This is a great resource for learning how to produce good architectural drawings. It is oriented around hand drafting, but the concepts and ideas are important for good, readable CAD drawings as well. My first year studio professor made everyone buy this book. It was money well spent!!

Architectural Graphics covers a huge range of fields within Architectural Drafting, and Presentation. From perspective to plans, this book has it all. Excellent for beginners, it is a visual, easy to understand guide to Drafting.

A fabulous survey of the conventions of architectural drawing in an easily referenced, concise format. Adequately covers the basics of orthographic, paraline, perspective, and rendering techniques. Good for the first time student just learning, or the experienced architect looking for a brush up.

This book was very helpful to me in being an informed health care consumer for my child. I especially found the detailed medication section helpful. My son's asthma had progressed from being mild to moderate and the thorough review of current medication options was very helpful. I purchased the book based on the fact that a pulmonary nurse clinician had recommended it. I am a nurse practicioner in women's health and value the recommendation from another practicioner who is involved in educating her patients regarding their conditon. This book really helped me in making informed decisions along with my son's pediatrician.

As a lifelong asthmatic, I strongly recommend The Asthma Sourcebook. It is the most informative and readable asthma book on the market today. It helped me and should be required reading for all asthmatics and their families.

I work as a nurse clinician specializing in pulmonary medicine. I also have asthma. I've read many books, articles, etc. on asthma and this book is by far the most informative (not to mention the most updated) asthma book I have read. I have found it very helpful both personally and professionally. I have recommended/bought this book for others with this disease. I know I'm too late to be a "winner", that's okay, my reason for writing was to "tell it like it is"

Choosing my rating for this volume of short stories was more difficult than I had imagined it would be. Kane's prose flows gracefully - seemingly without effort, but we know that's not true. Her stories and characters pour out onto the pages and into the mind and soul of the reader - these qualities led me finally to the 5-star rating.

That being said, these stories are all sad, or about sad people - almost unbearably so. The characters depicted in these tales seem to share in common an inability to cope with the hand they have been dealt by life. There is an angst in each of them that is palpable and aching - they struggle to deal with their careers, their relationships, their families, their emotions, their successes and their failures. There are a couple of stories that deal with the publishing trade - 'How to become a publicist' and 'Exposure'.

In the latter, a writer finds herself becoming more popular later in life, and struggles to deal with the demands of her public - in particular, the need for a photograph to accompany publicity, the very idea of which throws her into a deep panic. In 'How to become a publicist', we are given an 'inside' look at the colder machinations of the industry - a young woman fresh out of college, idealistic about her love of literature, seeks a job as an editor and settles for a position as a publicist. Her enthusiasm would seem to make her perfect for the position, but she soon finds herself ground down under the weight of the colder, 'practical' aspects of the task - in a rare (for this collection) glimpse of the author's sense of humor, we witness the character announce her disdain for the catchphrases we see so often in press releases and book reviews (mea culpa - I've used plenty of them myself, and I don't even do this for a living). I'm tempted to declare this story 'luminously mesmerizing', one of her 'favorites'.

I'm certainly glad I read this book - Ms. Kane is immensely talented, and I look forward to seeing further work from her. I just hope that on her next outing she 'homes in' on some more positive and uplifting characters or characteristics.

I loved these stories. They are sad, and full of life, and don't make empty promises to the reader. Beautifully written, lovely, and touching. I look forward to more stories by Ms. Kane

Touching stories that take a simple yet elegant look at humanity's strengths and frailties. Each story finishes "just so", but the reader regrets the end, and wishes there were more to each story, and more stories to the book.

We eagerly await Ms. Kane's next offering!

Yes, there IS a calendar version of this book but the calendar just scratches the surface of this collection.

I intitially borrowed this book while looking for reference images for a video project. It became obvious to me in a very short time that I would HAVE to purchase this book. Even though I am a professional photographer and filmmaker, there are very few photography books I am willing to spend my money on. There are many I like but few I wish to own. This book, like all of the photo books I've purchased, moved me in a powerful way. These are beautifully executed, intimate black and white portraits. Most of the photographs are spontaneous and shot during recording rehearsals. Several of the images graced the covers and sleeves of the records produced by the jazz record label, Blue Note.

