Well, why not?
I have to admit that this book on David looks good. However, whilst flipping thru the book, I came across the end section and there was this picture of the author in full frontal nudity, in a heroic pose. I don't see the link between a photo of a naked man and David's biography.
I can only attribute this to the fact that the author is indulging in narcissistic display.

I was thoroughly impressed with this profile of Jacques-Louis David. It was given to me as a gift and I was not sure of quite what to expect. From my experience, David is often given little more than a few pages (or even a few brief paragraphs) in art textbooks and thus if a person wants to know more, it is necessary to do a bit of digging.

From the introduction, my fear was dispelled and I knew I was in for a treat. The author discusses David's personal life, his political ideas and involvement, the relevant historical details, and David's works. The illustrations are wonderful and aside from David's paintings and sketches, the works of artists like Boucher, Vien, Caravaggio, Poussin, Gros and Ingres are included. Lee generally gives a fair amount of analysis on each of David's works. Most students will recognize The Oath of the Horatii, The Death of Socrates, and Marat Breathing his Last but will also see and learn about The Coronation, The Distribution of the Eagle Standards, Brutus, Intervention of the Sabine Women, Belisarius Receiving Alms and Mars Disarmed By Venus, to name a few. Regarding the politics of the French Revolution, Lee discusses David's role, his allies, his enemies, and his skillful use of paintings as propaganda. We see David shift from painter to the monarchy to painter for the Revolution to painter for Napoleon to painter for himself, warts and all. One should not assume that Lee candy-coats the issues in this book. He neither presents David as a flawless genius nor spoils the book with pretentious blather. The text is informative and sophisticated without being cumbersome or haughty.

Other great features of the book include a convenient glossary, short biographies on pertinent figures, a map and a timeline. Whether you are an expert art historian or a student, you will find this book to be a great addition.

Phaidon's new ART & IDEAS series has been consuming since I first purchased their NEOCLASSICISM and definitely will not be last. As expected from Phaidon, the production value is exquisite. Though compact, measuring 8in X 6in, it is lavishly illustrated in full luminous colors. There are two-page spread of David's popular works like THE OATH OF THE HORATII, THE CORONATION OF THE EMPEROR, and THE INTERVENTION OF THE SABINE WOMEN. Lee discusses David's bitter beginnings and his triumphs, the works in French political context, and the artist's inspirations and influences. Mercifully lacking in exceeding hero-worship prose, Lee also discusses David's jealousy and his extreme political views. Pompous, overeducated art scholars may dismiss the text as dry, plain, or written for "kids," but this page-turner is still a terrific overview of David's works. The book is painstakingly designed in such a way that you don't have to flip back and forth for a pictorial reference when reading a particular text; most of the illustrations are conveniently placed not more than three page-flip away from the relevant text. With its uncluttered, elegant cover design, and excellent editorial, Phaidon has another winner. Bring on Bruguel, Klimt, Caravaggio, and Magritte! More!

I am a big fan of the Rough Guide series and of their philosophy of including socio-political commentary, to remind travelers that the world isn't just for show. And what the China guide does well it does VERY well, with great detail. But my wife and I took both this book and a competitor's guidebook for our monthlong China trip, and Rough Guide contained maybe 1/3 as many things to see and do, and left many places to stay off the list altogether. Worse, some maps were just plain wrong. A travel guidebook that you find yourself leaving in the hotel room is not a good one.

The Rough Guides are considered among the "cream of the crop" in the guidebook world, and this book is no exception. I used it extensively in the planning phase of my recent month-long trip to China, and it was very helpful.

The background sections of the book are outstanding, giving the reader a solid overview of Chinese history and culture. The primary sites of interest to travelers are adequately covered as well, and so the book is very helpful in planning one's itinerary.

The main drawback of the volume is it's weight. If you are backpacking in China, as I was, this book is pretty heavy to be lugging around. Therefore, unless you are staying in China more than a couple of weeks, you might consider looking at the smaller city guides.....or ripping the necessary sections out of this book and packing only those in your rucksack.

Highly recommended for pre-trip planning at home. Recommended for packing and taking to China *if* you are going on an extended trip to the country.

I traveled extensively throughout China in 1998, and I found the roughguide a much more practical book for getting around. The charts inside the guide allow you to find the information quickly, whereas the other popular guide forces you to flip through pages with apparent random entires of Chinese Characters, which can be frustrating and stressful when you climb into a chinese taxi in the middle of the road, and you need to show the driver where you want to go. Although lonely planet seems to have more detailed information, the well organized layout of the Roughguide makes it ten times more desireable when your actually on the road. I'm looking forward to the new edition, as I left my roughguide in China with a friend who only had a lonely planet!

