Design Books

Was a very informative book on quilts, but was puzzeled by the caption on page 56 of the quilt titled Hank Williams. I don't believe the idea of the artist intended for it to be catagorized in pop art. Maybe a quote from the artist would be appropriate or a way to contact the artist about her view. Did the artists in the book have to sign a release for use of their quilts?

I'm a weekend quilter - and love working with rich color. This is not only a coffee-table beautiful book but it inspires creative ideas far beyond normal quilting. You don't have to be a quilter to enjoy - the art is wonderful. And if you do quilt, this will inspire you to all sorts of radically new ideas.

From the moment I set eyes on this book I knew I had to have it. The quilts are totally incredible. The skill of these quiltmakers & the detail they obtain is astonishing. They are true artists. It is a great value.

The abstract quilts combine color, pattern & shape so beautifully it takes your breath away. Surface techniques such as dyeing, painting, applique & embroidery make these quilts remarkable works of art.

Some of my favorite quilts include a nude pregnant woman & two quilts depicting Noah & his ark. I enjoyed a few scenes with vases & another made as a memorial to the artist's parents. I also fell in love with the many landscape quilts.

The text is fascinating, discussing the history behind quiltmaking & the techniques used to make these beautiful quilts. The captions are great, explaining the methods used to make the quilt as well as the artist inspiration.

Robert Shaw draws upon his impressive expertise to celebrate the traditional bed quilt as a needlecraft art form that is a creative, emotional, example of "form following function". His insightful text traces the transformation of the quilt from bed cover to display piece, the quilter from homemaker to academically trained artist, the workshop from kitchen to studio, and the materials from simple to complex. The Art Quilt is superb survey of an art form grounded in tradition and, at the same time, committed to originality and innovation. The works of such superb contemporary quilters as Michael James, Yvonne Porcella, Julia Pfaff, Nancy Crow, and more than two hundred others, serve to illustrate the quilt as art -- and the art of the quilt. The Art Quilt is enhanced with 300 full-color reproductions and numerous insightful sidebars of important technical processes and leaders int he art quilt field. The Art Quilt is highly recommended reading for needlecraft students, quilters, collectors, and popular culture enthusiasts.

Beautiful color plates. If you are an artist or quilter who prefers to emphasize color and design, then this book is invaluable for ideas and inspiration. Highly recommend for your library.

In my opinion, there can never be too many books like this one by Michael J. Hammel. This project-based book has great examples of how the graphic designer can use the GIMP software to get the job done. Each tutorial in this book is an individual project, allowing the reader to pick which tutorials best meets his or her needs. But read them all. Each technique is not presented in a vacuum. Hammel discusses these techniques in a way that prepares the readers to reproduce the results in their own projects.

Besides being a project-based book, I also liked that Hammel did not waste the reader's time, and his own, discussing every detail about each panel, menu command and keyboard shortcut. Instead, he commits those pages to more information that you can really use. Don't get me wrong, he does give a short overview of the GIMP workspace in order to orient the novice to the software. But he does a good job of giving the readers only the information that they will need for the rest to the book.

So what does Hammel cover in this book? He writes each project-based tutorial from the point-of-view of the graphic designer. He begins with a short description of the design criteria for the project and ends each tutorial with suggestions for other projects where the reader might apply these techniques. He divides the book into six chapters and each chapter covers a different area of graphic design. Once he covers the basics, he moves on to techniques for the photographer, web designer, advertising designer and UI designer. Throughout each chapter, he discusses how type applies to the project and he also devotes a chapter to type effects.

For the photographer, he begins with some simple techniques for adding steam to a photo and creating a vignette. Then he covers more advanced techniques such as simulating depth of field. Have you ever wondered how graphic artists get type to look so good on top of any background? Hammel shows you how this is done, along with some other nice text effects. Also, he has one of the best techniques for converting a photo into a sketch that I have seen so far. His technique goes beyond the usual examples that you find in books and on the web.

Moving from photography to web design, Hammel states that "color is king" on the web today. Only just a few years ago, books were preaching just the opposite. But now with the better monitors, Hammel can share some of his techniques for creating mood, simulating 3D and reflections, and "popping" an image. He also has some great techniques for creating folds from texture and gradients and for creating the popular Toon style.

With the advent of widgets and other ways to create your own desktop applications, graphic designers are being asked to design user interfaces (GUI) for these applications. Hammel devotes the last section of his book to take you through the design process for creating a UI for a video player. He starts with the face plate and designs each part of the UI individually. However, these same techniques could be used to create environments for digital games and other design applications.

