I purchased 4 copies back in August during a trip to New York. Great book. I didn't know until recently you could buy it on line here at Amazon (You should promote it more!). Am planning to purchase 2 copies this time around (One copy for myself this time!). Great work, Pierre. When will we see some other states... maybe Washington?

Welcome to New York City is a great coloring book for children and adults to share time and creativity together. I ordered it for my nephew and niece over the holidays, and with them living outside of New York, I was able to sit down and spend time with them as they colored the fine landmarks of this city and asked questions about the city I live in.

I brought 5 copies about 3 years ago. Gave them to friends. They loved it. I just decided to purchased 2 copies this time around. With the events of September 11th, I wanted a nice reminder of New York City. I highly recommend this book. The images are really well drawn. And as an adult it gave me an excuse to buy some crayons.

Out of left field, from the editors of The Collected Letters of George Gissing, comes a refeshing new view of Gissing--plus some charming turn-of-century Americana. The oddly successful combinaton comes about in this way. When the English novelist, desperate to escape for a time from his miserable marriage, visited Italy in 1897-98, he met there a 20-year old American traveller named Brian Boru Dunne. The precocious young man, who would later become a journalist in Santa Fe, New Mexico, kept a diary of their conversations over several months, recording Gissing's opinions on literature, modern and ancient Rome, and everything else that interested them. Years later, he wrote p some of his notes. The diary is lost, but the editors have used Dunne's surviving materials to create a fascinating portrait that shows us a more unbuttoned and humorous Gissing than we knew. Because Dunne is worthy of interest in himself, they have seen fit to include some other pieces: William Jennings Bryan's unconsciously hilarious rules for oratory; Cardinal Gibons' recipe for longevity; and an interview with Mark Twain written by Twain himself. Their 40-page introduction to Dunne and Gissing is unexpectedly fascinating. The voluminous footnotes explain so much, and in such style, that they are an integral part of the reading experience. This beautifully produced, amusing, and illuminating miscellany should attract all Gissing readers, and they will be rewarded by more than they bargained for.

As a long-time student of George Gissing's work and one of his first biographers, I was delighted to read this vivid and perceptive first-hand account of his activities and opinions. Few people who knew Gissing personally have left memoirs of him, and Dunne's is certainly the fullest up-close portrait that we have. He describes Gissing's writing and eating habits, his attention to clothes, his reactions to Italy and his people, and his opinions of other writers, and all this helps to clarify the novelist's character. I especially appreciated the excellent informative notes, which provided much needed background, and brought Dunne himself forward as an interesting and significant figure.

I stumbled onto George Gissing two years ago through his travel classic "By The Ionian Sea: Notes on a Ramble Through Southern Italy." I had not read much late-Victorian writing, except for brief forays into Thomas Hardy. Now I have found a new champion -- George Gissing -- and am discovering that post-industrial era through his works. In this process, I discovered Dunne's delightful memoir and was drawn to it because it recalled a time in Gissing's life when he seem most happiest: his 1897-1898 tour of Southern Italy, the setting for "By the Ionian Sea." Dunne's memoir -- wonderfully edited to fully explain all references, from obvious to obscure -- can be read on more than one level. First, it gives a vivid recounting, through an innocent young journalist's eyes that miss little, of a golden three or four months or so in Rome, hobnobbing with Gissing and two other Victorian writers, H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle. It also can be seen as "a work in progress" where the reader can examine how Dunne, by now in middle age and an accomplished writer in his own right, moved from diary through drafts of memoirs. And particularly important for the Gissing enthusiast is the introduction, which puts the era in perspective and paints a vivid picture of the players in Dunne's Roman holiday.

Not a lot of explanations but lots and lots of exercises I am a violin teacher and I sugest the book to all my students... but most things in the book still need explanations, Very good exercise book if nothing else. Fingering has changed from the time the book was originaly written, but still a very usefull book if you would like to use the fingering and style that players in Beethoven's time used. I sugest the book to all beginners and advanced players.

