Blake Books

This is not a bad book at all. My rating comes from comparing it to the similar "The Next Step" by Bradley Sowash and Scott Houston, to which I gave 4 stars. My complaints with this book are that, aside from the really dorky and thus grating attempts at humour, a few of the songs in this one are obscure to anyone under 50, and quite lame (Streets of Laredo and Simple Gift are two I had to track down and wished I hadn't), without being muscially interesting in any way. The treatment of the LH is not very in-depth. For general readability, TNS is much more engaging, and the goal of producing a full arrangement is kept more clearly in focus, particularly with respect to integrating the LH. So that's what How to Play from a Fake Book is weaker on: presentation and the big picture. Why buy it?

Here's what Neely's book has going for it: the section on chord types is MUCH more extensive than what you get in TNS and his "common tone" exercise is a great way to get the hands used to moving around the keyboard. There are some very entertaining songs to play that use minor and altered chords which take you to regions of keyboard geography you're just never going to get near with TNS. "Ain't Nobody's Bizness" is a great bluesy number to practice substitutions and swing rhythms on, for example. The book is more extensive and goes further than TNS, but the presentation just isn't as engaging as TNS. I'd say they complement each other. I find that I apply the approach to fake book playing from TNS, which I refer to for motivation, while I'm working through the more advanced material in "How to Play from a Fake Book". If you only want to buy one, which one? I'd say TNS if you're more of a beginner and Neely's book if you're a little more advanced, though at some point all you'll need is a decent fake book and a chord dictionary.

I was reading the reviews for the book Piano for Dummies on Amazon. There was a lot of whining about the dire humor in the book which I thought was a coincidence because I had been working on this How To Play From a Fake Book and I was finding it so difficult because the so called funny bits were putting me off. Then I looked at the "writer" and realized they were one and the same! Boy! This guy is not funny in a major way. The information provided is fine and the idea behind the book is illuminating but it is trying to learn how to play the piano with a 12 year old sitting beside you on the stool trying to brighten things up with some of the lamest cracks you could imagine. Therefore three stars for this "book" and minus three for the hilarious gags. I do not think I will be going near the Piano for Dummies book. I Neely did. Geddit? Ho ho ho!
(Oh man, it's contagious.)

Let's start off with some assumptions:
You have bothered to spend the few weeks it takes to learn how to read music, even if only slowly.
You are mainly interested in playing pop music (rock, country, soul, r&b etc.) as opposed to jazz or classical (not that this book can't help you with the latter as well).
You have noticed that most song books have what are called lead sheets that only have a treble clef melody line with chord letters over the bars of music, and lyrics.
You have gotten far enough with your keyboard playing that you can play some basic chords with your left hand and a melody with your right hand. Which is all that most songbooks show you how to do.

You have realized that on the recordings you listen to professional musicians seldom play a straight out melody with their right hands, and almost never while the vocalist is singing. Any more than guitar players play a melody, but instead play more interesting chord patterns for accompaniment.
This is the book that teaches you to play the way professionals do. In 88 pages no less. To put it as simply as possible, learn how to read music then get this book as the only book you need to learn how to play keyboards. Just as snowplowing is a useless skiing technique once you learn how to turn stop on skis, simply learning to play left hand chords and a right hand melody is nearly as useless a technique for actually accompanying a singer.
I say 'nearly' because there are in fact times when playing the melody line is fitting, but as your only right hand technique is frustrating and being stuck in a rut. This book gets you out of that rut and gives you the tools to strike off on your own with no musical limitations to hold you back. Man am I happy I found it. In retrospect I would gladly have paid $100 or more for this book when I first started.

If you're a self-learner who wants a very nice and gentle instruction on all the chord variants, this book is pretty good... it almost feels like you have a good-natured teacher sitting beside you. The book is interspersed with 50+ fake book songs, and comes with a chord reference chart, so it's hard to go wrong for the price.

However, it doesn't cover much more than block chords, so if you've learned all the chord variants already (or are going to learn them from the many websites), and don't care for the songs it includes, then this may not be the book for you.

I played piano for over 40 years but couldn't tell one chord from another, I'd only learned to play from written music. This book explains basic chords, variations, inversions and more in a simple, straight-forward manner that makes using a fake book and improvising a fun challenge. It's also helpful in embellishing my current music. I'd highly recommend it! It's brought new life to playing piano.