Hammel has been working with GIMP from its beginnings in 1996. He has authored and co-authored many GIMP related books and articles.

If you don't know what GIMP is, it's an alternative to Photoshop that allows you to do the same things (essentially) but is free.

I was impressed and surprised (in a good way) on the depth of tutorials in this book. I was really looking for something that would give me a good overview of using GIMP from the top, and was surprised at how many things you can do creatively that I hadn't even thought of. My only criticism is the paper used is flat and it would be nice to have something a little glossier for the images. The images are in color, which is nice though. I've used photoshop and now GIMP from probably a pretty basic level (I'm not a graphic artist) for album coverwork for compilation CD's for myself and friends, posters, and just playing around with abstract art to frame and hang on my own wall. I've been impressed with GIMP as an alternative to Photoshop and I think this book is a great companion to help me get the most out of it. If you've tried GIMP, which is free to download, and want to get more out of it, I would recommend this book.

The GIMP is an image editor whose power and easy use rivals the industry standard Photoshop - and is a popular free software item. While The Artist's Guide to GIMP Effects could've been explored in our Computer Shelf area, it's reviewed here to alert every artist working with computer images. It shows how to use the GIMP's powerful features to apply to ads, photos, and business pursuits, and comes from an author who has used GIMP since its first public release. From specialty photographic techniques available within the GIMP model to advanced web design features for special effects, no photo artist using the computer should be without THE ARTIST'S GUIDE TO GIMP EFFECTS - and any collection strong in Photoshop-type books needs it.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Should have purchased this book months ago. Not for the absolute beginner, but a must have for the advanced beg or int user who wants to learn more about using gimp.

GIMP, or the GNU Image Manipulation Program to give it its proper name, is a graphics-editing program broadly similar to Adobe Photoshop in terms of functionality. The GIMP is an open source program that can be freely downloaded and installed on most computers, including maps. But on the downside it doesn't come with a manual, so figuring out how to use GIMP can be tricky.

But 'The Artist's Guide to GIMP Effects' isn't simply a book explaining what all the different tools and features do. Michael Hammel pitches this book quite a bit higher than that, focusing instead on how to use GIMP to perform a variety of useful and common tasks. From trick photography to building graphics for web sites, Hammel leads the reader expertly through nicely illustrated tutorials. The end result is more than simply a better understanding of the program, but a richer appreciation of what the program can be used to do.

There are six chapters, the first of which introduces many of the basic concepts. Although there is some attention given to where the relevant tools are found and how to use them, the focus here is on what they do and why you need them. Fundamental to success with any graphics program is understanding how different tools work when applied together, and Hammel finishes off this chapter with a set of multi-function tutorials that underline this point.

The second chapter concentrates on manipulating photographs. These include softening images, adding motion effects, and creating reflections. In each case the process is taken step-by-step, with clear text and relevant screenshots. At this point it's also worth mentioning something about the layout of the book. No Starch has really done a good job here. The book is wider than it is tall, and each page holds two columns of text. The flexible binding lets the book stay open at any page. As a result, it's an easy book to use alongside the computer.

The next chapter is about creating artwork for web sites. These include things like tiles for web page backgrounds, buttons, tabs, and menu bars. The first tutorial in this batch is all about creating glossy, gel-like buttons of the type Macintosh users will be familiar with. One of the later tutorials looks at the ubiquitous rollover buttons, though from the perspective of creating the actual artwork required rather than the necessary JavaScript or CSS coding. That said, if you use a WYSIWYG web page layout program like Freeway, you probably won't need to manually any of that sort of code to your page anyway; all you need are the graphics.

Like all the other chapters, the web design chapter finishes with a collection of useful tips. Some of these should be required reading for any web designer, and it's great to see the author lay them out fair and square.

The fourth chapter is very unusual but actually makes a lot of sense. It's a chapter devoted to creating advertising. While no substitute for a degree in marketing, there's some great stuff here for anyone who needs to produce things like packaging and posters. Small businesses attracted to GIMP by its low cost will likely find this chapter worth the price of the book alone. On the other hand, some of the tutorials in this section are only incidentally useful for advertising purposes though, and could be just as relevant to anyone creating computer artwork. Again, there's a wrap-up section with a slew of useful tips and tricks.

Chapter five brings text into the mix. This chapter kicks off with some tutorials covering things like neon, metallic, and gel-like text, among other typographic effects.

