Mola Design Book (A Barbara Holdridge Book)

Customer Reviews:

Very crude mola designs in this book.......2006-04-29

I do not recommend this book. It has only one page of information on the Kuna and molas and the black and white design drawings are of very crude molas. It does not do justice to the Kuna who do some very sophisticated art work on their handmade molas.

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THE MOLA DESIGN COLORING BOOK
Caren Caraway
Manufacturer: Stemmer House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000J3RA6A

Customer Reviews:

Good pictures and text.......2006-10-03

This book takes us from decade to decade from the 50's to now with an examination of social, cultural, economic, and historical factors both setting the backdrop to and influencing changing fashions. This is an intermediate book in fashion, if you compare it to picture-only books to the other end of the spectrum where text dominates (often no pictures), and we see a treatise on aesthetic theory, anthropological roots, feminist writings, and studies on human sexuality and psychology.

This book is a very light introduction to the type of questions you see in more advanced texts, but will not alienate the dilettante fashionista or costumer. The pictures provide exemplary examples of the styles discussed, and the chapters summarize everything quickly enough to have a solid overview of our recent fashion history. Again, I am sure this book will gain lots of interest, whether for browsing or seriously perusing an interest in a compelling aspect of human history and society. Check Steele's other books as well--she writes with insight, but doesn't overdo it with the dry academic stuff; she also has excellent taste with her picture selection.

Excellent fashion primer for the last 50 years of the 20th C.......2003-11-09

This book has both beautiful photographs and informative text. The only reason I took off one star is that I think more photographs from each designer should have been included. I especially would have liked to have seen a few more photos of clothes from American designers from the 1990s. Throughout the book, the author mostly displays clothes made by European designers. I would not have expected much attention to be focused upon American designers before 1980s or 1990s. Arguably, it was not until the 1990s that American fashion really started to influence Europe, instead of the other way around. Because this reversal of influence was such a change, I would have expected more attention to be paid to it visually. Therefore, the lack of representation in this era makes me think that American designers were somewhat shortchanged in this book. However, I agree that all the designers selected, both European and American, did heavily influence their own time periods.

This book covers Post War 1940s through 1990s. In each era the author focused on a few key designers. The author chose Balenciaga, Balmain, and Dior to represent the 1940s and 1950s. The author primarily showcased Correges, Yves Saint Laurent, and Quant to represent the 1960s. Halston and Yves Saint Laurent were the focus of the 1970s era. More designers are represented in the 1980s. The book has one or two photos from Chanel, Lacroix, Blass, Herrera, Azzedine Alaia, Armani, Gaultier, Comme des Garcon, and Issey Miyake, among a few others. The 1990s are represented by a photo or two of designs from Versace, Anna Sui, Chanel, Tom Ford for Gucci, Galliano, Donna Karen, Westwood, Calvin Klein, and Prada.

Just as it is the maxim for fashion in general, so is it for this book in particular...less is more. The photos in this book capture the essence of each era and the text details the stylistic atmosphere to which each designer contributed. I highly reccommend this book. Despite having access to it at the library, I plan on buying it.

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Fifty Years of Fashion : From New Look to Now
Valerie Steele
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OLU0VY

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Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now
Valerie Steele
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000ORODMA

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Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now
Valerie Steele
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OSEVGW

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An entertaining way to wait for the next DVD release

Cartmel by Pertwee

Doctor Who: Atom Bomb Blues (Doctor Who)
Andrew Cartmel
Manufacturer: BBC Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 056348635X

Book Description

Los Alamos, 1944. A World War is being fought. In the American desert, the race is on to build an atomic bomb. The fate of the world is at stake, in more ways than one. The Seventh Doctor arrives, posing as a nuclear scientist; Ace is his driver and research assistant. They are here because someone, or something, is trying to alter the course of history at this most delicate point and destroy the human race. Playing detective among the A-bomb scientists, the Doctor tries to avoid falling under suspicion himself, but the head of Los Alamos security is convinced that something is not quite right about the small, eccentric Scottish research physicist calling himself Dr John Smith. As the minutes tick away to the world's first atom bomb test, the Doctor and Ace find themselves up to their necks in spies, aliens, and some very nasty saboteurs from another dimension.

Customer Reviews:

An entertaining way to wait for the next DVD release.......2007-08-22

Atom Bomb Blues, like many of the other Past Doctor Adventures, is pleasant for its decent adherence to characterization of the Doctor and Ace. Ace is neither belittled, hypersexualized, nor too far outside the "sphere" of the companion. The novel dragged a bit in early sections, forcing Ace to ask far too many, "But I don't understand, Doctor" type questions in order to do an exposition dump that, frankly, should be unnecessary for any reader who is even mildly historically literate. But things pick up when the sci-fi weirdness quotient kicks in. We have mathematics as magic of sorts here, but that's a standard Whovian trick, and so doesn't bug too much. Definitely some fun moments (although the dragon lady/lotus flower dichotomy used at one point is a bit much to stomach), nice dialog, and an engaging plot. Worth a read.

Cartmel by Pertwee.......2006-02-20

When I first bought this book, I expected an anti-American screed, a thinly-veiled critique of George W. Bush's Iraq catastrophe. After all, it's about the Manhattan project; it's got a dead Japanese face on the cover with a mushroom cloud where the mouth should be. "The Green Death" thinks this cover is subtle. The author's dedication to someone who "redeemed America in my eyes" certainly didn't make the book sound fair and balanced. I remember Andrew Cartmel's earlier "Who" novels, the War trilogy from the 7th Doctor New Adventures, as in-your-face and politically edgy. While I appreciated the scope of Cartmel's earlier novels, I never considered myself a fan.

