Illustration Books

This book is so cool! Anybody who hasn't read this needs to!!!!

This is a wonderfully fun book for little adventurers (and their parents too)! This large book contains fourteen two-page foldouts, approx. 14 inches high by 19 inches across, and each picture is packed with informative, and often humorous, images, labels and text, surrounded by a decorative border. The fourteen "maps and sketches of lost worlds and mysterious places" are: the Garden of Eden; Atlantis; Noah's Ark; the Tower of Babel; Ancient Egypt, depicting the construction of a necropolis for Ramses II; King Solomon's Mines; Homer's Odyssey; Man Against Woman, showing a gladiatorial combat between men and women that took place in Pompeii two days before it was destroyed by Vesuvius; the Seven Cities of Gold; Sherwood Forest inhabited by Robin Hood and his merry men; King Arthur and his knights; Genghis Khan and the Great Wall of China; Dracula's castle; and Conan Doyle's Dinosaur Island.

Each pre-folded out page has several paragraphs of explanatory text that are intriguing and funny. A flat magnifier is attached to the book by a ribbon. The end pages show maps, explorer's tools and silly photographs of the author on his treks, while the book cover looks like Prof. Al Lorenz's travel-worn satchel.

This is a fun concept-book, well-executed and a pleasure for readers (of any age) who are adventurers at heart.

The illustrations in this book are phenomenal!

I boughtthis book and I don't even have children!

The level of detail in theillustrations is staggering, and one will be drawn to the book again,as there is always something new to discover.

I applaud thecreators and hope that there will be more good things to come.

I have read many books on Cezanne over the past 10 years and in my opinion this is the best. For a combination of well-written text and excellent reproductions of the paintings this book cannot be beat. The text is jargon free. Mr. Rewald was a wonderful writer and he gives you a warm and sympathetic biography of a great artist and complex and difficult man. Cezanne was very neurotic. He had a fear of women and would not use nude models. His famous bather series was worked up from photographs and plaster casts, etc. He could be very anti-social: he sometimes would cross the street to avoid meeting someone he knew. He was very emotional and struggled to keep his emotions under control. This was reflected in his work. His early work was full of violence and shadows and you feel as though he barely was able to keep himself in check as he coated the canvas in a thick impasto. The later, carefully controlled and beautifully harmonized works are the more familiar to the general public. The cover gives you some indication of the beautiful reproductions which are inside this book. This is a great addition and in my opinion a must have for anyone's art library.

Rewald's biography of Cezanne is a very fine piece of work. It is beautifully written with substantial information about the artist & his work. As for all reputable art books, the paper quality is very good to render lovely reproductions of the paintings.
It is very nicely presented & a pleasure to read. . . or just look at the paintings.

I really enjoyed this wonderful book about a wonderfully delightful artist. I would recommend reading it if you are a Cezanne admirer, absolutely a wonderful book!

I bought this little book years ago from an used book store; it was worn and falling apart. I read it so many times, I added to it's ultimate demise. The binding finally fell apart and the pages were falling out...so it's time to get another copy, (hopefully one that's more intact). Great book!

This book has been a great help to me in getting more out of the parables of Jesus. The chapter on the parable of the Talents is worth far more than the price of the book.

One of Ellen White's great small books, she begins by establishing the reason for Jesus' use of parables and relates that back to our time. The author then proceeds to examine many ofthe famous parables in the gospels. The approach focuses on expanding and explaining the story itself and then proceeds to explain the spiritual significance. the language is simple and the writing flows easily. Clearly the work of an insipred person.

An historical, folklorical, and thought-provoking collection of symbolic prints geared to scare
kids into behaving via paranoia and the dark side of Santa Claus. Well done. I keep it next to
my copy of "Der Struwwelpeter".

I really enjoyed this book. The brief descriptions make the cards easier to understand by putting them into the historical perspective of beliefs and practices of late 19th and early 20th century Europe. Most of the cards are colorful and impressive, depicting different styles of the Krampus, having both humanistic and animistic qualities. This is definitely a good buy if you're interested in seeing the postcards without too much reading.