As an adult beginner, "The Art" gives me everything I need to complement my lessons - answers to basic questions of theory and technique, progressive exercises, technical principles illustrated by hundreds of phrases from the masters. And scales, scales, scales. Especially nice are the complete two-part scales of Cherubini.

This is one of the great string-playing books. Please buy it and read it---you will not be disappointed.

We live in an age when "art" has become horrifically bloated. Every major movie is three hours long, even the insipid Summer blockbusters. Authors from Don DeLillo to Tom Clancy crank out enormous doorstop-like novels of 700 to 1,000 pages. The artist Cristo doesn't just paint pictures, he wraps entire islands in pink cellophane. It is as if artists had lost confidence in their capacity to say anything meaningful and so they opt instead to try to bury us in pure volume. Heck, Bill Clinton's State of the Union message this year--a message which until modern times President's were content to simply write out and send up to the Hill--resembled a Fidel Castro harangue, lasting over an hour and a half. Apparently, if you're not sure about the quality, make up for it with quantity.

The results have been predictably uneven--on the one hand, the perfectly adequate 1934 comedy Death Takes a Holiday, which ran under 80 minutes, was recently turned into the interminable vanity project, Meet Joe Black. But on the other hand, Tom Wolfe's terrific A Man in Full (see Orrin's review) actually had one of the best set pieces he's ever written, Ambush at Fort Bragg (see Orrin's review), excised from the final novel. It seem that, just as we would expect, the sheer size of these projects bears no relation to the quality of the finished product. It is still the case that great writers and directors can produce outstanding longer works, but mediocre artists can not salvage their's, no matter how they inflate them.

All of which brings us to Bridge on the River Kwai. I'm sure that everyone is familiar with the story from David Lean's 1957 masterpiece, starring Alec Guiness, William Holden, Jack Hawkins and Sessue Hayakawa. Lean was the undisputed master of the movie epic--with films like River Kwai, Doctor Zhivago, Passage to India and Lawrence of Arabia to his credit--and his film version of Boulle's novel is a mammoth, 2 1/2 hour, panorama. It is unquestionably one of the greatest movies ever made.

Boulle's original, while every bit as great, is a spare, economical novel, which compacts vexing moral questions and ethical confrontations into a small but powerful package. It stands as sort of a demonstration that artists who actually have something to say need not resort to gigantism. The only major element that differs from the movie is that Lean needed an American actor for promotional purposes, so the whole scenario with William Holden escaping the camp and then returning with the demolition crew was added. All of the moral quandaries that make the story so memorable and timeless remain, despite the brevity of the book.

In fact, some of the themes emerge more forcefully. Pierre Boulle was himself captured, imprisoned, set to forced labor and then escaped from such a camp in Malaysia and one of the strongest undercurrents in the book is the author's obvious contempt for the Japanese. This is in many ways one of the most racist (I mean that in a non pejorative sense, if such a thing is possible any longer) stories ever told. The underlying assumption is that the two colonial powers find these places in a state of primitive savagery. The Japanese merely seek to exploit them for their own purposes and do so in an accordingly slipshod way. The British, meanwhile, attempt to bring the highest standards of civilization to bear and try to reengineer the wilderness so that it will stand as an eternal monument to British values. Boulle uses the construction of the bridge to demonstrate that the Japanese are brutal incompetents and that the British, while they are the world's master builders (both of engineering marvels and of civilizations), are so warped by their own rigid codes of duty and honor that they are blinded to ultimate issues of the propriety of their actions.

I must have read this book or seen the movie dozens of times since I was a kid. One of the really remarkable things about the story is how different facets stand out each time, or is it just that at different ages or in different social circumstances certain themes seem more important than at others. When you're a callow youth, the whole thing is just a bang up military adventure. In the late 60's and early 70's the point of the story seemed to many to be simply anti-war--"Madness! Madness!" as Clipton says. Today, I read it and see a Frenchman dissing the Japanese and the British. That Boulle achieves this kaleidoscopic effect with such brevity is a remarkable accomplishment and should serve as a reminder to all that increased size is no substitute for substantial ideas.

