Image Galleries Books

Despite being listed under John Grisham, it's the photos more than the words that spill out of this book like hunks of compassion and nightmare all rolled together. The blues speak to our species ability to survive the deep hurt, and hauanting images like "klan granny" and "chain gang" are in juxtaposition with the ability to laugh, dance and sing even if some fool thinks you're less than them. This collection covers a variety of styles and a various photographers. It's like a footnote to any good blues collection, the "why" to the "how" of of America's most original musical form and the conditions that created it.

This book of photo referrence costumes and poses is extremely dated and mediocre in it's style and contents.

If I could rate this product any lower I would. The first disk received had damaged/corrupted JPG's, a replacement was sent with the same problem.

My biggest grip however is that the majority of images that I was able to view are available for FREE on NASA's image archive site. Also worth noting, there is no organization to the images...it's a mess.

This was a complete waste money, don't make the same mistake I did.

If you are looking for a good source of information and images, you will be satisfied. Maybe will you think it could have been better arranged and organized. But frankly i am very happy these informations are made accessible, a lot are almost impossible to find in books and require a lot of search on the internet to find equivalent material. I recommend this product.

For anyone who is interested in the history of California and art, this is a very interesting book.

Someday, when the historians and sociologists of the future try to dissect the late 20th Century, they will make snide comments and rude remarks about the rampant "political correctness" and revisionist history that infected so much of the 1990s -- and they will use the text of this book as "Exhibit A." It entirely misses the essence of what actually happened here during three hundred fascinating years.

"Pacific Arcadia : Images of California, 1600-1915" ought to be a wonderful book; the history of California is full of fizz and sizzle, a place where spectacular things happened and superb artists were present to record them. The images in this book are indeed wonderful -- but they are accompanied with a commentary that commits a historian's cardinal sin, applying the manners and morals of the present to a time and place in the past. The author simply can't accept that the artists who recorded their views of California back in the 18th and 19th centuries actually liked the things she abhors today. Here's just one small example:

" . . . The repeated instances of animals under restraint - tethered horses in the field, rearing horses dominated by Spanish riders, cattle corralled by the presidio walls - serve as metaphors for the involuntary servitude of the native laborers and refer to the often unwilling role of Indians in the 'encomienda' system. Furthermore, the pointed wedge [in one painting] of the garrison walls that cuts so imposingly into the fields where the Indians work also hints at the frequently hostile relationship between the settlers and indigenous tribes. ..."

Well, if you like that kind of stuff, there's plenty more of the same. It is really rather tragic, too, because the book includes some really delicious painting, drawing, photography, and engravings that deserve better. The illustrations are generally subordinate to the text; reproductions are often a bit too small to see clearly, and captions provide only minimal information. The author of this book has obviously spent a great deal of time studying the people of California's past; it is unfortunate that she didn't seem to learn much about them.

Make no mistake, this CD-ROM is not produced by NOAA. It is a woefully incomplete download of images that are publicly available for free from NOAA's web site...P>The only reason for buying such a CD-ROM is to avoid slow downloads of the high-resolution images. In this regard, it fails miserably: there may be more than two thousand hi-res Arctic and Antarctic images on NOAA's web site, and this disc contains 183 of them, and not very good ones at that. This gives you a less than 1-in-10 chance of finding the image you are seeking.

In my opinion, this CD-ROM is a cynical, amateurish attempt to make a buck by ripping off NOAA's web site and reselling it. It contains no original material, and the producer appears too have been too lazy to even fix the hypertext links they broke during the download. It doesn't even contain the master table of contents or search tables, so if you're seeking specific material you'll be forced to wade through hundreds of unwanted pages.

Amazon.com does not accept returns of opened e-books or CD-ROMs; if you have any doubts at all DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT.