This is the book to get if you're into ocean liners! It contains loads of great information about the ocean liners of the past and present, and whets the appetite for more!

I think the "Fifty Famous Liners" series (books 1-3) are the most concise and informational descriptions of the worlds most famous liners a terrific buy for Liner enthusiasts! Andrew Oliva (aoliva@odin.cbu.edu)

"Worth every penny"? You bet...regardless of what the price tag happens to be on this masterpiece by Frank Miller (Sin City, Dark Knight Returns, Robocop 2 & 3) and Geof Darrow (Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot, Another Chance To Get It Right, Hard Looks, Bourbon Thret, conceptual designer for the Matrix Trilogy).
I've got my grubbies on every Geof Darrow item I've been able to find and/or afford...like the portfolio "Le Cite Feu" ("City of Fire") and Comics & Stories (a book of Bourbon Thret stories and pin-ups, etc.), and I've read Miller and Darrow's other collaboration, Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot, but none of these really reaches the impossible standard set by this...thing. The story, which much of the time serves to steer and hold fast the monstrous, unwieldy complexity of Geof's panels, is Miller in his PRIME, the world in which it's set being the same as that of his Martha Washington series, but with the Darrow *bite*.
Because of the intricacy of Geof's style, one page of this is good for hours of enjoyment at a time. One panel for that matter.
It's no bull, pal. This is a treasure.
Buy the book.
For those of you who think you're unfamiliar with Geof Darrow, he designed the Nebuchadnezzar, Sentinels, Subway Shootout sequence (El Fight), Zion, Power Suit, Human Power Plants (the inspiration for which can be seen in Hard Boiled, where surgical robots and assistants for the fantastically obese are powered by babies, soda, and candy bars in pods.) and other key elements of the Matrix Trilogy.
Frank Miller is, of course, known to anyone who reads comics. His Dark Knight Returns is the inspiration for the majority of Batman material that came after it, including the first three movies. It also obviously inspired the first Robocop film, the sequels to which Miller wrote, not to mention that cameo, which blew the Daredevil cameo outta the nuke-lab...uh...I mean water.
His Sin City series, the first in particular, starring Marv, is essential Miller, more so than any of his mainstream work, in my opinion (and includes a certain bespectacled somebody, not Frank, guest-starring as the deranged villain;).

First, a note to the parents and easily offended: This is NOT the book for you, or children younger than 17. It puts the ultra in ultraviolent, and has depictions of nudity and gross consumerism. Buy this for a relative at your own risk. And now,
onward.

You know, when a graphic novel merits a mention in an Andrew Vachss novel, it's quality. It is a very simple noirish tale, set in a an ugly future Amerika. Hopeless urban sprawl, violent crime, gun-toting citzenry. Everyone walks around tattooed with brand-names and eating irradiated cheeseburgers. Corporate masters set killer robots on their competitors, and get away with it. The stuff of crappy cyberpunk, in other words.
What elevates this, however, is the wonderful, fantastically intricate art. "Vibrates like liquid poetry", I believe the Vachss novel said.
And it's true. Everything, from the skin folds of the characters, to the grafitti on the wall in the far background, is fully realized in great detail. I could go on in this vein for a while, but why bother? Buy it. It's worth every penny.