GRADE: A+

I think this is one of the best books you can ever read. It is decriptive and exciting. A sure prize if you can get one. The story being set in Thailand (formerly Siam) is wonderful because it sets the scene for many of the dramatic events. It is my absolute favorite book, and anyone who gets the chance should read it.

Havent seen the movie for awhile, but have a question about it? Was the movie taken place in Africa and if so, where was the river Kwai? Is it in Kenya? Thanks for the help.

Neat, petite, and powerful. This artist friendly book is imbued with good feeling. Buy it. Buy it for a friend and they'll know you love them.

This book is not only a great quick read but it's a very much needed kick in the pants for all of us repressed artist. Bennu pulls no punches and lays it down. It's not what you say but what you do, what you produce, what you create.

Bennu is also a film maker and one of his shorts can viewed in the film section of artprotein.com an underground artist community online.

Everyone should read this book! I would very much recommend it.

Bennu gets it. And this book, as he warns in the beginning, is lean and mean -- if you're used to filling up your reading time with fluff, then get a magazine as a companion, because the author gets right to the point. And this is really the message of the book, get to the point in your life.

The writing style, the format, and the form are all perfect metaphors for the message, and once you've had a read, you'll get it too. The best thing about it, is that not only does it ring truth, but it's easy to see that Bennu wants to share honesty with you, and if you're open to be honest with yourself, then this book will reach you instantly, and you'll find yourself getting right to the point of your own life.

This book gives readers a unique view into the work and mind of Joel-Peter Witkin. Not only does it provide us with a good sampling of his own thought-provoking imagery, but also with visual references of the works that have influenced his photographs. In addition, Witkin gives us, in his own words, written insight, a personal interpretation of some of the images he has created. It is put together nicely with the text preceeding the photographs so that the photos occupy seperate pages. In this way the text enhances the viewing rather than interrupts it.
Highly recommended.

A book that will satisfy both the avid fans of Joel Peter Witkin's art and newcomers to this modern genius' output. We earn more about influence and process than we ever thought we would know. This beautifully presented volume is both an homage to Witkin's mentors and a celebration of his gifts as Master of the Bizarre. A fine addition to the volumes on Witkin and to the library of Fine Art Photography in general.

This book offers a key to Joel-Peter Witkin's art missing from previously publications featuring his work. His choice of 'ancestors' for his own work is enlightening, fascinating, stimulating and often startling. Anyone interested in photographic history and photographic purposes can learn from this book. An additional bonus is that it is beautifully designed and produced.

If I could have one cookbook back after our house burned down, this would be it. The Melon Moons recipe was our all time favorite pickle. We used most of the cherry recipes to preserve the abundance from our trees. The unique and exquisite recipes and precise directions make this the best book on canning, preserving, as well as endless other condiments, pate`s and wonderful things for the pantry that ever existed.

This is an absolutely terrific book for Christmas-time cooking. A fruitcake recipe that makes fruitcake-haters ask for seconds, plus beautiful and delicious nibbles and sauces. Unusual items that are fun to make and make great gifts too.

I figure if I find one really outstanding recipe in a book it has paid for itself. This book, and the revised Good Stuff, has recipe after recipe that are really flavorful and preserved safely. Many preserving books from the US and abroad do not follow approved methods, or have no preserving directions. Helen Witty does. The Red Pepper Jam-with red bell peppers and jalapenos is stellar. I make cases of it every year. There's such a variety and number of recipes; you can use it for years.

