Masterplots is an excellent aid for students and scholars who need to check a fact, recall the name of a character or setting, or review the details of a plot--all in the convenience of one's own home. I have recourse to these volumes frequently and find that my use of them to answer specific questions saves time and frustration. Browsing them may lead my research down a productive new path. A useful set!

Henri MATISSE's first success as an artist was his Paul Cezanne-type "La liseuse" still-life, with a brown and green flowered wallpaper pattern picked up as a cloth in his later "Nature morte a l'autoportrait." But his favorite painter was actually Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, as seen in the cool greys of his "Nature morte aux peches" and "Nature morte aux raisins" still-lifes. His still-life "Grande marine grise" springboarded the empty and symmetrical freedom of a Caspar David Friedrich landscape into the Piet Mondrian-styled beaches of modern art. In fact, much of the rest of his work had a part in how twentieth-century art, with its concern over color, turned out: "La coiffure," with its enormous hanging arm from Michelangelo's "Night" figure clasping hand to head, for a modern art growing out of twentieth-century anxieties; "Collioure" series, with figures recognizable from flat colors and with meadows dyed red against green, for a dazzling light from a Eugene Delacroix-type greatest outburst of opposing colors; "Le compotier" creating, not imitating, life by giving up color as description for Japanese print-type color as expression; "La desserte" showing dark tones coloring more brilliantly than light; "Homme nu," as an Auguste Rodin-type striding figure, taking one side in the twentieth-century artistic question over form holding its own edges against color or shaping from spreading color, as in "Bronze et fruit" still-life and his Paul Gauguin-type "Nu assis" figure almost lost against the arbitrarily patterned sunlight; "Interieur au rideau Egyptien" and "L'interieur rouge" finalizing Fauvism by energizing light and uniting picture parts; "Lecon de piano," as his masterpiece experiment abstracting garden greens and room colors; "Luxe, calme et volupte" escaping into the grandly simple Cezanne style of "Trois baigneuses" and leading into Symbolism; "Madame de Matisse," as a specific person in an alertly balanced pose, just by a Constantin Brancusi-type sculptured eyebrow and nose against blue sending off grey for the curved shaping of her head, for Amedeo Modigliani's and twentieth-century art's figures directly shown as being physical presences and filling human roles; "Nature morte, Seville" riotously patterning color; "Le reve" balancing field and figure, in-between areas and physical presence in pink arabesquing against blue; "La serpentine" collecting light along arabesqued thick lower legs and thin thighs into a separately modelled physical effect, as later seen in his own "Jeannette" busts and in Pablo Picasso; "Le the," with a Cubist-type head for his daughter Marguerite; and "Vue de St Tropez" landscaping Paul Signac-type energetically brushstroked color. So, through appropriately chosen illustrations and carefully organized text, the author leaves us on excellent terms with what Matisse did for art: I particularly like the attention that Lawrence Gowing gives to the cut-paper works, such as "La danse" and "Le rouge et le noir," and to the Vence chapel stained glass, as special favorites for my sculptress mother and artist sister. Unfortunately, the book is now out-of-print: so any readers not tracking down a stray copy might want to look into MATISSE: THE WONDER OF COLOR by Xavier Girard, HENRI MATISSE: CUT-OUTS ALBUM, HENRI MATISSE: THE VENCE CHAPEL, and MATISSE IN TAHITI by Paule Laudon.

Of all the books on Parrish, these authors are the most responsible in the history of the artist, in their analysis of the art works, and their research of the genre!! The illustrations are directly from the original paintings and glow as do the originals themselves.

Who can go wrong at $9.99 with such printing quality as this hardback?

A definite must if you want to be inspired

Well thought out. Good. A must for undergraduates and postgraduates.

This is the essential starting point for anyone interested in learning economics. The authors start at the very beginning and work through every aspect of microeconomics by developing a very clear model, and punctuating it with real world examples and historical anecdotes.

This book used along with my Bible and the Holy Scriptures of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, helped me during some very troubling times in my life. I have used the creeds for friends, on the job, and for having to deal with people and situations almost on a weekly basis. The creeds work, and Mr. Laurence's delivery is superb. He makes you believe you can have a miracle NOW, INSTANTLY...and the funny thing is, YOU CAN.

Mirrors of Paradise is a truly inspired presentation of a diverse sampling of Fernando Caruncho's architectural genius writ large on the landscape. A highly imaginative gardener by disposition, Caruncho possesses an idiosyncratic eye for wrinkles in the formal geometry of what is usually mundane. And the capacity to ingeniously comment on what he observes through design innovations which exhibit both wit and poignancy. To take but one example of this phenomena, in the Ollauri Garden which was designed in the mid nineteen-eighties, where a traditional water jet might be placed in the middle of numerous individual fountains making up a large flat reflecting pool, Caruncho plants single tall cypress trees in stone troughs. What a revelation this transformation of the ordinary creates! Such touches of imaginative whimsy permeate this man's work. But it is not caprice for its own sake. Every action is deliberate and conveys meaning. Every formal element tells a story. Mirrors Of Paradise is exceptionally well-designed, well-written, and contains a wealth of photographic images that do great justice to a man's work which is visually stunning, intellectually sophisticated and imaginatively pure.

So detailed that it makes all those old characters come to lif

Perhaps the best history of negation available in English. It is historical in that it identifies the way in which a given author questions some logical relation that all previous thinkers took for granted. It is, in the language of the field, pragmatic. It discusses the relation between logical relations and everyday discourse. Horn, an eminent figure in the field, will on occasion offer his own solution to a paradox that has puzzled logicians for centuries. He manages to be perfectly clear without sicrificing rigor. And he is a terribly witty writer. When it comes to combining logic with wit, he has no peer except V.O. Quine. I'm searching for a used copy, but apparentlv everyone who buys a new copy hangs on to it.