American Gargoyles: Spirits in Stone

Book Description

American Gargoyles: Spirits in Stone is the first pictorial essay on the many gargoyles found in the United States, featuring unique stories and breathtaking full-color photographs of these monstrous but delightful angels with a sense of humor. A number of books have showcased the medieval gargoyles of Europe, but never before has one been devoted to the thousands of gargoyles that peer down from American buildings. Lewd or ferocious, holy or humorous, these astonishing carvings are distinguished by fine artistry, vivid imagination, and spiritual mystery.

American Gargoyles puts us face-to-face with the winged griffins, fallen angels, and damned souls of Washington's National Cathedral, as well as those adorning the Woolworth Building and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Tribune Tower in Chicago, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and many other buildings. Robert Llewellyn's glorious photographs reveal the craftsmanship of the artisans and sculptors who created these works.

With Darlene Trew Crist's fascinating explanations of the varieties of gargoyles, stories about their history and creation, and extensive resource information, including websites, American Gargoyles makes a convincing case for looking up as we walk down the streets of America's cities.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderful Book.......2002-12-06

I bought this as a gift for someone and now I wish I would have also bought myself a copy! The pics are great, as is all the information regarding gargoyles. Only drawback for me, I thought it was going to be bigger, it's no bigger than maybe 10x10 or so.

American Gothic.......2002-03-04

This book is one of the best books I got from amazon. I got the two books Holy Terror's and American Gargolyes... it was a great deal. The book is loaded with pictures of gargoyles from across america and desrcibes what type of gargoyle and where it is located in america. The photographs are beautiful and descriptive through out the book. If you gargoyles get the two books for the price of one. Highly Recommended!!!!

Quality Book on Odd Subject.......2001-11-22

I was a little skeptical when I first picked up "American Gargoyles: Spirits in Stone" but a friend had reccomended it so I decided to read it. Boy, am I glad I did! If I hadn't I would have missed out on the wonderful details, breathtaking pictures and an all around fascinating history of American Gargoyles. The pictures are well shot, and I have to admit, were the first thing that caught my eye. But, when I sat down to read the text the author shared all these captivating little details about the gargoyles which I loved! The author tells you the story behind a particular gargoyle and if there is anything special you should look for when you see it. This book was so fascinating that I was inspired to take a trip to some of the sights mentioned in the book and check out the gargoyles for myself. I reccomend this book to all readers, it appeals to all audiences.

Monstrous Stoned Fun.......2001-11-13

Gargoyles have gotten to be very popular recently, and any gargoyle fan ought to get the book _American Gargoyles: Spirits in Stone_ (Clarkson Potter) by Darlene Trew Crist, with photographs by Robert Llewellyn, because American gargoyles are fun. It wasn't the original job of gargoyles to be fun. One of the explanations of how gargoyles got into their exalted positions in churches is that they were placed there to entice pagans to come and worship at Christian locales. Those who ran the churches thought that pagan symbols, and scary ones at that, were a good marketing ploy. Perhaps we American moderns are simply amused by carvings of fearsome dragons, but there are plenty of gargoyles shown here that are deliberately humorous caricatures.

The pictures are a treat. This is not a big, coffee-table book, but there are scores of pictures from many American sacred, commercial, and academic buildings. Though American gargoyles reflect the traditions of Europe, many are truly American. The University of Pennsylvania, for instance, has a strictly medieval style of quadrangle, complete with gargoyles, but one of them is a football player. At Washington National Cathedral, there is a gargoyle showing a crooked politician; he has horns, a big belly, a cigar, and a pocket full of dollar bills. There are a pair of gargoyles there which were given by a grandmother in thanks for her two grandsons. One is angelic and one is demonic, and she never said which is which; the grandsons are now grown up and still don't know. A weeping sea turtle is there as a statement of environmental protection. Out of the mouth of a monstrous duck stares a tourist with a camera, a payback from the carver who was the subject of thousands of pictures as he worked.

_American Gargoyles_ could have been a lot bigger, but Crist has included a reading list for those who want to see more. It is a good-looking and informative book.

