Ted Sturgeon was a nudist, a wild man, a tortured soul who reinvented himself and turned around to help the rest of us reinvent ourselves. It's a pleasure to watch his mind work, and a pleasure to see his stories still running wild and free without him. But his stories may upset you and make you wonder about things you've always taken for granted. His were the real dangerous visions, and his tears are mixed into his work. Reading Sturgeon is like grabbing a live wire, except being shocked never made me bellow with laughter.

Baby Is Three is the wonderful sixth volume in the Sturgeon collection. The collection is organized chronologically by story creation date. Having read and enjoyed the first five volumes, it was hard for me to imagine that I could possibly like Baby Is Three even better. But I did! Sturgeon's writing shows an impressive maturity of idea and flow in this volume, and Paul Williams' story notes kept me flipping to the back of the book to read about what was happening in Sturgeon's life at the time he penned each story. As a psychologist who is also a science-fiction fan, I enjoyed the intra- and interpersonal dynamics within each story, as well as the opportunity to understand and deconstruct the context in which Sturgeon wrote the stories, as offered by Williams' story notes. A bonus: two of Sturgeon's own short, autobiographical pieces are included at the end. For those who love science fiction that is thoughtful, playful, and psychologically based, Baby Is Three is a must-read. And for those who have read Sturgeon's well-known More Than Human, Baby Is Three will add to your understanding and appreciation of that tale, as well.

On one hand the notes and comments are very useful for novice readers lacking the historical context as well as the cultural aspects of the writing of the Bodhicaryavatara. On the other hand, placing comments before each chapter makes the book more analytical, and this impacts on the depth and beauty of the verses of the Bodhicaryavatara itself. It is probably a good idea to read it once for understanding the why's and who's and then go back through it without reading the comments at all.

Since it has been written after or partly at the same time as the Siksa Samuccaya, interested readers should also get the Siksa Samuccaya and read both books. It is also probably easier to first read this book and only after having been taught the context of the "story" go to the Siksa Samuccaya which is difficult to understand without a consequent knowledge of the Buddhist culture.

Anyway, this is a high quality translation as well as a very good commented version of the Bodhicaryavatara. Recommended for all types of readers, novice as well as more advanced in the Buddhist thought.

If you really want to understand the Bodhicaryavatara this is one of the best books you can get.

The translators have captured the poetry of the original, without losing the meaning. This text has all the beauty and power of the Matics translation, but encompasses the logic and clarity of Bachelor's. The text itself is the sublime essence of the Dharma and simply by reading it carefully one can be transformed and transported to higher states of consciousness. The translators provide a host of helpful and informative notes to the text. These are essential to the modern reader because they elucidate the context within which the 8th century text was delivered - which was in the thriving Buddhist milieu of the great monastic university of Nalanda at it's height. One of the most important books ever written in the east or west.

"The Color of Nature" is a very good book. The photography is wonderful, and there is nice text to go along with it.

Paul Dogerty makes learning the "whys" and "hows" of colors fun. He presents the scientific principles of how we see what we see in an easy-to-grasp manner that is both interesting and comprehensible. In addition, the photographs that accompany the text, which alone are worth the price of the book, serve to admirably highlight the processes Dogerty seeks verbally to illustrate. Together, art and words combine to emphasize the wonder and beauty of the world in which we live

Paul Williams is one of originators of serious writing about the whole rock music scene. This is a great collection of his early pieces from the original Crawdaddy magazine, which was his brainchild. In addition, check out his other writings. He remains an enthusiastic observer/participant of music and pop culture.

Excerpts and recollections from the first 19 issues (February 1966-October 1968) of Crawdaddy!, the first magazine of serious rock music coverage and criticism. This was the period when rock & roll was transforming into rock, when new groups and sounds were a weekly happening, and the rock album was asserting its place in the market. It is fascinating to read the articles, reviews, and interviews by some of rock music's future premier writers such as editor/publisher Paul Williams, Jon Landau, Richard Meltzer, and Ed Ward, and to relive the history of the music in the reprinted news items and record release notices. Fans of rock history and pop music journalism will enjoy this long-overdue celebration of the orgin of the form.