If you love paleontology, this book is not about that. It is about a legal battle over dinosaur bones. Not science. I was surprised, to say the least, to see the difference between the title of the book and its contents.

Tyrannosaurus Sue is a great book about the discovery of the largest T-rex fossil ever excavated. Sue Hendrickson and Peter Larson, commercial fossil hunters, found the giant in South Dakota. When her Cretaceous remains were unearthed, all parties involved were under the impression that the find had been made on private property and the property owner was duly paid for the fossil.

The situation quickly turned greatly political. The Sioux, the Federal Government and professional paleontological societies got involved. The bones were seized from the Larson institute and impounded by the Feds. It took years of confusing court proceedings to settle the issue.

This is a great story of how science is often politicized, especially when money is involved (the remains are worth a fortune). Sue wasn't simply discovered and studied by scientists and enjoyed by curious members of the public. She was fought over, transported, stored, etc. The tale of her journey is very intriguing. As a scientist in another field, I found it very interesting to gain insight into the operations of another field. Yikes, sometimes controversy is just inevitable.

Check it out, it's a great read (I intentionally left Sue's fate out of the review in case you're not aware of her whereabouts).

Although "Tyrannosaurus Sue" takes a while to get rolling, eventually author Steve Fiffer does get into the trial over the bones, and, as a lawyer, he does an excellent job of clarifying that mess.

In a foreward, dinosaur researcher Robert Bakker says, "There's a lot of Roshomon in Sue's story." By that I take it he means that there is a shortage of certainty about who the villains are, although Bakker and Fiffer are sympathetic to Peter Larson and his friends, who dug up Sue.

The fossil equivalents of Yankee tinkerers, the Larsons were self-taught and entrepreneurial. As such, predictably, they raised the hackles of academic researchers.

One complaint by the academics against the Larsons can be disposed of: that commercial bone collecting interferes with proper study of fossils. Surely the information to be gleaned from the bones is more valuable than the money people (or the Field Museum) will pay for the bones -- millions -- so interference with proper study is a serious matter.

However, although Fiffer does not go into it, the record of academic bone hunters in the western states has frequently been scandalous, with illegal collecting, faked documentation, slovenly curation and failure to publish.

As a good businessman, Larson was, at least, not inclined to the last two of those.

While some of the academic critics may have been sincere and even have had legitimate concerns, the leading lights come off very poorly in "Tyrannosaurus Sue."

Part of the reason Fiffer's book starts slowly is his evident intent to build up suspense -- generally, as here, an irritating approach -- but he also has the more reasonable goal and task of setting the finding of Sue in context. This means going back to the Bone Wars of the 19th century. Much of this is already plowed ground, but Fiffer's explanation of a legitimate (as it seems to have been) commercial pale ontological enterprise was new and interesting to me.

Once all that is finally taken care of, "Tyrannosaurus Sue" races to an exciting conclusion, with a lively courtroom drama, a tense auction, some corporate struggles and a not entirely satisfactory (to me) outcome.

It's a complex story, made even more so by a factor I have not mentioned so far: the fact that Sue was found on Indian land that was under lease to an Indian rancher. That added extra layers of legal uncertainty to an already uncertain story.

Fiffer also explores, without suggesting much in the way of remedy, the national government's confused, confusing and probably self-defeating legislation concerning fossils on public lands.

Steve Fiffer's "Tyrannosaurus Sue" is an interesting tale of the discovery of the most complete T-Rex skeleton found up to that point, and the bizarre battle that ensued over the ownership of the find. The book provides some insight into the world of paleontology (especially the pitfalls of searching on property where boundary lines aren't clear), and details a rather maddening tale of government intervention. I would have enjoyed more discussion of paleontology, but I understand that that wasn't the purpose of this particular work. Fiffer's writing style is straightforward to the point of being a bit dry at points, but it's well suited to describing the legal and political manipulations of the story. An interesting book that will spur interest in reading more about its subject matter.

One of the greatest dinosaur finds in history - perhaps THE greatest - was caught up in politics, money and jealousy. It is just pathetic what the government did to this scientist and makes one wonder question the rationality of "officials" who would commit such deeds.

All the ins and outs of scientific rivalry, government bumbling and misplaced priorities are thoroughly described. The story is fascinating and will hold your attention for days. Our view of T-rex and dinosaurs in general changed following this discovery. Good book, guaranteed to make you furious.

