This is a technical (physics) presentation of a possible interpretation of the esoteric work Occult Chemistry. It present a host of intriguing concepts that can be used in your own interpretation. The author also presents much material collected for his doctoral disertation. While I recommend this book strongly I have some personal differences in interpretation. Contact me for more information :)

A Secret Location on the Lower East side is an excellent overview of independent publishing from 1960 - 1980. It focuses primarily on the mimeograph revolution and is particularly inspiring for those who wish to become independent publishers. However, this book should also be of interest to readers who are interested in the Beat Generation and the poets and writers who were inspired by the Beats.

The book contains an introduction by Jerome Rothenberg, and the majority of the book consists of burbs describing the individual small presses. As a result, the book combines the best aspects of a coffee table book (accessibilty and short pieces) and solid journalism.

Though the price may be a little high, it is a worthwhile investment for writers, publishers, and anyone interested in the literary movements the second half of the 20th century.

Graphic novels, like comics, have to stand on the three legs of story, writing, and art. If any leg fails, the book fails. I found the story to be great and the writing to be above average. I found the photography to be lacking, though. It is not for a lack ot technique, as one look at the cover image demonstrates (it is actually what drew me to the book--stunning). What bothered me about many of the pictures is the posing of the models. The models come off, well, posed. So much so that they look like mannequins when they should be expressing movement or emotion. Whether this is the fault of the models or the photographer I can't say but the responsibility ultimately lies with the photographer. It detracts from the work as a whole and keeps the book from being completely satisfying.

"In The Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe" is a superb graphic novel, certainly unique in its style. The photographic art is a great concept and it works very well with this "real" story of Edgar Poe. Unfortunately, as an avid scholar of Poe, I still cringe when reading this story, which is great despite its inaccuracies.

First and foremost, the perverted love triangle between Edgar, his wife Virginia, and aunt "Muddy" was a rumor created in passing after Poe's death by his sort of arch-nemesis Rufus Griswold, and there has never been any record to prove it as truth. Additionally, the story continues a variety of false truths of Edgar's life, including his moody character. Readers should be aware that an artist's work is not necessarily a reflection of the artist's life. If that were the case, perhaps it is Jonathon Scott Fuqua, and not Poe, that is plagued by demons.

Overall, this is a great read with a highly innovative art style. Just don't use it as source material for your studies of Poe.

I am new to the world of the graphic novel, but if "In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe" is the standard, I want more. After their strong debut with "I, Paparazzi," the trio-con-brio of Parke-Fuqua-Phillips have realized their potential with this offering. Although it will predictably irritate Poe purists, it shouldn't - because this is just the type of informed speculation that even has a chance of plumbing the source of Poe's sort of mad genius. In the end, the question of Poe's literal demons is left open to debate - a masterstroke, given the ever-enigmatic Poe's legend.
The display of individual talent here is alone worth the cost of the book: Phillips photos are beautifully composed and lit.
Fuqua's writing is altogether spooky as he seems to channel the master himself. When Fuqua/Poe writes, "I laid bare the inner-world of haunted men, of people seeking revenge, of those doomed to die lonely," it's as if Poe is in the room with you. Steve Parke, whom I've been privileged to watch illustrate and photo-restore my own books, is at his apogee this time. Not only is every frame turned into a piece of art, but his casting of Damon Norko as Poe is inspired. If someone doesn't license some of his panels from Poe for posters I'll be shocked. As Joe Bob Briggs would say, "Check it out."

After reading (and loving) Pat McGreal's previous Vertigo/DC work- Chiaroscuro: The lives of Leonardo Da Vinci & Veils, I picked up I, Paparazzi with great expectations. Ummm.....can I have my money back, DC...?

I, Paparazzi centers on Jake "Monster" McGowran, a celebrity photographer, who runs afoul of a mean-tempered Sean Penn-type celeb, and stumbles into a bizarre conspiracy; actually, this one is THE conspiracy, the one from which all of the other ones were born,

The problems with the book were few, but large:

1)- The "Scooby-Doo" ending renders the whole story pointless. Why travel down such a bizarre road if it's only gonna end in Normalville? If you're going to deliver that kind of ending, it would have been better if the whole story had stayed believable.
and.....

