Image Books

wow what an amazing group of artists and so talented! if you don't have this on your coffee table your missing out!

Drink and Draw Social Club is the brilliantly simple notion of taking a bunch of very funny, talented cartoonists and seeing what copious amounts of alcohol does to their talents. The answer is, sickeningly, apparently nothing.
This book is amazing, packed with wild, crazy funny stuff ranging from sexy ladiez to aliens to cowboys to inner demons to suppressed childhood memories.
Accomanpied by hysterically-funny commentary, the core trio of DDSC make you wish they were your best friends. The drawings are inspirational and will have any budding artist reaching for another beermat.

I grew up in this town, and it was nice to see the historic pictures, and learn the significance of the downtown buildings.

I've worked as a docent in the Mill Valley Library history room, and I can testify that this little book is a brilliant collection of photos and snippets of the town's history. Not only does it have a surprising number of photos for a book this small, but its selection shows a splendid sense of editing. The book covers the period from native American days before the arrival of the Spaniards -- it does not neglect the Coast Miwoks who were the original settlers, after all -- up to the WWII period. It's a book worth having, and worth giving as a gift.

I do also recommend Barry Spitz' Mill Valley: The Early Years, which has more narrative material on the period from 1890, the time of the town's formal founding, to 1929 and the big fire. Also, the Crookedest Railroad in the World, by Theodore Wurm, concentrates on the railroad up Mt. Tamalpais from Mill Valley to the summit, also a must-have. But this book is a nice introduction to Mill Valley's feel and its past.

I purchased "East Fishkill" as a birthday present for my aunt who just turned ninety. At her party (filled with her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren), this book was the most popular gift she received. People loved looking at the Fishkill Plains section, especially the family photo showing the six "uncles," including my aunt's husband. But, in addition to the personally relevant photos, people also really enjoyed looking at all the photos of the way East Fishkill used to be. It's a great gift for anyone with any ties to that area or with a curiosity about New York State history.
Sincerely,
Edie

I guess I always had a connection with Hopewell jct. because my Mom was raised in Hopewell Jct. she and her older twin brothers were very fond of Hopewell and shared alot of fond memeries as they were growing up in this small Railroad town.This book is rich with old photos and history.Places where my relatives spent a bit of there day.A must for anyone interested in local history.

I have found 5 sources in this book of my relatives that were founders of East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Bought the book at a Borders in Providence, Rhode Island yesterday.

I visted the sites in the book of the original homes of my ancestor Clement Weaver, Silas Weaver. I talked with one of the owners of the first home built in East Greenwich, and she was really nice.

Then went to Main street and found not just one but two homes of Silas Weaver 30 Main Street is listed in the book, but also further down the road is Silas second home.

Then we went to the original jail on King near the water and found the plaque that was made to honor the original settlers of East Greenwich which had my ancestors on it.

So excited to be finding all this about my family. I then went back the other Clement Weaver home (the second Clement) and talked with the owner and asked him if he happened to know where the Weaver cemetary is and he told me to come around the back and he would show us. It was on his property. Oh my - I struck it rich in family history. We found the graves and all in all I think there is about 39 graves there, but they are covered up and the owner is over time planning on uncovering the area and unearth the headstones. Many are not marked well, and just have initals.

Very pleased with this book. Bought six copies for Christmas. Big hit with everyone.

I have several books from this publisher and this is one of the best. Due to the loss of so many homes and businesses from the purposed Tocks Island Dam project, this book is an excellent record of what once was in the Pocono area along the Delaware on the PA side. The photo captions provide the text in this series and they are both informative and well written.

This book is exactly what I'd hoped it would be. Lots of information and photos of the Poconos/ Delaware Water Gap area. We wanted to know something about the history of this area, we just purchased a home here.

