Studios Books

Having been a Role-Player since the late 1970's, I've seen/played/GM'ed a lot of different games, as well as having play-tested for several different publishers of RPG's. The Everlasting far exceeds most in its setting and the research that has been done to bring a game to market that takes a different spin on our real world while explaining how magic and creatures out of mythology could exist just beyond the perception of common mortals.

The Magician's Companion is the 6th book to be put out by Visionary Entertainment and is an excellent source for anyone who would be interested in taking on the role of an Osirian (a human who has magickal abilities and who is tied to the cycle of death and rebirth (reincarnated and able to remember past lives). It also expands on the extremely flexible and versatile magic system that the Everlasting uses.

The only drawback is that it only covers a fraction of the wide range of magickal paths that are possible in the game. However as with the other books, it has been researched and draws on many sources and as such is an excellent resource, not only for the Everlasting, but for any RPG that is based off of the mythology and folklore of our earth.

I highly recommend this book (as well as the other Everlasting books) for anyone who is seriously into RPG's, especially those who are big into the interactive story development and are interested in playing the part of a flawed hero (instead of the super-hero who is "perfect" but who does not exist except in shallow imaginations) struggling to become something great and overcome challenges. For those who are into the hack-n-slash games or the juvenile games such as D&D (d20), don't bother, as this game is targeted at mature gamers, those with imagination and a firm grasp on mythology and the concept of the "Hero's Journey".

This book is essential for anyone who truly enjoys the Secret World setting of the Everlasting.

Included are the Osirians, but they honestly are only the first bit of the book. You get details on all kinds of real world type magick that is practiced by mortals and eldritch alike.

Very interesting read, and extremely useful for anyone who wants to add sorcery (including DARK SCIENCE!!! my favorite!) to their Everlasting game.

The only reason I give it 4 stars is that I wanted more details on the mage societies and Shadowearth. Still, even without those nitpicky bits, this book is nearly essential to round out magick in your Everlasting game.

Awesome!

I have a lot of books on this subject, but this is the easiest and most clearly written book for the beginning home recordist I have seen. Mitch knows his business and also how to teach. He includes all necessary technical terms but explains them through simple analogy. Its almost like having a personal tutor there to help you. He anticipates and provides soulutiions for common problems that may, and probably will, arise. The book is thorough in that he takes you from shopping for and buying the right equipment, to recording and burning your music CD and distributing it online.

Make Music Now!: Putting Your Studio Together, Recording Songs, Making CDs, and Distributing Online by Mitch Gallagher (Editor)
This inexpensive book is one of the best small recording/music production information sources I have read. It covers many topics, with enough detail to give a firm understanding for the novice-intermediate home recording musician, while at the same time not overwhelming him/her. It is easy to read, well divided by topic and extremely affordable. It is also thin enough to pop into your laptop case. I'd highly recommend buying a copy to anyone confused by the ANY key concepts in recording or home music production. This is a MUST have. I work for a public school system, and this book would also make an excellent text for any teachers interested in adding recording/MIDI to their curriculum.BUY IT!

I highly reccommend Julie Patton's Maximizing Your Studio's Potential. It is a wonderful tool for students and teachers to track a student's progress, accomplishments and help to motivate intellegent practice sessions that are goal oriented. These books are very well laid out, contain great detail and are appropriate for students of all levels. The skill evaluation tests correspond with the most popular method books for each instrument (Arban for trumpet, trombone and tuba/euphonium and Kopprasch for horn). Julie Patton has given the music world another great tool with which to work!
Marc Reese
Empire Brass - trumpet
Lynn University - Chair, brass dept.

Maximizing Your Studio's Potential: Instructor's Manual by Julie Patton is an outstanding guide that can help both teachers and students realize the full potential of each lesson. The manual assists the instructor and the student in identifying goals and objectives for every lesson - for the semester - for the year. Student skill evaluation and practice analysis is also provided. This manual can aid in the development of productive lesson assignments and offer less subjective assessment possibilities. It creates an atmosphere in which the student and the instructor participate in the learning process and helps each student better realize his/her potential in the studio situation. By Donald L. Hamann, Professor of Music Education and Coordinator of Music Education - University of Arizona

I highly reccommend Julie Patton's Maximizing Your Studio's Potential. It is a wonderful tool for students and teachers to track a student's progress, accomplishments and help to motivate intellegent practice sessions that are goal oriented. These books are very well laid out, contain great detail and are appropriate for students of all levels. The skill evaluation tests correspond with the most popular method books for each instrument (Arban for trumpet, trombone and tuba/euphonium and Kopprasch for horn). Julie Patton has given the music world another great tool with which to work!
Marc Reese
Empire Brass - trumpet
Lynn University - Chair, brass dept.