A LAND SO REMOTE

Prior to the holidays, I received a great gift, a copy of the beautifully produced three-volume study A Land So Remote, authored by Larry Frank and Skip Miller, and published by Marianne and Michael O'Shaughnessy of Red Crane Books, Publishers, Santa Fe.
Creation of a successful publication of this magnitude can only be accomplished by many who work in concert, in this case scholar, editor, publisher and, of course, those who are willing to share their treasures with anyone wishing to turn the pages in this landmark study. Frank and Miller have devoted a large percentage of their lives carefully studying and painstakingly handling objects-some of religious importance, powerful images that were the subject of daily devotion, while other objects that served a useful function in the lives of hundreds of thousands attempting to make their lives easier. To the Hispanic, Native American, and the Anglo, these objects were an integral part of daily life-whether as an expression of their spirituality, their intense religious devotion-- or to enable them to perform certain physical tasks-- cutting wood or baking bread.
The authors, in concert with photographer Michael O'Shaughnessy, have treated each object sympathetically, whether it be a santo or bulto, or packsaddle or carreta wheels, with the same level of care, even reverence. The real joy is in seeing so many diverse objects fashioned out of wood and other materials in significant numbers. How often have we had the opportunity of examining page after page of images beautifully organized and described. The authors, of course, treat us to a display of work by lesser known santeros, as well as the most celebrated, notably José Rafael Aragon. Volume two devotes pages 288 to 377 to some of the most powerful religious images by Aragon and his followers that the reader will ever experience.
Since 1974, I have been a frequent visitor to New Mexico and have written a few books on the Anglo painters. After reading Miller's and Frank's essays, I said to myself, "I wish I had written these words. Both scholars write with conviction and authority. They also write in a style I have labeled "an easy read." They have organized their material so that it makes sense. You understand why the objects were created, who created them and importantly, how they were created. Happily, these objects, some still in the churches in Ranchos de Taos, Chimayo, Taos, and chapels throughout the Southwest, others in museums and private collections, have been "gathered" and presented to the reader and viewer in a beautiful and effective manner (I was tempted to use the phrase elegant but refrained).
All reviews of the publication praise A Land So Remote for its visual appeal, handsome photographs," fascinating account of the history and culture of Hispanic New Mexico," scholarship, a major contribution to Hispanic studies. One critic even suggested that, before being placed in a glass case [with other rare books], it might serve as a coffee table book. Never! If anything, it will be a banquet table book, and will be the scene of great feasts-visual and literary. But their words, like mine, fail to express the impact this handsome three-volume study will have on you-the participant. This study will, like the objects that it treats, transcends time. Secure your copy. I can assure you that it will never gather dust (although it will go out-of-print).

Dean A. Porter, Ph. D.
Director Emeritus, The Snite Museum of Art
Professor of Art History
University of Notre Dame

Published by the vaunted Red Crane Books of Santa Fe, New Mexico, this three volume set on religious art and wooden artifacts of New Mexico is a rare, rich visual and intellectual repast. It would be a treasured gift, one to which collectors and aficionados will return time and again.

Larry Frank is remembered for "The New Kingdom of the Saints" (1997), while Skip Miller is curator and director, Taos Historic Museums.

With 842 stunning color photographs and 848 pages A Land so Remote surely holds the most comprehensive and accessible information on this subject. Many of the photos included are of rare objects gleaned from nine museums and a number of private collections. Carefully selected for the part each plays in this artistic corpus, photos are accompanied by concise essays that enhance knowledge while still piquing an interest to know more.

Volumes I and II beautifully present the growth of religious art during a period of over 125 years. It was a time when in order to undergird their faith Spanish settlers turned to santos, visual representations of saints. Thus was born an art form unique to America which once was of great import in churches, communities and homes.. Santos were, if you will, incarnations of the hopes and dreams of these immigrants.

"Rightly understood," author Frank remarks, "santos are a kind of 'liberation theology' written in the language of wood, plaster, and paint, an understanding of Christianity that empowers the poor to free themselves from unjust socioeconomic and cultural structures in the larger world and within themselves.

Volume III centers on wooden objects, such as tools, furniture, toys, and domestic utensils. These objects testify to the influence of the Spanish on the traditions of the indigenous inhabitants of this region.

Photographer Michael O'Shaughnessy described his task as a "...wonderful, often awesome, experience of having such close contact with material that radiates the love and importance that their makers brought to their creation."

Such is the case with readers as they leaf through the pages of these landmark volumes.

- Gail Cooke

Ovid is by far the greatest Roman poet. Certainly, Vergil's work must not be overlooked, with his excellent style and powerful emotion (a favorite scene of mine is the death of Laocoon); however, Ovid surpasses Rome's poet laureate by leaps and bounds: Ovid's dactylic hexameter is ornate and precise, and his poetry contains a daring irreverence that outraged Augustus. Few authors have surpassed the power of Ovid's pen, and his _Metamorphoses_ is his best work.

Although I am not entirely impressed with pedestrian prose translations of poetry, the Lobe edition's side-by-side translation provides the reader an adequate aid to begin to grasp the poet's beauty.

(If one desires to read Ovid's _Metamorphoses_ in English, I highly recommend Rolfe Humprhies's excellent translation.)

The Metamorphoses, of course, is one of, if not the, classical world's greatest mythological treatises. The Loeb edition's convenient format of original Latin text opposite a clear, concise English translation is invaluable for anyone who has ever been interested in Latin, and a wonderful study guide for the Latin scholar. Highly recommended.

