Galleries Books

As is fitting for a guide on Orlando, the bulk of this book is focused on the various theme parks. In addition, all the standard Fodor's material is here covering restaurants and hotels.

The information is very useful and accurate. The strategies offered for avoiding long lines at the theme parks are spot-on. The book also gives descriptions and ratings of every ride and attraction at each park. The descriptions are almost too detailed (if you want any surprises) and their ratings are sometimes a bit generous. Still, the material is quite helpful in deciding which rides to make sure you see and what can be skipped if time is short.

All in all this is an excellent book that was extremely helpful to me on my trips to Orlando. The writing is clear and concise, the information is organized logically, and the information is accurate and useful.

This guide from Fodor's is well-written, informative and clearly organized to help you get the most from yur visit to central Florida. We don't always buy guides on vacations, but there is a lot to do in he Orlando area, and this guide was very helpful to us.

information is included about accommodations, restaurants and entertainment, with names highlighted for easy location, plenty of handy maps, ratings and useful travel advice, though we were underwhelmed by the incomplete restaurant information for the Disney parks. Fodor's always does a nice job of giving information for travellers with children, disabilities or special needs, and they are good about giving contact information, hours of operation and pricing. Also, their suggested itineraries (based on the amount of time you have) are helpful.

Chapters are about Walt Disney World properties, Universal properties, other properties (SeaWorld, Busch Gardens and Cypress Gardens), non-theme park attractions in the greater Orlando area, dining, lodging, shopping, recreation, night life, and Florida's Space Coast. he book concludes with a good index.

This book wasn't perfect. If you're going to be spending a lot of time at Disney properties, for example, you should also get a guide specific to them. And Fodor's is less useful for the budget traveller than other guides. With those caveats in mind, this guide is useful and well organized.

The 2005 edition adds another 50 pages of info over the previous edition. Hotels, restaurants and admission prices can change rapidly in the area, so it's worthwhile to have the most recent guidebook.
I live in the area and count on the Fodor's to give the detail essential to a successful excursion with our visitors. There is soooo much to see at Disney and around the area that you will miss a lot if you don't have a good guidebook like this. I like the "Strategies" highlights that give the best times to visit certain attractions and the "Need a Break" inserts that clue you into quick, but satisfying snack places.
They also mark in the margin "Fodor's Choice" to help you find some of the best activities.

I have a plan to travel Orlando this winter, and decided to buy a book about Orlando.

There were so many books about Orlando. Some gave very detailed information, but they were very thick and heavy.

The most important information you need for Orlando is which ride to visit, which parades to see, when to visit where, how to order all the attractions.

This book gives all these information about Orlando and light enough to carry during the trip.

To anyone familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural designs, the fact that love of Japanese art, design and print work should come as no surprise. The book 'Frank Lloyd Wright and the Art of Japan: The Artist's Other Passion' by Julia Melch gives clear details of the influence of the Japanese on his thinking and creativity, both in narrative and in glorious photography and print.

Frank Lloyd Wright
Wright was born in Wisconsin shortly after the American Civil War. He studied in the late nineteenth century with noted architect Louis Sullivan, with whom he had continuing and occasionally strained relationship. Wright is probably best known in America for the design of the Guggenheim Museum of Art In New York City; more generally, though, he is known for a particular style of low-built prairie-style houses and institutional buildings, that utilised open-space planning, and often had an element of interaction with elements such as water (in fact, a perennial complaint of Wright buildings is that they leak!). Wright was an innovator in incorporating engineering principles into the design of his buildings to provide sturdiness and creative forms of support and room design. In Japan, Wright was well-known for his design of the Imperial Hotel in Japan, as well as other buildings, including private residences of many prominent Japanese citizens. His work in Japan did not extend much beyond the early 1920s, however, and even the Imperial Hotel was demolished in 1968. Wright himself passed away in 1959 at the age of 91.

Wright and the Art of Japan
This book was produced for the Japan Society Gallery of New York by Julia Melch. It traces early affinities and influences of Japanese art on Wright and his work, continuing interest including Wright's almost voracious collecting habits, and the final selling and distribution of his collection late in Wright's life.

'When Wright died at the age of almost ninety-two, he owed money to several Asian art dealers in New York, and there were six thousand Japanese colour woodblock prints in his personal collection, not to mention some three hundred Chinese and Japanese ceramics, bronzes, sculptures, textiles, stencils, and carpets, and about twenty Japanese and Chinese folding screens.'

Some of this collection remains as part of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, but much had to be sold to pay debts, including tax bills.

Japanese art probably first came into Wright's sphere of creative influences with the World's Fair of 1893 in Chicago. Louis Sullivan had many books of Japanese design and art in his offices when Wright first joined the firm of Adler and Sullivan. This probably represents the earliest introduction. However, Japanese art was becoming widely available in American and Europe by this time, and Japanese principles were beginning to be introduced in novel ways to various buildings. Wright's first trip to Japan came in 1905, the first of many.

