Bruno Books

This book gives not exatly camping info, but really just some cool stuff to do outside. Since it was written in the early sixties it does have any "no trace" camping information. but it does give some cool stuff you could do outside. Some things include, tents and shelters made from sheets, tree forts, huts and forts, building fires, also its the only book ive found that shows how to make rafts and simple boats. Its really cool!

This is a beautiful little book (about 6 X 71/2 in) showcasing Christopher Makos' photos of his studio male models. There are headshots, nudes, body-shots, and others featuring young very good-looking men. These black and white shots are right at you in Makos' true style. He certainly knows how to bring out the erotic feelings of these attractive young men. There are even some photos included from Makos other book "Makos Men:Sewn Photos."

Included in this book is a great interview between Makos and Bruce Weber, that I really enjoyed. All in all a real treat from Makos. I just wish he would release a larger collection of his work because he always leaves me wishing for more. Great job!!

To many books on impossible figures are mere entertainment. This one offers a preamble to get the reader/viewer thinking. I use these with some of my students and in the day and age of over stimulated teenagers this book still sparks some interest.

I'm using this excellent book to teach my Black studies class right now. Primarily, it provides each side of debates of famous issues in Black history. For example, Thomas Jefferson's theories of Black inferiority are compared with Benjamin Banneker's beleifs in the equality of all, Booker T. Washington's "bootstrap theory" is compared with WEB DuBois's belief in social protest, MLK's veiws on the inclusion of Blacks in American society is compared with Malcolm X's views on Black Nationalism, etc. Complete lectures, speeches, and wirings in the own words of the people who are discussed, are given so that the reader/students may make up their own minds. Teachers, take note of this and consider it for your classes.

Henning von Berg's ALPHA MALES is certainly far and away the best book of male nude photography of the year and the most engaging collection by a single artist since Paul Freeman's beautiful BONDI CLASSIC. This outstanding retrospective published by Bruno Gmunder, consisting of over a hundred photographs in color, black and white and sepia, is divided into three sections: "Germany", "North America" and "Round The World." Dr. Boris von Brauchitsch and David Leddick, himself the editor of several similar volumes of photography, have written brief introductions to the photographs. The photographer also includes an occasional quotation to accompany the images from Shakespeare as well as Quentin Crisp and Gore Vidal, whom he calls his "admired role models," along with Martin Luther King, Sir Ian McKellen and John Waters, for their "outspoken fight for equal rights, liberation and freedom," a strange accolade, however, for Mr. Crisp who was mostly famous for being Quentin Crisp and living so long.

While a few of these photographs are predictable-- "Twins," for example of a young god leaning against a mirror-- von Berg creates images over and over of the male animal in all his glory, often erect, without repeating himself, no small accomplishment. Furthermore, he is inclusive in his choice of models. Caucasians, blacks, Asians and Latinos, the musclebound, those sans muscles, the older (the model Leo Jackson) as well as the younger, the tattooed, the occasional cross-dresser, all get to do their thing before the photographer's lens.

There seems to be no end to either von Berg's creativity or humor. Some of his most effective shots include several naked men together, often doing risque things ("Domination IX" and "Domination I", "Intermezzo III" and "Intermezzo IV." Also "Exercising" and "Training," both photographs that are beautifully naturally lit from the windows, should you happen to notice.) Many of the images from North America are shot in the rugged desert of California far away from the madding crowd of censors. Some of these shots are scary-- for instance, in the photograph entitled "Hanging" the model is hanging just by his fingers from a ledge of a high buiding. Also "Cliff Dancer" in which the model clad only in a tutu appears to be stepping off a high mountain ridge. "The Milk Man" is shot just after having poured milk down the front of his body. Obviously von Berg is playing with words in his shot of the blond seated before a Hardman grand piano.