American Gargoyles.......2001-06-21

Having read this book, I have a new outlook on American Gargoyles which truely are spirits in stone. This book is very educational, picturesque,informative, well written and I simply love it!

Book Description

Filled with detailed illustrations and simple descriptions, this drawing book presents easy techniques for learning to draw horses. Included are finished horses to trace or to use in creating other pieces of art as well as saddles, blankets, leg wraps, and bridles that can be traced onto completed sketches of horses. Filled with detailed line illustrations, anatomical explanations, and author's notes, this guide offers the budding equine illustrator the footing needed to begin drawing horses.

Customer Reviews:

Well............2006-06-17

This book is good,it teaches you how to draw a horse head,but not a horse.....It teaches you to draw lots of diffrent heads and expressions.When she is done she shades it .But does not teach you how,well she does but it is not step by step.It is like a huge step.

[...]

Not ANYONE can do it.Then she says to do SCRIBLES to draw a horse body,huh???A very deteiled head with a ¨Scribled Body¨that is not good! I like most of the book ,just that sometimes she jumps big steps,well too big for us!

Well go ahead and buy it it is not bad, teachs you lots of things,but a body....

What a GREAT start for the budding artist!.......2006-03-13

As the mother of an art student, this book totally broke through the obstacles my daughter was having with her beloved horse hobby. They say artist have the most trouble drawing the things they love the most, but the step-by-step instructions assisted my daughter to break out of her barrier. She uses the basic techniques to help her with her 3D work as well! Thank you!

Practice makes perfect!.......2005-09-30

This book is really good to learn from! I traced a few horse heads, then practiced free hand, and it came out really good! WHen I went onto a body, she drew a bunch of circles, and I was surprised, but I tried it-- it came out so good!! Ofcourse it took practice, but once you clean up the picture, shade it and add a saddle, you'd think this was a real peice of art in a gallery!! I really recomend this book!

Deserves Just That........2005-01-10

I will admit. This is good for teaching you how to draw horse heads. At least the first set of instructions is. I was exicited and thought this would be a great book when I went and drew an excellent, realistic picture of a horse head. I was aiming for arabian but got quarter horse, but I didnt care. It looked great. So I wanted to go on to bodies. And guess what I found Scribbles. Yes, scribbles. She just drew a bunch of circles, saying to go with the energy that you feel. I ddin't bother, and went on to draw another horse head using a different set of instructions I was so disapointed when I was done. The horse looked like something a 9 year old would draw if they grabbed the book. I looked back to the other picture. The other one was in a ocmpleately different class. After this, I tried to draw asaddles and bridles. But they didn't tell you how to draw them. They shpwed pictures of say, a racing saddle, and said trace this onto a horse you previously drew. I wouldn't request buying this book.

Book Description

In the 1950s William Klein, one of the world's great photographers, focused on Rome, producing a celebrated book of photographs with texts by his friends Moravia, Fellini, and Pasolini. Now Klein has returned to Rome to tell-in his way-how the city has changed in the eyes of its inhabitants, whom he immortalizes in 25 diverse and emblematic groups.

William Klein has worked in fashion, photojournalism, and advertising. He has also directed films. Klein aims always to get at the heart of the matter, which characteristically for him is how to tell a story as concisely and fully as possible. He is the 2005 recipient of the Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Customer Reviews:

A welcome and enthusiastically recommended addition.......2007-08-04

A friend and colleague of such luminaries as Moravia, Fellini and Pasolini, William Klein is a master of photography and recipient of the Lucie Award for 2005. "MMV Romani" is a compilation of full color photographs of the men and women of Rome. The subjects for Klien's camera lens range from waiters to aristocrats, from lawyers to art dealers, as well as actors, marketplace vendors, truck drivers, rowers. An impressive body of photographic artistry, "MMV Romani" is a welcome and enthusiastically recommended addition to personal, professional, and academic library Photographic Studies reference collections.

