Beauty Books

A great learning tool for a trainee Nail Technician and a great reference point for qualified Techs who need to brush up on certain areas. Good photos, easy to understand explanations, great step-by-steps and a large amount of topics covered. Very helpful and worth the money.

This book offers a great deal of information. However. It was written in England and that is the main focus of the information in this book.

Great book with up-to-date information. Book goes into some detail about starting a nail business as well. I was impressed with the quality and the extensive information, techniques, tech tips and excellent pictures. The heavy, glossy pages mean durability when returning back to the book for reference. I would highly recommend this book to any nail tech or nail tech student. It's a book well worth the cost and a priceless addition to my collection.

This book is a very informative guide for students as well as professionals. Very interesting for me as i am a nail tech in Australia and like to know about the standards around the world. The Chapter on nail art is very involved and has some amazing pics. I am very happy i bought this book!!

I bought this book halfway through doing a nail technician course and I found it fantastic. Great tips and hints, gives good advice and explains everything clearly.
My favourite parts were the trouble-shooting pages with explanations for common problems and how to solve them. There are also good sections on learning to be a trainer, nail art and entering competitions.
If you are a complete beginner like me then this book is perfect.

or maybe that should be "a galaxy of its own...." Every poem in this book is enormous -- dense, generally three or four pages long -- pure terrifying brilliance. This is the most terrifying book I've ever read. The poems are all that inelligent. It takes a lot from you to read it, but it gives back much more. She uses her uncompromising, undisputed formal mastery in The End of Beauty to create something necessarily avant-garde, totally unique. Flawless, utterly magnificent in every jerking twist & nuance & flare. The lines explode in myriad different diferent directions like shrapnel, shrapnel, & bring back more scope than you've ever encountered in one place before with sure victory. She knows how to show rather than tell & how to tell when there's the best way.

Not only Jorie Graham at her best but poetry at its best. Her "Self-Portrait" series is wildly addictive. You will read and re-read these poems and never exhaust their lyric strangeness.

This Jorie Graham's 3rd book was her first time writing the huge avant-garde housed in her mind. James Tate describes her well as "staggeringly brilliant." Each word in this book spans forever in every direction. Each poem is so massive, so dense. They take a lot out of you, but they reward incredibly. Fracturing & stretching, reaching & grasping. This book is an experience.

In THE END OF BEAUTY, Graham offers us a delicious deconstruction of our mythical histories, our culture, and our art. It puzzles me that few people--even poetry buffs--don't take to her poetry more kindly. For hardly any other contemporary poet--on this side of the Atlantic, anyway--tackles such philosophical, metaphysical, and aesthetic issues with as much vigor as Graham.

Graham's handling of great art and twice-told tales is refreshing in its idiosyncratic usage (and criticism) of postmodern conventions. Reading this book, one cannot fail to see the connections between Graham and Donne, Graham and Derrida, Graham and Ashbery. It's important, I think, especially for readers who fail to grasp many of her ideas, to envision Graham's poetry as part of a much greater discourse between metaphysics and history.

In "Orpheus and Eurydice," Graham retells the story of the mythological lovers, but through the eyes of Eurydice herself, as she vanishes into thin air forever. And in "Breakdancing," she splices together scenes of Saint Teresa's ecstatic prayers in Avila, and breakdancers on a city sidewalk, thus delineating the sense of a multiple reality.

The book will surely leave you with a heightened appreciation for art, as well as art's role in defining and redefining the world.

When I first read through this book, my mind was set on the auto-pilot of mere linear sense, trying to get some meaning from the poems. Mistake! At a second reading, I let myself drift along with the embracing flow and only then did I experience the sense of Jorie's words. I thought of how I had experienced James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, and though not comprehending the words or even able to parse them, I began to absorb images and impressions, which became unravelled into a sort of experiencing the reality within the Music of the words. Jorie's language is, indeed, another Music which one ingests much as one experiences an intoxicant dream. Her detractors say that she is an elitist with language, and full of vain puffery. But they do not understand what they're seeing. Jorie's words are a wonderous and beautiful and magical melody!

