This book is one of the 2 most desirable and collectible books on classical guitars (the other one is: Collection of Fine Spanish Guitars from Torres to the Present by Urlik, Sheldon). The figures are superb and the text informative. The hard cover edition is better in the following senses:

1. The hard cover edition is a limited edition (6000 copies only).
2. It is like a textbook which can be opened fully on its back. Easy for reading and scanning.
3. It's got a hard protective slipcase

However, getting the softcover edition might be your choice for its price and availability.

If you are a lover of guitars, specifically classical guitars, you owe it to yourself to purchase this book. There is nothing else like it. Great photography, details on some of the best guitars from some of the best makers...Romanillos, Smallman, Bernabe...They are all here. Inclusively, the book covers players (Williams, Bream, Segovia) as well as an in depth look at wood and the guitar market today. Great stuff and at ..., an incredible bargain.

Any lover of the classical guitar cannot help but appreciate this gorgeous collection of instruments, as well as the way in which they are displayed on the pages. Filled with information about the guitars and their construction, the luthiers, and which players'CDs you can hear them on, I highly recommend this fine edition. I take issue only with the subtitle "A Complete History", as the guitars are based on a single collection of instruments, owned by Russell Cleveland, and not necessarily what any other person would consider "Complete". That fact does not diminish my enjoyment of this exquisite book one bit.

Wonderful book! If your into Martin's, this is a great read. This one's better than Walter Carter's book...

DO NOT HESITATE....to buy this book. It is a really great book. It takes you back, all the way to Germany and the Stauffer influence on Martin Guitar. It has all the different models and the history of changes taking place not only with the company but the effect upon the instruments they were building. Maybe I'm just crazy about acoustic guitars but now, I have a greater appreciation for this genuine American guitar company. Richard Johnston and Jim Washburn really did knock the dust off lots of cool Martin guitar memorabilia too. Inside the cover is and acknowledgement to Dick Boak as Consulting Editor, he is a Martin man through and through and wrote the text for Martin's Kit Construction book and drew the plans, I do believe. This is an authoritative book and great photos on most of it's 264 pages. Yeah, I kinda liked it, and you will too if you like acoustic guitars, especially Martins. Two thumbs up, Five Stars.

Like most guitar nuts I'm a Martin lover. I thought that enough books had been written about the company and there was nothing more to say. I'm happy to admit I was wrong. The writers went the extra distance getting personal stories and never before seen pictures of some of the most beautiful guitars ever made. Surprisingly, the authors also delved into the less than rosy times, labor disputes and the near end of one of the country's oldest family run businesses. The book is the type of "bible" that you can return to often and learn something new. I couldn't give it a higher recommendation.

This is my two-year-old's favorite book. She understands the humor of the story: a farmer rocks his baby goodnight, and then rocks each of his farm animals goodnight (including his horse and cow. You'll have to see the book to understand how he is able to rock such large animals). The pictures are wonderful, the words are few. Your child will ask for it again and again.

This is a sweet lttle book for younger children. After you've read it a few times they begin to join in the reading. An easy book for them to memorize. My son always thinks it would be funny if the farmer would rock his wife :)

Simple text and colorful pictures make it a first rate introduction to reading; both our kids learned how to sit through a bedtime story with this soothing tale of a barnyard evening. We ALL want to know where the mouse went at the end!

I met the authors of this book and i highly reccommend to anyone who wishes to learn more about Internet Marketing to buy it. Dr Dave Chaffey - one of the authors of this book was my lecturer in E-Commerce Communications and my supervisor during my thesis. His knowledge, research and academic background on the subject will provide you the most essential tools to understand what Internet Marketing is all about. Don't think about missing this opportunity. The book is well structured, written in simple english and contains excellent examples of how the major e-commerce players in the market use Internet marketing to promote their products. This book is a must. Excellent value for money.

It's the best book on this topic I've seen.
Very well structured, reviewing all the essential aspects of the problem, this book is really the best choice for marketers.
I'd like to recommend "Internet Marketing" as the only real useful book about Internet Marketing.