I had never heard about the Eastland disaster until one day finding a "In Memory of..." picture showing the ship in good times and didn't even know anything about the Eastland, so I went to The Eastland Historical Society's webpage and started reading through it and though there is a great deal of information on the website (highly recommend the website, as well), I wanted to know more and with this book and another book "The Sinking of The Eastland, America's Forgotten Tragedy" it gave a greater view of what happened on that fateful day in 1915. This is an extraordinary pictorial look into a day in American History that very few have even heard of and after reading it, will never forget!

I'm going to cheat. I'm going to write one review and use it on three separate books. No doubt I'll offend the review gods at Amazon, but this subject merits it. Even though I live only 4 hours away from Chicago, I had never heard of the Eastland until I was searching for something entirely different and found a Western Electric website mentioning it. This is an utterly incredible story. I promptly ordered "The Sinking of the Eastland." The book goes into a fair amount of detail about the tragedy itself, yet its primary purpose is to describe the people involved and how they were affected. The author never claims to be a technical authority and instead makes reference several times to another book "Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic." I promptly ordered that one as well and while searching for additional information I learned of a third book "The Eastland Disaster (Images of America)." That one was ordered as well. Since you have read this far, you are obviously interested in my opinions and in my opinion, all three are required reading to grasp what happened. "The Eastland Disaster" is primarily a collection of relevant photographs which augment the other two books. Many more photographs of the events surrounding the ship, the sinking and the aftermath. And finally, "Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic" is much more technically oriented including the naval architecture concepts concerning the ship itself. I found this book to be especially good as it attempts to provide as much of a balanced view as possible, including several contemporary naval experts analyzing the court testimony of a leading architect of the day. Absolutely fascinating stuff. Not only that, but it is interesting to learn our concern for American jobs being lost to China is not a new thing. Ninety years ago people were worried about the same thing as a result of new regulations coming from the Titanic sinking. All three books solidly contribute to gaining knowledge about the disaster.

This is an excellant book .I am very pleased with it.And recommend this book .Elbert

The Egyptian Book of the Dead

The Papyrus of Ani was painted in Egypt about 1250 BC. It represents the best preserved, longest, most ornate, and beautifully executed example of the form of Mortuary Text known as the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Ani was a well-to-do scribe (or accountant) within the Temple hierarchy who, as he approached middle age, decided it was time to order his personalized selection of the prayers and invocations designed as a guide to the Egyptian afterlife. Compiled from the oldest religious culture on earth, these spells (known as the Pyramid Texts) had originally been engraved on the walls of the tombs of kings or pharaohs). As time went on, they began to be more widely available, carved and painted on the wooden sarcophagi of great nobles (where they are known as Coffin texts). Finally, they became even more widely available, painted on scrolls and available to the upper middle class. Ani's papyrus measured 78 feet long by 15 inches high.

The prayers are connected to certain archetypal images. Thus an invocation to Osiris, the Lord of the Underworld, will be written within a painting (or vignette) of that deity. The meaning of the passage is a marriage of word and image, reaching well beyond the merely verbal level of the brain. One of the best known examples of these breathtaking unions of text and image is the Weighing of the Heart scene. Here, the heart (the moral integrity of the deceased, the conscience) is weighed against the feather of Truth and Justice. If the cumulative effects of the person's past have allowed his soul to be as light as the feather of Truth, he or she is judged pure and admitted to the presence of the Lord of the Dead in preparation for the journey through the Afterlife. However, if the person's heart is weighted down with the burden of sin, his soul is flung to the great monster who awaits the recording of the verdict and is no more.

As a magical, polytheistic religion, the Egyptian spiritual path was alive with creativity and energy. The spiritual dignity afforded the observant Egyptian was an invigorating state. One who had led an upright moral life, who had shown respect to the Gods, and, who had been strong enough to persevere through the awesome dangers of the path of the afterlife, was then invited to feast with his Gods, playing board games in beautiful fields, drinking beer and enjoying related pleasures, The successful adherent would reach a stellar glory of his own, at last a member of that hierarchy his life had been spent in honoring.