The last chapter is specifically for software developers, and illustrates the ways in which GIMP can be used to design and prototype application interfaces. While a clever and potentially useful chapter, what was obviously missing from this section of the book was something on designing icons for programs. The book then rounds off with a detailed index.

For $45 this isn't a cheap book, especially when you consider that GIMP itself is free and comes with its own online guides and tutorials. The question is whether having things laid out clearly and logically in a nicely illustrated book justifies the cost. In the opinion of this reviewer at least, the answer is yes. For the GIMP user looking to go beyond simply cropping and resizing digital images, this book is highly recommended.

When I first started looking at Web Parts I couldn't quite grasp how they were different from other web technology. Darren was able to clearly describe how individual parts are created, and how to integrate them into a cohesive whole and helped me enormously in building modern websites.

This a very thorough and complete guide to ASP 2.0 Web Parts. After reading this book, I gained more knowledge than reading countless internet articles, numerous blogs and a few cumbersome books on subject. This book is a MUST Buy for anyone who needs to understand and/ or implement ASP 2.0 Web Parts. One added new value is the concepts outlined
in his book also work on ASP 3.5.

A must buy book if your working with webparts. Darren (The author) is also extremely helpful if you post web part related questions on his forum. The book is clear, concise and well organised. You will not be disapointed!

Ps. I have bought many many tech reference books from Amazon over the years. This is the first time I have ever posted a review. This book has been an invaluable reference for a large project I am currently working on.

Paul Hale (Domainscanners)

An all in one great introduction to web parts and even to some advanced techniques.

Web parts are a strong web UI element and this book has done a great job of talking about ALL the things that are necessary for proper web parts development.

This book introduces and explains a lot of concepts with Web Parts. This book SHOULD BE your starting point if you want to do any kind of web part development.

Key concepts:
- Web Part Connections
- Zones and how web parts behave inside them
- Tips & Tricks to get web parts to behave like they look in SharePoint
- Page Life cycle with web parts
- AJAX and web parts (little light on that topic)

I have done some basic web part development and read other articles on the web. This book by far brought a lot of concepts together and allows you to build a portal based on web parts.

This book is fascinating--it says it's a detective story, and it is, but with a twist--it's a detective story about people, and why they do what they do. It's a mystery where the writer tries to unravel how choices and fate and relationships and everything else all twist together to make and change lives, sometimes in sad ways. To me, it is the most interesting sort of mystery ever.

Which is why reading this book was such a total delight. It's like spending time with a really intelligent, engaging person dissecting events and following shreds of evidence, and there's this sense of loss when it's all over--you kind of want to stay engaged. A most excellent read!!

In the late 1960s the author's father and mother joined a countercultural enclave in New Mexico, where their marriage floundered and Anna's father committed suicide. Anna was five years old at the time. Twenty years later the discovery of some old photos sends her on a journey to learn more about her father: her reconstruction of her past is charted in ASSEMBLING MY FATHER: A MEMOIR and provides a moving personal history which will also inspire any conducting their own family history search.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I often randomly choose books to read, without reading reviews or recommendations. Sometimes that method backfires and I'm stuck with a stinker, but not in this case - I was very pleasantly surprised by this book. Perhaps it was the writing, perhaps it was the loss of my own father when I was very young (probably a combination of both) - this book touched me in a personal way that no other book has for some time.

Prior to reading "Assembling My Father" I was lucky enough to attend a writer's workshop with Anna Oliver in Boise, Idaho, and I must say she is an incredible woman. She is not only intelligent and insightful, but also extremely well read- all of which show up in her writing. In "Assembling My Father," she experiments with style and form, including extensive primary records such as pictures, news articles and writings from her father's journal which add to the overall theme of a "detective story." The inclusion of Anna's own tale of personal growth alongside her discoveries of her father's untimely demise create a depth of emotion and a unique poignancy. This is a must-read for anyone interested in writing memoir, especially family history, or for anyone who is interested in the counterculture of the 60's and 70's. I cannot reccommend it enough.

I can see I'm in the minority of reviewers of this book here. I had high hopes for this memoir that haven't panned out.

The story is simple on it's surface- a woman grows up in an off kilter family and realises as a young adult that she is adrift because she doesn't "know" her father. Of course, she can't because he committed suicide, but what she doesn't have are his stories. Slowly- and it felt slooow- she sets out to discover what she can about him.

