E.H. Gombrich's The Story of Art is one of the best introductory books on the history of art available today. The combination of Gombrich's insight into various art movements (particularly his discussion of Impressionism and Cubism) and the inclusion of many quality reproductions make this book exceptional. If after reading this book you find yourself hungering for a more in depth examination of art history, i also recommend Marilyn Stokstad's Art History; it includes many of the same issues raised and explored in Gombrich's book, but takes them a bit further. If you are interested in learning about art and its history, (and if you want to have an enjoyable time doing it) then consider reading Gombrich's The Story of Art; you will not be disappointed!

I am currently taking an introductory art history class, and Gombrich's THE STORY OF ART is the textbook. This book was an absolute pleasure to read, as I found myself going beyond the assigned readings. I finished the entire book from beginning to end within the span of two weeks!

Even if you aren't very interested in art history, THE STORY OF ART remains a must read; at worst, you will be entertained, and at best you will gain an entirely new perspective on art. The prose is masterfully written and the analysis he presents is very accessible. He discusses everything from ancient Greek sculpture to Renaissance painting to modern architecture. The reproductions of the artwork in the book are also extremely good (there are several high-quality fold-out pages included, such as one of Leonardo's Last Supper pre-restoration). I was very pleased with both the amount and breadth of coverage he provided.

Even though I haven't read any other introductory art history books, I find it hard to believe that any other book could do the job as well as Gombrich has done it here. I would highly recommend THE STORY OF ART to anyone who wants an art history primer.

Gombrich's book has a very specific purpose: he wants to tell the history of art as a continuous story, focusing on Western art and its gradual approach to the visual world. In strong contrast to most other art history texts, Gombrich's book has a thesis, and therefore an argument. In choosing among the various alternates (Janson, Gardner, Stokstad, etc.) it is important to bear this in mind. The size and compression of his book is not its salient feature from a philosophic standpoint: it is the presence of an authorial voice, and a continuous narrative. Most other survey texts give up the ideal of coherent exposition in favor of a neutral descriptive voice and a fragmented "story" that continuously interrupts itself in order not to lose any essential historical detail.

I have read sections of this book over and over again; Pieper provides the reader with a sensible and precise way to understand virtues which have heretofore been described in vague and sentimental terms.

I believe this work to be, perhaps, one of the most important that I have read to date. Ideas can be a very powerful thing. I believe this book delivers and packages ideas that are truly life-changing. Be prepared to stretch your vocabulary, your mind, and your heart.

This collection of works on the four cardinal virtues brings out the classical meanings of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. It also clearly explains the vices surrounding the virtues. It is a clear summary of classical thought on the virtues from Aristolte, Plato, Augustine and Aquinas. Very interesting digrestions on prudence and fortitude.

Better than Milan Kundera, this is a great novel. It may seem a little dated, as we are all tired of the alienated college professor rap(they write what they know). However the journey back to the war really are moving, and I do reccomend this book.

As brief as can be: this novel demonstrates how some live in history and some observe it. The contrast between the North American portions, where history happens 'out there', and the remainder of the book are striking and affecting. I shed tears while in this book, beware, it is real in the poet's way.

Quite an amazing book. I picked it up after seeing it on a book list of top influential books in Prague. I guess it is popular in its original Czech language. The main character being a Canadian from the then communist, totalitarian regime - was quite an experience for myself, and gave me some insight on how the other half lived ... the fact was like a fairy tale, and the fiction was such truth.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds has been a favorite of mine for years, so while I'm happy to see it popularized, there's so much I miss! This is the first book of Urban Legends. There's so much to the book, and so much is so funny, and the financial stuff is the driest part of the book.

That said, I understand Fridson has a theme, and by using these two old works, one Victorian, and one Louis XIV, he shows that nothing much changes: people will do very stupid things if that's what everyone else is doing. More to the point, people will do very risky things with their money, if everyone else is doing so. Examples abound in these two great books, and Fridson doesn't miss a chance to make a point, and usually gets a good laugh in as well.