2)- To this long-time Comic reader, the "Fumetti" style (using photographs instead of drawings) will always seem cheap-looking. I have no doubt that the book was expensive to produce, and very time-consuming, and the photography and digital imaging WERE impressive, but no matter how much of this type of work I see, it still doesn't click for me.

I would advise people with $30.00 burning a hole in their pocket to try McGreal's Veils instead.

I, Paparazzi is a graphic novel that is relatively unique in format. All of the artwork consists of photography that has been digitally altered (with added special effects, etc.). While this is an interesting gimmick that is used here quite appropriately given the subject matter, it is not always perfectly executed. For example, the colours can get garrish and the layouts are not always the most visually pleasing, but the effort that has been put into this title is worthy of admiration.

I, Paparazzi doesn't have the emotional depth of McGreal and Phillips' Veils (another highly recommended graphic novel in photographic format), nor does it have the beautiful lyrical paintings of Rebecca Guay which provided a nice break from the photographic art, but overall I did find this graphic novel to be more entertaining. The story is about a paparazzi who winds up on an X-Files/Robert Anton Wilson inspired adventure that is a lot of fun to read. To add more depth to the story, the author explains why the main character (and others) became paparazzi and defends the lifestyle pointing out, e.g., that it was a drunk driver who killed Princess Di and the fact that stars on their way up warmly welcome paparazzi until they reach the point where they, unlike most of society, no longer have to struggle to support themselves. Being photographed by paparazzi after deliberately placing yourself in the public eye is a small price to pay for such comforts.

The characters are all quite interesting, the dialogue is enjoyable, etc., making this a great read. Those who aren't familiar with McGreal et al's work might want to put off getting this graphic novel until it is available in a cheaper softcover, but I personally found the hardcover format worthwhile. And given the rarity of photographic comics (at least in North America), it also makes an interesting conversation piece.

if this book makes the claim that race doesn't exist, I hope that everybody can see right through that (although at least one fellow reviewer seems to accept everything he's told, as long as it fits with the egalitarian myth). Here's a little example that everyone ought to understand.

My aunt and uncle have a mixed-breed dog: a chihuahua crossed with a dachshund. This dog has a dachshund-like body and a chihuahua-like face, and is very nervous and skittish like a chihuahua. Does the fact that this dog is a mixed breed, keep us from concluding that there does in fact exist the breed "chihuahua" and the breed "dachshund", each of which has its own distinctive shape, coloring, and personality traits?

This is what people are claiming: that because there are lots of mixed-race people in America, then race doesn't exist. This has got to be the dumbest argument I've ever heard. And "no biological basis for race" -- so, I guess that melanin all comes from one's environment? These arguments are so dumb, it's no wonder that regular people never question them. It's a case of the Emperor's New Clothes.

This book was written as a response to the 1994 book "The Bell Curve" by Herrnstein and Murray. But unlike several other books that condemned TBC without any empirical data, this book actually does expand the issue of racial differences intelligence and is well worth reading by any one interested in this ongoing debate. At least in this book, while still motivated by an egalitarian goal to deny racial differences in intelligence, the authors do give TBC credit for being essentially a very sound book empirically, while picking away at some of the issues at its periphery. But as they do this, they also make many fundamental errors and omissions. This is to be expected however because TBC is very hard to refute on empirical grounds alone.

As an example, the authors take TBC to task for using heritability in the broad sense rather in the narrow sense like breeders do, which reduces the heritability between races supposedly by about 20% or so. The problem is, as shown by Jensen in "The g Factor", heritability in the broad sense should be used in comparing group averages, while heritability in the narrow sense should be used in predicting the expected intelligence of one's children. TBC was not a book on how to have smart kids or breeding cows for higher butter fat production. So the argument was a feeble attempt at obfuscation.

