By Subject Books

Excellent book on the coldest places on the planet. First rate photography and printed image quality. Many facts in short easy to read captions and chapter intros. This is a great book.

I have read many of Gordon's works. This offering is seasoned with the sage of a wiser thinker (if that's even possible). The color and composition of the photos is stellar. I have seen none better. The words which accompany the pictures are almost as captivating as the visual experience. The pictures which stand alone are equally as dynamic inasmuch as they make you want to take them apart and see how they work. You will want to get a copy for yourself and one for each of your closest "art lover" friends or associates.

Photography has always been an outlet to certain visionaries in our society. Giving them a way to express to others the way they interpret somewhat ordinary and sometimes not so ordinary sights. This collection of images inspires all those who look at them. And then combining these with words of inspiratin and thought provoking prose makes it a treat to the soul as well as the eyes.

This book is one of the most helpful sources to understanding and looking at Henry Moore's world, work and learning his regard for the objects of reality he transformed into his sculptures. It is truly amazing and it is the actual sketchbook of his very own sheep. It is a wonderful book.

This is the first of a massive three volume history of Beginning Reading Instruction in America. It corrects a number of mistakes that even phonics advocate make concerning the history of reading in America. The look-and-say method, here called the "meaning" method, has been with us a lot longer than most people think, beginning around 1826. The Reading

Wars have thus been with us a long time, and only got worse when early American Psychologists got into the act with the Dick and Jane method that handicapped millions of ususpecting Americans, and was made even worse when modern self-styled Whole-Language Psycholinguists perpetuated their predecessors' errors.

I personally witnessed the unfortuante incursion of the "meaning" method, under the guise of the whole-language philosopohy/psychology, during my career in public education. Unheaded history repeates itself.

Miss Rodgers' research is both massive and meticulous. Modern researachers should hesitate to make any pronouncements on the history of reading in America before consulting her history.

Be sure and read her other books: Why Jacques, Johann and Jan CAN Read The Case for the Prosecution, in the Trial of Silent Reading Comprehension Tests, Charged with the Destruction of America's Schools The Hidden Story: How America's Present-Day Reading Disabilities Grew Out of the Underhanded Meddling of America's First Experimental Ps

Don Potter
Spanish Teacher and Reading Specalist
Odessa, TX

Years of painstaking and meticulous research went into Geraldine Rodgers' accurate and insightful History of Beginning Reading. To study the history of beginning reading and miss this book is like missing St. Peter's on a visit to Rome. This is a standard work, deserving The Place of Pride in every educational library.

This is a comprehensive study of what the author asserts is an unacknowledged genre - the alcoholism movie. Norman K. Denzin is best known for his writings in addiction studies, including `The Alcoholic Self' [1987], and `The Alcoholic Society: The Alcoholic Self and Its Recovery' [1993]. Where this book differs from his other work is in its synthesis of methodologies -from cultural studies, historical sociology, psychoanalytic film theory - in addition to social psychology. It places the notion of `subjectivity' centre stage in arguing that cinematic representations offer multiple possibilities of identification and dis-identification to the viewer. This is a model that allows interactivity:- it is both reflective and generative of everyday social being and social consciousness. In this way, Denzin puts Raymond Williams' `structures of feeling' to good use.

The Hollywood alcoholism films analyzed span the period 1932-1990. Its start is not arbitrarily chosen as it marks both the death throes of Prohibition and the ascendance of Hays Code production constraints on Hollywood depictions. This typifies, as Denzin sees it, deep-rooted ambivalence and contradictions in American attitudes to alcohol. From the repeal of Prohibition through to the 1960s, the `Lost Generation' of alcoholic writers-turned-Hollywood-screenwriters influenced cinema representations. The leitmotif of hard drinking in their literary works has been written about extensively(see `The White Logic: Alcoholism and Gender in American Modernist Fiction' John W Crowley 1994), yet contemporaneous film fictions are less well addressed. Denzin's `Shot by Shot' redresses the balance by meticulous scrutiny of movies as film texts per se. Through solid scholarship and thorough research, he maps the trajectory of the genre from anti-alcohol through AA influenced illness concept to contemporary dysfunctional family theory.

The section on the `double standards' in representations of female screen alcoholics is astutely handled, as is the Lacanian based section `The Cracked Mirror and the Alcoholic Self'. The most compelling argument Denzin has however lies in the insistence on the legitimacy of an `alcoholism genre' in cinema. The common strategy of attributing cinema texts to genres other than alcoholism ( e.g. `Harvey' and `Arthur' as light comedy, `Lady Sings the Blues' as biopic) operates as a form of denial, and parallels the lived experience of alcoholics and their families. Indeed Denzin cites the use of Hollywood alcoholism films in re-hab treatment centres - used to facilitate the individual's rupture of denial, and their own self-attribution as alcoholic. If anything, Denzin could have developed this a little further through differentiation in both lived experiences and representations of ruptured denial - the slow dawning of identification as well as the epiphanic moment of realization.

Denzin's examples are well chosen and justified: redemption narratives, popular fictions and film biography. One wonders what Denzin would make of some of the cinema releases since the book's publication. Redemption and recovery certainly do not figure in such films as `Leaving Las Vegas' (1995) or the explosively powerful British film `Nil by Mouth' (1997). . Non-American cinema is sadly outside the scope of Denzin's book - and one of the best British interdisciplinary books, `Images of Alcoholism' (British Film Institute 1979) is now out-of-print. The shift of focus from the cultural studies mainstays of age/race/class/gender to wider representations of `attribute' will no doubt ensure that others will follow Denzin's lead in re-evaluating the alcoholism film genre.

This is easily one of the best books I've read that gives very practical tips and techniques with beautiful results.

I came across this book while I was at the bookstore this past weekend and I was really impressed with it. What I really like about Hodge's technique is that she does not rely on the grid method to complete a drawing. In each of her drawings she starts off with simple shapes and then demonstrates step by step how to get a finished realistic portrait. The title says this is a book for beginners, but some of the techniques and mediums that Hodge presents (ie: ink, colored pencil, charcoal; stippling, cross hatching, etc.) are too advanced for someone who is just starting to draw. Lee Hammond's "Draw Real People!" is more appropriate for beginners who need a basic understanding about shading and facial proportions (through the grid method). Hodge's book is more suitable for an intermediate who is ready to draw free style, experiment with different mediums, and find his/her own drawing style.

P Miller's collection of beautifully arranged photographs highten and highlight our senses and experiences of the human body, particularly the female form. The images are accompanied by insightful and thought-provoking prose. The black and white photographs especially have excellent balance of light and dark. The photographs and text flow effortlessly together and to each other.
This book stands out from the usual photography coffee table books in its exquisite presentation of the relations between the female body and nature.