Every adult child of a dysfunctional family can read this book, learn from it, and grow in the process. The authors help you realize..... if you every going looking for your hearts desire, one has not to look any further than one's own back yard because if it is not there , then you never really lost it at all......... ENJOY THE JOURNEY!

Compiled and written by architectural expert and writer Jason Miller, Frank Gehry is a truly gorgeous, full-color photographic showcase of Gehry's avant-garde architecture, ranging from the Schnabel Residence in Brentwood, California; to the Nationale-Nederlanden Building in Prague, Czech Republic; to the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington. An impressive coffee-table book offering beautiful, panoramic captures of architectural genius in both form and function, Frank Gehry epitomizes the life and work of its title architect largely through image accompanied by brief captions, backgrounded with a few short essays enhancing the majesty of the structures themselves. Frank Gehry is a welcome and highly recommended addition to professional, academic, and community library Architectural Studies reference collections.

There's a story told about a Buddhist monk who could look into your eyes and see your grandmother's soul. The collaboration between author Howard Frank Mosher and photographer John M. Miller, called "Granite & Cedar: The People and the Land of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom" gives the common reader a chance for a similar view. This remarkable book gives a profound opportunity to see into and beyond the familiar of "home."
"Granite & Cedar" is set in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom; the black and white photographs (most taken between 1971 and 1976) represent a simpler time when the region was a world unto itself. Then the Interstate rolled through, and it was suddenly easier to have second homes here. Long-time residents could come and go with ease, and the world of the Northeast Kingdom changed. Patterns of life shifted, and familiar traditions suddenly reappeared as people, places and ways that were different.
Mosher's haunting story of Aunt Jane Hubbell weaves through the photographs like hand washed thread turning into fine lace. The story opens in 1965 as the plans for the Interstate are introduced. Aunt Jane has fierce stubbornness and loyalty to family, both living and dead. Will she stand up to the engineers at the public hearing for the highway, or will she back down in deference to her 78 years and ancestors lying at rest? How will she be remembered?
We see the time-worn buildings standing tall beside symbols of an emerging era of rapid obsolescence; we see wool jackets and spruce boards holding their ground to synthetic fleece and vinyl siding; we see men and women whose lives and ways are somehow very familiar although today - they are gone.
We see into a place and time well used by those who lived off the land and were shaped by it and who like Aunt Jane were, above all, practical. Mosher and Miller have unwrapped the gift we thought unique to the legendary monk.
For those with connections to the Northeast Kingdom "Granite & Cedar" will be tenderly familiar. And yet strictly regional, this book is not. For those who only know Vermont's fringe from a distance, the connection to home will prevail.
"Granite & Cedar" is Mosher and Miller at their best.

i love spider-man .i like dd .team them up wow! thats all i can say about.well not all it has the best spidey&dd team-ups there is old ones like from amazing spider-man 15 i think, or Daredevil 17 & 18 and more. i say buy it you will love if you like spider-man

Don't let the title mislead, discourage or intimidate you: the interest and importance of Felicia Miller Frank's The Mechanical Song: Women, Voice, and the Artificial in Nineteenth-Century French Narrative (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995) lies not merely in its brilliant revivication of negelcted works by Balzac, du Maurier, Nerval, Sand and Villiers de L'Isle-Adam. Given the fetishization of the female voice in the age of electronic reproduction, Miller Frank's archaeology of the modernist confluence (Baudelaire being the crucial figure) of the feminine and the artificial, of the inhuman and the sublime, and the encoding of the female voice as a carrier thereof is as relevant to fans of such "ethereal," "angelic" pop divas as Julee Cruise and Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser as it is to scholars of, say, Villiers' L'Eve future (see Marie Lathers' The Aesthetics of Artificialty for a discussion influenced by Miller Frank). Perfectly complemented by Michel Poizat's The Angel's Cry: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Opera (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1992); Kaja Silverman's The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1988); and the collection of essays, Embodied Voices: Representing Female Vocality in Western Culture, edited by Nancy Jones and Leslie Dunn (New York: Cambridge UP, 1997). The recent, long-overdue English translation of Michel Chion's La Voix au cinema (The Voice in Cinema (NY: Columbia UP, 1999)) upon which most recent critical work on vocality draws is a bonus; now if only The University of Illinois Press would reprint their too-long-unavailable translation of Villiers' Tomorrow's Eve ...

This is a wonderfully illustrated book and a must-have for those who enjoy movie poster art. The full-color reproductions are a joy to browse. Highly recommended!!!!