Ruth Wood has specialised in Leader's life and work and has compiled a comprehensive illustrated catalogue raisonne of all his known works. She regularly authenticates Leaders works for the major fine art auction houses and private collectors. This is an excellent specialised read for the lovers of Victorian landscape painting.

Despite the bias that might come with having Judi Barrett as a childhood art teacher, I can say honestly, that this is my favorite book. Even as an adult, I often refer this book to all my friends. The simplicity of how to regain that feeling of anticipation, surprise, happiness and every joyous feeling associated with birthdays, is refreshing to the adult mind. This book gave me the innitiative to leave money in my pockets, and hide letters in old books, for it rediscovers the idea of rediscovery.

This book is about a hamster who accidently dirties the new page of his book. He tries all sorts of things to get the page clean, and of course nothing works. The illustrations are charming, and there is absolutely no text. You can describe what is going on or have the child tell what they see. My daughter "read" it when she was in first grade, and now as a senior in high school, she is still looking in the library for it, just one more time.

a delightful book for the very young set...my daughter cannot get enough of it at bedtime readings! ....if you can get your hands on this book, grab it! your little one will have many hours of enjoyment with benjamin's antics.

This book explains how the Rasch model imposes a measurement system upon data. It explains how counting is misleading and how the Rasch model permits sample-free item calibration and test-free person measures. The concept of fit is explained as well. While the formulae are included in this book, one does not have to be a mathematician to understand the ideas. This book will serve the novice and the veteran well.

I have used this book with whole-class instruction and individual work. Either way, the lessons are so easy to understand that students walk away with well-thought out poems. Each lesson offers steps for prewriting and examples of finished poems. Students have fun with the various options to write about!

Benjamin Bennett of the University of Virginia is one of the nation's very best, and Beyond Theory shows why. Bennett probes the question of irony in 18th-century German Literature insightfully and at times humorously. I am not a specialist of German Literature, but reading this book made me want to study German ! Bravo Mr. Bennett!

I recently reviewed this exceptional book for a college history class: Benjamin Quarles did an exceptional job in supporting his well-balanced and non-biased arugment that even though widely neglected in history, the Negro played a significant role in the abolitionists crusade. Quarles's use of Primary sources made this non-biased argument possible. A quick summary of the book is as follows: The "new school" movement began in the late 1820s to the early 30s, and it gave free Negroes the opportunity to publicly speak their views on slavery and the equality of blacks. Even though not all blacks were abolitionists, their general attitude was, as John Scoble stated in 1853, "'...[to be] true to their brethren in bonds...and to remain by them whatever the cost'" (p.7). Whether he be free-born or slave-born, man or woman, an active aboltionist or a supporter of abolition, the Negro was true to his brother in slavery. Evidence of this was shown in Negro reformist sheets, and narratives written by former slaves. The kinship Negroes felt toward the slave was also shown in the formation of anti-slavery societies, in the trips to England in hopes of gaining anti-slavery support, and Negro participation in The Underground Railroad. This book is an excellent account of the Negro participation in the abolitionist movement, long neglected in history. The fact that this book has a well-balanced, greatly supported, easy to read, and truthful arument, makes it exceptional. Quarles said it best when he noted, "To the extent that America had a revolutionary tradition, [the Negro] was its protagonist no less than its symbol" (p.249). One will never feel the same about the Negroes' union in their struggle for freedom and equality, after he reads, Black Aboltionists, by Benjamin Quarles.

This book is an indepth, and intriguing analysis of the role played by African-American Communists, particularly Benjamin J. Davis, in the struggle for Black Liberation. The book is very-well researched and consistently objective, avoiding the standard anti-Communist, anti-Soviet biases we normally encounter.

Dr. Horne presents a liitle known history, the positive role played by the Communist Party, USA (CPUSA), in the struggle for African-American civil rights. He details and corroborates numerous examples of positive Communist involvement and activity in the Black community in the 1930s and 1940s without using the worn out "red scare" or "Communist menace" shibboleths.

He describes a very clear picture of the role played by Benjamin J. Davis, an open Communist from Harlem and twice elected to the New York City Council. It is amazing to read Horne's description of the tremendous support Davis received from both Harlemites and famous Black celebrities.

Dr. Horne's theory that the Black American civil rights establishment was given the narrow choice of renouncing Communist support and Communists in order to win government support for civil rights, appears right on target and certainly supported by history.

A very interesting and informative book.

'Blue' is a multifaceted work that has no beginning and no end, no straight lines, and where the past and present intersect. In that sense, it is a design fabricated to evoke the experience of Kabbalah. At the same time it is constructed like pages of Talmud with a central text that contain the modern story but vaguely evoke relationships and events in the Torah, and with parallel commentaries/stories on the margins, the story spins off in many directions, sometimes off on its own tangents and sometimes bending back on itself to illuminate and elucidate the text. These parellel stories are a comingling on each page of famous Jewish mystics such as Luria, numerous Rabbis of old, with Kafka, Bob Dylan, Vermeer, a Native American chief, and the fictional Tal's parents, taking the form of direct quotes, actual and imagined lives which can be read in any order along with or without the main text. In yet another dimension, this is also a great art book of past and present, combining masters like Van Gogh and Vermeer with photographs of Kafka and Bob Dylan, and of Jewish scholars and students in Poland prior to World War II. The art work, too, also intended as a commentary to interact with the various texts.

The central story, which reads like an allegory belongs to Abraham Tal, a New York gem merchant and advice giver, who can't solve his own problems. Among other concerns, he is torn with indecision and regret about whether to marry Rachel Heller. Eventually this leads him on a journey to Safed, the center of ancient Jewish mysticism, presumably to track down the origins of a 16th century Venetian wedding ring, which of course contains a sapphire, but also as a personal quest for spiritual answers.

Blue holds many meanings. The most obvious is the blue sapphire gem which narrator, Abraham Tal, is using to make a suite of jewelry. Tal connects the word sapphire to "sefer" which means "book" in Hebrew, and to the giving of the book, the story of Moses finding a blue sapphire at the burning bush and the continuity of a people commemorated in the blue thread of the tallis. There is much more. Almost every page refers to a blue stone, blue in someone's clothing, blue walls, blue light.

I found Mr. Zucker's notes at the beginning and end of the book a good source as well as a help to confused readers. One cannot help but be confused (it even seems intentional), but at the same time delighted with this highly imaginative and light-hearted multimedia feast.