Libraries and Museums Books

I found this book at my local medical library. It's in the vein of "Roadside America", but without the laughs. It showcases 7 main cities (i.e. NYC, Baltimore, Boston) and then has a state-by-state breakdown for the major universities, hospitals and museums in each. My taste runs more towards the creepy Mutter-museum type places, and this book devotes significant attention to medical schools and hospitals. These tend to have little interest except if you want to tour the grounds and bask in the "historicalness" of the site. I checked some of the places I know and they were described factually. It's kind of out-dated, but the places will be around for a long time, although the collections are likely to change some. However, I'll definitely consult this book before any trips, just in case there's a good museum where I'm headed

While I found a few gems and insights, this 600-plus page tome needed a good book editor to boil it down to maybe 200 pages. It appears a bunch of noted academics were trying to appear, well, academic, and they succeeded. Single sentences the length of paragraphs, simple words with superfluous suffixes added--I kept saying to myself, "just say it already--stop trying to impress me with how you can bury a simple point in a massive flood of verbage." I reccommend the first book in this series, "Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display" (1991) as being much more accessible and helpful.

As a museum professional, I was hoping this would be more about how museums can contribute to our cities and towns and less about how paradise has been lost. There are insights of true brilliance, but more often than not I found myself feeling like I've heard it all before.

For those who are looking for a book about the importance of place in our culture, this is probably worth the read. If you believe community is possible through new technology, I suggest "Here Comes Everybody" instead.

this has very realistic illustrations and is acompanied by a stuffed apollo astronautbut don't let this full you i do not recomend this for children under the age 7. this is a nice book about children intrested in space. i thought something like this would be more expensive.

The Rem Koolhaus designed Seattle Public Library sounds good. And the pictures are beautiful. But as a user there are some major problems. An escalator that only goes up, abandoning users on the 10th floor. One can use some stairs down to the 6th floor, or merrily run around the spiral until you hit a wall on the 6th floor. Then you have to wait for an elevator to take you down to the 5th floor. Poor planning.

The waterless urinals reek. The water fountains have no water pressure and are lukewarm. The walls are black and the lighting dim in the fiction area. The self-checkouts only have room to stack one book to the side, or you can use two self-checkouts to have enough space. The signs are hidden.

This directory, according to the introduction, is a byproduct of the effort to reorganize "a century's worth of aviation documents" in the National Air and Space Museum files. The result is an alphabetical listing of some 5,000 manufacturers/designers which have produced roughly 25,000 discrete types or models of piloted aircraft, about which NASM presumably has some information. For example, "Ferguson, Charles J. (California)" is listed has having designed/produced the "Ferguson Glider". Likewise, some 60 iterations of the basic C-130 Hercules design are listed under "Lockheed (Burbank, CA)". However, this book is exactly what the title suggests--a directory. You'll find no further information about the Ferguson glider or any of the many Hercules variants between the prototype YC-130 and the latest AC-130U.

What you will find are very brief histories of those companies (Lockheed among them) which have been transformed over the years through mergers, name changes, and so forth. This can help the serious researcher unravel some of the complex "arrangements" that have been made in the aircraft business over the years, particularly concerning companies that have long since ceased to exist. As would be expected in a work of this type, there are also some bits of what might best be described as aeronautical trivia. On page 253 is listed "Schmuck Aircraft (See: Monarch)".

The last 65 pages consist of another alphabetical listing of aircraft by name. Thus we find that the "ABC Glider" was produced by Schultz and the "Zwergreiher (Heron)" is the name given to the Burgfalke Lo 100.

In summary, this directory will no doubt serve as a useful guide to those fortunate enough to actually access the NASM files, and hopefully it will soon be found on the reference shelves of most libraries. It will also be helpful to someone who's trying to figure out what company built the "Gnu", for example, but bear in mind that to find anything ABOUT the thousands of aircraft listed here, you'll have to keep looking.

Keep describing the items more in detail. Book was in great condition!!! Thanks alot! Shipping was fast too!!!

i ordered this book like 2 months ago before school started and i never received it. so i had to go to the student store and buy it new for like 130 dollars, after already paying 30 for the used one i never received.

Its a study guide, not the actual book, waste of money.

An excellent approach to management studies, this is a clear guide to manage under uncertainty based on core knowledge of the management history and new issues such as diversity, political issues, globalization and many others that will fulfill the basic study of Management for a graduate level.