Monte Beauchamp's dazzling The Devil in Design: The Krampus Postcards (2004) is a collection of 147 vintage images of the dark and Pan - like Krampus, who, with his guiding companion St. Nikolaus, visited German and Austrian children at Christmastime. But while St. Nikolaus rewarded the well behaved with small gifts, Krampus, as a more active presence, not only left switches for disobedient children with which their parents could beat them, but spanked, shackled, and even kidnapped the worst juvenile offenders, who were carried away and thrown into hell. Thus, a child's good behavior at Christmastime and indeed throughout the year took on an entirely different folkloric coloring than it did in America, a continent to which Krampus never successfully emigrated, though other parts of Europe had similar "dark" Christmas traditions.

Krampus was a childhood nighttime bogey and bedroom invader par excellence: small, horned, hairy, and black furred, he was almost identical to the archetypal Christian image of the devil. The classic Krampus figure was readily identifiable for his exceptionally long and permanently extended bright red tongue, as well as for having one cloven hoof in addition to a human foot. The numinous Krampus was a hybrid figure composed of both comedic and frightening characteristics; his bestial appearance and unmistakably phallic tongue underscored the decidedly sexual angle in his nature, which several of the included images make apparent. As a liminal trickster of the "betwixt and between" and a daimonic violator of boundaries and boarders of all varieties, several of the cards appropriately portray the irrepressible Krampus as bursting free from the two dimensional wall of the card and into the laps and

The visionary illustrations of the Krampus Postcards are as powerful and strange as the beliefs and folklore upon which they were based. As Krampus is uniformly presented in jesting guise, the overall effect suggests that the children of the late 19th century and early 20th were no more seriously frightened by Krampus than American children of a slightly later era were by the witches and ghosts of Halloween decor and the corresponding folklore. That said, most of the artists clearly considered the Krampus image as a point of departure, and freely added a variety of subtle sociological twists that considerably widened the scope of basic theme.

Several cards portray Krampus as a welcomed gentleman seducer, appearing on women's doorsteps dressed in period eveningwear, while others depict him spying enthusiastically on presumably wayward lovers. Two images reveal Krampus as a puppeteer of men, causing mankind's sin as well as punishing it. Like the Fool in the classic Tarot deck, Krampus gleefully steps off the edge of the earth, a group of shackled children following closely behind him; like the Pied Piper, Krampus leads away a line of children so long that its end disappears into the image's distant horizon.

Apparently never shy about causing physical pain and discomfort, Krampus freely pulls children's hair, boxes their ears, and switches their bottoms. Though some children allow themselves to be led blandly away, others are clearly terrorized and beg last minute forgiveness; but regardless of their reaction to him, Krampus' expression of dutiful pleasure never changes. He is also capable of diverse forms of mobility: when not leading children away on foot or painfully pulling them after him, Krampus is driving an automobile, arriving by train, riding a sled, or flying in primitive airplanes, suggesting that there are few places to which he doesn't have access. As a kind of reverse Santa Claus, Krampus carries a basket on his shoulders, typically filled not with dolls and other toys, but with captured human children whose stunned appearance suggests that they have become little more than objects. Several cards depict Krampus carrying off young offenders through the snow, revealing that he is as comfortable in freezing weather as he is in the fires of hell. In one, a smiling snowman and an anthropomorphic half moon in a nighttime stocking cap look peacefully on as Krampus passes by with a child prisoner in the still of the night, suggesting that everything is as it should be.

There are also female Krampus figures, and mother, father, and son Krampus families. Fans of Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer's Faust (1994) will recognize the Krampus on page 80 as the model for one of that film's enormous devil puppets.

Most of the illustrations are traditional in character, and thus any sexual content is far from overt. However the fleshy and lascivious Krampus on page 50 clearly suggests the influence of Aubrey Beardsley, while the stylized Krampus of page 21 resembles nothing so much as a huge turgid phallus carried about on enormous cloven hooves. Page 89's Krampus is nine tenths a rooster, or cock. While Krampus is fond of carrying off huge baskets of adult women, including those of grandmotherly age, he is equally fond of strictly male audiences.

It has taken Krampus a hundred years to reach American shores, an event The Devil In Design: The Krampus Postcards celebrates admirably. While some readers might prefer more historical information, Beauchamp's brief explanatory text provides the basic context needed to grasp the images: the illustrations, which speak volumes for themselves, do the rest.

Those interested in the evolution of Christmas folklore and other Krampus - like figures may also want to seek out Tony van Renterghem's When Santa Was a Shaman (1995) and Phyllis Siefker's Santa Claus, Last of the Wild Man (1997) for further information.