To read this book reveals not only plenty of interesting and quite often surprising information on fashions past and current but its text and pictures are highly complementary. In addition a lot of the provided information gives insight into social structures of the centuries referred to - and once more it is proven that fashion is one of the quickest instruments to testify social and historical changes to the world.

Harold Koda's Extreme Beauty surveys concepts of fashion and beauty. Koda considers the evolving, changing strategies of beauty around the world, focussing on different body parts and how they are accented and displayed through varying uses of clothing and cultural perception. Black and white and color photos of unusual fashion choices and styles make for some eye-opening insights.

This is a beautiful book illustrating the different ways cultures reform the body and for what reasons. It is just like actually visiting an exhibit at a major museum. But this you get to take home and enjoy over and over. The photos are plentiful, full color, large and professional. The text is not overly scholarly, but informative and intelligent. It does leave me wanting to delve deeper into the subject intellectually.

Sentient humans with brains as well as bodies have always been fascinated by the way we adorn ourselves and why. Once we can get past the cultural anthropology of fashion, and the fads that make it a billion-dollar world industry, we can dig down to discover the roots of historical and current adorned beauty, and EXTREME BEAUTY does this . . . beautifully.
It is pleasing--in an era in which physical beauty and adornment typified by fashion have been roundly rejected by most of the jeans-wearing public--to find a book that lets beauty out and helps us exercise our sense of mystery and wonder, based in no small part on human sexuality and attraction. Harold Koda (curator of the Costume Institute at New York's Met) has mounted a show and created a book with marvelous insights and passion, and the illustrations are wondrous--consider, as a case in point, Thiery Mugler's 'Chimere,' with its savage eroticism.
One could quibble with Koda's arbitrary division of the body into 'neck and shoulders,' 'chest,' 'waist,' 'hips' and 'feet,'
and his exclusion of the fascinating face/head/hair perplex, and the hands, with their magical touch and allure. But this book and its illustrations will become a benchmark by which human adornment is judged, and is a keeper of power and importance.

Extreme Beauty is a wonderful book that celebrates the Metropolitan's equally brilliant exhibit about fashion and it's different preoccupations with the body. The exhibit was magnificent, and the book truly honors the tone and feeling of it, while being extremely informative in it's own right. The book is divided into different chapters such as neck and shoulders, waist, chest, etc. Each chapter features photos of the garments displayed in the original exhibit, as well as additional historical drawings and photographs of the various fashions and cultural trends that have celebrated the parts of the body. And, as promised in the title, the book explores the cultural foundations of bodily transformation and mutilation(?) through everything from extreme corsetry, [..] footwear and peircing to the tribal women who use metal rings to actually elongate their vertebrae. Harold Koda's insightful and meticulously researched commentary is just the icing on the cake. This is a must for any fashion library, but also of great interest to non-fashionistas.

From the vantage point of a historian, I value this book as a lavishly illustrated and researched book about the clothing of an era, and how that clothing reflected the intense cultural changes of the 1960s. The outstanding representation of the society of the decade with photographs, drawings, album covers, movie posters and art brought the text to life.

As a Baby Boomer, I saw this book as a nostalgic glance at my school days -- virtually a yearbook for graduates of the Mods, Rockers and Hippie school of fashion.

Fashions of a Decade: The 1960s is highly recommended for the history student, fashion student, or anyone looking for an authentic look into the heart of an era. Brava!

I borrowed this book along with the other volumes (1940 to 1970 )from my library. This was exactly what I need for my assignment of different body types and the power of non verbal communication. It was very interesting and would recommend buying. This book was outstanding!

I thought this book was well written, even if it is supposedly for kids. It was full of information, pictures, and interesting trivia. As a free-lance writer and researcher of the Twenties, it's a good book to have in one's personal library!

I found this book to be well writen and researched. The illustrations were great, and very inspiring. I can't wait to try and sew some of these fashions myself. The historical aspects of the Fashions of the 1940s was very informative.

I really enjoyed this book. Its an interesting read about the effect of WWII on world fashion and also a helpful resorce guide to fashion and trends of the era. I must for any vintage clothing collector or swing kid!