She talks to whomever she can locate who knew him, including his childhood friends, and she gets what she can out of her mother who often refuses to talk about any part of her past. She collects what photographs she can- a task made more difficult because her father was usually the photographer. She reads his journal and tries to obtain copies of college work, including his undergraduate thesis and tapes of a "college bowl" contest which "put Rennsalaer Polytechnic Institute" on the map as a better school than people had previously thought.

She experiments with different formats in her writing- including some lists of things he would never know about her, and how she feels that he will always be a man who died at the age of 35.

Be forewarned though- it's not an easy book. It's boggy and uncomfortable. It very well may be intended to be that way- after all, the subject is a young father and the events leading up to his suicide. I kept returning to the photo montage in the front, contemplating this beautiful man and wondering what could have caused him to pull the trigger. of course, only he really knows, no matter what anyone else can say about him.

Here's my confession- I haven't finished it. At 2/3 through, I feel like I know what he did, but his daughter, like all of us, will never really know why. And he'll stay dead for her- sad as it is. If I do finish, I wonder if my feelings about the memoir will change.

Contrary to other information, this book is a good neutral source to the history of the middle east in maps.

The book does not take a stand on the issue of what land was and was not promised to arabs during the first world war. Anyone who claims they found an easy answer to that question in this atlas is misrepresenting the material.

Further maps show patterns of Jewish popluation growth. But none of the maps claim to show: 1) the price at which the land was sold, 2) that Palestine was a waste land, 3) the motives for land sales to Jews during the mandate and pre-mandate period.

Other maps show conficts between the communities within what is now Israel. They show a pattern of consistant and growing resistance of local people (palestinians) to the creation by force of a Jewish State around their homes.

The book also does not claim that Transjordan was ever a part of any intended jewish homeland, consistant with history. Any suggestion that the league of nations had ever sought to incorporate lands east of the jordan river into a jewish state is false. See the text of the mandate, the discussions of the negotiation of the mandate...etc. It is further false and not suggested by the book that the 1920-21 riots by palestinians against the mandate ended any jewish immigration.

The atlas shows the growing violence between palestinians and jewish settlers throughout the mandate period. What maps cannot show however are movements among the settlers to economically exclude all arabs from their lives. Movements such as hebrew labor which attempted to create economic segregation within palestine are not easily shown in maps.

The facts as shown by the book are that Palestinians resisted the creation of the mandate and a jewish homeland since the start. And that as the pace of jewish migration increased, violence and resistance increased in parallel. And throughout the mandate period there were deaths on both sides. The book also clearly shows the increasing violence that ended in civil war in 1948.

The peel commission did not find that Jerusalem was a predominatly jewish city. But it did use the example of the forced removal of greeks from Turkey in 1922 to suggest all non-jews be removed by force from the jewish state proposed by the Peel Commission. During the late 1930s, the Palestinians insisted on one country for all people. Every British proposal for division of the country involved large-scale explusions of Palestinians and a continuation of british rule over a large part of the remaining land (so-called international rule).

The book finally shows the war of 1948 and its disasterous results for palestinians. The flight of palestinians away from their homes during the war, the destruction of their villages by Israel and Israeli massacres like Dier Yassein of Palestinians are all shown in great detail. It also shows the patterns of settlement following the 1967 occupation of the west bank and gaza.

And while some will use the book to apportion blame, its better to look at the book and get a sense of who has lost what. Palestine, in 1921 was denied national existance and turned over to the british for colonization by europeans. In 1948, Democratic Israel was created by driving what would now be a non-jewish majority out of their homes within the new state of Israel. And after 1967, the clear intent of the Israelis to take all the land through settlements is more than visible.

Beyond that, arguments about what might have been in 1937 are utterly worthless today. The situation is that a huge population of Palestinians today lives in the west bank under Israeli military rule with no rights. That situation must change if there is to be peace. 1948 cannot be undone anymore than 1917 can be undone. But rather than apportion blame or point fingers or rehash the past, what needs to be done is to find a way to give the palestinians in the occupied territories a national state once and for all.

History can provide a source of facts, but it cannot make a peace. Peace can only be made by looking at the grim reality of the current situation and finding a solution.

My 1993 edition of this classic reference contains 147 maps imparting great wisdom, and a depth of understanding rarely presented in the evening news. Only three maps concern periods before the twentieth century. The third shows the Turkish conquerors' vilayet re-districting of the Holy Land in 1888, plus areas of Arab-Jewish conflict during the last three decades of Ottoman rule.

