No cobbled-together overview, this is an impressive, meaty book of great integrity. Care has obviously been taken to do the research & get the facts straight. "Heavy hitters" like John Mayall, Fleetwood Mac, the Butterfield Band & the Yardbirds are covered admirably in a way that is both comprehensive & concise. Lesser known artists also appear, & when reading the book one constantly encounter players who would turn up in other places, at other times. The reader feels himself in good, knowledgeable hands from the get-go. (Martin Celmin's introductory essay is worth the price of the book in & of itself.)
It's that rarest of things, a book that is both entertaining & a solid reference work as well. The A-Z approach also makes it, as my friend Chris Darrow calls it, a great "toilet book." Meaning, I hasten to clarify, a book one can dip into whenever or wherever.
It's the first in a series, & I look forward to the future volumes.

This book is fantastic! The only thing that would make it better yet, would be the addition of a few more blues artists that seem to have been left out. (The Animals, Eric Burdon, Spencer Davis,...and WHERE is Led Zeppelin!!!...the greatest Blues rock band ever??) It is still well worth owning, if you can still get one...lots of information, and things even an avid Blues Rock fan probably didn't know. The "Introduction" is one of the best parts, giving you virtually a complete history of how this great music evolved. Gives Blues Music the attention it has deserved for so long, and never got.

The "Blues-Rock Explosion" falls into the "must have" category for all serious music fans and collectors. The book features a great mix of well known and obscure bands and artists and is full of facts and details that even the most ardent fan will not be aware of.

Having been a British Blues fan/collector/writer for 30+ years it's great having detailed information on all of my favorites(Savoy Brown,Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation,etc.)in one place. Great articles,discographies, and photos highlight a book that is hard to put down.

So grab a stack of cds,the "Blues-Rock Explosion" sit back and enjoy!

One day I had to go to the library to get a book from my 7th grade reading list and I saw this huge book of comics and I just had to take it out. I read it probably 100 times .It became my favorite book.My favorite comics were Popeye, Gasoline Alley, The Smythes,and Krazy Kat. I love this book and you will to. So my advice to you is if you love comics you will love this book!

I've always been a huge comic strip fan going back to the days when my dad was the press foreman and he let me (as a little kid) watch the "Sunday Funnies" get printed. Awesome! Fast forward to my high school years. I was bored and killing study hall time in the library when I stumbled upon this book.

The book is broken down by period going back to the first comic strips and working their way up to the early 70's. There's some text where the authors write to explain the different styles or comment on various strips but the real gem here are all of the comic strip samples in this book. Some strips (like Mickey Mouse) get many pages as they tell a whole story. Others don't get but a single sample strip, especially strips after the 1950's.

I love this book and will break it out from time-to-time just to read all of the classic strips like "Yellow Kid", "Buster Brown", "Katzenjammer Kids", "Mutt and Jeff", "Little Nemo in Slumberland", "Thimble Theater", "Mickey Mouse", "Krazy Kat", and many, many more.

It's a shame this book hasn't been re-published with new sections to include modern classics but oh well. If you can find it, it's well worth having!

Growing up in the 60s & 70s, I wasn't much enamored of comic strips appearing in the newspaper with a scant few exceptions. Newspaper comics were awfully stale if not comatose at the time; they smell even worse now. In light of this reality, thank God I found this book 20 years ago. To me, this mammoth oversized anthology of color and b/w strips (mostly vintage 1895-1950) was and is an education, a revelation and a door to a separate reality. Who knew that such fully realized, utterly compelling and unique works of art were once commonplace features in our daily and Sunday newspapers? Compiler Bill Blackbeard provides minimal but insightful commentary, which only underscores his good taste as the majority of SMITHSONIAN is devoted to the actual comics themselves. Wherever possible, he provides continuities of strips to give the reader not only a fuller flavor of the individual storylines and the era they appeared in, but each strip's particular dynamic with its audience. What's also impressive is the sheer number of titles sampled. Among the weightier excerpts are Popeye, Moon Mullins, Wash Tubbs/Capt. Easy, Barney Google, Polly and her Pals, Krazy Kat...but many of the lightly-skimmed properties are just as good. Set aside their enormous entertainment value and what you may find most impressive is how starkly individual each strip creator is; what ends up on the page is the sum total of one man's creative & emotional being, distorted through a prism of fantasy or slapstick or melodrama. Your net gain as reader: 336 pages of the kind of joyous, crazy, all-elbows-and-graceful-despite-it art that can only emerge from forms that the Arbiters of Taste don't take very seriously. Splendid as this book is the first time 'round, it continues to enrich you, always revealing more with every subsequent re-reading. Out of print for a while but readily available through the online auction services; I also hear it's being reissued soon. By the way, the other mandatory strip anthologies are the 'sequel' to this one (COMIC STRIP CENTURY), an important predecessor (Robinson's THE COMICS) and the entire run of Rick Marschall's NEMO magazine; happily, there is next to no duplication of strips reprinted between all of them (apparently the archivist's code of honor). If this book floors you like it did me, seek them out and flabbergast further.

