Abstract Books

This book is a collection of abstracts as published in the Methodist "Western Christian Advocate" 1834-1850. It is a rather specific reference book for use in family or church history research for midwestern states.

It is a very useful tool for those connected to the Methodist Church during the years 1834-1850.

This book is a must have for those who are researching their families with ties to the Methodist faith.
It is a huge hard cover book, fully indexed by name and by city/state. From midwest to the eastern states, it is truly a great resource.

Lucky me, I found this in a local public library! But it is too bad I cannot buy this as it is out of print. Unlike other art books, this book is not limited to pictures but has lots of useful information to read.

Agnes Martin died in December of 2004. I encountered her art in March of 2005. I have a lot of catching up to do, for she was in the art world for many many years until her death at age of 92. This book has certainly been helping me on the catching up.

The best part of this book, to me, is the selected wrinting of Agnes Martin. Her writing, just like her art work, is characterized by contentment, conciseness, and beauty.

This book is extremely informative for artists especially minimalist and abstract artists. Not only showing us her version of beauty, but also her version of the definition of good art and bad art are explained here in a very clear form. Agnes Martin was indeed an ORIGINAL being after all. This book comfirms it.

Agnes Martin is one of the world's most respected abstract expressionist painters. Awarded the US National Medal for the Arts and many others, at 88 years young, she continues to paint daily in her Taos, New Mexico studio. This book highlights an extensive collection of her past and present work. The fascination of the work is that she is able to simplify and reduce the visual experience to very faint lines, grids, and bands of muted color on paper and canvas. The images in this book are not concrete, they are not bold, they are contemplative soft feminine brush strokes and fine graphite lines that can, if you allow them, produce a sense of calm, peace and joy. A true experience! If you are unable to go to Taos's Harwood Museum to see seven of her blue and white series all arranged in an octangal room constructed to house them, this book will introduce you to one great painter. Enjoy.

My first taste of algebra came from Lang's book (big mistake). I then read Gallian's undergrad. book and tried Lang again, it was still very difficult. I finally found Grove. This is a great book. Very easy to read and understand. Although it doesn't cover everything in Lang, it covers everything that commonly comes up in a first year graduate class. The book's only drawback is it's difficulty to find. If you're looking for a good intro. to algebra text (and if you can find it) buy it!

This is one of my favorite beginning graduate texts. Although it follows a very terse definition-example-theorem-proof style, the proofs and examples seem very enlightening. Each Chapter comes
with numerous exercises interleaved with the material, as well as
exercises at the end of the chapter. Groups, rings, fields, and modules are covered in depth.

This is a tour de force of an art book. The entire output of the artist is reproduced in full color, with a complete provenance listing including the current owner (when known). The book also starts with two brilliant essays by Richard Schiff (on the artist's ideas on art, on his attitude towards modern art movements, on the influence of the past on his art) and by Carol Mancusi-Ungaro (more centered on the artist's technique and creative process). One of the most sumptuous and best informed artbooks I own.

The most surprising thing about Newman's output is how non-prolific he was,118 works on canvas in 25 years.Every painting is reproduced in superb color.The only detriment is that half a dozen of his large horizontal paintings are spread across the centrespread,spoiling the composition.Using fold out pages would have been more useful.It also includes his drawings,graphics and sculpture,comprising of 329 works in all.No text accompanies the reproductions,letting the work stand on it's own.If you admire Newman's work,buy this magnificent book.It is one of finest catalogue raisonne ever produced.

Purchased as a gift for my son who is a graphic arts designer. He was very pleased with it. An easy transaction.

I was pleased with the quality of the reproductions. The introduction and details of Cy Twombly's life and work was informative and gave a clear picture of the man and his art. I would reccommend this book to anyone interested in the free thinking and essence of comtempory art.

Poetry that embraces the heart, mind, soul and body
I felt every word of the author poems
I recommend that everyone read this book of poetry.

When I read the poems in this book I felt my soul open up. I felt like crying and laughing all at once. The author truly knows how to get in touch with your soul with her poetry. I recommend this book of peoms to get in touch with the passion that is within us all.

Emily Mason: The Fifth Element is well written and the illustrations are excellent. Reproduced colors are accurately brilliant and the beauty of the paintings is revealed to great advantage. The biographical narrative is absorbing and illustrated with delightful photographs that capture the artist's character and the zeitgeist of the second half of the twentieth century. Analyses of individual paintings are clearly explained and fascinating. Emily Mason's use of color is individualistic, unusal and expressive. She is a profound artist. I highly reccommend this book.

In "Emily Mason: The Fifth Element" David Ebony, Associate Managing Editor of "Art in America" magazine presents a comprehensive survey of eighty oil paintings along with several examples of prints made from Carborundum plates by this contemporary American woman artist. The title comes from the mysterious substance described by Aristotle which complimented the four basic elements of earth, air, fire and water. In this fifth element--- ether, hung the heavens.
This daughter of Alice Trumbull Mason, famous founding member of the American Abstract Artists group and descendant of Neo-Classical colonial period painter John Trumbull, decided she was an artist while still a young child. Surrounded by art and artists, Emily Mason benefitted from this support and advantages by being educated at New York High School of Music and Art, Bennington College, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. Mason matured during the revolutionary art movement called The New York School during which time abstract expressionism became the dominant style of painting. In 1956, Mason won a Fulbright scholarship to study at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. Returning to New York, she exhibited there by the 1950's and made her mark in a male-dominated art community.
The paintings in this book are examples from five decades of steady work exploring color and space in an intuitive process of adding and substracting color, forms and texture.
I have seen her work in her studio and in a museum.
A master of color which speaks directly to the soul, Mason's work is beautifully reproduced by faithful recreations of her paintings in this book printed in China.
Inspired by nature and poetry, Emily Mason is a beautiful person. This is evident in her work.
If you have any concern about painting being "dead" buy this book!
It is alive and well in Mason's hands.