The book's fourth map clearly outlines the areas excluded in 1915 from the independence promised by the British to the Arabs, and requested by Hussein of Mecca for Arab cantons. Neither side mentioned southern Palestine, the Mutasarriflik of Jerusalem or the Jewish people--at all.

Further maps also evidence the eagerness of Arab property owners to sell waste land to Jewish settlers at very high prices, for very large tracts were made available.

Still others show the locations of Arab attacks on Jewish communities beginning in 1882. Through 1914, bands of Arabs assaulted at least 10 Jewish settlements between Jaffa and Jerusalem and in the Jezreel Valley.

From 1920 on, the maps show progressively more attacks, in which Arab assailants destroyed the new landowners' forests, wheat fields, orange groves and cattle, burned and stoned their shops and factories--and murdered unarmed Jews.

A March 1920 attack by a large number of Halsa Arabs on the Jews in Tel Hai killed six; an April 1920 attack on B'nai Yehuda killed one. In May 1921, Arab riots prompted Britain, the League of Nations' trustee of all Middle Eastern Mandates, to end Jewish immigration and "close settlement of the land" throughout Transjordan, both of which the League had sought, with Arab approval, only a few years earlier. Only these attacks, and the Arab 1929 riots that killed 20 Jewish children and elders in Safed, 7 in Hacarmel, 6 in Motza, 1 in Hulda, 6 in Tel Aviv, 2 in Beer Toviya--and 59 in Hebron-- persuaded previously passive Jewish farmers to take up arms, thereby defying British prohibitions against Jewish self-defense.

The fact is, Arab riots occurred well in advance of Israel's creation. They took scores of Jewish civilian lives. And then (in 1921)--as now--the only Arabs killed by Jews were killed in counter-attacks that followed the initial Arab assaults.

All this shows clearly on the maps readers reach page 14.

From here, the pictorials exhibit the precise dimensions of the 1936 Arab riots, with one page devoted to each of four months. The casualties to Jewish life and property were massive and nationwide. More riots in 1937 and 1938 followed.

Most enlightening of all, however, are those maps detailing the various partition plans over the years. The first of these, which the Jewish people accepted, and the Arabs rejected, was the 1937 Peel Commission proposal. The Peel Commission envisioned a tiny Jewish State, an L-shaped affair perhaps 6 or 8 miles-wide along the Mediterranean coast, from south of Rehovot to a few miles north of Acre with a northern corridor no more than 30 miles deep running from the coast, and inland on a border south of Afula to Beit Shean. Even this, the Jewish people accepted, and Arabs rejected.

But the Peel proposal was most remarkable for something else it inherently acknowledged: Jerusalem was not a "traditionally Arab city," as modern-day news repeatedly misinforms us. Its population--which was centered in the Old City--was predominantly Jewish. Christians and Muslims were minorities.

Thus the Peel Commission assigned Jerusalem, Bethlehem and a roughly oval-shaped area surrounding them, to an international trust to be managed by Britain for the League of Nations.

When that plan foundered on the Arab refusals, two subsequent 1938 partition plans proposed assigning even larger areas to the international trust. The more significant of the pair was the British Woodhead plan, as it was none too sympathetic to Zioninsts. Nevertheless, Woodhead expanded the international area encompassing Jerusalem and Bethlehem to include "traditionally Arab Ramallah" as well.

It is a lot more difficult after consulting this book, to lay blame for the Arab Israeli conflict solely on Israel's doorstep. The pictures tell the story. While the Camp David II final settlement offered in 2000 and 2001 is not shown, the book does contain maps of the "peace enclaves" as the future Palestinian Authority areas were then called. Moreover the later proposals almost seem unnecessary, given the illustrations of intense anti-Jewish attacks that began even before Israel was a state.

In short, Israel could and would have been much smaller than it is today if only Arabs had in 1937 accepted any Jewish state. They didn't, although none of the current issues even existed in 1937. But then, they had begun attacking Jewish farmers decades before Israel had any borders at all. These points are very telling indeed.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

Professor Gilbert may know more about this subject than any other scholar, and despite some inherent difficulties has reconstructed geographical areas with great precision. Even those who disagree with his views (occasionally expressed in the explanatory captions) must acknowledge the consumate scholarship underlying his maps--which have no "attitudes," only facts.