Francis Wolff was not just Blue Note's primary photographer (and quite talented), he was also the label's co-founder. His already skillful eye was that much more in tune (no pun intended) with his subjects and sensitive to the working environment. He was able to capture subtle moments few likely could. Most images are illuminated by a single light source, spotlighting the artists and capturing them in moments of thought, exhilaration, playfulness and intensity.

Seeing greats like Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, a young Herbie Hancock and Hank Mobley in these intimate moments early in their careers is powerful. The design is outstanding and the printing if these photographs is impressive. This is a must have book for the music lover, photographer, or photography lover. If you don't fit into one of the above catagories, don't sweat it. You will love this book simply because it is beautiful.

I must admit I am a little confused as to why the other reviews list this as a book.....

Good, insightfull text, great photographs, oustanding print quality: a must have for all lovers of jazz, jazz musicians and photography. The photographer's empathy for his subject(s) just oozes from the pages of this wonderful book. There's a picture there of a dreamy John Coltrane, that just totally catches the sensitivity, the intelligence, the emotionality of a great musician and a great human being! A must buy !

Buffalo's Best is the ideal resource for not only tourists, but for Buffalo residents as well. The book is a comprehensive, detailed, and painstakingly researched list of things to do and see in Buffalo, New York. Even after living in the city for a number of years, Buffalo's Best still manages to provide me with many new things to do. From nightlife to the arts, Buffalo's Best can accomodate for any preference in entertainment.

Everytime I'm in Bufffalo (and that's often) I bring my copy of Buffalo's Best. Thanks to the book I spent a delightful afternoon at the Pedaling History Bicycle Museum and that's just one of the many unusual places in the Day Trips chapter. As for the dining suggestions, I have not been disappointed. This is a must reference for enjoying all that Buffalo has to offer.

Buffalo's Best is the only guide you'll need to explore or rediscover the finest restaurants, hottest nightspots, and coolest places to spend your time in Buffalo. It is my constant companion when visiting the city, and I've given copies to several appreciative friends who live in and near the area. Great book!

Kudos to Farwell for his insightful biography of one of the most charismatic figures of the 19th century British Empire. Richard Francis Burton has always been one of my personal heroes and the author has done a fine job of bringing the exploits and foibles of this extrordinary soldier, spy, rogue, linguist, explorer, and author, to light.

I have read several biographies of Burton and this is by far the best. Byron Farwell has produced an excellent biography of a unique Victorian who led a life of incredible energy and movement. In fact, Burton seemed to find it impossible to stay in one place. Not always a likeable fellow, Burton lived for adventure. His dangerous journey into the Islamic holy city of Mecca , dressed as a Muslim and speaking fluent Arabic, vies with his discovery of Lake Tanganyika (with Speke) as the most famous of his exploits. But Farwell also describes many less well known adventures - Burton travelled to Salt Lake City in 1859 where he interviewed Brigham Young. He was British Consul in West Africa, Damascus, and Santos, Brazil. Burton usually completely ignored any duties he was given by his employer (Farwell says he was "unemployable"). Incredibly, much of his exploring was done while on dubious sick leave from the Indian Army. Farwell brings out Burton as an explorer of cultures and a scholar as well as a geographic explorer - Burton translated the Arabian Nights and other major oriental works. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Burton's early life, starting as an extremely naughty boy and maturing into an exceptional young swordsman who wrote a book on bayonet drill later adopted as the standard work by the British Army. Farwell is clearly fascinated, as well as sometimes exasperated by his subject.

Farwell's biography of the extrordinary life of Capt. Sir Richard F. Burton is a fine work. Farwell's excellent style and knowledge of the 19th century are perfect backdrops to the the exploits of "Ruffian Dick". The author manages to point out Burtons many talents and shortcomings in a fair, scholarly manner, without physco-babble or hero-worship. Yet more importantly, Burton's life is allowed to unfold as what it truly was, a grand adventure, full of exotic places, eccentric characters, brilliant victories and stinging defeats. Many biographies have been written concerning Burton, many are very good, but Farwell has managed to bring to life this truly larger then life personality

I consider Mr. Monek to be the "world authority" on walking sticks and canes. I've managed to make a very good living in the antique cane business with his expert guidance. If you're investing your hard earned money in this "tricky" industry you better have this book.