I love this book. It's pretty good for raising morale, but it is almost like a chunky girl bible. I love online shopping, and it has a complete listing of plus-size websites as well as actual stores, what sizes they carry, and the styles. Totally necessary for a woman who loves who she is, or even a woman who needs resources to better be able to love herself.

Round. Plump. Zaftig. It doesn't matter what word you use, they all mean "fat." And it's beautiful. That's the message from Lara Frater in her new book, "Fat Chicks Rule." LF doesn't apologize for being on the heavy side and neither, she says, should any woman (or man) who's in the same general size category. Fat is fun. It's cool. It's a survival asset in more cultures and at more historical periods than anyone at the New England Journal of Medicine is ever going to admit. LF gives tons of information about the history of fat, the history of women, background on why the medical profession is not necessarily your friend, as well as advice on tips that makes it a little simpler for fat chicks to work, shop, play and travel. Most importantly, she tells her readers that as long as they eat well, exercise, and let common sense dictate their impulses to lose weight (rather than the billion dollar diet industry), they'll probably do just fine. I picked this book up on a tip from a friend at work (we're all on the heavy side) and I was amazed and excited to read a message that finally made sense to me after having heard the same recycled dogma from doctors, the government, and other so-called "professional" health experts who were obviously more interested in selling their own "health products" than my health. This book is a gem!

We had a chance to read Lara Frater's "Fat Chicks Rule!" When I asked Liza what she thought, she simply replied, "This is every woman's story..."

Lara talks of her "thin voice" - you know the one that promises you friends, romance, success, beauty - if you could only lose some weight. The same little voice the drives us back to the roller coaster world of dieting. And then one day, she stepped off the ride, and began to live her life . . .

And she wants the reader to live too! She wants them to reclaim their bodies from the diet industry and from media stereotypes of beauty. The writer takes the reader on a how to journey of Ruling as a Fat Chick!!

Fat Chicks Rule! is a great resource for everything the Fat Chick needs to live her life fully. Need a role model? Check out Fat Chicks in history or famous entertainers. Lara has done her homework; a practical guide covering everything from size-positive movies to shopping tips to dare we say it? Yes folks, SEX!! It's all there and more.

Even witty comebacks for those insensitive remarks. . . My favorite being, "There's a thin person inside you." "That's because thin people are so tasty!"

So, if you need some advice, looking for a place to shop, or need a little boost in the self-esteem department - check out "Fat Chicks Rule!"

Your Friends at [...]

Fat Chicks Rule is a great book. As our society is so obsessed with women being "skinny" and makes big women feel like losers(which they are not!)this book gives big women a much needed boost.As a man,I dated "skinny women" and was married to a "skinny woman" and let me tell you it was some of my worst relationships experiences I ever had! After my divorce I dated big women and now I'm in a relationship with a big woman and those were the best relationships. My current big g/f is great.Pretty face,nice personality(plus I love the big bust and nice thick thighs!)and great in the you know where!So big ladies, read Fat Chicks Rule! it will really be of help and remember,there are alot of men like me out there who love big women. Don't let society or Hollywood make you feel inferior because you are not.

I picked up Lara Frater's wonderful book and I'm so happy I did. This is a great book for the fat chick. It's filled with awesome advice and info.

When you do, after reading this book you will be vividly aware of what is passing through your nostrils and into your lungs. You will have learned where the air you're breathing orginated, what assaults it's been subject to, and what you may have to do to improve it. The air you, and your children, breathe needs attention. This passionately written account examines the history of air, the people who have investigated it and the problems we're confronting in keeping it breathable. Although the story grows increasingly grim as it progresses, Sherman finds ways of offering some hope and solutions.