OK-I haven't read it 500 times but it IS consistently on the list of favorites. It has a bit of a thrill without getting too scary. Lavish illustrations.

In this story, which is told in rhyme, a small mouse insists on teasing a cat, while the cat is lounging on a hammock, drinking ice water, and generally minding his own business. A chase ensues each time the mouse begins the tease and the mouse scampers back to his mother to save him. By books end, the mouse has learned that it is not wise to tease. This book is extraordinary in its illustrations. My 3 year old son never tires of this book. It is a well read bedtime story. Highly, highly recommended!!

I learned of this book when I purchased another book and Amazon recommended it. What a sleeper! I had never heard of it. My 3 year old son laughs everytime we read it. The mouse insists on teasing the sleeping or relaxing cat, who then pursues him. The mouse runs to mommy to protect him. However, during the last chase, mommy cannot help and the mouse has to figure out how to save himself. There are some real slapstick scenes which my son loves. The cat has his nose tweaked, the cat falls off of his hammock, typical three year old humour. Highly, highly recommended!

This is a book that should appeal greatly to those interested in the paranormal as well as those captivated by aviation. The author writes in an engaging, personalized manner, and he bends over backward to defend the stories he relates as well as the integrity of his contributors. He does not try to explain the unexplainable; he merely presents each tale the way it happened, often using the very words of the person involved. Throughout, the author's great love for flying and for the men and women involved in aviation is openly apparent. Caidin's qualifications as a pilot and aviation expert are almost unequalled; he has flown countless aircraft of all sorts in his life, he has written well over a hundred books on aviation, and he is well known in aviation circles. The fact that he himself cites a number of personal examples of impossible things that happened to him while in flight lends great authority to his role as compiler of the truths of others.

Some of the stories are truly fascinating: a plane disappears for ten minutes on approach to Miami and everyone on board "loses" ten minutes; military aircraft fly hundreds of miles back to base and actually land with a dead pilot or no crew whatsoever; three flight crews return to base and are debriefed from a mission in which, it is soon discovered, all planes and crew were lost; pilots encounter planes from an entirely different era which then disappear; ghostly apparitions and sounds are encountered on military bases and airfields, etc. Every tale is fascinating; more importantly, each tale is verifed to the extent possible. Caidin tells us that the vast majority of the stories he collected were rejected; only the stories he could research intensively and authoritatively prove as having happened in the ways they were described to him made the final cut. He stands by these unexplainable stories and the brave men and women who had the courage to reveal truths many had never revealed before to another soul. As the author often points out, the events and experiences detailed here could not possibly have happened, yet they did happen.

This is a one of a kind book that, with its reportedly very careful research, should knock the socks of of you. I ran across it while researching another book and my (paperback) copy is well worn from rereading and friends who couldn't put it down when they saw it on the coffee table. Buy it. Even if don't believe it it's a great read.

One of the best books available on any kind of haunting...primarily because it is _thoroughly_ documented. Mr Caidin bases his stories on eyewitness accounts and official military records (none of those "I knew a guy whose second cousin knew the guy this happened to....")His 'take' on the Bermuda Triangle is particularly interesting. I had the honor to be acquainted with Mr Caidin; he was intelligent, opinionated, and as skeptical as anyone I've ever met. The fact that _he_ wrote this book makes the stories within all the more convincing!

Director 8.5 is a monster application with huge range of functionality. Nyquist's "Bible" uses CD-ROM-based tutorials to carry you through the concepts with relative ease. The tutorials are part of one continuous complex project, taking the reader from the basics through media management, interactivity, project management and some pretty sophisticated Lingo programming. It is also organized to allow easy reference for specific issues. Having recently completed an 'Emedia & Design' programme I would have to say that Nyquist's book is probably the most valuable text in my library.

Este libro es realmente extraordinario para aprender a usar director, pues se ve desde el uso basico de cada herramienta aplicando los ejemplos que incluye el cd-rom.

Recomiendo este libro a quien nunca haya usado director antes, y para aquellos que habiendo usado, solo han aprendido por su cuenta sin referencias técnicas.

There is no better book with which to get involved in Director. I've read nearly all of them; nothing else comes CLOSE! Get IT! ENJOY IT! LOVE IT!

I find The Joker to be a fascinating fictional character, and this collection of short stories definitely manages (at least for the most part) to get at what I feel is the true character of The Clown Prince of Crime. This little overlooked book is probably the best portrayal of The Joker this side of Alan Moore's The Killing Joke.