I loved reading Dances with Wolves, but Holy Road is a sore disappointment! I can't believe it's written by the same author. Blake spends chapters describing hallucinations and slaughter houses, but only a page on the death of the hero and other main characters. Way too many characters and way too disjointed. Holy Road lacks a cohesive story. I only read it because I enjoyed the original so much. If I hadn't read Dances with Wolves first, I would have put Holy Road down after the first forty pages. My opinion...watch the epic movie and leave it at that.

Although I could find no verifiable historical facts within the writing, it is a good read and has a good plot. It is PROBABLY typical of the events that could have happened during the time frame exhibited. I recommend the Novel for an enjoyable reading.

fred shannon

This was an exceptional book. Once I started it I could not put it down. If you enjoyed "Dances With Wolves" you are ganna love this one.

To much history mixed with fiction. Blake uses historical events and persons to write a mostly fictional book. Not enjoyabel for a historical interested person.

I really enjoyed this book. No, I really, REALLY enjoyed this book. The characters are so knowable, mournable, unforgettable. The stark closure of the story fits perfectly, to my taste, with the last condition of the Commanche, and was no doubt intended that way. As for Michael Blake, a great success is never without critics. I am not one of them.

I look forward to the celluloid version of this book. When this movie is made with the same vision and startling delivery as its predecessor, it will no doubt be a great film.

Since I was a young man, I have felt keenly and helplessly the loss of native languages, cultures, and civilizations on the American continents. May the People and the buffalo rise again.

I first read "Under The Skin" by James Carlos Blake whom I had never heard of before.It was quite different from books I had been reading. I decided to gather up as many as I could to start with. "In The Roque Blood" never let up on action. This book is not for the faint of heart. The tribulations that befall the two brothers are exciting and keep you turning pages. Was sorry to come to the last page.

The story of the two brothers from young men with their "family" in Florida to their adventures in Texas and Mexico are interspersed with a rich history of the Mexcian -Amercian War. The book is very graphic as most modern authorship of the time portrays. People are tough, cold blooded about survival, and sexual. Prostitution the second largest employer of women in the US up until 1910 is highly integrated into the story line. New Orleans and the border towns of Texas are rough places where people get killed everyday. The manner of deaths are varied and violent. THIS IS NOT A BOOK for those who don't like violence and profanity. It is a book for those trying to imagine the actual world these people lived in. There are acouple of plot turns (which appear to be made to include some history lesson) which are distracting but these are minor. There are also acouple of suspend belief moments of people finding each other out of nowhere --but again it makes the story flow.

I'm female and i love this book because i prefer truth reality and admire, wholeheartedly, excellent writing.
This was how it was in our good old USA about 150 years ago in my great granparent's time...... still like this someplaces i'd wager.

I think this book is definetly the most gruesome and gory book i have ever read.In my opinion this is James Carlos Blake's best book. My teacher recomended his books, and especially this one, knowing that I enjoy "guy" books. This book has made me laugh, cry, and gag. I could'nt believe how unbelievably descriptive and graphic it was, it kept me up for hours because i couldnt put it down. I highly recommend this book to any guy who enjoys appalling, grim, gritty, and repulsive stories, with a touch of twisted romance. Also to any girl that enjoyes the above qualities in a story.

blake has a sincere and vivid imagery, with empathy as portrayed by his characters. the portrayal of what real violence is, has to win Blake some kind of award. his characters are real, and they react as normal men (and women) would react under similar circumstances,anger, loss of a sibling, or, just trying to survive in this world of the 1840's. in the author's heart, there is a certain compassion, as seen in real men under real and violent circumstances---and the acceptance of one's fate.
cormack mccarthy sees the forest of violence, blake sees the leaves in the forest--a destiny to which the main characters are condemned. i wonder what war blake served in, or does he see true visions as his namesake the artist and poet (edward blake) saw violence in his poetry and art. Blake sure knows how to describe violence with reality. this book will stir your emotions.
stan sanders, m.d.

