Finally, a compilation of Howe's fantasy, and 144 pages, at that! I admit that this review is premature, but I am totally excited to snag this new arrival...

John Howe and Alan Lee are the indisputed masters of "Lord of the Rings" artwork. And this fantastic compilation of Howe's artwork, of all kinds, is a wonderful collection of artwork by an immensely talented artist. (And a cute part at the end has photographs of Howe in armor)

A great deal of the book is devoted to Middle-Earth and J.R.R. Tolkien's works. There are the creepily reptilian dragons, spiders chasing hobbits, the majestic Elves, several different incarnations of the Balrog and its battle with Gandalf, the black-armored and evil Morgoth, the dwarves dining in Bilbo Baggins' hole, a misty Treebeard, Smaug asleep on his glowing gold, the Dark Tower of Mordor with a hissing Fell Beast in front of it... all sorts of goodies. The pictures come from book covers, book illustrations, game boxes, and so forth.

But Howe's artwork is not just for "Rings" and Middle-Earth. Oh no. There are sketches (uncolored) and previously unpublished artwork. There are illustrations from picture books like "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Rip Van Winkle," Howe's fascination with armor and Arthuriana, which includes lots of solid horses, armor, and sword-wielding knights; his illustrations for books by Anne McCaffrey, Robin Hobb, Charles de Lint, Guy Gavriel Kay, Jan Siegel, Margaret Weis, a compilation of Merlin-related stories, and much more.

Howe's artwork has a lot of variety, and many of them look almost like photographs. While you can tell that they're paintings, they're frozen in one second, often in the middle of an action scene. So you almost expect them to start moving. He uses light and shadow expertly, such as in the pic where we see Smaug on his gold -- under his wings, the golden reflection of his treasure is lighting up his face and scales. Or when he is shown attacking Laketown, where everything is dark and shadowy except the fire.

When the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy was given the go-ahead, Howe (along with Alan Lee, ) was hired by filmmaker Peter Jackson to help with the sets and landscaping and other designs. Now Jackson has written a foreword to this book, in which he talks about what a fan he is of Howe's artwork (and was, even before the movies!), and how his artwork served as a guide of sorts to how certain things should look. (Such as Ian McKellen's "Gandalf" look, which was based on Howe's famed picture of the wise old wiz) And the afterword was by fellow artist and friend Alan Lee, who describes how they met in New Zealand in 1998, starting work on the movies, and praises Howe for his energy and skill.

This is a fantastic read for fans of J.R.R. Tolkien's works, not to mention people who enjoy good artwork and fantasy/SF pictures. A lush, fantastical book of dragons, halflings, Elves and suits of armor. Marvelous.

I shall just get right to the point: if you are fascinated by the world of Tolkien or just like to read books with some extraordinary fantastic art, this is the book for you.

This book shows you a collection of the art of John Howe, a well-known artist of fantasy art, and someone who designed a lot of visual aspects in the Lord of the rings movies. It contains lots of artwork that has to do with the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, but also some of Howes other work with various subjects.

I can really recommend this almost everybody,because it's just fun to have this for the pretty pictures. The impressive things are not only the detail, the design and the colorscheme, but also the fact that the work really seem to show a certain greatness and movement. They make you believe that those moments were keymoments in the history of some other world.

This a MUST-HAVE.

The 9th Edition of the "Comic Buyer's Guide Comic Book Checklist and Price Guide" for 2003 covers comic books from 1961 (i.e., the birth of Marvel) to the present. The basic purpose here is to includes individual listings for more than 100,000 comics broken down by Good, Fine and the proverbial Near-Mint. Most of the time you will find out both the month and year of publication for particular issues. With most of the superhero comics, especially those from DC and Marvel, there is information about specific guest appearances by other characters (so this will tell you about Spider-Man crossovers but nothing about Betty and Veronica). Abbreviations identify artists from Alfredo Alcala (AA) to Wally Wood (WW), as well as issue information on everything from O (Origin of) and W (Wedding) to 1 (first appearance of) and D (Death), as well as HOL (Hologram cover) and N (New costume). In other words, there is a lot of information available from Maggie Thompson et al. besides the basics.