Every page of this book features a full-page (or larger) image of beautiful, weird, and sinuous creatures, with expressive eyes, multi-jointed legs, resplendent wings, and fins that would not look out of place on coral-reef fish. These "dragons"--that's far too tame a word for them--dance, spar, swim, travel, and otherwise go about their everyday lives in settings that are as exotic as their inhabitants.

In the process, the reader strolls at a leisurely pace through a poem. And yes, the poem reads as if it were written for children...but I didn't mind in the least!

I first came across Rob Brown's work in a calendar a little while ago. It led me to this book. I admire his drawing style and methods, as his dragons portray a spectrum of emotions almost never seen in this day. When viewing them, many make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Definately worth getting, if you have a child with a broad imagination, or if you yourself like dragons a lot, and are tired of seeing evil dragons burning villages.

My son (5 yo) received the book as a gift from a friend. My son and I are reading this book together, and both he and I love it. The books illustrations are simply amazing.

The content of the book is also quite good. Both adults and children will love this story and illustrations. Rob Browns illustrations of dragons kept my son very interested in the book which has now become a regular bedtime story book. This book has also captured the attention of my 10 & 11 year old daughters. They were amazed with the Rob Browns detail and coloration of the dragons throughout the book "Dragon World".

The reading level is around 9 - 12 years of age, though a younger child will enjoy reading with an adult and looking at the beautiful illustrations. This would be a wonderful addition to any children's home library.

This beautifully produced volume contains five of Blake's early works in relief etching (his illuminated books from 1788 to 1793 save "The Songs of Innocence" from 1789 - published in volume 2 in this series). They are the early tract like "All Religions Are One" and "There Is No Natural Religion", then the fable of "Thel", the magnificent "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" (one of Blake's most popular works), and the beautiful "Visions of the Daughters of Albion".

This volume really four books bound in one. The tracts are treated as one book, then each of the others individually. Each sub-volume has its own introduction and commentary and each plate is given its own page and most have the text on the left page with the plate on the right.

There are also alternative plates provided for additional study.

As with all the volumes in this series, the production values are high, as is the scholarship. A volume you can be proud to have on your shelf.

I recommend that any fan of William Blake buy this volume and the other 5 in the series. The books are beautiful, large, and handsomely bound. Each book is reproduced in full color, using a six-color printing process rather than the standard four. The pages are heavy, opaque and have a gorgous lustre indicating very high quality paper. The text of each book accompanies the color reproductions in standard typeface with very competent commentary to boot.

I recommend that any fan of William Blake buy this volume and the other 5 in the series. The books are beautiful, large, and handsomely bound. Each book is reproduced in full color, using a six-color printing process rather than the standard four. The pages are heavy, opaque and have a gorgous lustre indicating very high quality paper. The text of each book accompanies the color reproductions in standard typeface with very competent commentary to boot.

Even if you've been graphing for decades or are a scientific or statistical sophisticate, this book is more valuable than you'd guess. You may know some stuff to help make your graphing better, but I bet there are many more principles, features, and techniques you simply never thought of. This book has these. But for even more incisive visualizations, you should get also Cleveland's "Visualizing Data". You'll need both books really. (There's not much overlap.) Even though making use of graphical perception principles increases the power of your graphs (the main topic of "Elements of Graphing Data"), there are even more incisive graph types you need to learn about; only a couple of these are in "Elements"; the others are in "Visualizing Data". After digesting Cleveland's two books, you will be a master data-behaviour elucidator. Once in a great while you may need the old statistical inference paradigm (test-statistics & p-values), but much more often you will be so glad you have the power of Cleveland's visualization paradigm to use instead. But again, you will need both "Elements of Graphing Data" and "Visualizing Data". Start with "Elements" though. The book reads easily, is interesting and has a bonus for those into perceptual psychology. A neato tidbit: the author's research results on graphical perception were given in part as graphs -- leading to the nifty "the medium is the message" thing. No matter what aspect of "Elements" you look at, it is simply marvelous -- all substance, and several points (not just a single point for a whole book like Tufte did in his book).

William Cleveland clearly describes how data can be presented to great effect. His description of visual perception spell out the "how to's" of graphing data. While many graphing programs are available in today's high technology environment, Cleveland's descriptions of how data can be presented into graphical format is enlightening. The book provides great examples of both superior and poor graphing presentation, focusing on how to encode graphs to allow for straightforward data analysis.

"The Elements of Graphiing Data" is a must for those who graph scientific data.