Shortly after Donald Spoto completed his book, Alfred Hitchcock read the book and then had a lunch with the author. He agreed with almost everything in the book about Spoto's scholarly approach to the movies Hitchcock directed. If you ever want to study the master's work, watch one of his movies and then read the chapter devoted to that movie (almost all of his movies are featured in this book) and you'll learn stuff you did not know. That's what makes this a good book. Now . . . Spoto did write a second book on Hitchcock, a biography, but avoid that because there is so many mistakes and many people who worked with Hitchcock personally on his movies lost friendships with other actors and technicians that it's best to avoid that book. But this one is one of the three must-reads devoted to Hitchcock.

(The other two must-reads are the Francois Traffaut book and Grams and Wikstrom's "The Alfred Hitchcock Presents Companion". Together with these two and this book, you have the essential library and all-you-really-need references for all things Hitchcock.)

Good book, a little long. Gives plenty of details on Hitchock's projects. Good reference book.

This is not a biography but rather a discussion of each of Hitchcock's films. For each film there is:
- Detailed synopsis
- Cast and Crew details
- Analysis of the film

These first two of these items can be obtained from the Internet for free and who really wants to know the details of the story anyway?
The analysis of each film is largely a waste of time as Spoto tends to over-analyse each film to the point of distraction while offering no real insights.

If you want to find out more about Hitchcock's films I would recommend McGilligan's excellent biography. This discusses each film in the context of Hitchcock's life and career and is far more illuminating.

Wonderful book and seller. Thank you!!
Joan

While this book covers all of his works, it doesn't cover any of them in any depth. Each chapter is mostly an incomplete synopsis of the plot, followed by an very abbreviated analysis. The analyses are shallow and vary greatly in their acumen.

I ordered this book for my son. He said that it is so good!

I read this book at around age 14 because a favorite character in another book read it and I even asked the librarian if she thought I was too young for it because that's what the character in my book was told. My librarian said I wasn't but looking back I probably was! It was intriguing and exciting for me and while I didn't understand it all, it was kind of like learning about sex with a Sears catalog! Classic book, good storytelling and something that has stuck with me for many, many years.

I enjoyed the movie and the book. After reading Harold Robbins "The Carpetbaggers," I found myself going in search of more delightful stories like this one.

Harold Robbins has written numerous books, almost too many to count. If one follows his career cronologically, beginning with a Stone For Danny Fischer and ending with the posthumously 'subsititute author' written Sin City, one can almost trace Robbins' improving talent/success leading to his increasingly heavy drug use and finally see the work suffer as he cranked out bools faster and faster to keep up on his income tax back-payments. The Carpetbaggers was written at the point in the man's life just after he hit his true stride as an author and just before his cocaine madness sabotaged his work.

If you've never read a Harold Robbins book, do yourself a favor and read The Carpetbaggers first. Even though the racey passages seem campy now, the story is just as good as it was in the early 1960's when the book was first released.

Written in 1961, The Carpetbaggers is really a tale like "The Aviator" - about a manly rich airplane flyer and maker who gets involved with Hollywood. The references to real life people are so thinly veiled that you sometimes forget that he is pretending to have made up the situations. But then you're jarred back into the fiction, because part of how Harold keeps you hooked is by throwing in gratuitous sex scenes ... constantly.

One of the very first references is when Jonas Cord is landing his plane - the landing field is apparently like a female naked body. In a short period of time, Jonas' father dies, and he is immediately raping his step-mom, Rina. He then sleeps his way across the US. He's got a naked daughter upstairs while he negotiates business with the father downstairs. You learn that Rina had slept with her adopted brother for many years as a teen, even becoming pregnant. Rina then made advances on her adopted father, which he rejects in horror. She becomes a bi-sexual for a while, living with her lesbian female teacher in France while also being mistress to an older man.

While most of these things might seem ho-hum in modern times, to the 1961 audience, it was incredibly shocking. It would have been enough to put in one such item in the book and to give it meaning - but the situations were just piled one on top of the other in order to keep further shocking the reader. Jennie is drugged and raped! Then she goes to work for an abortionist! Then she has an affair with him, even though he was married! Then she becomes a high-paid whore! There's little chance to develop the character in here, except as the repeated victim of horror after horror.

I'm not saying the book is not engrossing. It's 679 pages, and I read it in a single night. But it's more like watching a train wreck, rather than enjoying a good story. I don't mind reading about sex, but the situations were very contrived. The story was focussed on those sex details vs the other things that went on in peoples lives that helped to define them.

