I've had this book for over a year and used it as the basis for a number of toys I've created. The instuctions are clear and concise. The plans are easy to follow and include scaled drawings for each toy. The author also includes a very useful discussion of materials and finishes appropriate for building children's toys and design ideas for building your own animated creations. These sections alone justify the purchase of the book. Be aware that most of the designs in the book are copyrighted and if you wish to build them for commercial purposes you will need to contact the author. My favorite plan is for a very simple to make wooden rattle based on a traditional folk art design (this is not copyrighted). I've built six rattles and presented them as gifts to new parents and have been delighted to see how much infants love to play with them. This is a great source for wooden toy makers.

Whenever I am looking to make a toy for someone, this book is invariably the first one I always reach for. The plans have heaps of detail and processes for making the toys are very well thought out. These toys are not only animated, but appear to be alive, David has put a lot of effort into making these toys realistic and the movement fun for children (and lots of us not so young). As an added bonus to heaps of great plans, David has gone to great pains to talk about the processes behind designing and building a good toy, this books is worth it for this alone.

The photographs are so gorgious and real that they make you feel like you are right there. From the cliffs to the sandy beaches and from the light houses to the huge watery rocks make this book extremely unforgettable.

He was my friend. I do so miss him.

In 1890, Fragrant Lotus is a young Chinese girl who loves her grandmother very much. But one day her grandmother decides it is time that she bind her granddaughter's feet, a tradition going back a thousand years, and Fragrant Lotus' life changes forever.

Though having bound feet is exceedingly painful, her grandmother does an extremely good job and through the beauty of her feet, Fragrant Lotus is able to move up through society and gain wealth, power, and prestige normally out of reach for the lower-class. However, the Communist revolution is coming.

Where once Fragrant Lotus was the epitome of female beauty, in the 20th Century, footbinding becomes a symbol of the "old" China...a China that the government wants to escape. Fragrant Lotus continues to 'stand up' for footbinding, but it is a losing battle.

In this book of fiction, the author draws comparisons between the bound feet of Chinese women and the "bound" minds of modern China after the Communist revolution. Readers of Chinese fiction, literary fiction, historical fiction, and those interested in Chinese history will devour this novel.

What a treat it is to stumble upon a master storyteller! Feng Jicai tells this story with brilliant wit and intelligence. Kudos to the translator as well. He uses historical references to fill the reader in on the tradition of foot binding, as well as weaves a creative plot. The book focuses on Fragrant Lotus, a girl who has her feet bound in the golden lotus style, and her father-in-law, who collects daughters-in-law to serve his foot fetish. He and his other "lotus loving" friends have contests and long debates in their quest for the perfect bound feet. Fragrant Lotus eventually reigns supreme in the family by virtue of her stylish feet, but Jicai uses an ironic twist at the end of the book to ask the reader an underlying political question-- why the people of China have participated in things that caused them to suffer, such foot binding and the Cultural Revolution, and why social change often comes about with cruelty. This question is all the more touching because Feng Jicai's family was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.

Subtitled "a novel of foot binding", this book was first published in China in 1986 by the enormously popular Chinese writer, Feng Jicai and translated into English in 1994.

Told as a "once upon a time" story, the writer skillfully combines myth, reason and a compelling tale while bringing the reader into the world of the "three-inch golden lotus", the tiny bound feet of Chinese women.

Everything I have ever wondered about this fascinating custom is right here in this book. From the agonies inflicted upon young girls whose childhood includes broken bones and searing pain to the high esteem these tiny feet bring them as adults, it's all here, including the group of men who erotically adore them.

Set in the early part of the 20th century, Fragrant Lotus has her feet bound by her grandmother as an act of love and tradition. Later, her small feet catch the eyes of a wealthy man who makes her the bride of his oldest son. The women of the family all compete in family "foot contests" at which "lotus loving" friends of her father-in-law spend hours debating the fine points of the history of foot binding and its many nuances.

Through the years, Fragrant Lotus becomes the head of the family and comes face to face with the changing movement to outlaw foot binding.

At only 229 pages, this book is a great read on many levels. The writer really captures the world he has set out to describe, does a excellent job of characterization and keeps the tension high with his minute descriptions of the foot contests. He also has a way of making this all into a satirical tall tale as the concepts of truth and reality are constantly explored. Deceptively simple, this story has a far deeper meaning as a metaphor for the cultural revolution as standards of beauty change.

Highly recommended.

This book is undoubtedly a good reference, but you should not consider it a comprehensive one.

With a decidedly American slant, the book ignores the rich photography cultures of Japan, Russian constructivists and even of Europeans after 1945. Even on the topics which the book does cover, there are a few glaring ommissions. But I'm still glad to see this book come out and the author certainly makes no claims that the books list is a comprehensive one, just a seminal one.

This is an extraordinary book, both for its content and design. The book provides a wonderful view of 20th-century photography and photographic books, reproducing several double-page spreads (at reduced size) from a well-chosen list of 101 great photographic books. There is so much to see and think about here.

The catalog entries, luminously written by Vince Aletti and David Levi Strauss, provide a fairly detailed description, history, and analysis of each of the photographic books. And there are several essays on the history and techniques of photographic publishing; these essays are informative, smart, learned.

This is one of the best-designed books in recent years. The typography, layout, and printing quality are just perfect, at the very highest level of excellence. Andrew Roth and Jerry Kelly did the book design; Sue Medlicott supervised the printing which was done superbly at the Stamperia Valdonega.