Additionally the opening section of the volume answers a series of fundamental questions (e.g., What is the "Silver Age"?) and tells you want to pay attention to if you are new to collecting (cover variants, issue condition, etc.). There is also a Photo Grading Guide and Guide to Defects that will help you grade your comics, along with a system for maintaining an inventory of your collection. Each two page spread includes one small comic book cover in the upper right hand corner of the right page, which give you glimpses of both classic issues of Batman and forgotten titles like "Gold Key Spotlight" featuring Tom, Dick and Harriet. Consequently this is a solid volume that can be used to keep track of what you have and what you need to track down: already I have been using it to make a list of issues I need to pick up because stories begin in comic books I am collecting but then get continued in some title I pass on. At 800 pages this might be a bit much to tote around to Comic Book shows and conventions, but the alternative is copying all this information into some other format.

I want the prices to the comic books

Hardcover; 160 pages; 9.5" x 12.3"
Small map of Britain to locate buildings. Featuring Bodiam castle & 11 grand English country houses. All have beautiful color cutaway views, detailed floorplans of most levels of every house, and the history of the houses. This is refreshing because so often with other books I've read there are floorplans of only the first floor. This is one of very few books that contain enough content whereby a drafter could re-construct plans of the buildings.

Not all of the featured buildings have the following: some show landscape drawings; some show original renderings; some have photos of the interior; some have detailed drawings; some only have the artist's rendering of the homes.

Great value if price remains discounted.

The concept of a "Birds Eye View" of houses, was a revelation. That is why when I first saw this book, I bought it immediately!!! It features 12 of the richest houses in England, and gives you another view that in many ways is far more revealing. This Birds eye view shows us how the house fits the site; but it is much more than that. It shows the surrounding gardens and parks. Full of magnificent watercolors, this book gives the reader a lot of detailed information about not just the great architectural details, but how these people lived. Anyone who is interested in architecture or even landscape design will greatly benefit from having this book.

Brown does an excellent job of introducing the reader to the period of late antiquity in this work. He is able to cover the major political, social and philosophical transition of the Roman Empire of the Antonines to the emergence of the Christian Succesor States with clarity, and accuracy. Although this work does not take an indepth look into any of the many subjects that fall in this period, it is an excellent overview, and maintains a level of scholarship that is almost unparalled in a work of this nature. The book is documented to an excellent degree, so that even the most critical reader can see where it is that Brown is comming from. I would recomend this book to anyone from the avid scholar to the most casual reader.

Brown is able to establish the foundations for anyone interested in late antiquity with clarity and scholarly depth that is unparelled in the field. This book, although taking a broad picture of the period, and focusing on a shallow over view, rather than taking an indepth look into any perticular aspect of the period, is still scholarly enough to interest even the most particular historian, but will catch the interest of the beginer also. Browns conclusions are well thought out, and are based on an extensive, and acurate picture of the period. The documentation is incredible, hundreds of documents are quoted, and carefully indexed, in a book under 200 hundred pages, so the most nitpicky readers can see exactly where Brown is comming from. This should be the model for broad view scholarly work, this is truly an excellent work.

I really didn't think that I would give this 5 stars when I initially learned about it. I figured it would be another really simple little book from someone else in the industry saying "Here's how I do things and I'm great"...

I love being wrong.

I've never read any of Robin's other works. I've been GMing RPGs for a long time (it doesn't really matter how long), but I've been out of the "main-stream" games for years. I found his analysis very accurate, his experiences coincided with my own, and his thoughts and suggestions made a lot of sense.

The fundamental premise of Robin's Laws is that players can be categorized into a specific group, making it easier to understand what they enjoy in a game, what game you should play with that group, what the campaign and adventure should be like, how they should be structured, etc. He goes into a great deal of detail on how to accomplish this, while avoiding being preaching or arrogant in the process. He has even come up with a way to quantify some of these determinations, which really impressed me.

To be honest, I think that it is very difficult to make the determination of a player's type, in many situations. Possible, yes, but very difficult. His observations of what you can do with this information are very intriguing and inciteful, however, and well worth a look.

I highly recommend this to anyone who ever has or ever will GM an RPG. It has a great deal of useful information and ideas.

