With its powerful introduction by Walter Knestric, childhood friend and owner of the definitive Grooms print archive, and an essay by critic Vincent Katz, this powerful collection both accompanies a traveling exhibition and stands alone as a fine catalog of Red Grooms' graphic achievements. Full-page color photos display print styles certain to be familiar to many.

I grew up in what new urbanists would probably call a paradise. It was a real community in which neighbours were really neighbours. People did sit on their verandahs and converse with their neighbours on the street. There was an understanding that one could borrow things if the owner wasn't using them. It was considered polite to tell the owner if he was there but if he was away one could just borrow the thing and tell him when he came home if one was still using it. In short it was everything new urbanism wants. This was in a moderately large city in Canada.

There were two things wrong with this paradise:

a) it was not about verandahs, facing the street etc. It was about control and conformity. The neighbourhood protected itself by frowning on unexpected behavior. There was an expected range of interests and an expected range of activity. If someone went out of this range, one could expect social sanctions unfailingly. The dark side of Jacobs 'eyes-on-the-street' is Foucault's 'gaze.' The neighbourhood worked as an exercise in power. The verandahs and street life were instruments of that power. Heaven help anyone who had non-standard interests.

b) the neighbourhood was unsustaining. With the growth of the personal rights ethos, the ability of the neighbourhood to control its inhabitants fell away. No longer could the neighbourhood fathers take action to control petty teenage misbehaviour. Instead personal rights and social policy took these controls away from the neighbourhood and gave them to government agencies. As a result the neighbourhood is now perhaps not unsafe but definitely uncomfortable. No one leaves tools or equipment out now in case a neighbour needs to borrow it. Everything is locked up. The doors are firmly closed and neighbours now complain to the police instead of discussing thier joint problems.

New urbanism seems to miss this point. Neighbourhoods are about local power. For some people this produces a comfortable paradise. For those slightly different it creates a jail of conformity. Some people thrive in it. Some peole will be stifled. Neighboourhoods are an exercise in hopefully beneficent control. Architecture does not create this control. It can destroy it certainly and make it impossible but it cannot create it.

I have only had the book a day and already it has given me great pleasure and joy. I love the fantastic pictures and diagrams. The computer digitalizations on a few existing towns today and what they could be like were truely fasinating. I couldn't help not liking the indepth descriptions of numourous cities, towns, and villages from around the country and canada as well. This book had colorful photos and diagrams, this book to me is pure genus!

A very good appraisal of design examples of new communities with also a consistent theoretical approach to New Urbanism concepts. This is a necessary reading to those that want to be updated with the best design practices of integrated urban spaces.

This is wonderful painting and you will find yourself sighing over what should have been. I must agree with the other reviewers at Amazon, who say this is the worst designed book they've ever seen. It's too true. Yes, the dead center, binding portion of the book (called the gutter) is where you'll find the crucial part of many of the portraits! To say this hinders the viewing experience is about as mild a statement as one can make. If I were Clemente, I would want this book recalled as a defective product and the manufacturer (publisher) made to come up with a new one, just like with a defective automobile (The Lemon Law). So why am I giving it a 3 star rating? Clemente's art works are a 5 star event. Seeing them under these circumstances is better than not seeing them. The gorgeous cover portrait is representative of Clemente's work shown in this book. The color reproductions themselves seem quite fine; it is solely an issue of design placement of the images. I'm not sorry I bought it; I do wish I had gotten it at half price though!

The first thing to note about this book is its gorgeousness. There is simply no other word for the stunning graphic presentation, beginning inside the front cover and continuing throughout. Orchids Unfolding could easily be a subtitle.

The portraits are compelling and would be even if many of them were not of the rich and famous. Whether oil on wood or watercolor, whether lean of line or voluptuous in intensity, they leave no doubt as to Clemente's talent.

If there is any criticism to be made of this book, it is to be directed toward the publisher. One wishes that the double-page portraits did not cleave the faces in half, making them difficult to read as they fall into the center of the spine. Surely some astute editing could have corrected this.

Otherwise it is a pleasure to feast upon the fruits of Clement's talent. If you appreciate his work you will be happy to own this book.

This is a beautiful book. The pages are a large but not cumbersome size that enables the reader to truly see the work. Some paintings are unfortunately split by the binding, but the rest of the book makes up for it. Clemente's style is so emotive and beautiful. If you like Francesco Clemente, this is a definite must for your collection.