Deftly edited by Richard Johnston, How To Play Blues Guitar: The Basics & Beyond is a straightforward introductory guide and reference for beginning and intermediate blues guitar players, from basic scales to classic sample songs. Blues guitar greats Art Thompson and Dan Erlewine provide expert advice on selecting gear and setting up the guitar in this simple yet eminently useful self-teaching guide. Of special interest are the comments drawn from such legendary musicians as B.B. King, Eric Clapton, John Lee Hooker, T-Bone Walker, and others. A special bonus to the practical advice and musical excerpts is the free access to audio lessons on an exclusive web page. If you are planning to learn to play the blues guitar (or improve your present ability and performance level), then give How To Play Blues Guitar a careful and considered reading.

A richly drawn journey through the World of Two Moons, this collection of stories spanning thousands of years is a fine addition to the ever unfolding ElfQuest saga. "The Blood of Ten Chiefs" gives us an all too brief glimpse into the lives of the wolfriders before the familiar days of Cutter and his family. Like the best of the ElfQuest tales, these stories are well written, beautifully drawn and easily capture emotions without the need for excess dialogue and narration. The change in styles from story to story, artist to artist, can be distracting at first, but after the first few pages the reader is fully involved and captivated by each artist's unique vision of these wonderful elves and their magical world. Wendi Pini's creative absence, so terribly and painfully obvious in many of the other recent entries in the series, in no way diminishes this collection which features some of the finest work of the "guest" artists I have yet seen.

The stories are varied in style and scope, ranging from the visually stunning "Colors" which tells the epic tale of Timmorn and his struggle to reconcile his elfin and wolf heritage, to the whimsical and innocent "At the Oak's Root" which tells of a young Tanner and his misfit "wolf"-friend who is not a wolf at all.

Taken together the stories serve as an engaging glimpse at the legendary Ten Chiefs. Newcomers to ElfQuest should probably save this collection for last, as the stories assume that the reader comes to them with a full and comfortable command of World of Two Moons and its inhabitants.

In the twenty-one years since Wendy and Richard Pini introduced the graphic series "Elfquest", many readers have been curious about the background of Cutter and his Wolfrider tribe. The Pinis took a first step toward answering these questions by endorsing a fantasy-novel series, "The Blood of Ten Chiefs", which appeared throughout the 1980s; this collection of short prose stories brought to light major events in the lives of the chieftains who lived in the 10,000 years before we meet the elves for the first time. From 1993 to 1995, the spirit - and some of the substance - of these tales was brought into a new EQ graphic serial, "Blood of Ten Chiefs"; the first nine issues retold stories from the prose-books, the last eleven were original tales created specially for this new series. Book 9b reprints issues 1 to 7, and 10-11 (a two-part story).

In these episodes published here the storytelling is always of quality, and two of the tales - "Colors" (issue 1) and "The Broken Circle" (issues 10-11) are among the most memorable and significant in the series. "Colors" is the visual version of Richard Pini's tale about the struggle of the half-wolf Timmorn, the first Wolfrider chieftain, to reconcile the elfin and lupine sides of his soul. The difficulty of illustrating states of mind is handled beautifully here; profound as the prose is, the drawing is even more eloquent, particularly in the last few pages. Even the coloring-work, though reprinted only in black-and-white, yet adds to the total effect (a pleasant surprise in almost all the issues here is the graceful transfer of these originally colorized drawings). No issue in BoTC was less than solid, but this debut issue remains the best of the series.

Other stories include another carryover from the novels, "The Phantom of the Berry Patch" - a tale about the young Bearclaw (the father of Cutter); the grim, disturbing "Swift-Spear", an account of Two-Spear's madness and his resulting campaign against the humans; and the last story in this volume, "The Broken Circle", about young Skywise's discovery of a great relic of the High Ones, ancestors of the elves - and the havoc it wreaks with him and his tribe. Drawn in a completely different style from that of "Colors", it too is ambitious, far-reaching and thought-provoking - with a more unsettling conclusion.