Air means breathing and Sherman laments his failure to see his son's initial breath. There were distractions - a Caesarean birth and the condition of Sherman's wife. A forgiveable lapse, one hopes. From that incident, however, the author derived a deeper interest in the air we, and his wife and son, respire. Air, transparent and ephemeral, still captured the interest and imagination of early thinkers. Aristotle's famous dictum of the four basic "elements" placed air after earth in importance. Few doubted that air was essential to life, however. Although the air was thought to hold things like spirits and deities, actual investigation of air didn't come about until the Enlightenment. Shedding the myths, people like Lavoisier, Dalton and others detected "new aire" and the idea of air comprised of several gases began to emerge. More than one experimenter put his life at risk investigating the properties of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Even with the new studies, the long-standing idea of the air containing "phlogiston" as evidence of burning was not easily dismissed.

Although all life has its effect on air, whether taking it in for use or expelling waste gases through breathing and less polite means, Sherman is most concerned with humanity's influence on our "breathable sphere". He offers a long discourse on the impact of various forms of smoke, particularly coal. In the Industrial Revolution, coal smoke was a sign of "progress", new wealth, restructured society with urban growth and gainful employment. That attitude carried across the Atlantic to the USA as industrialisation progressed there. As smoke and various other pollutants began choking the cities, objectors arose. Movements to curb smoke were organised, with minimal success. Britain's problem was exacerbated by the onset of fog. When combined with coal dust and smoke, the results were devastating. A Public Health Act was one of the first serious attempts to address the problem. Although the Act listed many noxious vapours, enforcement was lax and largely ineffectual.

With similar problems emerging in the United States, opposition grew apace. Again, smoke and "progress" equated. There, however, the incipient women's rights movements made clean air one of its subsidiary themes. Concern for public health generally and children's health in particular, brought many women into the fold. One businessman, W.P. Rend, declared smoke to be the "incense burning on the alter of industry". With other industrialists and many politicians echoing this sentiment, those seeking cleaner air through legislation faced firm resistance. While some progress was achieved, the onset of the automobile created a fresh problem. The USA's love affair with cars has been well documented. Sherman traces the rise of "smog" in the Los Angeles basin and the halting attempts to curtail it. One thing was certain, people weren't about to reduce car use and the problem could only be addressed at the factory with new means of curbing emitted compounds. The impact of such regulation hasn't kept the USA from being the planet's greatest polluter.

Sherman's answer is necessarily a little weak. Although he's covered the Western world, it is his own nation that provides the readership he wishes to convince. He wants his fellow-countrymen to be aware they inhale 19 thousand times per day. "What enters your nostrils and lungs each time?", he queries. Think of the dust, mites, bacteria and chemicals carried on that air into your body. He reminds us that there are delicate membranes in the lung, which, if spread out fully would cover a football field. That very expanse means a thin membrane easily affronted. It takes little effort to damage the lung. And those inside your rib cage can only be taken care of by their owner. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Oxygen may not strike you as a lively protagonist for a book. Think again.

In a masterfully inventive biography of air, Joe Sherman weaves between geology and history, myth and science, to retrace our understanding of life's most precious gas.

From the Ionian philosophers of ancient Greece to the eccentric chemists and scientists who tested daringly with air through the Renaissance, Enlightenment and Industrial eras, Sherman invokes a lively, little known chapter in Western history.

He also explores myths in Hindu, Maori and Viking culture, showing the ways societies tried to make sense of the invisible gas that surrounded and sustained them.

In "GASP!," Sherman--whose non-fiction book on General Motors, "In the Rings of Saturn," was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize--blames the auto industry, weak government policies and America's obsession with cars as key factors tilting the scales of climate change towards disaster.

But "myth came before science and will outlast it" he writes in a meditative, vaguely hopeful tone. After narrating a 20th century atmosphere filled with germ warfare, radioactive pollution, smog and global warming, hope is about all we have left.

Read this timely homage to air--and make sure you take a few deep breaths.

I found GASP to be invaluable in telling the story of air "up close and personal." After 17 years in the air quality biz, I was stunned to find out facts I never knew about this much ignored but vital natural resource. From its cosmic beginnings to current techno solutions to air pollution, GASP reads like a biography, with air as its mysterious main character - - unpredictable, brooding and misunderstood. This book brings air down to earth; it makes us want to do things in our own lives to protect "one clean breath" for future generations. Bravo Mr. Sherman on a thorough and fascinating presentation.