For some reason, Fantomas never figures in the genealogy of the detective story, where Borges, with his 1942 story 'Death and the compass'is credited with completely reversing the traditional elements of detective fiction (crime,investigation,solution, resolution), to create a new post-modern genre, 'anti-detective fiction', followed by Nabakov, Pynchon etc,which is characterised by a lack of or a compromised resolution, an unknowable world (Holmes, Poirot etc. always knew the world they operated in), and a hugely fallible detective who is unable to control the plot, and is usually destroyed by his own detection. Fantomas does all this 30 years earlier. In the first book, we don't even know who Fantomas is - there is enough textual evidence to suggest that he is not Etienne Rambert-Gurn, that we can never know who he is. We have only Juve's word for it, and he is constantly admitting that this may be a figment of his imagination. The form itself is also revolutionary - instead of following a single narrative to its resolution, the narrative is continually splintering, with different stories on the go at once. Juve manages to connect them all to Fantomas, but to accept this is to ignore the special contrapuntal magic of the text, which through repitition, doubling, mirroring, achieves a terrifying loss of control on the part of the reader, who is frequently in the dark as to which character is which. Even if Gurn is Fantomas, the ending is hardly the cosy resolution of Agatha Christie, say. An innocent man is executed, and a homicidal lunatic is on the loose. The predominant motif of the novel is of the theatre, acting, inventing a role - the result being a comprehensive deconstruction of any simplistic, holistic notions of identity, and therefore, perhaps, offering a more liberating way of looking at the world, one which does not depend on repressive dichotomies, such as good and evil. This novel, despite being indifferently written, is a masterpiece, which proves the superior power of the unconscious over the conscious artist.

Who is Fantomas? The Lord of Terror, Emperor of Crime, Genius of Evil. That is to say, a middle-aged businessman, a masked black-tie and tuxedo burglar, an English footsoldier from the Boer wars. In this, the first of 32 sensational crime novels, Fantomas decapitates a marquise, stuffs the corpse of an English lord into a trunk and has an affair with his wife, fleeces a Russian princess, drowns all the passengers on an oceanliner to get rid of an alias, and throws the butler from a speeding train. And he gets away with it all, despite relentless pursuit by the righteous, obsessive, and paranoid Inspector Juve. Unfortunately for you, late 20th-century English reader, Morrow/Ballantine only reissued two novels, both out of print. Curses! I tell you, Fantomas is alive! "His boundless shadow extends / Over Paris and all coasts / What then is this gray-eyed ghost / Whose silence surges within? / Might it be you, Fantomas / Lurking upon the rooftops?" --Robert Desnos, "La Complainte de Fantomas"

The English have their Master Detectives. But the French have Fantomas - Master Criminal! Nowhere in English or American crime novels is there a villain as scary, or as omnipotent as Fantomas. If you're ready for crime novels where the bad guy always wins -- get Fantomas!

The adventures of Fantomas and his 'squeeze', Lady Beltham, were a sensation in France during the first part of the 20th Century. Even though they were just dime novels, great poets like Appollinaire (founder of the "Friends of Fantomas Society"),and artists like Magritte and Juan Gris worshipped this Genius of Crime. These novels, (especially the first one), are intoxicating, gruesome, and permeated with the atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Paris.

Readers of English mysteries might find the plots a bit airy at times, but there are moments of sublime surreal transcendance in each one, that simply cannot be found anywhere else.

One episode finds detective Juve, (Fantomas' nemesis), spying through a looking glass into an apartment he suspects has been visited by Fantomas. (This was Forty years before "Rear Window").

Through his looking glass, he is baffled to observe the lady who lives there, apparently recoiling in horror at her middle-class living room furniture, and leaping to her death onto a Parisian boulevard.(Juve through his telescope, could not see the Boa Constrictor which Fantomas had placed in the room.)

Bad guys dressed as gendarmes, good guys posing as criminals. With each new character, one wonders, "Is this Fantomas, or is it Juve"? And "Where is Lady Beltham"? Everyone is a master of disguise. Nothing is certain -- except that the genius of crime, with his sweet, beautiful English Aristocratic Lady will ultimately triumph in the end.