Wright became well-known in Japan, and entered a period he sometimes referred to as his 'Oriental Symphony'. During the time of his work on the Imperial Hotel, he gave an interview which showed his standing and mis-understanding in the Japanese architectural community:

Wright was not only a collector, but was himself a dealer of some standing. Particularly in Oak Park and the Chicago area, his designs for buildings would often include artistic recommendations that he would provide as dealer.

This lead to a major scandal, which Melch recounts in some (sometimes juicy) detail, including Wright's egocentric way of viewing the world and attempt to 'get away' with various controversial practices of manufacture and transfer of art work.

'Wright was an immodest foreigner operating outside the guidelines of the closed community of Tokyo print dealers. He flaunted his money and exuded the thinly veiled bravado of the ace dealer. Prices were escalating, the stakes were high, and h is jealous rivals were no doubt pleased to take him out of the game. Revamping was a new technique, totally unexpected. Greed and anticipation of huge profits had made him careless.'

Wright left Japan in 1922, before completion of the Imperial Hotel. He never returned. In fact, he had few international dealings in art or architecture after this period. He longed for greater international acclaim and exposure, but save a few unfinished projects in Hungary and Baghdad, he had few foreign assignments, and none of note.

Disposing of the collection, both before his death and by his widow after his death, is a tale in-and-of itself recounted in the book. Trading with friends and other art dealers, auctioning off pieces individually and as collections, and giving gifts away reduced the collection somewhat, but Wright continued to add pieces throughout his life.

Julia Melch
The author, Julia Melch, has had a career devoted to Asian art. Educated at Smith College and Harvard University, she has worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art organising exhibitions of Asian art. She is currently a senior consultant to Christie's, the famous auction house, specialising in Japanese art works.

This book is produced by Harry N. Abrams, Inc., which has a strong reputation, well deserved, for producing outstanding volumes of art. The colours are vibrant and attractive; the pages are firm and well-suited to the art represented. This is a reference volume, a great coffee-table book, and an interesting narrative read. Giving a perspective on both Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the lens of each other is a unique perspective, well executed.

It's almost unimaginable that anyone could find something new to say about this protean figure of the 20th Century. And, in fact, another author, Kevin Nute, has also written in recent years about the architect's lifelong fascination with things Japanese. Yet where Nute concentrates on the Orientalist ideas and design concepts that Wright so readily and brilliantly adapted in his own work, Julia Meech turns her attention to a different--and darker--side of the architect's personality: his passion for Japanese prints and art collecting. As she tells it, this obsession (his print purchases often exceeded the money that he took in on architectural commissions) not only drove Wright into bankruptcy, but ensnared him in a debilitating scandal over the resale of "revamped" artworks to several of his wealthy patrons.

Wright, the driven, self-absorbed genius, is everywhere apparent in this fascinating, well-researched saga. But so is the conflicted man behind the famous persona. (This isn't to say that he emerges as a particularly sympathetic figure: Meech relates, for instance, how Wright helped organize a memorial exhibition following the untimely death of his Japanese mentor, the young and talented printmaker Hashiguchi Goyo. She adds, however, that no evidence exists to show that Wright ever owned one of Goyo's prints--a bit ironic given the high regard in which Goyo's work is held today.)

Equal to Meech's riveting account, I would have to say that this is one of the most beautifully-designed catalogs (it accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Japan Society Gallery in New York City) that I have ever encountered. It is both lavish and tasteful, if that's possible, with gorgeous color plates and scads of rare photographs of the architect and his cronies, his places of refuge (including hotel suites and other temporary dwellings chock-a-block full of art treasures), and persons and places relevant to the story. For Frank Lloyd Wright fans already burdened by a surfeit of wonderful books, make room on your shelf for a fine new acquisition.

This book is replete with Remington's night scenes. For the working artist/illustrator, this is the Bible of scenes depicting night and other low-light situations. As always, Remington's compositions are things of wonder.

This book is divided in parts.
In the first part you will find the biography of Remington and all his artwork
In the second, there are all the "The color of the night" paintings in big size with the description of each one.
As a bonus, there is a brief study of the technique that used Remington to paint these great paintings.
Great book about a great artist.

After seeing the film "Frida" starring Selma Hayek, I wanted to see more of Frida Kahlo's paintings. (I had already been to Mexico City where the guides readily show you Diego Rivera's murals but say nary a word about Frida except when she appears in Diego's works).

I am pleased I chose this beautiful and profusely illustrated coffee-table style book. It holds a place of honour on my bookshelves, its cover-jacket and self-portrait of Frida & her trademark "unibrow" facing the viewer as you walk in the door.

The book was produced to accompany the 2005 Tate Gallery exhibition of Frida Kahlo's work, and is a must-have for anyone wishing to have a closer look at her life and art without the trouble and expense of travelling to Mexico.

The catalogue for the 2005 Tate exhibition, this book is a complete survey of F.Kahlo's career. Present here are her major portraits (of the Mexican high society as well as of her husband, Diego Rivera) and also her more famous self-portraits. An informative text helps the reader forget all the recent hype surrounding the artist and concentrate on her best legacy: her paintings, many of which are masterpieces of introspection and portraiture.Seeing all the self-portraits, one after the other, makes you understand the artist's life, pains and sorrows, better than any Hollywood mega-production...

