Eras Books

a wonderful book with great pictures that tells a very personal story, written from the families' perspective. Nice attention to the details that abound.

Henry Clay Frick really knew how to live a gilded age life, and you see the evidence in this fantastic book. The images are crisp and well conceived and the text highly informative. I expecially liked the section on Frick's famous mansion on Fifth Avenue in NYC, he was determined to out build Carneige and he suceeded, it is a beaux-art tour de force and the perfect setting today for his singular collection. If you have any interest in Frick, Guilded Age architecture, or fine books in general, then i can't concieve of you being anything but thrilled with this purchase.

This was the first volume that I purchased. Since then I have bought the other three volumes. Together they cover the entire historical range of classical music composers. Not ony do you find out about their personal lives but also the circumstances surrounding each of their major compositions. This volume provides several chapters on Beethoven but covers von Weber as well. I would recommend all of the 4 volumes.

As one of the co-authors of this book, I naturally rate it highly ;-) But honestly I think it will be of interest to many people - from academic colleagues with an interest in how higher education systems develop and change in the light of changing circumstances to the more general reader who wishes to understand why there is so much fuss about a name (university vs polytechnic/college) in higher education circles.

The chapters making up the three system-specific sections are written by authors with different perspectives - one from the government/system level and two from the institutions' perspective in each section. These are well related to each other and the general theme of national higher education reform by the editor Prof David Teather in his introduction and conclusions.

I commend the book to anyone interested in how university systems develop and the responses of governments and institutions to demands for change and reform in higher education.

"Historic Figures of the Arthurian Era" is Frank Reno's follow-up to his "The Historic King Arthur"... The work presented here extends Reno's explorations into the real world of "King Arthur" as found in the ancient written texts. It's a detailed, challenging book which should be of great interest to anyone who strongly wishes to better understand what lay behind all those centuries of legend and myth.

You can judge a historical atlas on two criteria: 1) Is it easy to read? 2) Is it more informative than plain text?

Yes, and Yes. A truly dazzling work. Clear, concise maps with a minimum of unneded clutter make for a great curl-up-with (albeit clunky) book.

If you are interested in this period of British history, snag this book.

The "Historical Dictionary of Ancient Southeast Asia" by associate professor John Miksic appears to offer a "comprehensive picture of the region" combining many data with great scholarship and clarity of presentation. If you want to know immediately something about a construction or a ruler of ancient Southeast Asia, this beautiful monograph certainly will help you. The dictionary also contains a bibliography so a reader can find further references to the relevant literature. The dictionary covers many data including Vietnamese history that distinguishes it from the famous monograph of Georges Coedes "The Indianized States of Southeast Asia".
A great merit of Miksic's dictionary lies in its great objectivity as the author gives to his reader in the majority of cases well-established facts and tells about discussions between scholars.
Miksic's theory of ancient Southeast Asian history can be characterized as hermeneutic in some degree as he, following Oliver Wolters, uses the term mandala to conceptualize particular features of regional political and social structures. In fact, both scholars aim to describe the societies by their own terms.
But Miksic's theory differs from Wolters' as the former believes that the concept of Indianization is still useful for scholars because the process of Indianization was a common theme in regional developments like Christianization, Renaissance, and Enlightenment in Europe. Another theme was sea.
The dictionary has some drawbacks. First, glossary on pp. 447-450 is misleading as the reader doesn't know where s/he should find the entry: it may be found in the dictionary or the glossary. Second, sometimes you can find factual inaccuracies. Miksic writes on p. 239: "Srivijaya... referred to itself in its inscriptions as a mandala". But this Old Malay polity never did it. The term Srivijaya can be found only with the words kadatuan and wanua ("the place of a ruler" and "an inhabited land, a community" respectively) in the relevant inscriptions. The records from Kalasan and Kelurak were carved by pre-Nagari script, not by Devanagari (p. 108, 181{182, 190). The term Taruma has a Proto-Austronesian origin whereas the dictionary gives the Sanskrit one (p. 383).
Despite these observations I think any student can find much useful information about ancient Southeast Asia.

Compiled, organized and presented by Charles Burney (Retired Senior Lecturer of Near Eastern Archaeology, University of Manchester, England) Historical Dictionary Of The Hittites is enhanced with an introductory essay, a chronology, an extensive bibliography, and 32 photographs. A 365-page dictionary style compendium of entries on the civilization that ruled vast portions of Mesopotamia for nearly 500 years, yet which remained largely unknown until excavations of the 19th century revealed the extent of its influence upon the ancient world. A solid resource for students, scholars, and general readers, Historical Dictionary Of The Hittites is practical and easy-to-use, though many of the entry are the names of individual figures, or cities, or terms related to Hittite civilization and thus would be unfamiliar to the lay reader until he or she read the descriptive text.

The author has taken a difficult subject(General Aviation) that has a history as long as powered flight itself and put it into a format that allows the reader to follow key historical events that shaped this segment of the aviation industry. He covers all the manufactures and the personalities who established these firms. However, the reader should already have a good grasp of the many General Aviation aircraft products that are refered to in the book chapters because there are few photos for reference. This is not a criticism and a reader who is not already familiar can obtain a reference book for this purpose. However,the main focus of the book is how the General Aviation business was formed and the historical economic business factors that drove and shaped this industry from the begining to today. I have heard many in aviation say this type book could not be written on this subject. This author has, and has done an excellent job.

This text is as in-depth in its survey of all the major and minor figures after Vesalius as it is approachable. Leibniz believed that everyone should study anatomy, wiht this text everyone can.

This first volume of the history of Russian Christianity deals with the period from Apostle Andrew to the death of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, a period of almost 1600 years. The information provided is intensive and objective, dealing with the events, people and politics of the development and expansion of Christianity in Russia. The book covers the earliest of traditions, the rise and dominance of the Russian Orthodox Church, the many dissenters and sectarians that evolved over the centuries and their persecution, and the influx of Catholicism and Judaism and other minority religions into Russia. The history covers the involvement of tsars and princes, as well as saints and serfs, and monks and mystics .
(This 3-volume series of the history of Christianity in Russia will extend to the conclusion of Soviet authority in 1990.)