This book fairly lept at me from the shelf. I wasn't particularly looking for it, but I found it nonetheless. For a former Ayn Rand afficianado & neo-Objectivist, the very title ought to have been anathema. However, it was a greater sense of peace that I was after, and to some extent, this book is helpful at understanding one's true relation to God, particularly in terms of recognizing and submitting to His will.

I had previously attempted Kempis' "The Imitation Of Christ", and found that it was difficult to disassociate from the intended audience of that book (cloistered religious). I'll try to review it in the near future. In any case, my experience with Thomas a Kempis made me a little gun-shy with regard to spiritual primers intended for religious communities. One of the challenges of "Self-abandonment" is the extent of its direct communication between the author (as spiritual director) and the nuns with whom he communicates. Nevertheless, the more generalized introductory sections overcome this difficulty.

I happened to be in the midst of "Self-abandonment" at the time of my grandmother's death. I must say that in retrospect I could not have found a better companion for those days. de Caussade does an excellent job at communicating the spiritual benefits of acceptance, duty, and forgiveness. It ought to be the goal of every Christian to make each day, and each moment of each day a paean to the Lord - seeing His will in all things - even small things and most particularly in painful things is a crucial step toward living a truly Christian life.

Finally, I don't know whether to call this book "life changing," as I believe that one must already be at a certain level of acceptance prior to realizing benefits from the approach that de Caussade recommends. Nonetheless, it is a useful and helpful aid to the continuing trauma of living in the world but not of the world.

This is an amazing 18th century classic divided into 2 parts and giving the method espoused by de Caussade for attaining great holiness. Written for all no matter how advanced spiritually. The author believes that God hides behind the simplest of daily activities and can be found through total surrender to whatever His will is for the individual. Therefore, self-abandonment is the key to spiritual development An outstanding spiritual tool, revealing new insights with each reading. A must for any serious Catholic. 230pp. PB. Imprimatur.

God's omnipresence is taken for granted by all Christians. But it is so easy to assume this applies merely to the physical and material world. If He is omnipresent in a physical sense, then He must also be present in every circumstance we experience our lives, no matter how small. Thus, we can experience God just by yielding to what life brings. DeCaussade, in this beautiful book (I am in my third reading), has introduced me to this "new" way of experiencing God: I now "see" Him everywhere. This view of God brings great comfort and assurance. I find myself struggling less with life, accepting things that I would once have found distasteful, and discovering many new blessings from God. If you long for a more settled life you will gain much from this book.

I think that the non-religious who reads the things that Therese said and did with her sisters in community at the Lisieux Carmel may occasionally be intimidated. I know I am from time to time. Sometimes I am even confused, for there are some pieces of advice and counsel that would not do for a secular woman such as myself. But I thoroughly enjoyed this work, and the translation was superb. Through the compilation of the reminiscences, I was able to better see what it might have been like to follow Therese around, listen to her, go to her in tears, question my vocation. I am grateful for this glimpse and I believe I have a better understanding of the way Therese taught. Thanks for reading.

This is a lovely book giving us yet more details about the daily life of Therese and those with whom she lived. Her teaching of the novices is an inspiration to all of us, even though, obviously, their situation in life (nuns in 19th century France vs. lay folks in 21st century) is quite different from ours. I loved this little book.

The appearance of this book in English is a gift to all of Therese's English-speaking friends. Marie of the Trinity tells many stories about Therese not recorded elsewhere, and the study of her relationship with Therese is itself endlessly fascinating. Insights into daily life at Lisieux Carmel; interesting account of life at Carmel from 1897-1944. Read about the dream Therese had about 1896 which she confided to Marie of the Trinity; she dreamt of a celebration for her in a field, like a cemetery, yet festive, and told Marie that sooner or later they would find out what the dream meant. In March 1923, the solemn translation of Therese's relics from Lisieux cemetery to the Carmel took place, and Marie realized the dream had foreshadowed that event, in which 50,000 pilgrims followed the body of Sister Therese in its return to Carmel. It is easy to see why the testimony of Marie of the Trinity was important at the Process. Enjoy.