I am a Joe Sherman fan.

Gasp! is, by far, Mr. Sherman's best cultural history to date. This book can be read as a history of cultural perceptions, a meditation on the element we take most for granted, or a demand for social responsibility in an increasingly toxic world.

Mr. Sherman at heart is neither a fiction, nor non-fiction writer. He is a cultural narrator. Part historian, common-sense speaker and fabulist with Gasp! he invites the reader to join him in a wrestling match with Air. He extracts specific and telling details and riffs both on the facts that underlie them, and the possible consequences they leave for us living in a Tailpipe World.

I have read several of his previous books including: 'Charging Ahead', 'In the Rings of Saturn' and 'Fast Lane down a Dirt Road'. These previous books all explored odd and specific topics as metaphors for our culture and times. Electric Car Innovations, GM's Business Unit of Saturn and the 20th Century History of Vermont are topics which Mr. Sherman converted into stories unfolding larger cultural and social truths.

In Gasp! he reversed his usual manner process and come away with a stunning book. Instead of a strange and specific topic being explored as windows into larger social forces, Joe undertakes the entire history and scope of the atmosphere. It worked. Somehow, it worked. Mr. Sherman has left me aware and pondering of every inhaled breath as chemical process, spiritual process and an underappreciated act of biological chance.

Joe draws on an incredable knowledge of the Automobile Industry, cultural history and the sciences to this book a wonderful read.

This book is part Social History, Science History, and a meditation on a common-sense need for environmental awareness. If John McPhee and Studs Turkel had collaborated on work about the Air, it might be something like this book. But for those who have read him before, it is definitely the strange and insightful Joe Sherman writing this work. This book is some his best writing. Somethign to be thankful fo.

Last night, Mr. Bush the leading supporter of the Clear Skies Act, won the election. Unable to sleep, I instead finished Gasp!

Placing Mr. Bush's 'Clear Skies' into the context of Mr. Sherman's 'Gasp!' is something worthwhile for anyone who would care to better understand the Air and our relationships to it.

Among the big problems with air is that it is invisible (with luck) and that we don't have to pay for it. We get to regard with specific attention the food we buy, and if you don't like the tap water you pay for, you can always spring for bottled. Air, on the other hand, is taken for granted, and you usually don't even think of even one of the 19,000 breaths you take every day. Like any other big subject we don't think about, air is hugely complicated, but in _Gasp! The Swift and Terrible Beauty of Air_ (Shoemaker & Hoard), Joe Sherman has covered the topic fully in many different ways. He writes, "Understanding air, which is both big and amorphous, and small and right in front of you, demands a few mental oscillations." He makes the oscillations fun, from basic principles of gas exchange within your lungs to the different gods of the sky people have believed in to the evolution of our planet's atmosphere to the current worries about pollution and global warming. As if the subject isn't big enough, he has taken many discursive asides; he just has so many facts he has to disclose to the reader, but his grasp of his subject is sure and his ability to convey complexities in understandable terms is excellent.

Much of the book is devoted to the history of our understanding about the air and the thinkers who have tried to break down the invisible to see what it was made of. For instance, in 1648, the mathematician Blaise Pascal repeated the experiments of Torricelli with the new invention, the barometer. Not only did he check air pressure at the bottom of a tower stairs and at the top, he went to the mountains to try the effect. Pascal reasoned that air would weigh less and less the further one ascended, eventually winding up in a void. This sounds sensible to us, but it was anathema to the church; if there was a vacuum way up there, there was no Aristotelian scheme of higher spheres, especially the one that was where God lived. Pascal's ideas were attacked by the Jesuits. Lavoisier and Priestley eventually helped do away with the concept of phlogiston when they discovered oxygen, but the air explorers were not just at work in their labs. There is Other chemists took to the air in hot-air balloons and later hydrogen balloons. In 1862, Henry Coxwell and James Glaisher rode their basket gondola beneath a hot-air balloon to become the first to reach the stratosphere. Their altimeter indicated that they had reached 35,000 feet, but like most of the equipment and procedures of the flight, it went wildly wrong. They had a truly heroic battle against cold and a new malaise, altitude sickness, that imperiled their judgement and their lives.