Tulipomania (when the price of tulip bulbs in Holland inflated beyond the ridiculous) is especially revealing, and though Fridson is using it to make a point about price inflation, I couldn't help thinking also about the marketing technique by which the public is convinced it needs something, then that something is doled out like Oreos to a diabetic. I'm thinking specifically of diamonds, but there are lots of examples.

Fridson pulls this altogether, and as big a fan as I am of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, the original work he has created by mating a part of it with the other work, and with his own explanatory text is a great book.

I am not an investor, and generally find economics petrifyingly boring, but this book was a fun romp. Even if you have no interest in finance, read this book just to have a good laugh at our species.

The stories in this book will have appeal as long as human beings exhibit great greed and fear in their investing. Those traits will encourage people to manipulate those emotions to their advantage, and these tales will recur with new investments every few years or so. Some few winners will garner long-term wealth while most will lose their seats in this game of financial musical chairs . . . known as speculating in endless opportunity. Fast success draws attention, which draws new investors, which creates more fast success. The price takes off like a rocket ship to eventually crash to earth when it runs out of the fuel of optimism and greed.

No one can hope to be a successful investor without absorbing the stories of these timeless follies.

You will find in this book three sections from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay in 1841, and Confusion de Confusion by Joseph de la Vega from 1680. The Mackay material describes the almost simultaneous Mississippi Scheme in France and the South Sea Bubble in England, as well as the earlier speculation in tulips in the Netherlands. Confusion de Confusion is a translation from the Spanish about speculation in Amersterdam in the securities of the Dutch East and West India Companies.

The Mississippi scheme involved the use of private bank notes to improve the French debt and currency that were eventually tied into investments in a colony in Mississippi. John Law, a Scotsman, was the originator of the scheme, which grew out of control when the French printed too much money and the Mississippi colony foundered. You can read more about this in the recent book, The Millionaire. The basic facts are more easily absorbed, however, in this volume. Following along shortly thereafter, the English began to speculate in stock in a monopoly to develop trade with the Spanish, also tied to reducing public debt. That became the South Sea bubble and the speculation was encouraged by the early success of stock investors in the Mississippi scheme in France. Tulipomania is considered the best of the financial parts of this book, and recounts the amazing heights that a single tulip bulb could bring (with a famous table of the buying power of a florin at thta time) and the problems encountered, such as when a sailor mistook a rare bulb for an onion and had it for his lunch! These three essays are about psychology, and do not go into the market details too much. The descriptions about how the government dealt with these disasters provide relevant information for regulators.

In Confusion de Confusion, there are four dialogues about how bull and bear markets can be manipulated and the consequences, in the context of speculation in hopes of gain for the new colonies and trade. These dialogues are superb examinations of how markets actually work, and will be an illumination to the new investor of who she or he may be up against. The lesson: Be sure you know the rules and think about how they could be used against you.

This book is greatly improved by a series of essays. One is by Peter L. Bernstein in which he makes comparisons of the current markets to these early essays. Herman Kellenberg's introduction explains many of the details of the Amsterdam markets very well to make the de la Vega material more accessible. I especially liked the introduction by Martin S. Fridson in which he points out some of the errors and hyperbole in the Mackay material, and puts that work into a current context. Without these essays, I would simply encourage you to seek out the originals instead of this book. But these modern essays will add a great deal to your understanding.

Mackay's book was reportedly a favorite of Bernard Baruch's, which has helped its popularity enormously over the last 70 years. After you read this book, I do recommend that you read the entire book. Although it is a tough slog in places, you will come away with a much better understanding of crowd psychology than these three sections alone will give you.

The fundamental mechanism for each of these mania is that a new investment opportunity arises that seems to offer great potential. No one is quite sure what the future will hold, and optimism takes over. The price starts to rise, and that attracts attention. As more people invest, the market rises more. That draws more attention and investors. This continues until either pessimism starts to balance excess optimism, or the market simply runs out of new investors. It takes ever more money to create the same growth, so the market eventually has to fall. Along the way, a few are smart and take out their money. The rest lose.