The quality of the stories is uneven, ranging from brilliant to forgettable. Unfortunately, the very best stories are all weighted toward the first part of the book and sets you up thinking that ALL of the stories will be that good. My favorites are "The Man Who Laughs" and "On a Beautiful Summer's Day, He Was." The latter, while being the least "Joker"-y of the lot, is also the most disturbing. "On the Wire" is also excellent, and although "Jangletown" falls into the average group, it's memorable for its description of the Joker (which brought shadows of Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum) and the hints at pederasty. Most of the others are average but still entertaining and full of dark, disturbing moments (Bruce Wayne's punchline in "Dying is Easy, Comedy is Hard," the opening of "Bone," and the patricide in "Best of All"). The only story I flat out didn't like was "The Joker's Christmas."

I thought it was an excellent decision to use horror writers for the most part to bring The Joker to life...I can't imagine a genre he more belongs at home in.

Do yourself a favor a grab a copy of this book. It's truly unsettling.

This book consists of several short stories, each written by a different author, and all of them about the Joker. The stories are too short for me to tell you much about them, and besides, part of what makes this book great is the different angles taken on the Joker. Each story focus on the Joker, but each shows a different part of the whole Joker.
I would recomend this to any Batman fan, any comic fan, or anyone looking for good short stories.

To me, this book defines The Joker; A mean-spirited, incredibly intelligent, completely psychotic mass murderer with a way beyond warped sense of humor. I first read this book in High School. Once I picked it up, it was so amazing/disturbing I couldn't put it down until I'd read the whole thing. I wrote a paper on it that got me into AP English. Now 10+ years later, it was so good I'm searching for it again. This book is a KEEPER. Be careful who you loan it to, they might think so too.

This is hands down the best book for children age 3 and under that I have ever encountered (and we have over 1,000 children's books in our home!). I began reading it to my oldest child when she was 2 months old, and by 16 months, she could recite the alphabet AND identify all 26 letters of the alphabet-- upper AND lower case! I give most of the credit to this wonderful book (but keep in mind, we read it EVERYDAY, often times, several times a day!) My youngest child picks this book out of the shelf first and foremost. He is only 13 months old, but he absolutely loves this book and prefers it over most toys. Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault have more than a classic here, not to mention the great illustrations by Lois Ehlert. If you're looking for the perfect book to teach your children the alphabet or you just simply want an entertaining book that is sure to be a hit, look no further. This is it!

Living in a book filled with books and kids is heaven. We read aloud every day here in our house, and letter books have been favorites for years and years when the kids start learning to read. We live in Norway and speak Norwegian, so most of our children's books are also in Norwegian. Still, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is among the favorites. The text, by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault is so simple and still so filled with rhymes and humour. And Lois Ehlart's colorful illustrations go perfect with the words.

Learning the letters and learning to read can be a hard task for a child, and the book captures this perfectly. The letters live their own lives, climbing up the coconut tree, falling down again, bending, looping, having fun.......exactly what letters do when you are a newbie and try to sort them out. Any child will laugh of the way the letters act, and the sometimes hard task of learning the letters will be a wonderful game the child wants to play over and over again

We love this book in our house, and can recommens it to any young readers.

Britt Arnhild in Norway

"A told B and B told C
I'll meet you at the top of the coconut tree."

Thus begins Chicka Chicka Boom Boom's bouncy romp through the alphabet. The cadence is quick and the rhyming is fun. One can't help but read it aloud just to bop along! This book has captivated every child I've seen "read" it from 1 month (no kidding, the bright colors and simple shapes really grab 'em) to 5 years.

As for its learning potential, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom clips through the alphabet twice, and in a brilliant move portrays the child-personified letters as lower-case and the "adult" letters as upper-case. The "kid" letters are rambunctious and accitentally get hurt (resulting in "skinned-knee d", "black-eyed p", and "loose-toothed t"), but the "adult" letters are there to help them up, dust off their pants, and feel better.

In short, this is a book that's so sweet and fun, I'd have bought it even if it didn't have it's additional benefit of learning the alphabet! Chicka Chicka Boom Boom comes highly recommended!

A joke is always funnier if you understand it, and the Alice tales are so full of inside jokes that you need someone to explain them. The Annotated Alice does just that. Carroll's tales are here, complete and unabridged, and the editors have painstakingly provided every piece of explanation and commentary you could ever wish for. Complete with Tenniell's original illustrations (although, alas, not colorized), this is a book any girl, little or big, can cherish.