The universe has spent a long time producing our atmosphere, and Sherman starts from the Big Bang to the Cambrian explosion of half a billion years ago, when oxygen was boosted to current atmospheric levels by plants, enabling the eventual takeover of the land by animals. The final third of _Gasp!_ is devoted to our very recent destruction of the atmosphere that was so long in coming. He has lived in Los Angeles, and he has written before about American car culture, and he is disdainful of how little attention governments in general, and our government in particular, are paying to air's problems. The phasing out of Freon and other such chemicals because of their destruction of the ozone layer that protects us from the ultraviolet is actually an environmental success story. Sherman shows, however, that just as in the current debate over global warming, such anti-regulation politicians as Tom DeLay insisted in 1995 that banning chemicals that destroy the ozone layer was all based on dubious science. The current administration is eager to relax rules that might bother business, and has wanted to relax pro-ozone rules as well, despite the documented reaccumulation of ozone since the rules were enforced. Profit-making corporations, Sherman shows, have a good history of making profits, and a bad one of serving public health. We have industrial (especially automotive) pollutants and the potential for weather changes that are going to reshape civilization; but he reminds us that "Clean air is about as public a concern as it is possible to imagine." It might be that corporations will get eager to forego profits for health, and it might be that government will get eager to draw up rules to make this happen; but don't hold your breath.

Imagine yourself basically a prisoner in your own home because of all the toxic chemicals in fragrances of products used everywhere we go! The author of this book describes her gradual build-up of becoming intolerant of fragrance. She used perfumes, scented candles, lotions, etc...and has ended up not being able to go out of her home because of the horrible reactions she has to the toxic fragrances! This is a scary book...but any one of us could face the same situation! A very important book...now, I think about it every time someone walks past with strong perfume or any other type of scent...thanks to the author for enlightening us!

This book is a "must read" for anyone who cares about protecting their health and that of their loved ones. This book will tell you some shocking information about the toxicity of fragrances of all types including perfume, body lotion, etc. Just like it took years for people to realize how harmful cigarette smoking is, in the same way, it is also taking time for the American public to get educated on the fact that fragrances can cause debilitating health problems to those who wear them and those who breathe them "second hand". If you'd like to know the truth about how dangerous perfume is, I highly recommend this book! After reading this book, it makes me think laws need to be passed to make public places "fragrance free" to protect the health of all of us, and especially children whose immune systems are especially vulnerable to the toxic chemicals found in fragrances. The info. in this book could save you from experiencing health problems down the road. I can guarantee you that the perfume industry will not want you to read this book to find out the truth as they stand to lose considerable profits once people know the truth. I hope you find this book as informative and helpful as I did!

This book is scarier than a Stephen King Novel, as it contains TRUE FACTS. It astounds me that our government doesn't do something about this atrocity. All people are at risk, and it's no wonder that people are being diagnosed with Alzheimers, breast cancers, and all kinds of neurological diseases at earlier ages, and it will keep getting worse. Also, I had no idea that millions of people live lives like hermits due to hazardous perfume chemical exposures. This is a book that all people should read. I found the information very disturbing, especially when I think of children and unborn children.

Until I read this book I had no idea as to how fragrances and chemicals have so severely affected the health of so many, nor did I realize that we are ALL being poisoned unknowingly. This book "tells it like it is" including the author's own testimony as to how her life has changed, how confined she is by not being able to be out in public places due to all the fragrances and other chemicals everywhere. There also is documentation and research done on the subject to verify and stress this seemingly unknown growing problem. Hopefully people will read this, as I have, and change their habits before they too suffer the drastic consequences experienced by so many.

