains lots of interesting and useful information for the purse collector. And, as in previous books, Johnson's writing style assures that you'll never be bored. A beautiful book in every way!!

During the 50's & 60's , Ed Wormley and Dunbar were leaders in the fine furniture industry. Leslie Pina's reprint of one of the catalogs from that period gives collectors a nice reference point. The company is about much more than what is presented in this basic presentation, hopefully someone will write a more comprehensive reference on the entire collection. I've heard word that the company is coming back and going back into production with some of the primary pieces. That would be great! The book on Edward Wormley is also worth checking out.

Great starting point on Dunbar.. I agree with the review that said they miss some key points about the company and the top designs, but this is only a reprint of one of their catalogs, not the definitive story of Dunbar.

Enjoy it for what it is.

Edward Wormley and Dunbar have much more to offer than what is presented in this snapshot... nice to see the copies of the breakout advertising campaigns that Dunbar invested in to promote the product launches.... Check out the Edward Wormley profile book by Judith Gura and Chris Kennedy - its very good.

It would be nice to see some of the Dunbar pieces back in production... quality pieces are hard to find and often expense because of the auction setting.

I collect Blenko glass, and I got this book with the expectation that it would help me distinguish Blenko from the other WV glassmakers. The book is full of wonderful photographs, but there is only so much to be learned from a two dimensional object. There is a brief history of each glassmaker, and therein lies the problem. The history is much too brief, and there is very little if any discussion of what distinguishes each glassmaker from its competitors. The pictures are great, but the book left me wanting more information, and I came away from it unsatisfied.

Subtitled "Color Along the River," this book features handcrafted glassware produced in the 1950's and 1960's along the Ohio River Valley, an area in West Virginia famed for its glassmaking. The book contains over 400 color photos of glassware, plus labels, catalog page reprints, company histories, and a price guide. Featured companies include Blenko, Pilgrim, Kanawha, Rainbow, A.F. Bischoff, Fostoria, Viking, and Morgantown. There is also a chapter on cased and satin glass from international sources, such as Italy and Scandinavia.

This book is a wonderful source of information on glassware that was poorly documented elsewhere in 1995: crackle glass, all those colorful decanters with pointy teardrop stoppers, cased glass, pinched vases, and oversized bud vases. (Many of these items were not marked, but carried paper labels which quickly wore off.) There is also a chapter on figural glass, featuring the fish, birds, and elephants that were so popular during these decades.

Much of this type of glass is definitely an aquired taste. People seem to love it or hate it: currently it doesn't seem to have the mass following of, say, Depression glass or Fenton. Colors range from the garish (orange) to the gloomy (brown, gray), and items range from the delicate to the downright clunky. Some of the styles are just too recent for people to get too excited about. Having said that, Blenko in particular is seeing quite an upswing in popularity: some of its large decanters--especially amberina--are currently selling for well over $100. And crackle glass has a lot of afficionados. There is no doubt that glass of the 1950's and 1960's will be highly collectible in the near future. This is a unique book, which highlights "a pronounced awareness of color, form, and texture" which took place during these decades.

I am a collector of viking glassware. This book is the single most helpful book I have found. It has great color photos and, what I find most interesting, actual pages from original viking glassware catalogues. It also has a great section reviewing the different labels from different series. Additionally, it contains a rather descriptive and detailed table of estimated values of the different pieces today. The book does a good job of giving histories of the companies inside as well. There are other types of glassware from the same geographical area (New Martinsville, WV) covered in the book as well. I, however, can not list them for you as my original copy of the book was recently destroyed in a fire so I am online today to order my new copy of the book!

Softback, color, 158 pp, includes introduction, catalogue, bibliography, price guide, and index. This is a wonderfully photographed overview of the Kensington line of Art Deco and Machine Age style aluminum designed by Lurelle Guild.

The collector is provided with basic background historical and biographical information on the Kensington line, Lurelle Guild, and Alcoa. The real strength of this book lies in the lavish photographs of many Kensington pieces.

The book is incomplete in that many items are not pictured. While more complete guides are rumored to be in preparation, this book it is still the first and only guide to Kensington and an indispensible source of information for the art deco, machine age, and aluminum community.

Cheri tells a story of the end of a six years affair between a middle-age woman, Lea, and a young man, Cheri. The funny thing is that stereotypes are turned upside-down, it is Cheri who wears silk pyjamas and Lea's pearls. He is the object of gaze and Lea gives him lessons in love. But Cheri marries a young woman looking for her money and Lea is emotionally destroyed. The story continues in The Last Of Cheri, written six years later, which contrasts Lea's strength and Cheri's fragility. The two books recount the rise and fall of a spoiled, capricious and handsome man, who already as a child was called "petit chef-d'oeuvre" by the American ladies. The end is perhaps the punishment to passionate love, a feeling which seems to be condemned for the author as well.

If you collect mid-century plastic radios you should own this book. Sixty-six manufacturers are represented with 450 color photos, the popular companies, such as Crosley, GE, Motorola, RCA and Zenith each have several models shown.