The Arab-Israeli conflict is a fiercely debated topic with numerous accusations constantly being thrown back and forth. For someone just beginning to study the Arab-Israeli conflict, it can be overwhelming. This book is a collection of maps drafted by a professional cartographer to show the real dimensions of treaties, ceasefires, boycotts, and other historical moments in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Would you like to know exactly which land the Oslo Agreements included?

Would you like to know which parts of the Middle East belonged to biblical Israel?

Would you like to know which parts of Britain's Palestine Mandate they forbid Jews to dwell or buy land on?

This resource can answer all those question and more graphically showing you the exact boundaries of, countries involved in, and other important aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. I particularly found this resource helpful in disputing allegations by people that "such-and such a percentage" of the land was to be given up in a treaty such as the original U.N. plan for Palestine or under the Oslo Agreements. After showing my fellow debater the actual maps, the arguments were ended since I was in possession of hard fact thanks to this fine reference book.

Sir Martin Gilbert is a well-acclaimed British scholar, who has written numerous titles in the Historical Atlas series, extensively written about the Arab-Israeli conflict, and was also officially appointed to write the biography of Sir Winston Churchill.

I have reviewed the 1984 Fourth Edition, but several editions have since come out with updated information and additional maps to reflect more recent developments. I recommend getting the most recent edition available.

I highly recommend this outstanding resource for anyone studying the Arab-Israeli conflict, whether pro-Arab or pro-Israeli.

Review by: Maximillian Ben Hanan

Very informative. Gives a good understanding of the conflict by one of the best historians alive right now. Buy it.

Hi, when I heard about this book, I said I worked so hard with parenting links on my online Baby to Toddler store, when this book would be also a great resource too. Every new parent should have it by their computer-side! The thing is, new parenting sites happen all the time, so don't be complacent, buy the Next Addition(s) too, if you can*! or visit regularly the Publisher's website to see the New sites to be Listed in the next addition!
* My experience it sells pretty quickly! ...

If you have a baby, or need to purchase baby items, or need information about babies, then this is the RESOURCE to get it from. Gretchen Nalley has carefully placed all the websites that pretains to babies, from baby gifts, to parenting to care of baby and everything in between. A quick reference guide to take you to where you need to be without having to search and search. Thank you Gretchen for a job well-done!

I am one of the unfortunate ones who had their kids too early for this book, if only it had been around when they were younger. But that hasn't stopped me from buying this book - I have given it as gifts! The time saved in not having to search the web for the websites & information that is in this book is invaluable for parents that already find their time at a minimun with the demands of a new baby.

This is a must have!

Never has a book been more useful! This directory is a parent's dream. Have you ever looked up "baby" in the yellow pages? There sure isn't much there. My only regret after buying The Baby Web is that it wasn't available with my first two kids! I love it, and the pictures are adorable! No new parent should be without The Baby Web (I keep mine in my purse!).

Everyone knows that the Internet is a great resource for information and a great alternative to traditional catalog shopping. Unfortunately, weeding through literally millions of sites can be both time-consuming and frustrating. Since time is a precious commodity when you have young children, getting someone else to do the weeding is a welcome shortcut, and that is what this book delivers. Think of this book as the yellow pages for baby websites.  The 1,200 sites are listed by category and also in an alphabetical index. Categories include: Announcements, Baby Care Products, Baby Gear, Baby Names, Bedding & Furniture, Clothing, Food & Feeding Supplies, Gifts and Gift Baskets, Health & Safety, Parenting Advice, Pregnancy & Breastfeeding, and Toys. Many of my favorite sites were listed, and some new ones that I have since bookmarked.  This book is a great starting point for a new parent or someone new to the web, but it is also a good resource for anyone interested in finding new websites for parenting tips and products on the Internet.  There are a couple of sites that I probably would not have included if I were making a list since they offered only one or two items or were intended for dealers rather than consumers, but out of 1,200 sites that's a pretty good track record.  You will need access to the World Wide Web and a basic understanding of navigating the web to get the full benefit of the book, although many of the sites listed also include a customer service phone number.  --Reviewed by Teresa Burgess

Whether you are in charge of 100 or 1 systems, you need to consider backup and data protection solutions. Clearly the most sensible approach is leveraging inexpensive and highly available disk based solutions as backup targets. This book not only describes the benefits of this approach but also guides you on how to leverage one of the simplest yet most powerful Windows backup software available.

By simplifying our backup strategy from traditional tape to disk, we were able to save $12K a year (in tape costs) and took our backup window from 2 1/2 days to 6 hours, while increasing our time to recovery to 5min. from 5 hours.