Every woman worries about getting breast cancer because there is such a high incidence rate in this country: NINE out of TEN women will get breast cancer. One has to wonder why; certainly, our doctors can't (or maybe "won't") tell us. After reading this book, it makes perfect "scents." I never knew perfume, cologne and products that have "fragrance" in them contain deadly carcinogens (in fact, the very same ones found in tobacco smoke). This book contains convincing and legitimate scientific and medical data confirming that fragrance chemicals are also composed of neurotoxins and teratogens (which cause birth defects).

I also was educated as to why so many people have asthma, RADS and migraine headaches.

The unequivocal evidence presented in this book reveals the fragrance industry has been testing its chemical products on US -- the unsuspecting consumer -- and, despite the industry's mass fortune, the results of their "roll of the dice" have been debilitating illness, disability and death to millions of innocent, unaware people. The fragrance industry has violated every federal law, including the Toxic Substances Control Act, and, as usual, our government has done NOTHING to protect the public.

Once I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down. I read the entire book in one day because it captured my attention 100%. Immediately after reading this book, I threw away every bottle of perfume and all products that had "fragrance" listed on the label. Folks, we're talking about pure POISON -- far worse than pesticides -- and we're putting it right on our skin which makes it go directly into our bloodstream, and then we are forced to inhale it in the same manner as second-hand smoke. At least tobacco smoke can be avoided in the majority of public places, but perfume vapors are ubiquitous and completely unavoidable, especially in places where they should be banned, such as hospitals and medical facilities.

I encourage every woman and man to read this book in order to protect your health and that of your children and loved ones, then share it with everyone you know who wears fragrances. After reading this book, I guarantee you will be OUTRAGED ... Contact your local and state representatives and, most importantly, the FDA and DEMAND that the FDA punish this unscrupulous industry for its heinous crimes against mankind. We are human beings, not guinea pigs.

AND, FOR GOD'S SAKE, WHATEVER YOU DO -- DON'T BUY THE PERSON YOU LOVE A BOTTLE OF PERFUME OR COLOGNE FOR CHRISTMAS!!!

User friendly, innovative, narrative guide, to an image that fits all types of woman. Thoughtfully presented in a way that allows woman to laugh, think, re-think and make positive changes. I love how she breaks down her chapters as well as her sub-titles and parts to her book. The steps, checklist, tips, (including the Do's), writing exercises, and the six images of woman are universal to all woman. It's like reading a friendly image encyclopedia of usable everyday information that can actually be implemented. This book wants me to want to feel and look good, and be better every day, and there's plenty good about that !!!

This book is absolutely fabulous "Darling". Chloe gave me very helpful tips on finding my authentic image. This book is not only the ultimate guide to help you with your wardrobe, hair style and makeup, it helps you connect with your inner beauty as well. Every women and girl should have this book in their collection. I look forward to seeing Chloe on the "Oprah Show".

I love this book. It fills in little details that make daily life and preparing for extraordinary events flow with laughter and ease. Chloe points out areas that give rise to anxiousness in many of us and simply states ways to approach each. I enjoyed the challenge of thinking through my lifestyle first - being honest about who I am and how I want to spend my time. Then the rest - hair, make-up, clothing choices, shoes, what I keep in my closet - they all make so much sense. It's easy reading, encouraging and truly helpful to women of all ages. I bought copies for my college-age daughters, my sisters and good friends. Enjoy!

From the first few pages of this book I knew I was going to be in for a treat. I love the way Chloe has written this book from the heart and shares her story and her knowledge to reach the heart of the reader. I feel as though I have just learnt a new language, the language of inner and outter beauty flowing as one. Getting ready Chloe Style is the perfect book for women who would like to know more about enhancing their natural beauty. Thank You Chloe Taylor Brown.

Jayne Mason (Australia)

It may at first seem strange that a male with no connection to the fashion industry would be reviewing a book primarily intended for women. The truth is that as an author, I am very interested in how other writers approach a subject. Plus, as both a personal development coach and a man, I have a keen interest in what makes women "tick".

Getting Ready Chloé-Style is well written with an easy style. It is difficult not to fall in love with Chloe's unique blend of friendly advice and frank candidness, delivered at a high mood level.

One thing that struck me is Cholé does not attempt to sell herself at all in the book, nor does she sell the fashion industry. Rather, she exposes it for what it primarily is, a business that needs to consistently make money.