Some of my favorite photographs: "Brandenburg Gate" and "Stairway" from the Berlin series; "The Bat" in which the model, wearing a bat mask, is crouching on a high cliff; "Russian-Brazilian Hunk," aptly named and exquisitely lit; the last photograph in the book, "Sampson's Hair," albeit fake dreds; "Meditation IV," a brilliant juxtaposition of a naked man inside a beautiful church; and finally "Cook," of a thin young man wearing only women's platform shoes in a pose that Helmut Newton, one of the photographers von Berg lists as among his idols, would have approved of, accompanied by a quotation from the acerbic Mr. Crisp: "For flavor, instant sex will never supercede the stuff you have to peel and cook." The most amazing picture in the collection has to be "Antenna." When you see it, you'll understand why. (The pages in ALPHA MALES are not numbered so it is difficult to refer easily to the photographs.) The photographer does name his models, however, and gives the dates and locations of each shot. Most of the models are included more than once as well.

This book is one you will come back to again and again and that will bring you much pleasure.

Amazonian dark earths are a type of soil that has long been known in the Amazon but whose origins have been disputed for many years. Over the last 10-15 years there has been a consensus that these are anthropogenic soils created by agricultural and social methods of old indian cultures in the Amazon.

This book is a compilation of significant academic articles on amazonian dark earths. The most active academics in dark earth study are represented, as well as a good array for sites are studies, from the Tapajós, Negro, Solimoes, and Napo river basins. Also studies are done on the composition of these soils and their anti fungicidal and fertile properties. The most interesting feature of these soils is their continued extraordinary fertility even many centuries after they were formed.

Dark earths are an interesting phenomenon that may hold the key to productive agriculture in the Amazon basin, as opposed to common slash and burn techniques that are so devastating to the region.

This book is not a lively account of dark earths, but a scholarly text. For someone interested in dark earths from a less technical background, I recommend "1491" by Charles Mann, in which there is a significant portion on dark earths. This book is for those seeking a deeper knowledge of the subject.

This is the story of an Amish girl who left her community to marry an "outsider" and how it changed her life. It is inspiring how she deals with life's hardships. Sometimes families don't communicate well, but remain steadfast and lovingly care for each other. It also shows how you can accept what life brings you and turn the bad into good. At every turn there was something new to keep you from putting the book down. We kept passing the book around where I work and everyone is waiting for the sequel to be published. This very talented author should be promoted more widely, as well as her awesome books.

Are computors making our life easy? Really? Read this book, please, and You understand it!

When I first read this book, I was a teenager, pretending to become an Architect. I was surprised by this way of entering Space, Architecture as Space. I have re-read it a few times, that because I have presented it as a gift, to a few number of people. Now I do want it for myself, and for a friend in his eighties, whom I think hasn't had the experience of enjoying it.

In Artisans of Democracy by Bruno Tardieu and Jona M. Rosenfeld, the authors share with us a view on poverty and the institutions connected with families living in poverty which scrapes below the economic surface to ask questions and give suggestions about the nature of poverty itself and the human relation to it. Compared to conventional North American thinking, the idea of poverty that gives this book its foundation is profoundly different. Tardieu and Rosenfeld propose that poverty is an economic issue on only the most basic level, that poverty means the stigmatization, the exclusion, and the marginalization which the extremely poor suffer at the hands of the rest of society. They propose that our distant, aloof, academic study and theorization of those in poverty only adds to the feeling of exclusion that they experience. Tardieu and Rosenfeld instead give a revolutionarily positive account of 12 social institutions, from schools to judicial systems, from utility companies to international governing bodies, working together with those afflicted with poverty to overcome their exclusion from society and these institutions. They practice their own beliefs by studing in depth the lives of those in poverty and how, through communication and appeals to basic human rights, they work together with complex and bureaucratic institutions to solve a specific problem. They then draw on these stories to reveal how success, or at least a pathway to success, was achieved. A fundamental part of the success begins with the institutions' change in thought about the family living in poverty. Instead of the commonly accepted, paternalistic, "strong helping the weak" relationship, these institutions only make headway when they begin some level of reciprocal learning. When the institution says, "We can learn from you how to work with people living in poverty to allow both of us to succeed", a door opens. Until that first step, until the institution realizes that it is dealing with human beings and not class groups or statistics, all meaningful paths of communication are closed. Tardieu and Rosenfeld do no feign to have an answer to overcoming poverty. They instead ask us to take a small but extremely challenging step, to begin giving all people one of their basic human rights: to be treated as a human being, and to be included in all of human society, despite class status.