I bought another book, The Museum Companion: Understanding Western Art, written by the same author, Marcus Lodwick, because I like that book very much and I would like to read other art books by the same author. After I received that book and browsed it, the materials are exactly the same as The Museum Companion: Understanding Western Art, except the cover. Since it is a very good book, I sold it to my friend. Therefore, if you have The Museum Companion: Understanding Western Art, you do not need this book. If you want to understand western paintings more and do not have any of these two books, I strongly recommended to get one.

We used this extensively while traveling in Italy. It has a lot of interesting detail, yet is succinct enough not to overwhelm. We are interested in all forms of art, yet are not artists or students of art history, therefore, most of our knowledge is received while viewing. This was a perfect guide to enhance these experiences.

This book is full of examples of resumes from various industries and career levels. It has an index to help you find resumes in your particular field. The book shows a variety of ways to market yourself through your resume'.

The book is much more than a gallery of cover letters, although it is that as well. The first quarter of the book takes you through building your own cover letter from scratch and assists you in tailoring it to specific ads/conditions (i.e. pre-interview/no interview etc). This alone was quite useful. The remainder of the book is a huge omnibus of every imaginable type of cover letter, broken down by industry and also format. There are at least 8 to 10 cover letters per industry/type of job and each is written in a different format and by persons of differing circumstances. It will definitely get your creative juices flowing and assist you in crafting a perfect cover letter for the job you want. I almost forgot, there is a section containing eye catching resumes as well.

I have written three to four cover letters using the tips from the book, and also some of the examples for inspiration (I'll let you know how it goes :) ). This is definitely top notch and does precisely as advertised. In conjunction with the books "Killer Cover Letters&Resumes" and "15-minute cover letter", you will have all you need to create amazing cover letters.

A true story of a crime gone awry, "Gallery of Fools: The True Story of a Celebrated Manhattan Art Theft" is author Jerome Tuccille's story of being dragged into the crime by his family as they lift paintings worth millions out of Manhattan art galleries, barely escaping intact. Trying to escape the misdeeds, he runs for Governor of New York, as life falls to shambles - the campaign fails, his family gets arrested for their actions and he begins to fall into financial ruin. He turns to redeem himself in any way he can. "Gallery of Fools: The True Story of a Celebrated Manhattan Art Theft" is highly recommended for community library true crime collections.

This book is a real paqe turner. It is all the more astounding since it is a true story that reads like an Elmore Leonard novel. It has all the elements of Get Shorty, Pulp Fiction, and The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight rolled into a single book. I finished it in two sittings. It is the kind of book you can't put down, and then you're sorry when you get to the end because it is so entertaining and enjoyable.

Paul Marano

A Gallery Of Grace: 12 New Testament Pictures Of The Christian Life by Pastor Warren W. Wiersbe is a compendium of dynamic, profound, and powerful interpretations of the New Testament and its message for daily life as a Christian. A Gallery Of Grace is very highly recommended as a moving, soul-searching account of what it truly means to live in Christ and embrace the love of God.

A Gallery Of Grace: 12 New Testament Pictures Of The Christian Life by Pastor Warren W. Wiersbe is a compendium of dynamic, profound, and powerful interpretations of the New Testament and its message for daily life as a Christian. A Gallery Of Grace is very highly recommended as a moving, soul-searching account of what it truly means to live in Christ and embrace the love of God.

Whether you are an armchair traveler who loves gardens or international traveler in search of the most beautiful gardens in England and Wales, this book both satisfies the craving for reading about this topic and whets the appetite for more. These private gardens, opened to visits to help raise funds for this charitable organizaton, are described in detail with dates and times they are open, admission fees, directions, parking and what is available to partake of, such as teas and music. There are several pages of beautiful color photographs. This is one book that will be packed in the suitcase or tucked by the garden lover's chair. It's a book I love and never tire of going through time and again.

If you are planning a trip to England and/or Wales and want to know which gardens are open on what days, plus which of those days selected gardens are open for charity, this is the book to buy. GARDENS OPEN FOR CHARITY (2003) is updated every year. The 2003 version is sponsored by "Carr Sheppards and Crosthaite" and contains every thing the avid gardener and/or garden lover and/or visitor will want to have on hand to plan a vacation, a weekend excursion, or a day out. I ordered the 2003 version of the "yellow book" from Amazon-UK and received it very quickly.

Gardens open almost every day through the year, or the growing season plus those only open for special events are included. You can obtain information about all kinds of gardens including the Botanic Gardens (Oxford University) and Hidcote Manor Garden in Chipping Camden (National Trust) that are accessible most of the time to privately owned gardens such as Lambeth Palace (Archbishop of Canterbury) that are only open to the public on special occasions.

England and Wales are divided into shires and maps are shown for each jurisdiction. The gardens discussed in the catalogue are noted on the map. This is one of the best if not the best guide you will find to gardens in the U.K.