This is an excellent college level text.I particularly like the detailed "real world" drafting problems for the students. Also it has a very good apppendix. It is comprehensive enough that we use it in three different courses here at Vincennes University.

I have had this book in my drafting library for some time now. I am always using it and recommending it. The book is laid out so that you can go from beginning drafting up through advanced. It not only says what the standards are, but walks you through drafting technology so that you understand why they are like they are. I believe that anyone that is going to be doing drafting should have this in their library.

One of the best general engineering reference manuals ever written.

The book holds the most important equations that an engineer will need in the working feild. This book is a handy size that allows one to bring along with them unlike the full lenght Perry's chemical engineering handbook. It is a must buy for a working engineer

Exposed: A beautiful and Informative Book about a Controversial Topic

What surprised and delighted me most, by both the exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, and by this wonderful text that accompanied the show and is now available to purchase, is the unbiased historical approach to the theme of Victorian Nudes and Sexuality. Most museums and texts that dare to present 19th century Victorian and academically rendered art (art in the realist tradition taught by the academic art schools of the period) have accompanying text that is tongue-in-cheek or satirically critical of this artwork. But this book, as the exhibition (which was organized and sponsored by the Tate Britain museum in England) gives serious insight into the Victorian controversy of nudity and sexuality. "Exposed: The Victorian Nude" explains with respect, what the artists of that era were trying to do. It analyses the social climate of the time, the innovative and daring works of the period's masters, as well as lesser artists, and shows the influence this art had on popular trends and views. The book is also rich in color plates and is a visual delight as well as a wealth of historical knowledge. There are fine examples of paintings by Frederic Leighton, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Evelyn De Morgan, Herbert Draper, Anna Lea Merritt, Annie Swynnnerton, John William Waterhouse, Philip Hermogenes Calderon, Edward John Poynter, Albert Moore, George Frederic Watts and Earnest Normand. There are also fabulous drawings by William Mulready, William Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown, and John Everett Millais as well as photos of great sculpture of the period. This impressive book would make a wonderful holiday gift for anyone interested in the Victorian Era. If you are interested in my complete review of this book and show, with many examples of the colored plates from the book and descriptions of the paintings, you make find the review at www.artrenewal.org This site, The Art Renewal Center, is the largest on-line museum on the Internet and is a non-profit art educational organization. The review may be found in the top menu under Articles/latest articles/ "Exposed: The Victorian Nude" by Sherry Lazarus Ross.

Alison Smith deftly edits Exposed: The Victorian Nude, a photographic exploration of the range of Victorian representations of both male and female figures. This concentrates on painting, sculpture and drawing, but also explores photos, popular illustration and film. An excellent history.

This book, based on a series of talks given at the New York Library, biographers Robert Caro, David McCullough, Paul C. Nagel, Richard B. Sewall, Ronald Steel and Jean Strouse explain how and why they went about writing biographies in the way that they did.

Each biographer explains well how the life of the biographer becomes intertwined with that of the person they are researching. In each case, they stress that biography writing is both intense and time-consuming.

Lyndon B. Johnson biographer, Robert Caro, recommends Francis Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe" for two reasons. One, to show that the job of the historian is to try to write at the same level as the greatest novelists. Second, that the duty of the historian is to go to the locales of the events that will be described, and not to leave, no matter how long it takes...until the writer has done his or her best to understand the locales and their cultures and their people.

In the end, it means that the biographer must not only understand the person, but also needs to intimately know the area where the person grew up and lived.

This book gives its readers new insights into the lives of some of this nation's most prominent figures, through the eyes of six well-known biographers. In "The Unexpected Harry Truman," David McCullough shows the life of Truman through new eyes. McCullough stresses that a biographer must genuinely care about his [or her] subject because you are living with that person every single day. The process is like that of choosing a spouse or roommate, therefore, the subjects that he chooses must have a degree of animal, human vitality. In Truman, he said, as with Theodore Roosevelt, he found no shortage of vitality.

McCullough created a detailed chronology, almost a diary of what Truman was doing from year to year, even day to day if the events were important enough. He also used primary sources, such as personal diaries, letters and documents from the time period. Truman poured himself out on paper and provided a large, wonderfully written base of writing for McCullough to sort through and "find" the man.

McCullough says that the magic of writing comes from not knowing where you are headed, what you are going to wind up feeling and what you are going to decide.

Richard Sewell's "In Search of Emily Dickinson," research process took twenty years and he says, "In the beginning I didn't go searching for her, she went searching for me." The process took him two sabbaticals, years of correspondence and meetings with Mabel Loomis Todd's daughter Millicent Todd Bingham to uncover the whole truth.