The impact of Ancient Egypt on modern western culture is of course ubiquitous. Egypt is known as the Mother of Western Civilization. The 42 part Negative Confession is a source of our own Ten Commandments. (The additional ancient statute against the bringing of law suits might be worth revisiting!) Egyptian religion is the source of the Judaeo-Christian belief in the after death resurrection promised to mankind as a reward for righteous living.

The Egyptian religion was a magical religion that involved a continuous interaction between the individual and the various deities who constituted its elaborate and exalted pantheon. Initiates were required to memorize magical formulas and spells, and to demonstrate their proficiency therein; tests of courage and honor were administered by the officers of the Temple. Possession of secret knowledge, along with a highly developed moral character, were necessary to penetrate the deeper levels of Egyptian spirituality.

Egypt's moral teaching presented in its Wisdom literature and Mortuary texts attain to the highest levels of sacred awareness. Egypt's temples, statues, frescoes, carvings, jewelry, painted scrolls and sarcophagi stand as mute witnesses to a brilliant and lofty spiritual culture that has never been equaled on earth. The silent and stationary images of The Egyptian Book of the Dead continue to speak and move today, some four millennia after their creation.

* * * * *
The story of the securing of the Papyrus of Ani combines elements of fate and tragedy, even slapstick, and marks the very end of European colonialism in North Africa. Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, assistant Keeper of the Egyptian Collection at the British Museum, and author and editor of many books on ancient Near Eastern civilizations, arrived in Egypt in 1887 with funds for the purchase of antiquities for the Museum. There had recently been a series of extraordinary finds in Upper Egypt. The Egyptian government, seeking to preserve the finds, had appointed police/military units to seek out native Egyptians in possession of these antiquities and to prevent Europeans from buying them. Budge was personally threatened with arrest should he attempt to purchase anything.

At Luxor, Budge found a papyrus he described as the largest such roll he had ever seen. "... I was amazed at the beauty and freshness of the colours of the human figures and animals, which in the dim light of the candles and heated air of the tomb, seemed to be alive." In fact Budge was obsessed with the papyrus. He arranged for a tin smith to make a cylindrical box to protect the roll. He evaded the chief of police of Luxor, who was carrying out orders from the Director of the Service of Antiquities. The Ani papyrus was stored in a small building nearby the old Luxor Hotel, where it had been placed under government guard. Budge and the antiquities dealers first attempted to get the guards drunk, then to bribe them to leave their posts for an hour. Finally they arranged for a crew to quietly dig under the wall. A substantial supper was arranged for the guards and while they feasted, the conspirators removed the papyrus of Ani along with numerous other finds through the two foot square hole they had dug for the purpose earlier in the evening. Secreting the papyrus aboard a steamer at midnight, Budge arrived in Cairo, and with the help of members of the British army, managed to get the papyrus off to London.

* * * * *
Here's where the real trouble began. Budge cut the papyrus into 37 nearly equal lengths for ease of handling. The sheets were glued onto wooden boards to keep then rigid. Fortunately Budge immediately commissioned a facsimile to be prepared. An exquisite limited edition was produced by color lithography in 1890 preserving forever the awesome beauty of the ancient original. Meanwhile the translation began which took five years and a companion volume of translation was released in 1895. Meanwhile, the extraordinary nature of the find encouraged the British Museum to display the sheets under a large skylight in a central hall. The glue and direct sunlight damaged the papyrus beyond repair. The translation had also revealed that many of the cuts were made in the wrong places, thus chapters were interrupted, vignettes were split, and text was left far from its accompanying image.

Book designer James Wasserman arranged to photograph his extremely rare copy of the British Museum facsimile of the papyrus. Utilizing the modern magic of computers and state-of-the-art production techniques, the images were scanned, reassembled, and electronically recut to best display the 78 foot papyrus as a book. A team of Egyptologists was led by Dr. Ogden Goelet of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at New York University, who wrote an overall commentary on the work along with a plate by plate The bulk of the translation used is that of the late Dr. Raymond O. Faulkner, whose work is universally acknowledged as the most authoritative. It was updated by Dr. Goelet to reflect advances in Egyptian philology. Carol Andrews of the Department of Antiquities of the British Museum wrote the Preface and facilitated access to the original papyrus. Eva van Dassow acted as overall project editor. The work of these scholars made this publication as intellectually accurate as it is visually beautiful.