Later in the book they admit that Blacks almost make as much money as Whites when wages are adjusted for the average difference in intelligence between the two groups. But they go on to say that "almost" is not good enough. The error here of course, as even they argue in this book, is that earnings are not just a matter of intelligence. It is the most important trait with regards to wages, but other traits are also important. Research has shown that conscientiousness is the second most important behavioral trait after intelligence in occupational success, and one would have to assume that conscientiousness would vary among racial groups as easily as intelligence due to evolutionary forces on selection under different ecological conditions. And Rushton has shown that many behavioral differences exist between Whites and Blacks on average, including conscientiousness.

So this book is a mixed bag on not denying that there are differences in the average intelligence between Blacks and Whites while trying at the same time to ameliorate the damage that recent research has produced showing that the differences are in fact real and persistent. But the funding for this book was such that the authors had no choice but to use some very fancy footwork to dance around the primary issue and try to diffuse its impact with regards to education and equality. Politics always comes into play, depending on who is paying the piper.

This book is fantastic for the layperson that was swayed by the misuse of psychometrics in science. These authors evince clearly that there is no biological concept of race. Any effort to compare races is simply false beacause even anthropolgists and biologists cannot decide the cutoff point in races.So why do psychologists put people in categories that do not even exist? Ideology.The authors of the Bell Curve have no way to define the boundaries of race- even so there is no such thing as racial purity. In America 20% of whites have black ancestry. Unless psychologists can clearly delineate where races end and begin, books like the Bell Curve have no scientific legitimacy.

Although I have not read the entire book, I have read most of it. Though some would say that its boring, it was a new experience for me. In the sense that I was reading about a different type of book, thats not science fiction for once. I enjoyed the book, but for those who don't like to read in the accent that its written in, then they may not enjoy the book as much.

This collection contains Maggie, a story that captures realism at its finest. It is short, but powerful. "The Open Boat," is an autobiograpical account of a ship wreck, that would lead to Crane contracting tuberculosis. This short story was BORING! I recommend that one reads Maggie and saves the rest of the book for a blizzard to read.

This book was pretty okay, for a book about creative writing. I mean, it was cheesy and simplistic, but what book about creative writing isn't? It won't make you into F. Scott Fitzgerald overnight, but it might help. We used it as a textbook for a creative writing class, and it was a good class, so it did its job.

If you want to read one of THE dullest, stuffiest, not to mention stylistically ghastly books in all of art history, please read this one. These writers confuse ambiguity and meanlingless hodgepodge for intelligence.

More regurgitated destructive orthodoxy from the arid soul of an academic hack, it's all here every careerist leftist's cliche there is. The arrogance of the previous reviewer could only come from a button down Yalie politically correct snob.

This is the textbook used in Yale's introductory course to 19th century French art, and is considered to be the industry standard for surveying the period.

This title is billed as the Sixth Edition, and reflects the coming and going of co-authors. It is too bad that the editor had so little influence. Sections of this book that stick to their cartographic knitting are excellent. Historical information is very intersting. Basic explanations, such as the evolution of ellipsoids is very well done. Some of the writing is so bad it could have been extracted from a sophmore term paper, sprinkled with such inept phrases as "such as", "similarly", "however" and "in fact". The most glaring deficiency is in the area of computer technology. Either this material has not been updated since some earlier edition, or the author(s) are very uncomfortable with the subject matter. As examples: "Most common procedures used by cartographers have been translated into software programs written in special computer languages such as FORTRAN and C." "Today's well-rounded cartographer is routinely involved with these 'canned' (prewritten) mapping programs..." "The professionsal cartographer should, therefor, have a working knowledge of at least one computer language." We are regaled with three pages of detailed obselescent material on computer structure, but only 23 lines of overview on current instrument technology. There is a whole chapter on fonts and lettering, but no algorithm for conversion from Lat-Long to UTM. The central meridians for the UTM zones are not provided, nor is the DoD lettering scheme. One of the responsibilities of a text book is to arrange the subject matter in a structure where it can be easily referenced. This book reads like a series of articles of varying quality published under one cover, with overlap resolution left as an exercise for the reader.

I cannot recommend this interesting work until non-control
rates are included alongside all control rates and until all the many errata and ambiguities are corrected in future editions.