I'd been looking for an authoritative Kane "Bible" for some years now (I spell Kane with the "K" as the ancient Cameroonians did). This book not only met my Kane needs, it exceeded them. I was doing a article for a local paper on Kane usage in the Depression years. This answered all of my questions and gave me the insight to write my Hufnagle Award For Journalism winning article (named for the late great Earnesto Hufnagle). The is a must buy for any Kane enthusiast!

I learned what type of canes are valuable. What an amazing book! It's so thorough! Very well researched! --Stacy S., Houston, Texas

This is a wonderful book. Also, check out the movie "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" and the book "Francis: the Journey and the Dream".

I love this book for a million reasons but probably the simplest reason is the mystery that is as old as the world and the separateness and unity of the sexes themselves. It paints Clare the human woman and Clare the divine woman and seeks not to compromise either but makes St. Clare real flesh and bone and brings her radiant awe into a new era when mankind is floundering for as sense of identity. Friar Bodo writes like no other and from the point of view of a contemplative,the inner way and written by a man who himself seems to be madly in love with the Lady Clare - and who himself has the touch and the gift of a medieval poet.

this book is written with all the tender poignancy of a lover and with all the insight and wisdom of a man who has followed in the footsteps of the Franciscan Way. For all who are interested in a more intimate knowledge of Clare and Francis or anyone simply interested in a love story at it's zenith and it's purest - this book is purely a real fairy tale and pure treasure.

Clare - A Light in the Garden is a book to be cherished, endeared, words to be read over and over. Murray Bodo paints a picture like no other person. He definitely has a sense of the holyness and purpose of St. Clare. Enjoy and share with others!

If somebody loves you authentically so much so that you become better person than before, you can't help loving him dearly. It happens. And it can happen even through a book! In this incredable book called "insight", you are invited to a wonderland of a higly diffentiated intelligence, only to find that it is no other than your real self. At first you wonder, you ask, you think hard, and you get it! For the first time you come to know what is understanding. You begin to doubt, you reflect, and finally you judge that you are a knower! Now you are changed. Now you know you are consciously operating in your experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding. Now you know what knowledge is, what it means to you, and how it means to you. You become a living, knowing, acting subject. And you come to love Lonergan, since he introduced you to yourself. To "read" Insight may take a long time, years or decades. However when you finish it, you will begin to take another long trip to yourself, where no one had gone before...

This is the definitive text of Bernard Lonergan's most important work, Insight, with over 130 revisions, based on the meticulous labor of comparing three texts, line by line, word by word! All students of Lonergan's thought owe a great debt to Frs. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran for having executed their task with such thoughtfulness, perfection and devotion. Corresponding pages to the second edition of Insight, which has been the standard one, are given in brackets. My previous review was based on the second edition.

Rev. Bernard Lonergan, S.J.(1904-1984), though still not commonly known, was, talent-wise, certainly one of the top thinkers of the 20th century. It takes time for his thoughts to be appreciated, developed and applied. There are already numerous web-sites and hundreds of books, articles and theses written on his ideas. He might be publicly acknowledged as one of the 100 most influential thinkers by the end of this century. For more than forty years, his works continue to nourish and challenge people, initially in seminary circles, and gradually in different universities. Boston College has been a key base for over 20 years in fostering studies of Lonergan's thought and stimulating dialogue with people in diverse fields. Insight remains one of the basic books that one needs to master if we want to reach up to Lonergan's mind, just as he reached up to the mind of Aquinas. One of the perennial issues underlying human differences is our assumptions about knowing and reality. What is it to know? Is it taking a look out there? Or do we presume that we cannot know reality? Lonergan proposed an arduous journey for all of us to become aware of what we are doing when experiencing, understanding, judging and choosing. The focus is on appropriating or gaining self-knowledge of our recurrent cognitional processes and structures in knowing. "¡Kit is essential that the notion of insight, of the accumulation of insights, of higher viewpoints, and of their heuristic significance and implications, not only should be grasped clearly and distinctly but also, in so far as possible, should be identified in one's own personal intellectual experience." (p.xx) "Thoroughly understand what it is to understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines of all there is to be understood but also you will possess a fixed base, an invariant pattern, opening upon all further developments of understanding." (p.xxviii) This is a difficult, painstaking and challenging task, not achieved just by reading from cover to cover (785 pages plus 30). Lonergan's examples from mathematics, physics, classical and statistical investigations might be a hurdle to those who don't have background in such disciplines. Insight is like the Zen master's finger pointing towards the moon. One must be careful not to get lost in the sweeping and erudite visions and constantly come back to appropriating one's own knowing processes. This is not a book for the faint-hearted. One easier introduction is Terry J. Tekippe's "What is Lonergan Up to in Insight? A Primer". Then one can go on to Flanagan's Quest for Self-Knowledge, and The Lonergan Reader, edited by the Morellis, and finally come to grapple with the full original and Lonergan's later works on Method in Theology and Macroeconomic Dynamics.