Victorian-era readers of Lewis Carroll's delightful fantasies knew the poetry and song and public figures referred to; we moderns need to have the jokes explained to us, and Martin Gardner does a masterful job of it. We're fortunately past the more bizarre Freudian and Marxist interpretations of Alice that Gardner takes to task in his preface, but Gardner's annotations survive, as they should. The White Knight's encounter with Alice is heartbreaking when you know the background information, the lyric the White Knight's doggerel alludes to. By all means, give this to children at risk of being pithed by exposure to a certain indigo reptile; as children, they'll appreciate the story, and as they mature, they'll appreciate the commentary, and you'll have saved a budding intellect.

Alice in Wonderland is an extraordinarily fascinating and delightful story, replete with jokes, puzzles, and nonsense of the highest order. But in order to appreciate it fully, the modern, non-Victorian reader requires some guidance, as well as an adequate background on the man and the times that produced Alice. Martin Gardner, the greatest figure ever in recreational mathematics, provides readers with all the information they need to appreciate this story at its various levels. This book occupies a place of privilege in the library of every serious Alice fan.

The setting is an English family in a rented summer home in Tuscany. Odd things happen, water disappears, and then someone dies. The mother, Molly Partiger, becomes obsesses with getting to the heart of these mysteries, and with meeting her mysterious landlord. It is a particular pleasure to see Mortimer's love of Shakespeare comes through in Molly's Falstaff of a father, and the Hamlet-like play-within-a-play which gives Molly the final clue to the murder. Interwoven with the plot is an homage to Piero della Francesca (although it has been written that Mortimer gets everything wrong about Piero's Flagellation). The book ends with typical Mortimer poigniancy. The book is light in the way that a Tom Stoppard play is light -- an intelligent guilty pleasure.

this book is fantastic. the masterpiece theatre production was awesome too. i would like to buy a copy of the video if anyone has one. this is definitely worth reading - and watching too!

I read this book because I saw the Masterpiece Theatre production on TV in the early nineties and fell in love with the characters and the story. This is the type of detective mystery novel where one can truly relate to the detective as she is an average person with a highly developed sense of curiosity. While I shared Molly's intense curiosity about her absent landlord and her outrage at the so called "water racket", I would not have gone as far as she did to satisfy that curiosity. Molly is rather reckless (if not stupid) towards the end and doesn't realize the consequences of her actions until too late - and even then chalks it up to coincidence. All in all the book is a quick and delightful read that will have you longing to travel to those Tuscan hills. I wish Masterpiece Theatre would rerun the film or make it available on video. You've got to see the film. The cast was so well chosen and the locations are beautiful, especially the terrace on La Felicita.

I am not a Linguist, but this book helped me to appreciate all of the differing theories and various fields within what is known as linguistics. If you are seeking a book that is simple to read, yet very comprehensive, I recommend this volume. If you enjoy languages, speech development, regional dialects, language acquisition, theory of language, language trends, and more - this book is for you.

Major disciplines coverd include: phonetics, morphology, syntax, and semantics. Also included in this new addition are new chapters on second language acquisition and psycholinguistics.

One of the best features of this text is how well it is laid out. It is a pleasure to peruse and even study because of it's logical and user friendly format.

If you love anything about language- whether knowing it's origins, or what part of the mouth is used to create certain sounds, or how language changes over time and for what reasons, or a host of other curiosities, you will certainly enjoy the wealth of information within Contemporary Linguistics!

"Contemporary Linguistics" (CL) is a wonderfully clear and accessible introduction to the field of linguistics. The authors begin by introducing the methodological assumptions that underlie present day Chomskyan linguistics and then reserve a chapter each for almost all major research directions within linguistics.

One thing in particular that I liked about the format of CL was the treatment of more advanced material (marked "Advanced") in each chapter. The "Advanced" sections augment the material in the rest of the chapter and are placed in logical sequence with the rest of the material instead of appearing in an appendix at the end of the chapter. For example, a section marked "advanced" on X' (read X-bar) Theory appears fairly early in the syntax chapter. Having some knowledge of X' Theory allows the reader to proceed to examine the rest of the material with the knowledge that there exists an intermediate level of structure between lexical categories (N, V, ...) and phrasal categories (NP, VP, ...).

Most chapters in CL are pretty well written and technical tools to treat linguistic phenomena are almost always introduced at the correct juncture. However, CL does not treat Innateness properly (why Innateness and arguments for and against Innateness), and has a weak chapter on semantics. The reader would do well to augment the material in CL by reading Pinker's "The Language Instinct" or Jackendoff's "Patterns in the Mind" for a non-technical introduction to some ideas in linguistics, as well as sections of De Swart's "Intro to Natural Language Semantics" to get an idea of how semantics is done. If the reader is interested in looking at language from a cognitive science perspective, she would also do well to read most of Gleitman et al's "An Invitation to Cognitive Science: Language".

All in all, CL provides a relatively painless initiation into linguistics and I highly recommend it.

Speaking as a newcomer to the subject, I found this book to be an excellent intro. Very useful.