I'm shocked these books are out of print. I totally enjoyed them and I think I read every one. This book especially was practically prophetic from the standpoint of what the military is currently working on. Consider the year written, and it is quite remarkable.

I would highly recommend this book for young kids interested in imaginative inventions. "Creative inventors", so to speak.

Danny, loooooooong preceeding "Neuromancer", dons a helmet and gloves which give him sensations from an outside source--in this case, a mechanical dragonfly. He uses this technology to his own ends, of course. Prescient sci-fi from the team of Williams and Abraskin.

Review in the Maine Antique Digest, January, 2000:

"...an interesting and in depth look at Dassonville's life and work in a well-researched essay."

"...beautifully produced book...." 48 color duotone plates printed at 200 line screen on coated paper.

Review in the newsletter of The Friends of Photography:

"This important new monograph reveals the life and work of 20th century pictorialist William Dassonville. The artist's exquisite style is only now beginning to be understood and appreciated, nearly fifty years after his death."

This book gives us what paul Valery thinks, and what he thinks is the forgotten basis of many thoughts

This book contains some of the most inspiring prose written in this century, in a truly incomparable translation. it doesn't get much better than this. READ IT

An amazing book full of superior examples of penmanship, fine mark making through to highly skilled illustrative works. If you are not a reader who likes wading through text, the examples themselves stand alone for their sheer beauty and skill - excellent as exemplars to improve your own lettering works, or just to open your eyes to the broad variety of styles, skills and individuality of the best known penman of the era. I study the examples regularly and recommend this book to my own students as an excellent reference work.

While the graphics inspire and educate on the quality one desires to achieve, the well constructed text in the book transports us back to an era when lettering was a part of everyday life - where schools in penmanship taught learners in a rigorous and hectic schedule with drills and practice and more practice - lives so dedicated to their artform that we can only imagine what it was like today.

This book will delightfully inform and educate you about this wonderful time in American calligraphy through the carefully woven stories of the lives of these Master Penman. It fills a gap with information and samples that had previously only been available to those who spend a lifetime studying the history of penmanship.

A book to be in every calligraphers and historians library (and even those who just love a delightful read out of interest) and well worth the cost - even with the poor exchange rate in Australia! Don't miss it!

As someone who takes both the art and history of American calligraphy very serious I was speechless when I first saw this book! In fact, the importance of this book in helping to document a portion of the rich, but almost forgotten, calligraphic heritage of the United States cannot be overstated. 'An Elegant Hand' represents this history from the perspective of one of the great Master Penman of the past, WC Henning. Henning was intimately involved with masters such Louis Madarasz, AN Palmer, WE Dennis and FB Courtney. All of whom are represented in the book as well as many others. The book is a delightful read and very accessible to even the novice calligrapher/pen art enthusiast. Furthermore, it is literally jam packed with art containing specimen after specimen from past masters that will serve as a source of study for calligraphers of any level. I consider it a MUST HAVE for anyone interested in calligraphy.

This book, based on a series of talks given at the New York Library, biographers Robert Caro, David McCullough, Paul C. Nagel, Richard B. Sewall, Ronald Steel and Jean Strouse explain how and why they went about writing biographies in the way that they did.

Each biographer explains well how the life of the biographer becomes intertwined with that of the person they are researching. In each case, they stress that biography writing is both intense and time-consuming.

Lyndon B. Johnson biographer, Robert Caro, recommends Francis Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe" for two reasons. One, to show that the job of the historian is to try to write at the same level as the greatest novelists. Second, that the duty of the historian is to go to the locales of the events that will be described, and not to leave, no matter how long it takes...until the writer has done his or her best to understand the locales and their cultures and their people.

In the end, it means that the biographer must not only understand the person, but also needs to intimately know the area where the person grew up and lived.