The book is loaded with facts about many areas, from skin and body types, to how to dine formally. It is a veritable "gold mine" of information that seeks to improve literacy in an area that abounds with opinion and pre-conceived ideas.

Chloe's concept of the "Inner Beauty Being" stands out as a very workable approach to improving self esteem. She takes the basic premise that beauty stems from a person's view of themselves and expands on it. It is her observation that everyone has the potential for external beauty. This comes from own very real struggle with self-image which she overcame to become a high fashion model. Her contention is that anyone can build on their uniqueness and shine like a super model.

After reading Girl in a Funk, I decided I should get Girl in a Fix. Most days, I never wear makeup because it just takes too long and too much time. But Girl in a Fix gave me simple solutions that I never thought about, for example, using art brushes as make up brushes. Also, I hate painting my nails because it always leave a yellow stain behind, but Girl in a Fix taught me how to fix that - LEMON JUICE! If you want to learn to to make eyeshadow your lip gloss and cheek blush, get this book!

This book is so helpful! It would be an amazing gift for friends, or daughters ETC. This book explains different ways to quickly rid the redness of a zit, or puffy eyes. It also describes how to deal with greasy hair, or rid blackheads. There are so many great tips, I can't describe them all! I say that every woman/girl needs this book!

This book is an excellent gift idea for a niece or daughter - really, for anyone who has had to deal with puffy eyes, an unwelcome zit or a bad hair day. The tips are easily accessible and make a lot of sense - I particularly like the scientific basis for most of the advice. The writing style is fun and I would definitely recommend this book if you're looking for straightforward beauty advice that doesn't talk down to teens, but is still useful to us in our thirties.

I definitely enjoyed and got a lot out of this book. There were quite a few things in it that i would never have thought of before in my life. Also a lot of the fixes in this book are pretty natural are good too, no to mention making things easier to find in your house helps you to spend less money on stuff. Natural things are a lot better for you and this book contained some really great ideas that can definitely help you out of some bad situations and without spending your paycheck on unneeded stuff.
-Lisa M., 16, NY

In high school, there are times when you feel insecure about how you look and you can't find ways to fix it. After gym, your makeup is smeared and your oily. After lunch, your breath stinks. And you're also dying for those highlights that all the cheerleaders have. This book tells you how to blot oil by using toilet seat covers, and highlight your hair by yourself. This book helps you find cheap ways to satisfy your expensive desires.

The 12 year old girl I gave it to for Christmas loved it. She did not put it down all afternoon. She liked the notable teens featured in the book and its makeup info.

I found this book very helpful. I got tips on how to make my makeup look better and I got tips for my confidence.

My daughter asked me to buy this book yesterday at B& Noble. I liked it...enough to send to my nieces (in middle school & high school). Finally, there's somebody else out there that validates what I've been saying all along--Stop with the racoon eyes and the 'hard' look. It's a good book...wish the author would follow up with something like this for the 45+ crowd. Just a suggestion.

- This book is AMAZING. Being a teen myself, I really
love this book. It helps you deal with problems of
self-esteem and gives you reassurance about yourself.
Whenever you are feeling a little down, you just have
to remember that you have to feel good inside, first,
to have your confidence shine through your outside. It
also has soooo many helpful hints that you couldn't
get elsewhere. Joanna knows what she is talking about and
gives a great flair of her "how-to-do"s instead of
just boring steps. The fantastic layouts and colors in
the book add a sassiness that is essential to make me
actually look at the book and pick it up in the first
place. I also love the fact that they use "normal"
girls, we can all get so caught up in the idea of
thinking we cant look like the "it" stars, but with
the help of this book you actually can. This book is
just fantastic, nothing can top GLAMOUR GURLZ.

I picked up this book for my niece at a local book store and paid quite a bit more for it than what Amazon is selling it for. The book itself is worth much more than even its list price. Loads of great photos and tons of inspirational and informational content. My niece hasn't put the book down, and I'm sure that I'll be buying her another copy come Christmas.