Tufte shows you why it's important to do graphs well. Cleveland shows you _how_.

The last quarter of the book details experiments in human visual perception that rank how well we detect certain things: relative angles not on a common baseline (i.e. pie charts) justly come out at the bottom of the list.

One of a only handful of books I've labelled "JXH ONLY". If I loan you my copy, know that you are special.

This book is a must see! The artist really have an eye for detail. I love it!

Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell are the best fantasy artists in the planet! This collection of their works depicting fantasy women is by far one of the best fantasy art collections you will find in the bookshops! The art is wonderfully reproduced in the printed form with text that explain their aims, experience and motivations regarding each of the paintings. I highly recommend this book and all of the other Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell books!

100 great paintings without buying 100 books. Simply a great book. I am a big fan of fantasy books and I am very familiar with many of the works from this artistic pair. They have done books, magazines, calendars, posters, and even movie posters and I believe even a music cd cover. Their artwork is fantastic and this book displays the best of their best. But there are a couple of things that make this book stand out from the average compilation of art work.
It isn't just about gorgeous women with swords. It is a tribute to the mercurial spirit of the female form. You can see this spirit in its full spectrum throughout the book. It is sensitive, passionate, battle-enraged, fiery, determined, innocent,or just plain sensual. Each work has a defined theme.
Another thing I really like about this book is the comments and notes by Julie and Boris. They tell you a little bit about the works, explaining the symbology of each work, or what they were trying to achieve. It is a great bonus to be able to take a peek into the mind of the artist and it helps you see the paintings in a new way.
And then there are the models; many of whom are real women like the scorchingly gorgeous Julie Strain or the brainy/beautiful queen of the B Horror Movie Brinke Stevens.
If you are a fan of fantasy art or a fan of fantasy novels this is a great book for your coffee table but this is not your fathers coffee table book! Of all the range of expression the models portray in this book modesty is not one of them!

Note: There are a couple Mormons who are angry over my negative reviews of books written in defense of the Book of Mormon, and they have been slamming my reviews.

Your "helpful" votes are appreciated. Thanks.

I can't comment on every picture, but this book is worth the price for only three of the images: the "Apotheosis of Technology" (showing the future with an obelisk, spaceships, and a huge planet in the background), "Interplanetary Excursions" (showing elephant-like creatures hauling people from a spaceship in a river onto land), and a couple of neat pictures of Jane Fonda as "Barbarella." If you don't like Jane Fonda, don't worry. The rest of the book is great.

You'll find something in this book that you'll love. See my postings of these pictures.

This is a coffee table type book that covers primarily popular culture images of life on other worlds up to 1979. It is considerably better than the usual mass market attempts. First of all, while the pictures are the dominant feature of the book, the text accompaniment is very literate (I mean, how many times have you seen Immanuel Kant worked into such a discussion?) However, the illustrations and still photos steal the show. The editors got permission to from an incredible range of sources- many obscure. You have everything from movie stills from Melies to Lucas, stills from television shows, book illustrations, to pulp and comic strip illustrations. And all of it is liberally interspersed with actual NASA photos and concept paintings from various missions (to illustrate how often fiction has become fact over the years.) Sure, it only covers the years up to '79, but if you are a sci-fi buff you will find a wealth of information and memories here.

Here is a partial listing of some of the sources covered: Destination Moon, Flight to Mars, Conquest of Space, The Adventures of Tintin, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, This Island Earth, Space Cruiser Yamato, Things to Come, Quark, Barbarella, Star Trek, Lost in Space, The Outer Limits, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, The Time Machine, UFO, Space 1999, Supercar, The First Men in the Moon, Astounding Stories, Planet Stories, Wonder Stories, Startling Stories, Analog, Weird Science, Moon Zero-Two, Little Nemo, John Carter of Mars, The Angry Red Planet, Silent Running, When Worlds Collide, Planet of the Apes, Forbidden Planet, etc., etc., etc.

I even discovered some surprising stuff here- who knew that Bob Clampett of Bugs Bunny fame started work on an animated version of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian stories?

This is a coffee table type book that covers primarily popular culture images of life on other worlds up to 1979. It is considerably better than the usual mass market attempts. First of all, while the pictures are the dominant feature of the book, the text accompaniment is very literate (I mean, how many times have you seen Immanuel Kant worked into such a discussion?) However, the illustrations and still photos steal the show. The editors got permission to from an incredible range of sources- many obscure. You have everything from movie stills from Melies to Lucas, stills from television shows, book illustrations, to pulp and comic strip illustrations. And all of it is liberally interspersed with actual NASA photos and concept paintings from various missions (to illustrate how often fiction has become fact over the years.) Sure, it only covers the years up to '79, but if you are a sci-fi buff you will find a wealth of information and memories here.