Average customer rating:

Mmv Romani William Klein
William Klein
Manufacturer: Contrasto
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000N6B91U

Book Description

Totodile is hungry, gobbling up everything in sight. It's up to its friends to teach the greedy Pokemon a lesson! “You may dig collecting them for their fine full-color art and cute stories.” — Game Pro

Amazon.com

People become writers, in large part, because they are in love with language. Wordstruck is the story of one such writer's unabashed affair with words, from his Halifax childhood awash with intriguing accents to life as a traveling journalist who "delighted in finding pockets of distinctive English, as a botanist is thrilled to discover a new variety of plant." Each aspect of Robert MacNeil's youthful existence prompted yet another linguistic thrill. Childhood churchgoing "did not provide me with any spiritual awakening ... but it anointed me with language." His mother's passion for the natural world and his father's life as a ship's skipper gave him two more complete vocabularies. And "If you define yourself by the language you acquire as you enter different spheres," MacNeil writes, the absurd language of "cricket was another piece of my self-definition."

MacNeil is best known as a novelist, coauthor of The Story of English, and onetime executive editor of the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. In Wordstruck he imparts a passion for Shakespeare (in particular, Hamlet), Dylan Thomas, and T. S. Eliot, whose ear for the English language, he says, was "the equivalent of perfect pitch--for the harmonic range of our tongue, its rhythms, and all its voices." Wordstruck is a charming memoir from a man "crazy about the sound of words, the look of words, the taste of words, the feeling for words on the tongue and in the mind."

Customer Reviews:

English Language in Perspective.......2003-03-10

This book explains MacNeil's love and passion for the English language through his firsthand knowledge of it. He describes his first glimpses at the beauty of words by telling us the story of his childhood. Although it tells the story of a child growing up in a time of war in Canada it contains information and stories that everyone can find relatable. Any lover of the English language will enjoy this book. He hits you with just the right combination of history and personal experience to make the story real for the reader and yet informative at the same time. The information provided in this book is a mixture of both fact and opinion. Mr. MacNeil provides the history of his life and gives his opinion about how experience has influenced the initial spark and continuing devotion to the English language. I found it intriguing to look at the English language through such a different perspective than my own.

Wonderfully original tribute to the English language.......2001-04-30

Any person who is passionate about the English language -- and not only as it is found in literature, but in conversation, in theater, in any kind of storytelling, everywhere--;who is fascinated by its many dialects and its complexity; and who fondly remembers milestones in the history of their own relationship to the English language, will realize what a treasure this book is.

What is particularly wonderful about it is how MacNeil combines an intelligent tribute to and reflection on the English language with personal memoir. Not every bit of the book is about reading, storytelling, or even language in general, although that is the major theme. A great deal of it strays from this into childhood in general...and it is so interesting and moving, especially for a person who grew up in and still lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. (I have to apoligize for this obvious bias...but I can't write from my heart about this book without revealing it)I have never seen my own city written about so articulately, and never really learned about its history. I always thought I lived in a pretty boring city with very little history...relatively speaking, of course. I certainly didn't think anyone existed who actually possessed nostalgia about this place. But he does! And he is a wonderful writer, so thankfully, he expresses his nostalgia well. Every Canadian should read this book, and others should as well-- perhaps an American or two out there might be interested in the experience of a Canadian, as dull as they might think it will be. It's not. What's impressive and unique is that there is nothing EXTREME in MacNeil's childhood. Most succesful memoirs, of course, have much more drama, and seem to all document extreme abuse and misery--eg Angela's Ashes, The Liar's Club... MacNeil's childhood is so simple, perhaps even (gasp) common, and yet all the more touching because of this. The drama and magic of childhood without the distraction the extreme situations is wonderful and refreshing in a literary world overwhelmed by stories of extremism and the 'abnormal'. One gets tired of eccentric and quirky characters and extreme situations-- it seems to be the easy way to be original, for a writer.

Anyway, I know I'm becoming a little long winded and have revealed an obvious bias which might make that New Yorker or Californian reading this cross this book off their mental list and look for another exotic account of an African adventure or heartbreaking memoir of life in India to read, but I had to simply speak from my heart. I feel so strongly about it...I read this book when I was in Japan teaching (sigh, leading to even more bias), when I was surrounded by a strange world and a strange language, and it made me feel more strongly than I ever have about my homeland and my language. Tears came to my eyes...yada yada yada O.K. I'll stop there...I don't want to obliterate all credibility... As much bias as exists behind my review, I must, say, even if you have no interest in a boy's childhood and coming of age in Halifax, Nova Scotia during World War 2, you should still read it. It isn't just about that (That actually makes up a fairly small part of it). This book is really about the story of a man's relationship with his language-- in childhood and as he came of age. As an aspiring journalist and writer, for this reason alone I find it to be a jewel. It is a very personal memoir about a lifelong love affair, which any of us who read reviews on Amazon.com likely share...a love affair with language.