Although Peter Cottontail is a very nice character, the young reader has to pull a string -- so the rabbit Peter will be hidden from sight. The mechanism do not work if you are intending to give this book to a baby or a toddler, specially because there are signs during the text, indicating if the child is supposed to pull down on the string or release it. Too complicated for the youngers, I think.

I purchased both of Crossley's Hide-and-Seek books for my son when he was 6 months old, and he has always loved them! They're wonderful interactive books, and in this one, Peter Cottontail "pops up" to surprise bears, ducks, and a lamb with candy and flowers on Easter morning. My son loves to anticipate each page, even though by now he knows exactly what to expect. To this day, he goes nuts over the ducks, and he loves to point out everything in each picture. Very simply written and colorfully illustrated, I only wish that Mr. Crossley would give us more of these! I must add that this book has somehow managed to survive my son's every attempt to destroy it. It's a very sturdy board book, and the elastic that holds Peter is extremely strong, but I'd *still* recommend putting this book away after the reading session is over.

read carefully... there is is good info in there somewhere... other wise you will end up wandering the red light district of hiroshima for a bar that does not exist

We just came back from a two-week trip to Japan using the RG Japan. We visited Ise Pennisula, Shikoku, Kansai and Kyushu area and found the guide book was very detail yet accurate in all aspects. The book is especially helpful for us for the accommodations and eateries. One example is the Hiroshima International Youth House in the Aster Plaza in the Hiroshima city center, which has brand new western rooms (two beds and bath, no food) for only 6,260 Yen for two person per night. The book provides accommodation price range from 1 through 9 and we tried one Ryokan with 9 in Dogo Hot Spring in Shikoku. The bill was 52,000 Yen per night, just like the book described (also the superb service and garden). In addition to the normal description of tour details, the book provides considerable historical and cultural background information which helped us to understand Japan better. I compared the RG with similar guide books from the LP and Frommer and my experience is that RG Japan is definitely far superior than the latter two for touring Japan.

I am constantly looking for good travel guides to Japan. I've used three of them. I choose to use the Rough Guide now. It is the most accurate and the most interesting, and also the most recent.

I am surprised that the maps have been criticised. In some cases (Nikko, for example) they are much better than those of other guides.

Finding things in Japan can be harder than elsewhere, and books can only help you so much. I had trouble finding a particular restaurant in Kumamoto because the book only gave its address and map location, but another well-known guide gave no contact information for any of the restaurants it mentioned.

The Rough Guide is my first choice. The Lonely Planet guide would be my second choice. None of the other guides come close to offering the right combination of practical data and background information to help you enjoy what you see and do.

A useful tip to people who get very upset over errors in guide books: first, learn to expect some, second, take two guides if you can afford the extra space and weight - if a phone number or address is wrong in one of them it is usually right in the other.

The publishers of computer books ought to realize that people buy the books to be able to learn a program without having to suffer through technical gobbledygook. This book is written very badly. It is poorly organized. The book's five authors, I get the impression, weren't speaking to one another when they wrote it. The same material is covered in some chapters.

I found it extremely difficult to get anything out of this book, because the material is expalined so badly. I do not recommend it.

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm a competent user of Linux, Windows, and the computer in general. I bought this book expecting it to teach me how to take the *basic* knowledge of FrontPage that I had gleaned from playing with the buttons and learning what they do by trial-and-error and expand upon it, not just explain how to use wizards. Guess which one I got. The so-called "Guide to Running a Linux Server" consisted of an explanation of the fact that ports of the giant security holes that Microsoft calls Server Extentions exist for almost all platforms. I was shocked! The first few chapters in the "Core FrontPage Techniques" section involved inserting tables and pictures! What?! There was then a useful chapter on positioning with CSS2, but then the book jumped right back into using themes! Themes! The topics that followed were primarily discussions of using the wizards, which is simply absurd. Microsoft's wizards make everything simple enough for even the most benightedly unintelligent person to understand. Nearly every topic that followed involved either a wizard or a Server Extension, and I'd rather not use anything like that. I am selling this book now, purchasing one on Dreamweaver, and moving on to real Web development.

what I learned in this book. I don't know where the other reviewers of this book are coming from but as a professional designer there was no better book on the market for me. The entire team I work with has a copy of this book. I have two of the previous editions as well. They are all great.