This mechanism occurs about once a decade. Some of the recent examples are Internet stocks in the 90s, biotechnology stocks in the 80s, the Nifty Fifty in the 70s, the conglomerates in the 60s, electronics companies in the 50s, radio companies in the 20s, utility trusts around 1900, railroads in the 1880s, and so forth back in time. The key lesson: If you think a mania will form, do your buying and selling very early in the game or ignore the game altogether and go into safe securities. Either one will work. If you want to split your money in half with half for speculation and half for safety, that would give you the best and safest route. Most people do not have the emotional discipline to sell in time, so it is dangerous to play. The markets will fall many times faster than they rose, so the time to escape is on the way up.

I hope you will buy and read this book, and share it with your children when they start to invest.

When you are done with the book, I also hope you will also consider where else mania take over. These occur in consumption patterns (not unlike tulip bulbs), activities (remember disco?), businesses (franchised door-to-door selling), and entertainment (quiz shows will come and go many times). Be sure you watch out for your exposure to these mania as well. Avoiding wastes of time and resources are an important part of achieving true growth.

This is a must read if you work in any kind of market-related profession. The historical perspectives offered in both books are well-written and provide ample documentation into the history of panics, manias and crashes.

The book, despite its age, holds up well against many modern books on the same topic and should definitely be considered a finance classic!

I'v been a Brahms' music fan for a long time and i have read three different biographies, without having the opportunity of get closer to his thoughts before i buy this great book. Now I know how Brahms' mind worked, how (really) was his relationship with his friends and how were his feelings and thoughts during the periods he composed that wonderful music.

I'm not an english born speaker, so i had some difficulties in understand the meaning of some sentences, more exactly, some modisms, wich are very frecuent in Brahms' speech.

In spite of this, I recommend this book because it's just wonderful.

The virtues of this book are several: about 800 previously untranslated letters of Brahms, masterfully translated and carefully and judiciously annotated, based on research entirely from source materials which, among other things, give the lie to the unsavory myths of Brahms childhood, proving beyond doubt that he came from a hard-working, well-meaning family who lived in a good neighborhood, and provided him with a good education and normal childhood. The author's research confines to the rubbish heap the silly Freudian theories, never based on any evidence, for his reasons for not marrying. This compendium of letters and their absorbingly written annotation is a gold mine for amateurs and professionals interested in a truthful picture of Brahms.

Unfortunately, Jan Swafford did not have a chance to read this book before writing his own "biograohy" of Brahms. If he had, he would have been privy to a wealth of information, much of which has not been available to non-german speakers. Avins' commentary on the letters of Brahms and many of his correspondents is clear and well researched.

This book drives me up the wall, the pictures of wartorn lanscpaes, dispaced lonely images, almost completely void of people. The isolation one feels is intense, like walking into an old subway entrance when nobody is around. The photos document the natural erosion of landscapes and the 'personalities' that prevail as a result of neglect, beautifully framed by cold hard angles giving shape to the image at hand. And anogst all the torn metal and concrete then there is a picture of a lone tree in the middle of a baren snow-covered landscape, cold and alone and wonderful, just how you will feel when you read this. Not really a coffe table book, unless of course you never have have any guests.

absolutly stuning, wonderful study of texture. and i bought it for... right after looking at it. if i don't see it every now and then i miss it. i want to say something more, something globaly political, but the images are so romantic it seems josef koudelka doesn't realize where he is. (that's a complement)

I consider Koudelka to be one of the finest photographers to come out of Prague. This book is handsome. The images are beautifully reproduced and the camera format seductive. If you appreciate textures and rich blacks, this edition will please you. The graphic art direction is smart and intelligent - a photo art book for the fine art collector.