Paul Nagel's "The Adams Women," gives readers a sense of how important the women in the Adam's family were. Nagel said that contemplating the development of ideology is good training for a biographer. After all, he said, the intellectual historian takes an idea and brings it to life. For Nagel, working with ideas establishes a bridge into the mind and life of the people who had the ideas he studies.

Nagel said that he likes and admires women and this is why, after writing about the Adams' men, he wrote about the Adams' women. Nagel also said that he has learned and taught his students that our grasp of history must always remain incomplete.

Ronald Steel said, that the hardest job a biographer has is not to judge his or her subject, however, most fail to keep their judgements out of the biography.

In Jean Strouse's, "The Real Reasons," she explains that the modern biography examines how character affects and is affected by social circumstance. Biography also tells the reader a great deal about history and gives them a wonderful story.

In writing about Alice James, Strouse found that there was not an interesting plot line to her life other than that her brothers were writers Henry and William James.

Strouse, when asked by another writer about the descendents of the three James' children, she said that William's great-grandson in Massachusetts, tired of being asked whether he was related to Henry or William, moved to Colorado where he was asked whether he was related to Jesse or Frank. Strouse reported that he stayed in Colorado.

Strouse realized that in order to tell the story of the James' family, she was going to have to use her own voice to give life to the family, especially Alice. This is not recommended for all biographies, but in a case such as hers, it needs that biographer's voice to connect all the information for the reader.

In Robert Caro's, "Lyndon Johnson and the Roots of Power," he talked to the people who knew Johnson to get a sense of the former President from Texas and what made him worthy of a new biography. He wrote the biography to illuminate readers to the time period and what shaped the time, especially politically.

This book will help writers understand the steps he or she will need to take to write a biography. It shows the difficult research processes and makes the reader want to either write a biography about an interesting person or never want to write again. Either way, this book provides new insights that one may have never thought about before. I recommend this book to both beginning and seasoned writers

This book has been out of print for a good many years. Still, if you logged onto this entry, you must be a fan, a TRUE fan. Since you are, this book is certainly for you, adding a little personal information on a producer who absorbed and delivered the sensitive, innovative, and intelligent work that most horror profiteers can't. The concept of producer is misleading and mostly boring. Often, the producer is the guy who pays for the filmed project - a guy who considers the money angle, considers the production costs, and goes home at the end of the day. (Mr. Jerry 'Pearl Harbor' Bruckheimmer I'm looking at you. Shame on you....) Other times there are 'producers' who are assigned by movie studios to deliver the movie on time, and on budget. Val Lewton was one of those producers, given an assignment, and always a subordinate of the RKO film system.

Yeah, it was/is a bad system, but there are & were producers who not only 'oversaw' film but were a creative part of those same projects. There have been so FEW of them. Val Lewton was one of them.

What a legacy. Val Lewton's productions had a talented staff and even better directors. Considering the budget of those epic films ('Cat People', its sequel, 'The Body Snatcher)it's astonishing how vital these films are. I don't have alloted time to tell you, but Carol Reed's 'The Third Man,' Hitchcock's 'Psycho' shower scene, and many other films owe a debt to Lewton's creative influence. Val Lewton created a profound influence that's here with us today. But you already know that. That's why you clicked on to my review. Buy this book.

McFarland & Co. have published many fine books on film folks, and this is one of my favorites. Not only because I'm a big fan of the Lewton productions, but it's a brilliantly written book. Lewton was responsible for some of the best so-called Horror movies ever made, like "I Walked With A Zombie", "The Body Snatcher" and "Curse Of The Cat People". -All favorite films of mine. The book naturally covers all the famous thrillers, but it also tells the story of his relatively short life. I especially like the anecdote about how Lewton apparently once tossed away the script for "Gone With The Wind", calling it sentimental trash !. -Way to go, Val - I couldn't agree more. Lewton really knew what it took to make a good and eerie movie full of atmosphere, but film-makers of today sadly seem to have forgotten all about this. -Suspense is not something you can SEE, it's something you're supposed to FEEL. Director Robert Wise later showed what he learned in the "Lewton school", when he gave us the original "The Haunting". Director Jan De Bont recently showed us he didn't pay attention in his class. He, and everybody else ought to read this wonderful book.

Chawla's book gives an excellent overview of digital and analog video and lists the necessities for optimizing your Macintosh and FCP in a quick and easy language and, more importantly, explains the whys of how things work. I also found the index referencing to be in good working order with easy to find listings. And the book goes over filter effects (left untouched by previous publishers) as well as the basics of importing/exporting alternative media and sound as well as how to incorporate them into your video editing.

I am a digital video producer by trade and this booked proved to me that I really don't know as much as I thought I did. It is simple to understand, but incredibly useful and informative. It will always be kept close to my editing station as an invaluable reference. It has already saved me from a making a couple of mistakes, that I had been making for years. YOU NEED THIS BOOK!