This book gives its readers new insights into the lives of some of this nation's most prominent figures, through the eyes of six well-known biographers. In "The Unexpected Harry Truman," David McCullough shows the life of Truman through new eyes. McCullough stresses that a biographer must genuinely care about his [or her] subject because you are living with that person every single day. The process is like that of choosing a spouse or roommate, therefore, the subjects that he chooses must have a degree of animal, human vitality. In Truman, he said, as with Theodore Roosevelt, he found no shortage of vitality.

McCullough created a detailed chronology, almost a diary of what Truman was doing from year to year, even day to day if the events were important enough. He also used primary sources, such as personal diaries, letters and documents from the time period. Truman poured himself out on paper and provided a large, wonderfully written base of writing for McCullough to sort through and "find" the man.

McCullough says that the magic of writing comes from not knowing where you are headed, what you are going to wind up feeling and what you are going to decide.

Richard Sewell's "In Search of Emily Dickinson," research process took twenty years and he says, "In the beginning I didn't go searching for her, she went searching for me." The process took him two sabbaticals, years of correspondence and meetings with Mabel Loomis Todd's daughter Millicent Todd Bingham to uncover the whole truth.

Paul Nagel's "The Adams Women," gives readers a sense of how important the women in the Adam's family were. Nagel said that contemplating the development of ideology is good training for a biographer. After all, he said, the intellectual historian takes an idea and brings it to life. For Nagel, working with ideas establishes a bridge into the mind and life of the people who had the ideas he studies.

Nagel said that he likes and admires women and this is why, after writing about the Adams' men, he wrote about the Adams' women. Nagel also said that he has learned and taught his students that our grasp of history must always remain incomplete.

Ronald Steel said, that the hardest job a biographer has is not to judge his or her subject, however, most fail to keep their judgements out of the biography.

In Jean Strouse's, "The Real Reasons," she explains that the modern biography examines how character affects and is affected by social circumstance. Biography also tells the reader a great deal about history and gives them a wonderful story.

In writing about Alice James, Strouse found that there was not an interesting plot line to her life other than that her brothers were writers Henry and William James.

Strouse, when asked by another writer about the descendents of the three James' children, she said that William's great-grandson in Massachusetts, tired of being asked whether he was related to Henry or William, moved to Colorado where he was asked whether he was related to Jesse or Frank. Strouse reported that he stayed in Colorado.

Strouse realized that in order to tell the story of the James' family, she was going to have to use her own voice to give life to the family, especially Alice. This is not recommended for all biographies, but in a case such as hers, it needs that biographer's voice to connect all the information for the reader.

In Robert Caro's, "Lyndon Johnson and the Roots of Power," he talked to the people who knew Johnson to get a sense of the former President from Texas and what made him worthy of a new biography. He wrote the biography to illuminate readers to the time period and what shaped the time, especially politically.

This book will help writers understand the steps he or she will need to take to write a biography. It shows the difficult research processes and makes the reader want to either write a biography about an interesting person or never want to write again. Either way, this book provides new insights that one may have never thought about before. I recommend this book to both beginning and seasoned writers

The Quilts of Gee;s Bend is much more than a beautiful coffee table book. It is that, too, of course. The book is filled with social history of this small place near Selma, Alabama. I've been lucky enough to visit Gee's Bend and see the quilt-making process. The Whitney Museum exhibit must have been wonderful. Sunday Morning on CBS did a story on the exhibit. The quilters traveled to New York for the opening and entertained the guests with their singing. That's what Gee's Bend is like: A rich yet poor stop on the road where women made the best of what they had and turned out great art in the process.

I have seen the exhibition of the Gee's Bend quilts at the Whitney museum three times. The quilts of Gee's Bend are simple, graphic, and stunning. Although I own the smaller of the Gee's Bend quilt books and the video about the quiltmakers, I find that I want to know and see much more. I have thumbed through this book at the museum and am delighted that it is full of lush photographs of so many more quilts. At the top of my holiday list of things I must have, is this, the larger of the Gee's Bend quilt books.