As a 54 year old librarian and writer, I was amazed at the author's ability to maintain the voice of an 11 year old narrator and tell the story and grow the characters. This is an easy-to-read book and very charming. It must have taken the author years to write because it reads like not-reading, like you are standing there watching the characters live.

Highly recommended!

This was a wonderful story of forbidden friendship, and how love develops between an uncle and his orphaned nephew and what it can do to their relationship. The orphan went from almost nothing to everything he could dream of.The book was very interesting all the way through, and had an ending that made me want to cry almost. The book is well written for all ages.

I am an eighth grader at Lucille Erwin Middle School and I have recently completed the book, "The Robber and Me". I fell in love with this book. It literally became impossible for me to put it down! I was so intrigued with Josef Holub's style of writing because of the way it incorporated passion, mystery, drama, and comedy. This book needs to be on your "must read" list, because it is incredibly dazzling!

do you remember, as a child, watching trains pass by? i'm guessing that you counted every car, reading the words on some; looking in the windows of others. this, to me, could stand as the definition for innocence and it feels as if the adult counter part of this process lies somewhere inside milos hrma, the narrator of hrabal's novella. milos is a young railroad apprentice who insulates himself against the reality of world war ii. he cowers when faced with authority and he fears that he is impotent. those fears are eventually silenced as he confronts a trainload of nazis and realizes the consequences of war. he lays bleeding and gripping the hand of a dead german soldier, who is both his victim and his murderer. hrabal has written an understated and poetic tale of german-occupied czechoslovakia that lives in your mind long after the eighty-five pages are read.

This is a tale about heroism of ordinary people, not about epic feats. You won't find here but common people, and that's what makes the tale so touching and realistic. The book is beautiful and is beautifully written, with a sober yet elegant and poetic style. The trains are an essential part of all the characters'lives in their jobs and their personal memories, and are related to the fight of Czechs partisans at the end of the II World War, which is the time the novel is placed. The novel is both dramatic and comic, and Hrabal's sense of humour is one of his most remarkable features, following the best tradition of Czech's Literature, particularly Jaroslav Hasek. The mixture of drama and comedy, as well as the human touch and tenderness which envelops the characters makes this novel very moving to every reader. This work is a little and brilliant jewel, definitely worth the trouble reading.

Bohumil Hrabal's novel (or novella, more precisely) Closely Watched Trains first hit the scene in 1965. It is the story of the curiously naive railwayman/kid Milos Hrma who overcomes his sexual impotence by succesfully consummating intercourse with an older woman. This intimate and seminal life event of Milos is beatifully and sensitively detailed amid occasional description of WWII, an event that was looming over Milos and his surroundings. This novella is a joy to read.

A fascinating account of Nazi "scientist" and "doctor" Josef Mengele, who cheerfully "selected" thousands of Jews, Gypsies, and other people for quick death (gas chambers) or slow death (by exhaustion, malnutrition, and the filthy conditions) at Auschwitz, and who performed pseudoscientific "experiments" on many human prisoners, especially twin children. Delving into Mengele's past, as an endearing child known as "Beppo", and his life after the war (unrepetant to the end) the authors have created a fascinating portrait of this complex, twisted man. Juxtaposed with Mengele's story are the stories of the few twins who survived the experiments at Auschwitz. I found it especially poignant to see the contrast between Mengele's relatively easy life after the war--he used his family's wealth to start a successful business in South America and hobnobbed with other members of the South American Nazi "elite", and the lives of the twins after the war--most of them lost their families and lived in severe poverty, as well as being haunted throughout their lives by the horrors they suffered at Auschwitz. Highly recommended.

Both my parents served in the armed forces overseas during World War II, and it was through them, as a young adult, I heard of the "children of the flames" and the horrors of the concentration camps. When the book was first published, it caught my attention for that very reason. "Children of the Flames" is not an easy book to read simply because of the subject matter. However, the authors have managed to relate the story in a way that tells of the evil acts committed but in as diplomatic a manner as possible. The attrocities are almost too bloodcurdling to conceive. For me, it was impossible to read "Children of the Flames" in one sitting, especially the interviews which actually describe life and the experiments at Auschwitz.