Average customer rating:
Wordstruck
Robert MacNeil
Manufacturer: Penguin
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
ASIN: B000GR0EN0

Average customer rating:
Wordstruck
Robert Macneil
Manufacturer: Penguin Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000JZGIZC

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Personal Story

Language Autobiography

Surprised by Words - a Treasure

Wordstruck
Macneil
Manufacturer: Audioworks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette

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ASIN: 0671681389

Customer Reviews:

Personal Story.......2005-04-09

This book tells the story of MacNeil's childhood and his lifelong fascination with words. MacNeil's parents came of age in the late 1920s in Halifax, Nova Scotia. They started married life together just as the Depression hit. MacNeil's father commanded ships for the Canadian equivalent of the Coast Guard. During much of MacNeil's childhood, he was away at sea, and young Robert MacNeil was expected to follow in his footsteps when he graduated high school. However, Robert was drawn more towards books and literature, having developed an ear for literary expression at his mother's knee, as he listened to her read stories like Peter Pan and Treasure Island. It was his ear and love of enunciation that led him to a career in theater, radio, and eventually television broadcasting. In this book, MacNeil shares with us many of the influences on his early life and career, and enumerates some of the many books that he enjoyed experiencing as a child.

Language Autobiography.......2004-03-16

Robert MacNeil was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1931 but lived and learned language in Nova Scotia. He became a well-known broadcaster, but he also wrote several books. MacNeil co-founded The Story of English, a more popular book, with Robert McCrum and William Cran in 1986.

Wordstruck being published in the late 1980's caused it to seem a little outdated but appropriate to the type of book. MacNeil's only original autobiography is aimed to lovers of the English language who are interested in it's dialects, history, and personal relevance. The level of reading is usual, not extremely hard or easy. The flow of the memoir is smooth as it presents his childhood experiences and influences of language and words.

Actual pictures are displayed of MacNeil's family when he was growing up within the pages. Both facts and opinions of his information are demonstrated. Facts of MacNeil's life and opinions of the language influences are told. I felt that the book overall was very informative allowing me to undestand different experiences with language and how it affects me.

Surprised by Words - a Treasure.......2003-11-07

This wonderful memoir, first published in 1989 by Robert MacNeil, is absolutely wonderful to read. A delightful memoir by a distinguished man who also co-authored The Story of English. He is co-anchor of the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour.

I bought it a few years ago out of curiousity - and have shared and recommended it to friends who appreciate a well written book with lots of surprises. This man loves words and the power of words, He was raised in Nova Scotia by a mother who read and provided books for him, introducing him to the world of poetry and the love of learning.

How appropriate this book is for today when literacy and reading books is being emphasized, finally. I think the brilliant author deserves more recognition and his thoroughly enjoyable book should be reprinted and made more easily available.

You will not be disappointed in this book. It is a treasure to keep and reread as time goes by.

Thanks Mr. MacNeil for sharing with us your uplifting story.

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Wordstruck : a memoir / Robert MacNeil
Robert (1931-) MacNeil
Manufacturer: New York, N.Y. : Viking
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000VT4D7G

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Wordstruck A Memoir
MacNeil Robert
Manufacturer: Viking
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000UDB3SU

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Wordstruck, A Memoir
Robert MacNeil
Manufacturer: Viking
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000H5CBRS

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Wordstruck: A Memoir
Robert MACNEIL
Manufacturer: see notes for publisher info
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0571143008

Average customer rating:
Wordstruck: A Memoir
Robert MacNeil
Manufacturer: Viking Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NXSACE

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Wordstruck: A Memoir/Audio Cassettes
Robert MacNeil
Manufacturer: G K Hall Audio Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Textbook Binding
ASIN: 0804500789

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