This book covers everything you want and/or need to know about inplementing the BFW system. It's written in a style and language that even non-tech business owners can appreciate. Very thorough!

We've implement the author's Backup 2 Disk design, and we couldn't be happier with it's results. After years of frustrating tape drive failures, expensive tape and equipment replacements, and agonizingly slow backup and restore routines, Mr. Lolli's backup architecture is a welcome solution. It's allowed us to recover from a frightening, and potentially catastrophic, system failure and it's day-to-day operations are fast and easy. Restoring accidentally deleted files, for instance, is now an exceptionally quick, simple, straight-forward process. Our backup system is, finally and thankfully, practical, solid, reliable, cost-effective and easily manageable. Accolades to Mr. Lolli!

This book and the methodology Mr. Lolli explains has saved our company a lot of time and effort! And his book is very easy to follow and understand.

We were using tape backup and on several occasions we chose to re-input lost data manually rather than go through the hassle and time of a restore from tape. We were also running into a time constraint problem of actually completing daily backups.

Now, because of this book we backup entirely to disk, and it's one of the best decisions we ever made! Backups are now done in less than 1/10 of the time tape took, and a typical file restore takes less than 2 mintues!

The methods clearly explained in this book are amazing time savers, and easy to follow and implement. I highly recommend this book for businesses of any size.

Aaron Combs
Vice-President
Stoneybrook Publishing, Inc.

Mr. William Lolli's Backup 2 Disk Now! provides IT administrators with the background information needed to select the best products available which will provide your organization with timely backup and restoration solutions. I have worked with tape backups and their pitfalls for years. Mr. Lolli has taken all of the leg work out of finding a better backup solution and presenting it in a logical and organized manner that is easy for others to follow. What more could an IT professional want when trying to find and promote a better way to secure his data on both large and small scales?

This volume measures up to the superb standards of the Anatomy of a Ship series, and it is high time we had such a comprehensive and attractive guide to HMS Dreadnought, the prototype for all 20th century battleships. The book includes a narrative history of the ship and description of its features, full technical data, and superb drawings of virtually every detail of the ship's construction and equipment. The one request I would ask only for more interior photos. Highly recommended to historians, naval buffs and serious modellers.

The book can be broken into three parts, the first is relatively brief and gives the background to how the ship came about, its costs, major issues etc.
There then follows an extensive collection of photograhs showing the ship during it's construction.
The remainder of the book (probably about 60% of it) consists of plans and construction drawings of the ship. These provide a wealth of detail on all aspects of the ship ranging from construction of the ships boilers to the attachment arrangement of steel girders.
If you want to see how an early dreadnought is put together you'll love this book. However it doesn't give the designers reasoning for the decisions made (or the issues they had to resolve). Therefore if you want to know what was built it's a good chioce; if you want to know why they built it the way they did you'll need to look elsewhere (Battleship Design & Development 1905-1945 by Friedman gives a much more detailed assessment of the conflicting engineering issues facing any battleship designer).

I purchased this book for two reasons. First, I make models of ships. This book is an invaluable reference manual. The detail will actually go into the internal layout of the ship. Crew cabins and sleeping area will show up on the details. The very excellent plans of the ship are worth $30 to $40 dollars at any shop that sells ship plans. That is worth the price of the book.

Conversely, I was a little surprised at the write up of the operation of the ship. Dreadnought had no economical cruise speed. So, unlike other ships of her time period, like the USS Michigan, she was never economical to operate. Dreadnough had no design flaws. Thus, she was the working prototype for all British Great War ships. In design she was perfect.

I was very happy with the pictures of the ship. I had never seen most of the pictures before. The level of detail in these pictures gives a good picture of the set up of the ship.

This book is not a operational history. That is somewhat a regret. However, people wanting an operational history of the ship should read Robert Massey's excellent "Castles of Steel".

This book is total truth in advertising, it is a study of the ship. It is a total look at the Dreadnought. The book is vital for model builders and is a great reference for any student of history.

5 Stars.

In a nutshell this book is detailed blueprints for the HMS Dreadnought. There is a small amount of text at the beginning, as well as unusually in depth statistical details such as how much the ship cost to be built as well.

The majority of the book after that first chapter are all schematics. You will see deck by deck plans for every toom in the ship, with many rooms even more detailed in their own chapters. Who would have guessed the ship's prison was in the same room as the toilets at the rear of the ship? Did you know that the ammunition bunkers have air conditioning to keep the gunpowder/cordite a consistant temperature for consistant gunnery? Did you know that the boiler rooms have air forced into them in the steam age equivalent of turbo charging?