In the last few months, I have seen 3 extraordinary visual books that powerfully demonstrate just how wonderful books can be:
(1)The Book of 101 Books by Andrew Roth and colleagues
(2)The Atlas of Oregon (2nd edition) by William Loy, Stuart Allen, Aileen R. Buckley, and James E.Meacham
(3)Artists' Books in the Modern Era 1870-2000: The Reva and David Logan Collection of Illustrated Books, by Robert Flynn Johnson and Donna Stein, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Now this is something special! As a publication designer I can appreciate the care and thought that went into this stunning and unique book. Andrew Roth, in the introduction, explains his brilliant idea, 'The basis for my selection was simple. Foremost, a book had to be a thoroughly considered production; the content, the mise-en-page, choice of paper stock, reproduction quality, text, typeface, binding, jacket design, scale - all of the elements had to blend together to fit naturally within the whole'. I would agree with all of that (I have eight of the 101) and also his selection of the photographic books which mostly exemplify what he was searching for.

Not all of these criteria apply to each book though. The author has wisely included all the covers to his selection and I don't think there is a single book jacket shown that I would class as excellence in design, that is, the title and image working together as one to sum up the contents for a potential purchaser. Mostly they are the usual publishers' marketing department output, a single photo or image with some (bland) typography added. Strangely the cover to 'The Book Of 101 Books' is rather dull and typographically conservative.

Another area where, I think, many of the books fall short of the author's criteria is the lack of captioning. Many of the reproduced spreads clearly just have the photos on the page with no information for the reader. Why do publishers (and possibly even the photographers) think that beautiful, imaginative and stimulating photos don't need some textual explanation on the same page? I recently bought 'Dream Street' by Eugene Smith, an excellent collection of photos taken in 1955 of life in Pittsburgh, virtually all of the photos make me ask "What's going on here" and I have to constantly turn to the back of the book to read a caption, even more annoying because there is plenty of space on each page for them. This lack of a caption on the same page as the photo seems a common fault with many photographic books.

The author says his goal was not to compile a selection of rare or precious books, just great ones and the 101 chosen reflect that vision, starting in 1907, with the twenty volume 'The North American Indian' and ending in 1996 with David LaChapelle's 'LaChapelle Land', these two books are a world apart but nevertheless have elements in common that the author was searching for. The other ninety-nine books show the amazing diversity that a photographer's eye, light and chemicals can do to the world. As well as the spreads from the books there are six essays dealing with photographic book publishing, all of them interesting and thought provoking, Richard Benson (no relation) writes a very succinct explanation of book printing techniques over the last hundred years.

Handling this sumptuous book, turning over the pages of the beautiful paper it is printed on, looking at the images (printed with a screen well over two hundred dots to the inch) it is a good example of why books will not vanish in this expanding digital age.

BTW, another reviewer has commented that 'The Book Of 101 Books' is one of the best designed books of recent years, beautiful as it is I don't think I would go that far and I'll not be adding it to my Listmania 'Ten of my favorite well-designed books'. Editorially I think there are a couple of errors, firstly, in the bibliographic details there is no mention of a books pagination, and secondly, all the text about a book is in one paragraph, clearly a mistake when some of the pieces are several hundred words long. I also think the layouts have an annoying fault, each of the 101 books starts on a spread and the left-hand page displays the books cover within a text wrap of two columns, this second column frequently looks a line short because the writer's initials are ranged right on the last line instead of occupying a new line or even hanging them in the margin, in bold face, for instance.

"Plum Blossom Hand" is the fourth volume in the Praying Mantis Kung Fu series. Sifu Paul Eng demonstrates this form in 32 movements, including applications. Directions are written in Chinese and English, and are clear and precise. Paul Eng has studied Seven Star Mantis under Kam Yuen (the fellow who taught David Carradine everything he knows for the "kung fu" t.v. series back in the '70's), Tai-chi Praying Mantis under Jiu Jook Kite, and several other kung fu styles from other accomplished teachers.

An excellent book especially of you already know some of the intermediate Praying Mantis forms. The hands, steps, and the coordination between them as done in the Plum Blossum Hand will be no mystery.

This is a great book for a novice woodworker. Making these dinosaurs will require a bandsaw and drill but most of the other tasks can be accomplished by hand. All the wooden parts that David specifies (wheels, pegs, etc.) are standard products, easily obtainable. The resultant toys are very charming. The only somewhat tricky part is enlarging the in-book plans to full-size (hint - go to Kinko's rather than use your at-home copier/scanner - much easier!). Also, since these toys are glued together, be prepared to repair (re-glue) them after a few months of hard play - after an evening in your workshop, they'll be as good as new.

"Spatial Epidemiology" mixes practical application with theory to provide a critical review of methods, challenges, issues, strengths, and limitations of spatial analysis in epidemiology. Subsections of the book progress from types of data, to statistical methods, to disease mapping and clustering, then end with exposures and links to health. Each subsection includes at least one chapter presenting spatial analytical theory, one chapter providing an overview of spatial analytical methods, one chapter reviewing a particular spatial analytical method in depth, a chapter applying a method, and one specialty chapter. Authors have included equations, comprehensive examples from both chronic and infectious diseases, and extensive references to other chapters and other works for each method presented. Earlier chapters provide a thorough background discussion of data issues that will be particularily useful to novices in the field. Statistical chapters assume intermediate or more advanced experience with spatial analysis, however, provide references to background and seminal works that will allow novices to the field to optimize their learning experience. There are several chapters devoted to cluster analysis, Bayesian analysis, and modeling which are particularily useful.

Overall, this is a very useful book for researchers at any level of experience with spatial analysis. Although technical terms are used liberally, the overall text is easy to read, clear and concise, serving well as both a teaching text and a reference book.

Other useful features:

List of abbreviations - very helpful for acronyms; Color maps; Comprehensive index; References - each chapter provides references to other works that provide more detail or background on the method under discussion