Maximizing Your Studio's Potential: The Student Log Book by Julie Patton opens the door to an interactive guide that enables students to more fully understand their abilities, take responsibility for their own progress, and better understand the path upon which their performance goals and objectives are based. Students using Patton's guide will find they can create, develop, and/or reinforce meaningful dialogue with their instructors. Student and instructor awareness, focus, assessment, and development are all facilitated by this text. I highly recommend it for every student studying a brass instrument. Donald L. Hamann, Professor and Coordinator of Music Education - University of Arizona

The book was beautifully composed. Wonderful watercolors and thoughtfully chosen prose. I was going to give it to a friend, but I think I will keep it myself.

Meditations on Nature, Meditations on Silence edited by Roderick MacIver and Ann O'Shaughnessy is a retreat between two covers. It is an eclectic collection of insights into the quality and nature of silence and of the silence in nature.

There is peace in this book illustrated with watercolors by Canadian-born MacIver, who founded the publishing house Heron Dance in 1995 to publish books such as this one.

Hundreds of sources as diverse as Science Digest, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rachel Carson, Tagore, and TuFu give voice to a shared and multi-faceted experience. It is like a cool and beautiful river that offers refreshment at whatever point you jump in.

"There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature--the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter," says Rachel Carson.

"Thus the light rains, thus pours,/The liquid and rushing crystal/beneath the knees of the gods," says Ezra Pound in Canto IV.

What is a luscious book about the richness of nature without something scientific and poetic from Stephen Jay Gould? Hear this: "Many great extinctions...have set basic patterns in the history of life, imparting an essential randomness to our evolutionary pageant."

A pattern of randomness. This is science speaking to the soul, and it's why we need beautiful books that place seemingly random things side by side to let our minds make the connections, to fill the spaces with meaning, to free our hearts that we might, in the words of Li Po, be "like a peach blossom/in the flowing stream/going by/in the depths/in another world/not among m

Ernest Withers possessed an artist's eye. In this great volume of oversized black and white photos Withers captures much more than the Memphis Blues. Many of the photos are of acts that played the chitlin' circuit of the 40's, 50's and 60's.

Acts such as Ike and Tina Turner at the Paradise capture the full power of those early, energetic and soulful performances.

aretha,elvis,bb king,jerry lee lewis,duke ellington sam cooke, al green,ray charles,helen humes,james brown, tina turner,the snearly ranch boys.. they all lived in or came to memphis to perform and record. this collection of images which spans four decades provides rare insight into the talent that was atrracted to and lived in this city which was the gateway from the oppression of mississippi.withers' photographs seem alive with the youth and exuberance of these young, legends in the making. the subjects seem oblivious to the camera and withers must have had carte blanche to capture the enegy and private moments of these american icons. any serious student of this country and the roots of its traditions should have this volume.daniel wolff has done all of us a favor in publishing the work of withers. it appears he has just scratched the surface

I got my first Moleskine journal because my daughter recommended them to me. She's been using them for a couple of years and absolutely adores them. And now I see why. These are a great size: small enough to carry in a purse or pocket and large enough to actually see what you write. I always buy the lined versions, but there are unlined ones that would make great sketchbooks, too. The journals come with little pockets inside for keeping receipts, tickets, or anything else you want to keep handy, and there's a rubber band that slips around the book to keep it closed and everything inside. I write down a lot of stuff during my days and probably couldn't live without my Moleskines now.

The planner is a really nice version of the regular journal. I used to carry a much larger planner but I find this one does everything I need it to. Great products for readers, writers, and just about everybody.

I love these date books. I especially like the soft cover. It's butter soft to the touch. The paper is acid free so you can use a fountain pen or, for that matter, any writing instrument and it will feel and look great.

On the left hand side is the place for appointments and to-dos. On the right you can put notes or more to-dos, anything you want.

I use mine to schedule my projects and keep appointments. It's just the right size for my desk. But it could just as easily go into a bag of some sort for either a man or woman.

These are exceptionally well made. They'll last forever. You'll be proud to own and use one.

Highly recommended. Get one every year.

