This book is really good for art students and medical students if you want the deteils. I highly recommand it!

Albinus on Anatomy is a great book. I am a printmaking student;My teacher introduced this book to me when I asked her about detailed etchings of the human figure. I love how intricate and delicate the lines are to create figure. They remind me of the prints of Rembrandt. For anyone interested in art, I really suggest this book. It's great for those studying to be medical illustrators, print students, the everyday sketchers.......ANYONE! It's also great for those who just love to learn about the anatomy of the body.

This oversized book contains over 200 illustrations of the human body, posed so as to be of use to the artist studying the human form. Beautiful and highly accurate, the book can be a valuable tool for the artist wishing to improve his skill through a better knowledge of human anatomy. Albinus himself is not solely responsible for the engravings. He collaborated with an artist who did the drawings and finally the copper plate engravings of the figure. In the meantime, Albinus arranged the poses and oversaw the process from rough sketches to the manipulations of the printing press, ensuring that the accuracy and quality of the images were preserved. The figures are represented with various layers of tissue exposed, first the nude model, then the outer layer of muscle, the next layer of muscle, the organs, down to the bare skeletons. Each layer has an anterior and a posterior view. The potential for the engravings to become a grim lesson on internal anatomy is offset by the engraving artist¹s whimsy. He was allowed artistic freedom with the background on each plate, and the settings range from a Greek temple to a verdant forest. In one plate a rhinoceros grazes directly behind the model. For the student of anatomy, each bone is taken individually, and the proportions, muscle attachments, and major connective tissue are shown for each in turn. A passionate introduction to drawing the human body starts the book off, and a complete index ties it together. The playful, detailed drawings make this book attractive to the artist and the art admirer alike. For its size and complexity, this book is a great buy.

I gave copies of this book to a 6 year-old and a 12 -year old. Both loved it. It is a really well-researched and cleverly put together book, a great idea done well.

I bought this book largely because of its gorgeous, highly reflective cover. A true whim, particularly as I do not have children. However, as soon as I started to turn this highly engaging volume's pages, I found myself riveted. Hainey is a master at fascinating minutiae. He takes a simple topic--the color blue--and relates it to myriad topics ranging from animals to music to history. Kids will devour it. And this adult loves it.

A great book! It is written at the 1st year graduate student level. The authors think you are smart, are willing to work to understand, but feel they need to cover it all from ground zero. A great proposition if that is your state. Heavily diagrammed but unafraid to get down to some of the (simple) physics. (What really moves those plates anyway?) Just scanning and focusing down on what interests will teach you something new every time. The result is giving you a new set of eyes. Nevada (the great basin) never looked so interesting.

You should be aware that this "reader" offers extracts from 83 works in only 191 pages (the Amazon description as of 7/24/00 giving the page count as 400 is wrong); most works are represented through passages that are only a page or so in length. If you are expecting an anthology, you will be disappointed. If you are looking for a text that compiles brief passages relevant to the theme of literature and religion from a wide range of sources, this book will serve your needs.

The change in biblical studies, with an increasing tendency to read the Bible as literature and to relate it to other literature, offers a field day to those who are skilled in both and there is plenty of evidence that they are able to exploit it. Anything in that department bearing the name of David Jasper is likely to be worth reading and this book is no exception. Fundamentally it is a resource book for teachers and students by two people with experience of both, but it also has much to offer to offer the general reader, especially those who find difficulty moving from the world of modernism (where life is rational and organised) to the world of post-modernism (which seems to be chaotic and marred by uncertainty). In a world where individual interpretations replace community interpretations and trust often gives way to suspicion, these editors explore religious literature afresh and at the same time uncover new biblical insights, not least in those biblical passages often neglected.

If the potential readership is broad so too is the literature. Eight chapters include extracts on origins (beginning with Genesis and the prologue to John and going on to the Quiché Indians and a creation story from the Iroquois), on sacred texts, biblical motifs and images, and on the great themes of literature and religion.

Writers include Ovid, Augustine, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Luther, Bunyan, Kierkegaard, Teresa of Avila, Mark Twain, D H Lawrence, Goethe, Milton, Merton, Donne, Blake, Kafka, Eliot, Beckett, Derrida, and Ricoeur, to mention only a few of the more familiar. With such a wealth it is difficult to be selective, but Michèle Roberts, The Wild Girl, described as 'a kind of fifth gospel written by Mary Magdalene', is a good example of breaking into new territory, the bringing together of Job and Kafka a creative way of tackling a theodicy, Elie Wiesel's Night perhaps the most moving, and Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood the seeds of a sermon on Matthew 7:3.

Once you begin to think this way it is difficult ever again to be content with interpreting biblical literature in isolation from other literature, and indeed from all the other arts and the whole world of culture. It certainly raises awkward and embarrassing questions but that may be a more effective way of uncovering religious truth than the traditional watering places of church, liturgy and sermon. Readers should be prepared to be stretched, occasionally alarmed and sometimes threatened, but much of the struggle is avoided only at our peril.

Robert Detweiler and David Jasper edit Religion And Literature, a reader which offers selections from over seventy sources ranging from ancient classics and Western writings to literary analyses. Study questions at the end of each chapter lend to a fine scholarly presentation.