The series - and this book - are, by design, a literary and artistic grab-bag, with contributions from several different artists, but the level of inspiration is high all around; about the only flaw is a certain blockiness of pencil-work in two of the stories ("Swift-Spear" admittedly being one of those two). As I have said, the art has transferred very well to this lower-price format (not always the case with other volumes in the EQ Reader's Collection).

To summarize: if the "Blood of Ten Chiefs" book had been a mere history of a tribe of elves, it would have been much less interesting. But because it focuses on the major events in the chiefs' lives - and, through them, illuminates their characters and times - these stories will bear repeated reading. Recommended.

I really enjoy Elf Quest comics, but they don't tell you much about what life was like before Cutter's tribe. This book provides you with exelent, well written background information, and detailed drawings of the elves and the incredible world of two moons. It tells you different stories about all the ten cheiftens that came before cutter.

The movie Jeramiah Johnson has always been one of my favorites. It turns out that the true account of the life of John Jonston (his real name), though no less fascinating, is not much like the movie at all. The movie portrays a lonley man haunted by relentless attacks from the Crow Indians. This is partly true, but if you have seen the movie and think you know a little of the history of the man, you will be amazed at how much you did not know after reading the book. This was a truly violent, ruthless man, living in a time and place where those traits were not uncommon.

The book reads quickly and gives you a sense of awe for the man, and the manner which he and his companions lived. Though the book is mainly based on documented accounts of those who knew Johnston, I sometimes found parts of it hard to believe. One example is simply the sheer number of Indians this man kills throughout the book. That alone is nearly beyond belief, and I wonder if some of the accounts may have been exaggerated. That aside, the book was very enjoyable. A true taste of the harshness of the place and the people of that time. You'll never look at a liver the same after reading this book!

Possibly the best fur era book I have read. John Johnson is what the free trapper really was. If you are ready to get away from the "fantasy land" of the historical novelist, and immerse yourself in what was, this book by Thorp will bring you there. Open the book, keep your powder dry and watch your topknot. If I don't see you at the grave on Sepulveda (Big Anton's name) then I'll see you on the trail.

I have read this book a number of times. Having grown up in Wyoming, I am familiar with much of the country and many of the people described in the book. Opening this book is like going home all over again. This is not an "historical novel" but a retelling of actual events that reads better than any fictional adventure story. The best part about the book is that it turns the giants of the American West into real people, with real foibles and follies. The mountain men weren't super heroes, but regular people living a hard and dangerous life. It's an excellent snapshot of the realities of frontier life, told by the people who lived there. Thank God Raymond Thorp interviewed these men before all knowledge of their lives passed into obscurity.

Any new parent/expecting parent should read this book, it is always safe to be INFORMED!

This book by Mr. Girbig, a fantastic German historian, shows a good ammount of statistics and combat losses, but it seems to have been written in a hurry, because it's somewhat confusing at times. He never tells, for example, the combat victories of the Jagdgeschwader he describes. The reader has the impression that the translation was ugly done.Anyway, it's always good to have a look on the German side of WW II aviation.

Gerbig presents a well researched work which is primarily a recount of the unit war dairies. His battle coverage is detailed but disjointed. The book takes the war dairies and laboriously lists the casualties but doesn't deal with the Luftwaffe infighting which caused the poor decisions aptly described by the title. Excellent research effort that may have lost something in translation. The "Bodenplatte" fiasco is covered but the command decisions that put it on the way are an interesting story which is missing. The question "why?" is not answered.

Werner Girbig shows us how the sheer overwhelming numeric superiority of the allies led to the tragic deaths of many young German fighter pilots in useless acts of bravery and courage. It's a good book, although sometimes it seems to have been written in a hurry and leave some conclusions to the reader find what hapenned!

Its listing is a mistake, and should be deleted from Amazon's catalog