...

I've been GMing for 20+ years and I still found this book to be very useful. It starts by first analyzing the different types of players and what they want out of a game. I was able to easily fit my players into the different categories and change the focus of my adventures to try to please them. He also talks about various structures for adventures and what to do when the players get stuck. There's also some advise about improvising that's pretty useful.

Robin Laws (the author) also writes a column on playing for Dragon Magazine that's frequently helpful. He also designed The Dying Earth roleplaying game, which is pretty cool, and a bunch of other games I haven't played and so can't comment on.

This catalog provides a wealth of information for collectors of comic books. It can be overwhelming for a novice (me) to absorb, but what fun I will have while I learn. Definitely a worthwhile investment.

This thing is a monster. It has details on nearly every comic published, through to September 2001 or so. Besides the usual pricing information, if also includes circulation info (for some titles) and CGC info (how many copies have been CGC'd, and what the highest grade is). Many titles have a short series synopsis included, with information on storylines, creators, and anything else that might be interesting about a title.

Most white people rarely think about racial discrimination except as something that happened "back then" "down south". We're (I write this as a white man) far more likely to whine about "reverse discrimination," about how unfair affirmative action is and how confusing PC speech has become (Are "they" black, African-Americans, people of color or *what* ?). We tend to think of black people three ways:

1) We see them as white people with extra pigmentation. We don't really notice any difference and blithely assume that they're "just like us".

2) We see them as gods and superheros, running faster, jumping higher, dancing better, and better endowed in various ways.

3) We demonize them--welfare mothers pumping out babies, gangstas, crack ho's & that junkie pulling a smash 'n' grab to feed his habit.

Rarely do we ever try to understand what it's like, growing up different. Langston Hughes, in this powerful little book, opens a window for us. Although aimed at children of all races, perhaps the people who benefit most from this work will be white "liberals" who think racism is horrible until an African-American family moves in down the block.

"Misery is when the taxi cab won't stop for your motoher and she says a bad word."

"Misery is when you first realize so many things bad have black in them, like black cats, black arts, blackball."

"Misery is when you go to the Department Store before Christmas and find out that Santa is a white man."

"Misery is when you start to help an old white lady across the street and she thinks you're trying to snatch her purse."

These, and a whole host of others, are poignantly illustrated by Arouni. The book is introduced by Jesse Jackson, who points out that some things are dated (society has evolved a bit since 1967), but that plenty of room for progress remains. Historical events, such as the presidential election of 2000, demonstrate that deep and systematic racism still pervades American life. This was the last work that Langston Hughes wrote. He died in 1967, while working on the manuscript.

Both my 13-year-old son and my 8-year-old daughter have found the book touching. Reading it with them has helped them to have a better understanding of what it might be like to be "different." I believe this book opens the way for genuine dialogue between people of different races, instead of maintaining projections and biases.

I am 38 years old and I read this book when I was 17 years old as a senior in high school. It wasn't a requirement that I read this book. I simply saw it in the library and was intrigued by the title. Now that I am an adult, I want my children to read this powerful book. I am also ordering the book today so that I can reread it. There were so many people who participated in the civil rights movement and it is time we learn about more of those American heros. I could not put this book down. I read it in two days! Myrlie Evers shares her darkest fears and greatest joy.

Excelent book for making your organization ISO 9000 compliant

If you want to explore the present state of knowledge about tigers in the wild and their real prospects for survival, this is the best publication available. It's attractively illustrated with photos of wild tigers, current range maps, and useful treatments of their history, habitat, populations, prey relations, conflicts with people, and conservation status in various parts of their range. The book's chapters are well organized and written by well informed scientists.

I couldn't put the book down and have only been surprised that it has received so little publicity beyond the professional ranks of conservation biologists. It's useful also for those considering a visit to areas where tigers still occur.

An excellent and thorough composition of research of the tiger and its conservation. A must have for ecologists or wildlife biologists interested in studying or working with the big cats. Very informative, written with a lot of data, statistics, maps and references - most informative for those with a scientific mind. Highly recommended.

Riding the Tiger is a fine conservation book. It gets into the technical part of conservation which few see. If you are interested in becoming a zoologist this book is a must.