I was bothered by the many stereotypes in the story. It's about sexy, handsome white rich people. There are a few jewish people - and they are not portrayed very well at all. I believe there's one black person - the butler who is the 'wise dutiful loyal silent type'. The American Indian woman is dutiful and quiet (and of course goes through an explicitly sexual rite before marriage, described in bloody detail).

I also disliked the ending of the story. After everything else that went on, it was way too contrived and neat. POOF, characters that really didn't have that much in common suddenly decide to live happily ever after. There are a number of huge plot holes, but I won't give away story details by revealing those. There are occasional sentence structure errors that make it unclear who is speaking, which means you have to re-read a page twice to get the gist of how the discussion progresses.

But that all being said, it is interesting how the book is broken up into sections, each about a certain person, and how you go back in time to learn why they became the way they were. It's interesting to hear what people in the 60s thought about culture. There are all sorts of "laugh with me!" references, as people back in the "old days" (the story begins in the 20s) think talking movies won't catch on, that plastics is a strange new item, and that World War II will never begin.

This is a book to read to understand what the 60s was all about, as people moved from the staid, quiet days of the 50s into the more free-wheeling times of the 60s. It's also a book to read just because it's one of the top selling books of all time, to be able to discuss the ideas in it if someone else brings the topic up. Just don't expect anything very enlightening!

Aside from starting a small Internet adventure and shooting it to world wide fame in just a hand full of years, the guys at Juxt Interactive have written a book chock full of wonder-us delights. Though they claim the primary role of their Flash deConstruction book is to look at ActionScript, anyone buying this book will get far more than they bargained for.

Juxt demonstrate their processes of design and workflow in approaching real world application development. A look behind the scenes into their infamous Juxt Interactive site, with a tutorials in how they implement their design, and script of key sections of the site, is a real eye-opener to anyone who owns a copy of Macromedia Flash.

One of the great things about Flash deConstruction is the fact that many of the real world projects contain what Juxt describe as 'hacks'. These 'hacks' detail problems they have found with ActionScript when implementing projects on different platforms and gives detailed pointers how to overcome them. In my opinion this is what separates Flash deConstruction from the rest. How many other ActionScript books tell you about the development
glitches you are liable face?

Although this book, with the design fused in Juxt's innovative way, has a section for beginners, you need to have a decent working knowledge of ActionScript to get the best from it. It is a book of techniques for the developer to use and build upon, not a promo about Juxt.

I am always interested in studio process books. It's good to learn from the real pros that are out there everyday doing and living what we all are trying to learn. I think that this book is well designed, very informative and highly articulate. Juxt has done some amazing work, and learning from their process and hearing about what goes into large scale, fun, interactive web sites was interesting. I recommend this book to other designers I know.

This review is ment to be a warning for people who consider purchasing this book. DO NOT get deceived by few positive reviews!!!
Actually, THERE IS NO DECONSTRUCTION OF JUXT WEB SITE in this book. At least not in the fashion that I expected.
I expected, besides other things, specific instructions on how to build the movie clip architecture of the ENTIRE Juxt site (nesting symbols of different content within another and distributing them on the site with tips why it is done so) and the COMPLETE action script of Juxt web site.
Instead of that the hole book is general talk and description of Juxt`s process of creating web content. The author gives you only the IDEA of how something should be done not the specific steps of building Juxt`s web site.

Let me illustrate my thoughts for you with few lines of text from within the book (it`s maybe not right but I feel readers diserve to know what they can expect):
"4.3.1 ORGANIZING ARTWORK IN FLASH
Now that the file (or artwork) is in Flash, it needs to be further organized. The symbols are moved to levels, and the movie clip structure is ready to be built. It`s much easier to break apart a symbol than to make a group into a symbol after it has already been tweened several times.
Freehand, as drawing tool, deals with objects. In contrast, Flash deals with more wet, or editable, elements. We use the term "wet" because these objects are like wet paint on canvas that can be painted on and rubbed off. Freehand objects come into Flash as groups of wet elements. The groups might deceivingly feel like a symbol, but they aren`t. They lack the small crosshairs that indicate the center point of a symbol. It is important for you to get used to this to avoid creating unnecessarily heavy files.
It`s good to get into the habit of creating symbols out of everything and moving elements to their appropriate layers for animation once the Freehand file has been imported to Flash."