This is the story of Josef Mengele and his "children of Auschwitz". Selecting primarily twins (or others who caught his eye) from the multitudes of Jews headed for the gas chambers, Mengele used these innocent children to satisfy his own perverse needs, all in the name of research, as human guinea pigs for his own horrendous experiments. The book is based upon interviews with survivors of Mengele's twins, and the reader will quickly discover, there are few survivors. The interviews tell the life of survivors before capture, during their time at Auschwitz and after their release. Almost all victims have had a lifetime of horrific, unending nightmares except those who cannot remember. Those who cannot remember, and there are few, are perhaps blessed with the body's unique defence system to block out that which is too unbearable and too painful to remember.

It has been over fifty years since the Holocaust, but it will forever remain a part of our history. Perhaps we owe it to the survivors of the Holocaust, and the families of those who did not survive, to honour their memory by a book such as this. For those of us who were born after World Ward II, the book will give the reader a deeper appreciation of the freedom we have today in North America.

Interweaving quotes from twin-survivors about their stories both during and after Auschwitz with Dr. Mengele's own biography, the authors have created a truly compelling narrative. Their central thesis -- that Mengele's obsession with twins derived from the fact that in personality he was a "twin" with angelic and sadistic sides -- is a fascinating one. Moreover, the authors are skillful in presenting anecdotes about the twin's lives that contrast with or even mirror times in Dr. Mengele's own life: i.e., the twins are desperate to leave Europe for Israel after the war; Mengele is desperate to leave Europe for South America; the twins live in broken health; Mengele becomes a hypochondriac. Thus, there is always a rich subtext to simple "stories" about the twins' lives.

Moreover, there is nothing gruesome about the book; it avoids detailed accounts of the substance of the experiments, but simply makes the point that the countless procedures performed had no medical value, and were not understood by the twins themselves.

Truly excellent and original.

...to get you thinking. The authors briefly share each of their previous eating issues and their recovery. They then carry you through the expirince of getting in touch with your deepest needs and desires, which begins with you identifying your "life purpose". You will then incorporate this purpose into the remanider of the exersizes in the book.

From a person who has battled body and food issues for some time, the authors present a new way of viewing my feelings and struggles. Take note that there are many exersizes (which they refer to as "practices") that are time consuming. In addition, to get the most out of this book, you have to be at a place where you are really ready to look at your food/body issues. It is not a diet book, it does not advocate weight loss. The goal, as I see it, is peace.

I personally have yet to follow all the exersizes but believe that when I am ready to truely confront my food/body deamons and take the time for the practices, this will be just what I need. (had i already done more of the exersizes I may have given the book 5 stars).

"What Are You Hungry For: Women, Food, and Spirituality" is a true milestone. In a culture that seems to struggle daily with unhealthy, mixed messages, that cloud the perception of women and keep us from being all that we can be, this book cuts through the mire and offers us solutions to our own mental traps. Lynn Ginsburg and Mary Taylor don't merely stay in the "talking at you" mode either. they offer things that you can actually do - practical solutions if you will - that will gradually help undo unhealthy body image problems that many of us struggle with. It is worth noting too, that while the authors are quite serious about their subject, with good reason, they do not get bogged down by taking themselves too seriously. they are wry, witty, and in the process, quite wise. I highly recommend this book. It is certainly refreshing and altogether different than anything else that has been written on the subject of women and body image. It's a must have for women of all ages.

What Are You Hungry for? is a must on every womans bookshelf! Like every woman I know, I have experienced food /body issues. By opening the door to a spiritual healing ,Taylor and Ginsburg give me hope for a healthier future for myself and others. In following the body/mind exercises ,I am able to begin understanding my habitual patterns.As a result,I am changing a life time of unhealthy food /body patterns. As a mother of two; one being a daughter, I find What Are You Hungry For? ,invaluable for the future generation of women in America.Bravo!!