I am a dance from the Nation Dance Institute, more commonly know to us as NDI. I have met Jacques' d'Amboise and I have also been in the program for two years. This is my second year. This books really tells the truth, you would really feel like dancing :).

A copiously illustrated work featuring a complete dictionary of hairdressing terms. Numerous period illustrations, photographs of antique hairdressing tools, and excerpts from period texts on the craft of hairdressing and wigmaking. A must-have resource for the 18th and 19th century reenactor.

A complete and technically detailed enumeration of rockets from all around the world (yes, outside the USA). Very well done, and very instructive. Diagrams, charts and statistics... it has it all.

A handsome book of 270 book jackets clearly showing the very wide range of styles publishers used to sell their wares. All the covers are shown complete with the designer's name in most cases, none of them are angled or overlapped, thankfully! A lovely feature is the use of still life photos of the book and the jacket complete, many of them with tears and creases on the jackets, looking as if they have just been rescued from a second-hand bookstore.

These jackets are such a contrast to the covers shown in a book I recently reviewed, 'The Great American Paperback', a colorful collection of six hundred covers (annoyingly designed so that they nearly all overlapp each other) from the forties, fifties and sixties. These covers are extremely conservative in their design approach, a predictable painting with crude typography for the title. It was not until the mid-sixties that paperback publishers turned to eye-catching paintings and photography with intergrated typography.

In contrast the covers in 'Jackets Required' are bursting with creativity, the chapter on non-fiction has some particularly striking designs. The back of the book has a portfolio of six designers including my favorites, Alvin Lustig and Paul Rand. There is a designer and title index, someting that was sadly missing from 'The Great American Paperback.

Heller and Chwast have produced a super book that design students and fans of popular culture will enjoy for a long time.

This book is very informative with absolutely beautiful, clear, accurately-colored photographs of graphic design works. Very helpful for anyone interested in modern Japanese art.

In the footsteps of Varga and George Petty, along with his contemporary, James Silke, Dave Stevens, creator of the comic book and the Disney movie, the Rocketeer, continues the sexy but innocent, often humorous depiction of the female (not nude) body beautiful.

This large (around 11" X 14") paperback contains 16 detachable and framable prints from Betty Page (Stevens is one of her biggest devotees) to Faye Wray in the hand of King Kong, from a sexy cowgirl to a naughty pirate to two spacegirls sitting astride a 50's style spaceship. The color reproduction is very good, as is the quality of print.

This is a great showcase collectible of Dave Steven's talents, as well as a feast for fans of illustration and "fantastic women at their loveliest."

Quite simply the best book/catalogue of it's type I have ever seen. The presentation of the book is good, as is the reproduction of the paintings. The short biographies of the artists are quite simply the brilliant, and contain more information than much longer articles. If you only have one book about late romantic art have this one.

An excellent book on the great Twentieth-Century composer, being both a biography in the usual sense, but also providing definitive analyses of his major works. The detailed description of Bartok's six string quartets, leaves little more to be said of them -- unless you want to go to monographs like Prof. Leo Treitler's Ph.D dissertation on the Fourth Quartet alone. A must for any Bartok lover. [updated email address]

A bit like a poem, this slim volume manages to do a lot with very few words. Through the story of one very smart designer creating a logo for one very particular client, Mr. Skaggs manages to cover how to handle client relations, how to keep creative juices flowing, how to move through a structured design process, and what a logo needs to do to be successful-- all without losing the narrative flow of the core story. I've read many descriptions about what a logo needs to be successful, and the golden rules (visibility, memorability, etc) but because of the context of his tale, here each rule makes sense. Moreover these lessons apply just as easily to the whole of the design process, and not to just to creating a mark.

I was surprised when I got the book in the mail: no glossy pages, no color pictures, just cream pages with black and white sketches, more like a children's book than a design book. But this book had more to say to the reality of design than many of those glossy $50 monsters. Great for designers, clients, and the curious... I can't imagine anyone --insider or outsider --who wouldn't enjoy this book.

I am currently studying mechanical engineering in a college in Ireland Co. Donegal. I find this book very helpfull in my studies as it gives me good and simple efficent accounts on what i need to know.