The translation of the text of each image is placed on the page directly below the image, allowing the reader, for the first time in 3500 years, to gaze on the images while reading the words of the papyrus. Uncluttered with footnotes or other extraneous matter, the papyrus is displayed with the intent of allowing the modern reader to experience the full depth of the original. The restoration of the unity of word and image in this publication of the Papyrus of Ani has brought to life one of the most important early spiritual treasures of mankind.

Electric Boat Corporation (Images of America) (CT)
Page No. 36- Should say Groton Plant after the Mid-1920's construction projects (see top picture on page no.46) and before USS Cuttlefish (see top picture on page no.52) in North Yard building Ways No. 1, 2 & 3, c. 1928, not 1918.
The four stack Destroyer USS Paulding, DD-22 (1910-1934) is identified in the picture as the converted Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC Paulding) CG-22 (1924-1930).

Page No. 82- Should say Tall Ship, U.S. Coast Guard Training Ship, Eagle, Overhaul in Dec 1963, not 1947,

Page No. 96- Bottom Picture- should say Robinson Research Laboratory, 1957, not 1952.

Page No.103- Should say Shift End Exodus, 1958, not 1954. Robinson Research Laboratory, 1957, previously named Research And Development, 1955. (see page 96)

This is an excellent book if you are interested in submarine or nautical history. It is a must have if you are from the Southeastern CT / Southern RI area.

This book is substantially revised from the previous edition in 1983, some 17 years ago. Consequently, new topics are added, particularly on GIS and digital photogrammetry. The appendixes on least squares adjustment, co-ordinate transformations, collinearity equations and digital resampling are particularly useful.

This book is clearly one of the best ones around in the area of photogrammetry. The chapters are properly organised and the concepts are explained clearly.

Of course, every book has to focus on its intent and target audience. The authors did this with flying colors. If there is anything missing in the current photogrammetric literature, it surely must be a book that reorganises the chapters into an operational book of case studies on photogrammetric practice.

I strongly recommend the book to you.

Dr Willie Tan bdgtanw@nus.edu.sg

This book is an excellent resource and covers all topics in a sufficient and easy to read manner and definitely covers all the "elements". Anyone that is interested in Photogrammetry will find this book quite useful.

There are many great examples of basic image processing techniques in this book. Topics like Image Filtering, Edge Detection and also some Wavelets. There is both theory and detailed examples which really helps when trying to get the DSP in a symbiotic relationship with Matlab, CodeComposer Studio and MS Visual Studio.

There is a logical flow in how information is presented. First a basic description of the algorithm. Second some Matlab or pseudo-code. Then third he describes exactly how to implement it on the c6x dsp. Not only are there implementation details but also interfacing explanation for both Matlab and Visual Studio.

Overall this is an excellent book for getting a project up and running in a timely fashion.

This is an extremely well laid out and understandable text. The coding examples are easy to understand and can be easily demonstrated on the TI DSK's. As a current TI employee with little experience with the C6x line of DSP's, Qureshi's book allowed me to learn a large amount of image processing background in a short time while becoming familiar with the workings of Code Composer Studio and the DSP. The book starts very simply and has clear instructions on how to obtain the tools to run all of the code samples on real DSPs.

Starting with an overview of the tools involved and the C6x architecture, Qureshi moves into simple image processing concepts, such as contrast stretching and window/level processing. After clearly explaining the concept and the implementation, the reader is led through the process of optimizing the code for the DSP environment. Later topics, such as edge detection and wavelets leave the reader with a clear understanding of the fundamentals of image processing, as well as code examples that make implementation a breeze.

Overall, an excellently written book and a must for anyone interested in image processing, whether on TI DSPs or not.