Where the book does fall flat however is explaining all these details. You had better already have a good idea of what the components of a battleship are, because the schematics do not explain what it is you are looking at.

I still give it a 5 out of 5 because you will not find this level of detail in any other book.

Naval history enthusiasts will be familiar with this series, each book being organized into a written section covering history and design data, then a pictorial, followed by immensely detailed drawings.

The Anatomy series is written to a 5-star standard. However, allow me to suggest this book to be a notch above the Hood, Yamato, and Warspite volumes, into 5 1/2 star territory.

A great source for bike history - a classic from 1862. Often quoted in other books about bicycle history and technology.

This book shows that many current 'new' ideas in cycling are not at all new ..... very useful even now.

Although 100 years old, it has great potential as a technical reference for small mechanism design as well as bicycles.

One of Sharp's goals was to debunk the truly awful designs of his day, and hopefully bring about their demise. When the book was written, the "ordinary" had only recently given way to the "safety," and the proliferation of designs described here is truly mind-boggling. As a historical record of early bicycle design, no other book even comes remotely close. The technical section is thorough enough to qualify as an engineering textbook, and needs no updating. The section on the design of individual components is of course limited by what was available at the time, but nevertheless is still of interest. After the numerous references to this book in Mike Burrows' "Bicycle Design," I had searched unsuccessfully for years for a used copy. The reissuance of Sharp at a reasonable price shouldn't be passed up by anyone with even a passing interest in bicycle design and history. Be forewarned: this is a faithful facsimile of the original, and as such, the typeface isn't as clear as what we're used to nowadays. We're lucky that the book is available at all, and this edition is undoubtably superior in appearance to an original (assuming you can even find one).

Honestly, I have studied some of the older bikes, like highwheelers and the safeties and even the racing frames used by 6-day racers like Major (Marshall) Taylor... and I honestly thought most of the early bikes were designed by luck and a prayer.
Sharp shows how much engineering knowledge was known about bicycles at the early parts of the 20th century. No wonder bikes were the precursors to --the automobile, --the airplane, --Harleys!
Concerns about bottom-bracket flex, weight distribution, climbing efficiency, transmission systems, steering control, comfort, stability at speed, etc. are all covered. Various materials and their pros and cons are covered (but back then exotic materials were bamboo and heat treated rolled steel!).
If you are an engineer or have a good background in math, you will be entertained by the incredible amounts of analysis presented in the text. If you are just a techie bike geek like me you will still enjoy it without breaking out the calculator to verify the formulaes. There are lots of 'pretty pictures' and well explained concepts to inform and entertain anyone interested in the fundmental engineering priciples and concerns of bicycles.

This book begins with a lot of information about sewing pattern companies, sewing in the beginning half of the century, and fashion changes during the forties that are worth the price of this book. The second half is all reproductions of the fronts of pattern envelopes which provide inspiration for design as well as pointing out how much more advanced the average sewer seemed to be in the forties compared to today.

This is a wondreful look at a time in fashion when looking your best when in public or private did matter. The fashions are an inspiration to those who love classic design. The only statement being made by these fasions are upbeat ones. Thanks for a great book that any sewer will treasure forever!!

I was amazed to receive this book. I learned about how rationing during WWII affected clothing and fashion. I saw how fashion evolved during a decade that began with war and ended with Paris reviving their Haute Couture.

I think that the one aspect of Blueprints Of Fashion that caught me completely by surprise was the nostalgic feeling that looking at home sewing catalogue illustrations returned to me. I remember spending hours browsing through catalogues with my Mom during the 60's and 70's. I noticed the change of illustration styles, and the use of more photography, throughout those 2 decades of the big 3--Simplicity, Butterick/Vogue, and McCall's. In the 40's there were many more brands and that much more variation in illustration styles.

Mr. Laboissoniere has done a great job of grouping the pattern face cards into a journey through the fashionable 40's. Even though he meant this as a guide for collectors, there are so many facets to his research that he has created something truly extraordinary.

this is one of the great fashion books. very well put together, interesting...unlike most fashion books (in terms of text) and classy and LOTS of images. Both of Laboissonniere's books are great.

As a dealer in vintage patterns, (...) Wade's book is an indispensable resource in accurate dating of my pattern inventory. This in turn helps me to better serve my customers. Wonderful color examples of all the catagories, styles and companies.