In my opinion, this is the best book out there whether you are starting off with this program or have used the program before. This book, like the other Stanek texts, is filled with great information, page after page, so that no matter what you are looking for on FrontPage you can find answers. If you are already a high tech person or already have used the program with some success, this is definitely a good choice. If you are a beginner that learns fast, I think this is a good choice too. This book is a must have for any FrontPage user.

I really like the approach and the presentation. The teaching style is casual and if you follow the chapters you will get a FP site up and running quickly. My advice is to buy this book.

This is a very simplistic "picture-book" about the dead. There are much more authoritative/informative books around about the history and sociology of the dead.

The pictures here are amazing and truly make it worthwhile for the dead fan. The story could be a lot clearer and informative.

Clinical Application of Neuromuscular Techniques is an alternative to Travell's Trigger Point Manual if you do not do TP injections. It has great pictures, well explained treatment techniques (if you are up to date with your anatomy and medical terms) and lots of references. The disadvantage are typos (the editor must have had a bad day and was unable to write the German words for the references right, but also some English words are off!) Parts of the text are repeated in the book twice, what I thought is unnecessary and only adds to the number of pages but not the quality of content.

This book is presented in the Report form. Though its not an Exhaustive work, authors have tried to assimilate privacy laws of many countries. The style of presenting information could be improved, though its quite an informative book and a good attempt to bring together (in one book) the privacy laws of many countries.

The topic of the book itself is a current and very much of State of the Art Technology. Geographical Epidemiology is a century old but the GIS applications makes the field more reacheable to the masses. It also focuses on the appropriate use of IT in the subject. This will be an asset to the Health planners and epidemiologists for better planning.

I must admit that this is the first Elizabeth George novel I have read. I hear many of you say that much of her other stuff is much better, so perhaps I will take a chance and read her other mysteries.
As for "Traitor to Memory" I just felt it should have packed a bigger punch, particularly at the end, for a book well exceeding 1000 pages. After reading, I honestly had to go back and make sure that really was the ending.
Another annoyance, at least for me, was the unnecessary trashy lesbian and love scenes. (Spare me this, there are many other trashy novels in the romance section at Barnes and Nobles).These appeared to be put in just for the sake of putting them in; who knows, maybe part of this book was suppose to be a soap opera.It did little for the characterization and could have been deleted from the book.This book could have been edited further and been written effectively in say 600 or so pages.
Still, I did enjoy reading much of this book. You probably wouldn't figure that, since I'm giving it 2 stars. There was a great deal of intrigue and, unlike many others, I did like the journal entries that got us into the mind of Gideon. I just suggest that if you buy this book, that you will have to have some patience in getting through it. Although I felt it read rather quickly, getting through 1000 or more pages will take some time, especially with some of the "nonsense" included within the book.

I went on vacation this summer to my mother's house in Florida. She had gotten two new books for me to read--"A Traitor to Memory" and P.D. James latest. I started reading Elizabeth George because she is one of my favorite writers and I usually thoroughly enjoy her books. However, this book was way too long!! The same plot, characters and all the ramifications could have been told in 500 pages and been a much better book. I guess what I don't understand is why the publishers, her editor, etc. don't/can't tell an author that they have "diarrhea" of the pen and the book will suffer for it. Because this one did--it's way too long. By the time I was finished I really didn't care who had done what--I was thoroughly bored with the whole thing and just wanted it to end. Please somebody, tell Ms. George to tell the story faster next time. I'm sorry to say that I really did not enjoy this book and hope that her next book is better.

I confess to being a fan of Elizabeth George. I have read the majority of the books in this series so clearly, something draws me back. However, I also confess to being disappointed overall with this effort. First, and foremost, it is TOO LONG at over 1000 pages. Second, the mystery is quite minimal here and I'd figured it out by page 200 or so. It was pretty much a task to slog through the rest of the book just to confirm what I already knew. As usual, her writing is lucid... maybe too lucid if it was not much of a mystery. I was also disappointed also in the character development in this novel. Usually, such great attention to detail is spent on describing even the slightest of characters in her books. But incredibly, given the length of the novel, few of the characters were fully realized. Last, the returning characters... Lynley, Havers, Nkata, et al were all pretty much ignored with regard to development. Hoping the next one is better!!! KSK