If you're a Catholic Christian and want to appreciate your faith more, these books will serve you well. If you're not Catholic or Christian and wish to encounter the most persuasive apologetics, this is an excellent place to start.

Chesterton is a wonderful writer. A poet by nature, Chesterton focuses on the material and concrete in ways that seems both paradoxical and wondrous. In "Saint Francis of Assisi," Chesterton takes the most popular saint, and presents all those details that really make us modern secularists most uncomfortable with him. In another book here, he links St. Thomas Aquinas to Francis, showing that, despite their vast differences in temperament, they both strove to save and present the goodness of creation and nature and to rebuke (in word or action) those who would hold the bodily in disdain.

In a sense, the biographies here are more than biographies. They're filled with diversions, and those diversions all point in the direction of the remaining book, "The Everlasting Man," which is presented between the other two. The central point here is that the Incarnation is the central event of human history; it allows us to joyously celebrate the good of creation and nature, as God has blessed matter with His very being.

Also, Chesterton is a real pleasure to read, as this passage shows: "One of my first journalistic adventures, or misadventures, concerned a comment on Grant Allen, who had written a book about the Evolution of the Idea of God. I happened to remark that it would be much more interesting if God wrote a book about the evolution of the idea of Grant Allen."

His wit shines in the conclusion of this anecdote. To his bemusement, his editor castigates *him* for being blasphemous. "In that hour I learned many things, including the fact that there is something purely acoustic in much of that agnostic sort of reverence. The editor had not seen the point, because in the title of the book the long word came at the beginning and the short word at the end; whereas in my comments the short word came at the beginning and gave him a sort of shock. I have noticed that if you put a word like God into the same sentence with a word like dog, these abrupt and angular words affect people like pistol-shots. Whether you say that God made the dog or the dog made God does not seem to matter; that is only one of the sterile disputations of the too subtle theologians. But so long as you begin with a long word like evolution the rest will roll harmlessly past; very probably the editor had not read the whole of the title, for it is rather a long title and he was rather a busy man."

This volume contains the most important works of G. K. Chesterton, his study of St. Francis, his study of St. Thomas Aquinas, and _The Everlasting Man_.

I have chosen the word "study" rather than biography deliberately. Readers looking to find a strict chronological account of St. Francis or St. Thomas according to the modern or postmodern canons of historiography should look elsewhere. What Chesterton does is get you at the heart of these two saints. He tells you what they were all about. He is somehow able to convey to his readers the very air that these saints breathed.

And then there is _The Everlasting Man_. While it is hard to characterize, this is Chesterton's best work. Period. Written as an answer to H. G. Wells's _Outline of History_, Chesterton gets at what is most important in human history: the fact that God became Man in Jesus Christ. It really is an incredible book.

Chesterton had an amazing knack to cut to the heart of the matter. If you want to see what St. Francis or St. Thomas were all about, or to appreciate more the Lord who inspired these saints, I would highly recommend this book.

Ignatius Press has done the world a great favor by releasing their "Collected Works of Chesterton" series. If you can only afford three volumes, get # 1, 2, and 6. If you can only afford one volume, it should be # 2.

Chesterton's book on St Francis is wonderful. Unlike most modern books, it places Francis squarely in Christianity. (Many contemporary books on Francis portray him as a 13th-century hippie, which would have astounded the devout friar!)

The book on Thomas Aquinas is simply the best biography of him ever, and many noted Thomists have agreed with this sentiment.

But "The Everlasting Man" is the true pinnacle of Chesterton's amazing output. In one book he puts "comparative religion" into a new and brilliant perspective. C.S. Lewis listed "Everlasting Man" as one of the reasons he became a Christian, and it really will floor you.

(If you are short on funds you can always buy Everlasting Man as a single volume, too!)