Here is a partial listing of some of the sources covered: Destination Moon, Flight to Mars, Conquest of Space, The Adventures of Tintin, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Wars, This Island Earth, Space Cruiser Yamato, Things to Come, Quark, Barbarella, Star Trek, Lost in Space, The Outer Limits, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, The Time Machine, UFO, Space 1999, Supercar, The First Men in the Moon, Astounding Stories, Planet Stories, Wonder Stories, Startling Stories, Analog, Weird Science, Moon Zero-Two, Little Nemo, John Carter of Mars, The Angry Red Planet, Silent Running, When Worlds Collide, Planet of the Apes, Forbidden Planet, etc., etc., etc.

I even discovered some surprising stuff here- who knew that Bob Clampett of Bugs Bunny fame started work on an animated version of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Martian stories?

We just returned from a trip to Panama and Costa Rica that I had purchased the book for. I had little time to consult books as we were so busy but it was helpful as background before the trip and as a resource during the trip. It is a beautiful book and I will keep it. As an all around resource and book to have along two other books were helpful. One, Watching Wildlife: Central America (Lonely Planet) and another Birds of Costa Rica (photographic volume) were very helpful and easy to carry along. Others brought Birds of Panama and used it alot - very heavy to carry. The guides used the laminated wildlife "brochures", two I got on amazon but there were others available down there. There doesn't seem to be one great resource for wildlife in the region but as we were traveling with naturalists and with the above two sources, we were pretty happy.

This field guide is a definitive yet handy guide that will surely be a classic of its type. It covers all the living species of native mammals from Mexico to Panama (including aquatic species such as whales and otters). For each species there is a careful description of its physical appearance along with notes on habitats, ranges (with maps) and behaviour, as well as other useful comments such as the best place to see a particular species, what the ground tracks look like and the status of threatened species. It is an absolute mine of fascinating information, much of it newly gathered or previously available only in obscure academic sources. There are excellent introductory sections on the main mammal groups, and good indexes and bibliographies -- in short , everything one needs to find and enjoy looking at mammals. But the most unique and useful feature (as well as the greatest delight -- and why this is a true classic), are the illustrations - hundreds of beautifully drawn colour plates painted from life (often in the most demanding of circumstances), that will allow you to settle important questions like "Is that a Woolly False Vampire Bat or a Great False Vampire Bat that just bit you" without flaming your travelling companions. (The book is especially strong on Bats.) Flying squirrels, monkeys, oppossums, sloths, deer mice, armadillos dolphins and skunks, they are all here. I would highly recommend this book both for amateurs and professionals (whether they are going to central america or not!). Every academic library should have a copy of it.

The care taken over detail throughout make the book both scientifically valuable and highly readable. It is a true labour of love - and just look at this quote from the author's preface! "Some species I painted while sitting in a truck, using the steering wheel as an easel, and some in a tent with a hadlamp at night, but most were done outside during the day, sitting on the ground or on a log. The white background of the plates suffered from a continuous onslaught of dust, sweat, and grime, and other indefinable debris. Carrying the plates throughout Central America involved some harrowing experiences, one of which was a short flight to Tortuguero in Costa Rica. The pilot had at length persuaded me to put my portfolio in the front baggage hold in the nose of the plane, and after we took off he realized that the door to this hold had come open. While the other four passengers agonized over the possibility of the plane going down if the luggage became tangled in the propellors, I was trying to follow our coordinates so I could search for my plates if they fell to the swampy ground below. Fortunately, we landed at a small airfield, corrected the problem, and lost nothing but peace of mind."

I had the opportunity to participate in a research project in Nicaragua. A local Nicaraguan university library allowed me to check out and use any field guide I wanted. Within days, all other field guides were permanently stowed in the bottom of my bag until I could return them to the university.

Having never been to the tropics before, I was still able to identify every bat I caught using mist nets with only the aid of this book (my local guides were unfamiliar with the bats).
This book will be your best piece of equipment if you plan to study mammals in Central America.

One of the first things I did when I returned home was order my own copy of this wonderful book.