A welcome contrast to the overly studied and glamourized coffee-table porn books of late, this book contains images from the notorious seventies underground erotic quaterly.
edited from a unique series of magazines that featured the Mythic sex appeal of seemingly ordinary black men. Produced during the height of the black exploitation period, these images may be hard to look at during our current P.C. times. However, as a historical artifact of seventies pop culture and sexual liberation, it's an interesting item. The complete lack of sophisticated art direction is precisely it's strength. The garish interiors and un-polished men are period perfect. This work did not share mr. mapplethorpe's ultra refined visual taste and obsessive eye for artistic details. Museums and galleries were not the intended targets......it was all about arousal. Direct and immediate....for anyone who had a particular fondness for a specific type of ebony brother.

Images are arranged by color rendition, instead of by model: Black & white (b&w) to page 64, then color through the end at page 128. Ron, also known as (aka) "Outlaw," for example, is on pp. (pages) 12-13 in b&w and in color on pp. 65-67 & 100-101. There is no text after the Introduction and no captions identifying the models. In case you are wondering if any of your favorite models are included, I also recognized Angelo, Barry, Clayton or "Clay," Francoise, Mack, Mario Albert, Mark, Mickey (cover), 'Rone, "Sputnik," "Taurus," Ty aka Jack, Vic and Warren. A lot of others are shown, but I do not know their names. Many of the photo's have been circulating for years on the Internet, which is where I associated their names/aliases, but the 'net pictures have usually been degraded as cropped, thumbnailed, low resolution, etc. I was glad to see the picture of Clay(ton) in the book, although in black & white, because the color image that has circulated on the 'net is stretched sideways and the book's image is the first time that I have seen the picture without distortion. On the other hand, some of the photo's I have never seen before; to me, I think the book would still be worthwhile even if I had seen all the photo's before. Overall, the photo's are usually not cropped, often showing too much background, but better too much than not enough. The emphasis is on full, frontal nudity. Some rear views are shown, but are usually given lesser importance as one of two or more photo's on a page, instead of a full page. Likewise, there are only a few portraits without full nudity, front or rear; I did not add any portraits as Customer Images (being suitable without nudity) because they are not as representative of the book's content as much as the cover. The publisher's website already shows "sold out" for this title, so do not wait any longer if you want a new copy, as stock at the U.S. distributor in New Jersey may be all that remains. The South Africa (.za) Janssen website also shows a "2006 Preview" thumbnail of a sequel, "Mr. Long," with Francoise on the cover, calling it "...the final continuation," but ISBN "to follow."

This book is not going to get dusty on the shelf. It is a real resource--for art teachers, social studies teachers, home schoolers and anyone else who wants to use art to teach world culture (or conversely world culture to teach art). The lessons makes sense. The art projects are doable. This book had been well thought out. It's also been tested with real students. It is ideal for teachers who want to do multi-cultural education and not just talk about it.

Susan Hogan's book is a fascinating exploration of several different cultures through their art, their customs, geography and history. Her insight into the nature of the different societies brings a deep understanding of how art has been interwoven with the needs and rituals of that society. It also points out the need for us to use our hands, our minds and emotions - expecially in this electronic age. It brings us back to ourselves, to make these things with our hands. I have worked with children of different ages for more than a decade. I find the students really enjoy the easy to do projects that help them produce beautiful articles they can actually use. What a wonderful way of teaching. Bravo!

My 14 month old loves this book. Young children are starting to learn their body parts and clothing and this helps makes SHOES fun instead of a chore!

The Mom's Choice Awards® honors excellence in family-friendly media, products and services. An esteemed panel of judges includes education, media and other experts as well as parents, children, librarians, performing artists, producers, medical and business professionals, authors, scientists and others. A sampling of the panel members includes: Dr. Twila C. Liggett, Ten-time Emmy-winner, professor and founder of Reading Rainbow; Julie Aigner-Clark, Creator of Baby Einstein and The Safe Side Project; Jodee Blanco, New York Times Best-Selling Author; LeAnn Thieman, Motivational speaker and coauthor of seven Chicken Soup For The Soul books; Florrie Binford-Kichler, Founder of Patria Press, Inc.- an award-winning independent publisher and Member of The Children's Book Council; Tara Paterson, Certified Parent Coach, and founder of The Just For Mom Foundation(tm) and the Mom's Choice Awards®. Parents and educators look for the Mom's Choice Awards® seal in selecting quality materials and products for children and families. This book has been honored by this distinguished award.