Frank Stella started out as a painter who painted directly onto the projected canvas and this book clarifies the many, complex reasons Stella chose his signature style. The horizontal and vertical bars seen in his luxurious paintings are as relevant today as they were back in 1958. A desirable book for anyone who is learning about the history of Minimalism--a movement in which many people believe Stella played a big part.

1958 was an incredible year in Art History. Frank Stella knows no bounds and is endlessly fascinating. Harry Cooper and Megan Luke get it completely.
Bravos and Brava.

The main focus of Jorg Bewersdorff's "Galois Theory for Beginners: An Historical Perspective" is "...[polynomials] and their solutions..." Chapters 1 through 3 are about classical methods (formulas) for solutions on cubic and bi-quadratic polynomials. Chapter 4 and 5 are "systematic investigation of the...solution formulas..." Chapter 6's primary topic is "...[polynomials] that can be broken down into...lower degree." Chapter 7 focuses on the construction of regular polygons with straightedge and compass. Chapter 8 is about "...finding a general solution formula for [the] fifth-degree [polynomials]..." Chapter 9 and 10 focus on Galois theory: "...the limits of solvability of [polynomials] in radicals."

I began my pursuit "...to understand why a general...[polynomial] of the 5th degree should have no solution in radical..." decades ago, as if Jorg Bewersdorff. His book is the best I have ever read on Galois theories. For instances:

1. Theorem 10.18 An [polynomial] is solvable in radicals, that is all of its solutions can be expressed in terms of nested roots whose radicands can be expressed in terms of the coefficients using the four basic operations, if and only if its Galois group is solvable...

2. Definition 9.2 For a [polynomial] without multiple solutions whose coefficients lie in a field K, the Galois group (over the field K) is the set of all permutations s in the symmetric group Sn that permute the indices 1,...,n of the solutions x1,...,xn in such a way that for every polynomial h(X1,...,Xn) with coefficients in K and h(x1,x2,...,xn) = 0, one has h(x(s(1)),...,x(s(n))) = 0 ...

3. Definition 10.17 A finite group G is called solvable if there is a chains of groups {id}=G0 ( G1 ( G2 ( ... ( G(k-1) ( G(k) = G for which the subgroup G(j) is a normal subgroup of the next group in the chain G(j+1), such that the quotient group G(j+1)/G(j) is cyclic of prime order n...

4. A point in a plane is constructible if and only if its "...coordinates can be expressed in rational numbers and nested square roots using the four basic arithmetic operations (+, - , * , /).

This is a wonderfully written, highly accessible introduction to polynomial equations (quadratics, cubics, etc.) and their solutions by radicals, leading step by step to an introduction to Galois theory.

Galois theory is presented only towards the end of the book. Readers already familiar with the solutions of quadratic equations, depressed cubics, cubics, and quartics will find the first half of the book somewhat redundant. But it is nevertheless very pleasant to read, with succinct notes on the historical background, and (mostly) self-contained short sections.

It reads very well all the way to the end. It gets a little harder when Galois theory is introduced. But that's perhaps to be expected. I can't say that I master the subject, but certain things (about polynomial equations) are a great deal clearer for me now.

I do have one reservation (but I did not knock off a star for that): the editing (of this English translation of the German original) is quite poor: there is a typo just about every other page. I am very sensitive to typos, and most readers probably won't (nor should they) care -- but there are some typos in the math here and there, and that's plain unacceptable.

After some one hundred pages of semi-historical digressions on various scattered topics in classical algebra, we get to the main topic: the question of solvability by radicals of polynomial equations. The known solutions of equations up to degree 4 can be interpreted as relying on certain solvable auxiliary equations, the roots of which can be used to express the roots of the original equation. Lagrange then introduced the would-be analogous auxiliary equations for higher degree cases. Their roots, "Lagrange resolvents", can express the roots of the original equation, but their appearance suggests that they will not be solvable. However, proving this sort of thing seems to call for "a kind of calculus of combinations" (Lagrange; p. 146), i.e. permutation group theory, beyond his reach. The subsequent development followed the lines indicated by Lagrange to some extent; Gauss's proof that cyclotomic equations are solvable by radicals is based on solving iterated auxiliary equations, thus providing "remarkable examples of the step-by-step solution of equation as envisioned by Lagrange" (p. 185), and the Ruffini-Abel unsolvability proofs did indeed involve a little bit of permutation groups. But the paramount vindication and perfection came with Galois. Galois has his own "resolvents"--given an equation, a Galois resolvent is a calculable expression that can rationally express all the roots of the equation. Now, if one substitutes into these rational expressions another root of the minimal polynomial of the resolvent, then one still gets the roots, but they are permuted. All such permutations form a group--the Galois group--which is the key to solvability. Namely, solvability by radicals of the equation, i.e. solvability by +,-,*,/ and p:th roots, is precisely mirrored by the "solvability" of the corresponding Galois group, i.e. the decomposition of this group into a chain of normal subgroups of index p.

I have tried for several months to find a book wich could give me some inside of "GALOIS Theory", an idea of how people came to such abstract considerations.
I think I've found it!