Major General Bob Scales may well be the Army's brightest light and this generation's successor to General Don Starry and Dan Morelli (who inspired the Toffler's book on War and Anti-War). First published by the National Defense University Press in 1990, this book reflects deeply on the limitations of firepower in limited war situations, and the conclusion is a telling indictment of our national intelligence community and our joint military intelligence community, neither of which is willing to break out of their little boxes to find a proper response to this statement: "The common theme in all five case studies presented here is the recurring inability of the side with the firepower advantage to find the enemy with sufficient timeliness and accuracy to exploit that advantage fully and efficiently."

MGen. Scales provides the world with a fascinating study of man's recent relationship to technology. I enjoyed the book and wrote many things in the margins. MGen. Scales shows how firepower was used and countered in the French and U.S. tials in Viet Nam, during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, during British actions on the Flaklands and through U.S. Army/Air Force combined operations against Iraq. Not dry or technical, this book weaves the moral aspect of war with the effects of artillery, naval and air-delivered munitions in a manner which would be clear to both the civilian and military professional. A great book for those involved in America's national and military strategy or foreign policy, for it illustrates what firepower has and hasn't been recently able to contribute to the foreign policies of France, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the U.S. Invaluable to those seeking to understand why technology rarely triumphs over human will on the battlefield. I also recommend it to the casual reader interested in modern military history--MGen Scales fills his tactical discussions with stories of human interest from all sides of these conflicts. His discussion on Iraq, for instance, opens with a dramatic story from an Iraqi artillery leader about his experience at the receiving end of American firepower. My only disappointment is that his discussion of the Iraq war focuses on the U.S. Army and Air Force and to a point that almost discredits the contributions of the U.S. Marine Corps and Navy and the Coalition. Nonetheless, a worthwhile expenditure and a fine book to keep on the shelf.

What more can I say? Anders is awesome, as are Rockwell, Rodriguez, and of course, Quentin Tarantino. This is a marvelous screenplay, definitely one of my faves. I'm so glad they produced this screenplay!

I'm also a big Tim Roth fan, so I decided to pick up a copy of the play when I saw it being auctioned. I'm so glad I did! There's some great storyboards as well as some black and white pictures of the film.

It's a great bargain! If you loved the movie as much as I did, you'll love this! A+!

The idea was conceptually unoriginal but the actual screenplay turned out to be a magical thing that could not, with all our trying, become what it was in the text; An imaginative piece where all involved brought something worthy to the table. The film which it subsequently became is not even on par with what we could call a "movie". A mess is more the truth. Rodriguez' segment is the only worth viewing and then Quentin's second only because this was still when he was hot and feeling like the character he portrayed. 'Jackie Brown' humbled him. I know it did. The screenplay is a stand-alone and should be approached as such. Do not view the film once done. This diminishes all previous effort.

I've been using this book in a career writing class where we have been focusing on learning how to write creative non-fiction. It is a great book full of incredible selections and is a great introduction to the field of Creative Nonfiction. Let me tell you, after years of writing academic essays, this has been a blast. The book, and my instructor, has helped me understand the difference between an autobiography and a memoir or a personal familiar essay and a personal critical essay.

All of that being said, I found this book to be more of an introduction into the world of Creative Nonfiction than an instructional 'how to' book. I have enjoyed being introduced to such a large host of, for me, new writers and will definitely keep this text book for reference, enjoyment, and inspiration.

Finally the genre of Creative Non-Fiction is gaining recognition as a valid art form. Critics are finally starting to realize what the puplic has always known; real people have valid and intruiging stories to tell. The Fourth Genre collects an overview of the best non-fiction writers writing in and about their genre. I had the privilege to study under a contibutor from this book and discovered the joys of writing about my life and reading about the lives of others. This book is a necessity to those interested in Creative Non-Fictions. I would also recommend Naked and Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, Writing Life Stories by Bill Roorbach, and Take the Cannoli by Sarah Vowell.

A meticulously documented look at a fascinating furniture designer of the turn of the century. The book depicts the Hunzinger exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum and gives the reader an understanding of what makes this period of patent furniture so inovative. A must for the collector! It lets you identify pieces whether or not they are signed. A must for the restorer! It describes original upholstery.

Barry Harwood has compiled a remarkable amount of material on one of the most elusive furniture makers to emerge in late 19th century America. Harwood's impressive catalog, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art's extensive collection of Hunzinger furniture, documents the impact of this nearly forgotten designer on late 19th-century American taste. Many of the chairs show the splendid upholstery of the day; others show surprisingly pared down designs which have been called "proto-modern" in spirit.