Believe it or not, this is ALL you get on building the structure of the Juxt site in Flash!!! You are left alone with file imported from Freehand and you are expected to create the symbols and movie clip stucture of the site by your self. Plus the action script, of course! Action scripting of some isolated elements is described, and having only that as help, you are supposed to figure out how to script the entire site. Hello!!! I am not a beginner, but I am not sure what is the best and most efficient way of doing that!!! I purchased this book hoping it would show me how to do it!!! What a mistake!!!
On top of that, there is no FINAL ".fla" file(s) of the site provided for download, with movie clips in place and action scripts assigned to them, for sake of deconstructing the site by your self.
What did I pay for?! To read how the author is proud to have Hillman Curtis for his friend?!
By the way, more than 70 pages is wasted on interviews and transitions between chapters!
This book is the worst purchase I have ever made!!!
You might try with "Macromedia Flash: Art, Design + Function", by Mighty Assembly.

For an art type of site and to show creativity it is very good. My interests are commerical applications and it isn't good. They go to some depth on their business processes but their processes aren't optimized. Probably better business processes than most design companies and wonderful that they described them. Serious creative talent there. I wasn't impressed with their portfolio of sites but my portfolio is worse. You get what comes in the door and that rarely shows your potential. We would really have a feast if Terra Incognita or Second Story Interactive would write such a book!

- jim

This is one of those cases where the fluff and hype outweighs the content. Had I checked out the sites desconstructed in this book before ordering it, I would not have purchased this book. I was not impressed by the design and coding, and I found their attempts at deconstruction rather shallow. Several key flash files were omitted from the books' download page also.

Before I got hooked on Hell's Kitchen, I naturally thought that this guy was a Simon Cowell ripoff just trying to make a buck. After reading this, I have a lot more respect for the man. It provides insight to what he really is all about, how passionate he is about what he does and why he is that way. Its amazing that he started with nothing and worked his behind off to get to the top and how much hard work he puts into everything. I thought it was a great book regardless of all the F words, I actually find all his cussing quite F'ing amusing (you should hear me on the golf course) :) Its a quick read and it should make you look in the mirror and ask yourself if you have it in you to achieve success on that level.

Chef Ramsay revealed! The screaming monster, the upwardly mobile mover, the Chef of Hell's Kitchen and the demon of Kitchen Nightmares bares all in this biography. We learn of his tricky past, his difficulties, his disappointments and his admission of how he deals with his own demons, and leave with a better understanding of the driven man behind the machine.
A thin line separates the genius driven man from the hopeless addict or the mentally insane! It depends on how the energy is focussed, and Ramsay focusses on perfection and speaking the truth, no holds barred, with exuberant use of the "F" word. He has made it stylish! He even has a show called "The F Word!" He is original, and has made the bar very high for all the would be TV Chefs.

An interesting read, very revealing, some of the references to British folk and terms were hard to place, but that is why we have Wikipedia!

I would recommend to anyone who has an interest in who the man is behind the driven Chef.

If this biography was a dish on one of the episodes of Hell's Kitchen, Chef Ramsay would have told author Neil Simpson to "take off your jacket and leave Hell's Kitchen". I thought the book was poorly written and provided little more than superficial insight into Gordon Ramsay and his meteoric rise to success in the culinary world. Too much of the time the author seemed more interested in trying to justify the boorish behavior that Ramsay is known for as somehow being okay because of Ramsay's passion for food. In addition, the book portrays Ramsay as having an idealized family life that doesn't seem possible given the driven, workaholic nature of Ramsay. I would have prefered a book that provided a more balanced, and yes, more critical look at Ramsay.

This was a great book. It really gives you insight to his behavior. (which is not bad) It was a page turner, and I finished it in a weekend.
He really had alot of disappointments in life but turned it all around. It gives you inspiration.
If you like Gordon,this is a must read.

I agree with previous reviewers. This is short attention span writing. It jumps from one topic to another topic without going into depth. It felt like reading People Magazine and not a book.

This is not a review, but an account of my experience of reading Elkins' book. I found that my way of looking at the world shifted. The feeling of the writing seemed a blend of inner thoughts/feelings being shared with the reader. A gift for anyone interested in reconsidering what they think they know about their own eyesight. Elkins is a true teacher. (Apologies for the pretentious "real name" middle intial and suffix...trying to find a way to change that on Amazon)

I'm fascinated by this book since it tackles art and subject from several important perspectives -- aesthetic, philosophical, anthropological. The figure-field reversal is not often treated in such detail or with such interesting illustrations. The first image of a eunuch is extremely haunting and well placed to begin the discussion of our objectifying the world and often forgetting the humanity of those who we picture or study.