I personally like the way the author introduces the reader onto the field of business and clarifies many of the concepts surrounded them with the most characteristic ingredient on today's world: "Change".

This title and its content has inspired me to continue with the MBA program I started.

I used this book for my Management class and I found that most of the information is redundant, vague, and frankly, boring. The book is terribly overpriced for the information of little value. I don't recommend this book for management courses.

If your kids love Curious George and are also dinosaur fanatics, this book is for them. It combines two of our kids favorites, and you can't beat that....anytime you can find a book that peaks their interest be sure to invest in it. It will foster a love of reading that will last a lifetime.

This book is " adapted from the Curious George film series". The illustrations are different from the original, and even from the "Illustrated in the style of H.A. REY" both of which I feel are much better.

The story is about CG who goes to a museum and gets into "trouble". It is a very short episode that doesn't really teach anything. Maybe its because I didn't even know there was a film series.

I recommend the 3 book miniature set of originals, and "CG goes to a chocolate factory".

There are so many interesting adventures George could have had in a museum, but the authors decided on a worthless plot. George is at a science museum on a class trip with children. The teacher is trying to teach them about rocks and minerals, and the children are all whining about how boring it is. George runs away from the group and climbs all over the skeleton of a dinosaur in a nearby room. He is scolded by a member of the museum staff (as right he should be!!!) but then the class catches up with him and the children are interested in the dinosaur bones. The story suggests that the only reason they are interested is because George is climbing on it! The teacher is grateful that George has found something better to look at than the dull rocks and the museum staff, glad that the children have been spared their boring museum, readily forgive George and hail him as a hero. What a bunch of bologna!!!

This is just not up to the caliber of the original books....The behavior and comments of the children in the story convey themessage that learning is unpleasant and museums are boring - - not themessage I want to give to my children. In addition, George climbs adinosaur fossil and the museum director states that this activity isok, because now the children are not bored by having to be at thedull, old museum. This book was a gift which we have removed from ourbookshelf.

Jerry Yares (below) is much too hard on this reprint of a classic. I have used it in rambles around the City and Westminster, and found it invaluable. It is also a great companion on a winter night, planning that next trip to London.

Mr. Yares does us all a favor in pointing out the existence of a second, updated edition (1988). If this were a reprint of that edition, I would have given it five stars in a minute. Were there copyright problems? In any case, the 1988 edition is available from Amazon partners. The binding of my copy is old and breaking, and the type is hard on the eyes, but the updates are very valuable.

Buy both, and take this one with you to London; keep the 1988 edition at home for reference.

Lacking "no-stars," under duress I am forced to rate this book one star.

Ian Nairn published the original in 1966. In 1988, Peter Gasson produced a major revision and updating of the original which I bought several years ago at a remainder store.

Now, in 2002, I am about to revisit London. A friend tells me that Roger Ebert, my up until now favorite film critic has revised Nairns. So I buy a copy.

Bad move.

In it is the text from the 1966 original edition, which according to Gasson, in 1988, was then somewhat out of date.

The 107 essential photographs from the original (and from Gasson's revision) "are not reproduced here."

Plus, ". . .Gasson's updatings of Nairn's 'irreplaceable and intensely personal text [presented by Gasson as footnotes]' are, in their turn, sadly and inevitably out of date as well. . . ."

From Ebert's introduction I surmise that neither he nor the publisher had the guts, expertise, insight, sensitivity, energy, or courage to do a creditable update. So they copped out and merely reprinted the original 1966 Nairn's with Ebert's comments pasted in the front.

In my opinion, this book is a waste of your money.

In my opinion, better you should hunt up a copy of Gasson's 1988 revision and spend an afternoon plotting the locations on a good London map and checking out the details in the 2002 Time Out London guide.

I am returning the Ebert/Nairn guide to Amazon next week.

Jerry Yares (jyares@aol.com)

Given the appealing illustrations and natural-sounding text, some readers will enjoy this book and counsel my five-year-old and me to "lighten up". But even HE found the humor here too predictable. I was turned off by the anti-intellectual, wisecrackin' tone which didn't allow readers to be interested in anything or anyone for their own sake, but had to relate in an utterly false way to a contemporary suburban American scene. Thus, wouldn't it be great if Christopher Columbus could come back so he could find Mom's car keys? Er.... not really. History with imagination or modern-day relevance is one thing, "history" with no substance, just gags, imparts a sorry message to children.