Besides a photo of the radio there are plenty of close-ups of tuning knobs, speaker grills, frequency ranges and each maker has a close-up of their logo. Also included are some period ads from the fifties.

Page 176 shows the front of a Trav-ler 5022 from 1950 and on the facing page is a shot of the back of the set. What a contrast, while the front is the best the marketing/design folk could come up with the back shows a clutter of wires, batteries and evidence of cheap mass production.

Looking at the design of the various models it becomes clear that as these radios all do the same thing it became important to sell the product on other (non-existant) virtues. The names (Wide-fi, Transitone) reflect high technology, big tuning knobs reflect scientific precision, some makers logos are heraldic reflecting snob values, the plastic cases were in bright eye-catching colors.

I think it would have helped if the dimensions of the sets had been included and the photography is very bland with the radios set against insipid backgrounds. Radios can look good, have a look at Philip Collins 'Radios:The Golden Age' and 'Radios Redux', dozens of beautiful shots mostly against a black background which make the radios jump out from the page.

This is a book though that any serious collector and those interested in fifties popoular culture and product design should have.

I read the book. I liked the book. You need to read the book!Good truths for everyday living!

Just finished John Craven's book, "The Silent War".

As a newly retired 24 year Submarine Veteran, I'm just as excited as the next guy when confronted with anything that speaks to submarining. Plus I knew who Craven was, knew what he'd meant to the Navy and knew he was current, so it was with great anticipation that I picked up his book.

It was interesting enough, but still in the end I felt a little unfulfilled. My submarine career pretty much encompasses the second half and end of The Cold War, and I guess I expected to see a little more of me and my comrades in Craven's work which is subtitled, "The Cold War Battle Beneath The Sea", accompanied by a dashing photo of a 688 class nuclear submarine on it's dustcover.

Craven writes in great, sometimes scientific detail, about the various Navy and marine programs and investigations he was involved in. But there is not a lot discussion of actual operational submarining, in contrast to Sherry Sontag's and Christopher Drew's "Blind Man's Bluff", and this may be where the reader gets mislead. There may be security reasons, or maybe operational submarine discussion of the period isn't interesting to anybody but us submariners who were there, but a reader looking for that will be disappointed.

But there IS room for "Blind Man's Bluff" and "The Silent War" in your submarine library. While Sontag and Drew have taken a lot of flack for their book, it IS much more a story of the submarines, the crews, and the missions than anything else current. Craven writes from a much more "above it all" perspective and his topics and discussions deal more with their strategic impact on submarining, than with the actual submarining itself.

The one REAL negative of Craven's work is his propensity for tooting his own horn and patting himself on the back.
It starts at the very beginning and continues unabated throughout the book. The personality and demeanor that we see of him in all the television pieces on submarines, shines through on every page of the book. He did make an invaluable contribution to submarines, the Navy, and our nation, but he's gotta give us a break.

Maybe if he'd titled his book, "My Story", with a portrait of himself wearing a tiny little set of civilian dolphins, we would have been better prepared for what we were getting into.

Gene Brockington, San Diego, California

Two books on submarine operations during the Cold War are on the market. The earlier, Blind Man's Bluff, has a copyright date of 1998, while the more recent, The Silent War, has a copyright date of 2001. The authors of Blind Man's Bluff refer several times to John Craven, auther of The Silent War, while Craven refers to Blind Man's Bluff in several places, sometimes to question its analysis.

The Silent War was written by one of the principles in submarine circles during the Cold War, John Craven. As such, he is in the paradoxical position of knowing more of the details than the authors of Blind Man's Bluff, while being bound by security regulations to say less. As a result, his book presents an interesting picture of the personalities involved, and an occasional interesting technical tidbit [two examples: big waves can be created on demand by driving a large ship at high speed - and turning it abruptly at the last second; materials have a critical temperature, below which they become brittle, rather than flexible.] - but less operational detail.

The book is written in the first person and with a sense of excitement that one would expect from an author having lived through the experiences personally. Despite stumbling over an occasional cliché or misspelled word, the writing is competent to very good.

Which to read? If you want to know what happened, I'd go for Blind Man's Bluff. Its content overcomes the better writing and sense of presence of The Silent Sea. If you want to know something about the people that made it happen, I'd go with The Silent War.

John Pina Craven was key to helping keep the Cold War cold and eventually collapsing the Soviet Union. His work in the late 1950s for the Special Projects Office under the U.S. Navy led to the development of the first ballistic missile submarines and their missile, the Polaris. Other projects included underwater labs, saturation diving, and searching for lost objects on the seafloor of major importance to national security, including a Soviet ballistic missile sub that went down in the Pacific in 1968. Was it about to fire a nuclear missile at the U.S.? You'll be shocked by his conclusion on the subject. Craven is not a man many people are familiar with, but his work has made headlines many times over. He tells his stories with as much detail as national security will let him, which at times was a constraint that led to stories being oversimplified. His overuse of technical jargon made the book a little hard to understand to a laymen, even one with a rudimentary knowledge of military hardware. All things considered, I walked away from the book feeling a lot more knowledgeable about how our nation prepared for it's defense against the Soviet Union and happy that people like John Craven work for us and not the other side.