I asked Elkins if I could borrow his title for a solo art show (this was several years ago) and he was gracious to allow me to do so. I mention this because I found Elkins to be one of those aware adventurers in the quest for who we are (and who we think we are) as defined by those objects in the world that stare back upon us.

James Elkins has a wonderful way of opening our eyes to the world. He explains the way we see, or maybe what we don't see, in a witty and extremely accessible way. Elkins uses his knowledge of Art History and mixes it freely with neurology and psychology to bring us readers at a different level of understanding of the world. I'm already a true fan!

James Elkins gives a lot of interesting speculation on the experience of seeing, but unfortunately, he fails to give much linkage of his subject to the experience of making and seeing art, which is curious in that the author is an art historian. He attaches a lot of importance to the idea that conventional seeing is a form of "blindness," that is, that conventional day-to-day seeing is extremely limited, but, again, he seems to be uninterested in the ways that artists remove these limits, both for themselves and their audience. So much of the writing is about how the author himself sees and does not see, that eventually I became bored, as one usually does listening to one person talk on and on about his own limited experience of a subject.

I haven't read much of this book, because it contains images of the most awful thing I have ever seen, the 'death by a thousand cuts'. These pictures still haunt me, and the author uses them, claiming that they are disturbing because they represent somebody who is halfway between being alive and dead - I disagree - they are disturbing because they are scenes of an atrocity inflicted on a living being. (The victim was a woman who allegedly committed adultery in China, I'm not sure when the photos were taken but they look quite old).
Those four pictures have destroyed any faith I ever had in human beings, they will probably do the same to you if you are unfortunate enough to ever see them.

If a reader of this book is already familiar with the images of the OTMA, and Maria in particular, then the mistaken identifications will not be a problem. There are many photographs that are not in many Romanov photocollections, and the information contained in the text seems spot on. However, I would not recommend this for anyone who does not have a familiarity with the Romanov family already.

i love to read anything i can find on the russian royal family,great book.great service,thanks.

Hmmmm, I was decidedly disappointed in this book. Many of the pictures contained within were very poor quality and there were some blatant mistakes in identification of the family members. A good many of the photographs are not new to the collector of Romanov books. I would not recommend this book if one is expecting to see anything new. I dont think Mr. Blair Lovell would have been pleased!

Brief Summary:

In the year 1881 church bells rung from the towers Alexander II is dead. His eldest son Nicholas was crowned czar of imperial Russia. With his wife Alexandra from England. Granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Their first child was born in 1895.Her name was The Grand Duchess Olga Romanov. She was the czars heir. Then in 1897 their second child was born. Her name was Tatiana Romanov. Then in 1899 Marie was born. Then in1901 Anastasia was born. Followed by their final child the new heir Alexei in 1904. Then problems came to Russia there were riots in Russia. The people started to hate the czar and czarina. People were starving in the streets. And Nicholas didn't know anything about it. Alexei was diagnosed with Hemophilia that meant if he bleeds he could bleed himself to death. The Russian Revolution started and the people hated the czar. They imprisoned him and his family. To a small village in Siberia. Then they transported them to a village near Moscow. Where one morning a soldier came to there room and told them to get dressed and get downstairs. The family was told to wait in the basement. A firing squad opened the door and started to fire on the family. The bullets cut their bodies down. There were screaming and lots of smoke. Not one Romanov lived that morning. They say that Anastasia escaped and lived. But that is another mystery.

Critical Thinking:

In the book Royal Russia the Romanov family had many fears. They were imprisoned to Siberia and they went from extremely rich to poor. The girls were the most scared because they did not know what was going on or what was going to happen to them. When they were shot in the basement they probably had a clue what was going on. When they were shot they were terrified on what happened to there family.

Bottom Line:

Good book to read and also has some good pictures to look at that best describes the Romanov family as they were not how they were preseved to be.

In "Royal Russia", Lovell draws the reader into the amazing world of the last Imperial Family with their wonderful photographs. The photographs are excellent, however there are some misidentifictations of the Grand Duchesses. Nonetheless, the book is great.