Much to my surprise, then, "Atom Bomb Blues" did not read much like any of the books in Cartmel's War trilogy. Nor did it read much like the stories Cartmel oversaw during his three years as "Doctor Who" TV script editor. The most common feature was Cartmel's ethnically diverse take on the Whoniverse. Our look at the Manhattan Project is initially through the eyes of J. Robert Oppenheimer's Mexican cook, the first character the Doctor befriends. Later, the Doctor sneaks off campus to commune with three Apache Indians: in the desert, they build a campfire, share peyote, and sing "The Ballad of Ira Hayes". All right, they only did two of those three things.

What struck me, though, is that this book is structured more like one of the six-part TV stories from the Barry Letts era. Maybe I caught the resemblance only because I watched the DVD release of "The Claws of Axos" the same week that I read "Atom Bomb Blues". But there's also this: the book opens in Los Alamos, where the Doctor poses as an eminent scientist, and lectures the other nuclear physicists on responsibility to mankind (Edward Teller is a bad guy, here). I can imagine Jon Pertwee doing a lot with this material.

Of course, Barry Letts would never allow such a setup to last much longer than Episode Two. He'd get bored with the straight science, much as Cartmel gets bored with the Wikipedia.org data dumps on Oppenheimer's boyhood and previous marriages. So, halfway through, time to bring out psychedelic sets and over-the-top villains. The Doctor detours out into space, to visit a day-glo UFO with strange organic creatures lurking inside. Again, maybe I shouldn't have read this the same week I watched "Claws of Axos". There is a celebrity cameo by an American musician that is simply not to be believed. Finally, the action concludes with a wacky shootout in a stately Los Angeles manor.

I enjoyed "Atom Bomb Blues": it defied my expectations, and made a few clever plays on words. The historical atom bombs in question were named "Fat Man" and "Little Boy". The book's main guest star is an (intentionally) anachronistic physicist, Ray Morita, who is both a fat man and a little boy, in appearance and motivation. Another neat play on words is the book's fictional Los Alamos security chief, Major Butcher. You'd expect that an American assigned to the atom bomb project, with a name like "Butcher", to be rather an obvious caricature. Instead, Butcher gets a lot to do, and doesn't end the book in the manner I expected.

As it stands, this may be the last in a line of paperback "Doctor Who" novels that began life in 1991 as the New Adventures. DW books are still published, but now as hardcover novels based on the Russell T. Davies series, and aimed at a younger audience. As a book with both a high camp factor and a serious moral message, "Atom Bomb Blues" is not the worst way to conclude 15 years of novels too broad and deep for the small screen.

Book Description

This book explains how to prepare for and write various types of critical pieces on film. It distinguishes the four main critical formats of writing about film—the review, the critique, the comparative analysis and the documented research paper—from each other (why, when, and how to use each and the different aspects within each). The book provides theory, discussion, component examples and full samples of all formats discussed. The book also provides exercises and strategies to prepare the critic to watch the film and write a first draft. B> preparation for and the process of film criticism, style and structure in film criticism, the review, the analytical critique, the comparative analysis, the documented research paper, primary and secondary sources of works guidelines and an index of names and titles. For anyone interested in critiquing films for personal interest or professional writing.

Customer Reviews:

Background Information.......2004-08-10

I am a sort of contributor to this book- three of my essays were excerpted for use as examples. (two were improperly credited in my review copy, but that is of no real concern here) I will confirm that they were written as class assignments for a community college course titled "Film As Literature." I'll make no claim that they are superlative examples of analysis, but they were FAR better than the average.

Dr. Moscowitz was not in fact the instructor of the class when I took it, but he apparently took over when that person retired- and inherited a body of past work accumulated over time. He contacted me a few years after I had moved on for permission to use my work.

The class, as part of the state's college curriculum, was meant primarily as an exercise in writing. It was not meant as any great in-depth study of film as an art form. It was not meant for film-school students in serious study of film.

This is meant as background information- you'll still have to make your own decision about how appropriate the book itself is to your situation.

Dr Moscowitz's continues to amaze.......2004-08-09

Sure, if you want a manufactured, canned review of film and movie creation, then turn away and buy an Ebert book. But if you want an independent review of film by a PhD, then this is your book. Dr. Moscowitz's introduction to film in this book is wonderful. This book covers all facets of film from the review to the documented research paper. An excellent addition to any film class or general reader's library.

Poorly executed guide to writing critical film reviews........2001-07-10

John Moscowitz poorly executes a mini-textbook on how to write critical film reviews. He takes a series of student papers (presumably from his own classes) and presents them with repetitive commentary echoing what the writer has just said.

A better idea would be to read an actual book of reviews by a single author such as the Roger Ebert ones or any of a number of other critics.

Extremely thorough..........2000-01-11

This volume is an extremely thorough work on the process of film criticism, detailing techniques for accumulating information and thinking about the material, approaches to film criticism, types of it, and so on. Glossary and various appendices are included -- it's even got a quiz at the end. This is a wonderful book for budding film critics.

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Important film music book
A scholarly and introspective selection of essays

Film Music: Critical Approaches

Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0826413560

Customer Reviews:

Important film music book.......2007-01-04

This is a great book consisting of various essays on film music. The new price is high, but you can find it used for much cheaper. Fantastic analyses and theories on film music. In depth essays for those who want to read deeper into film scoring.

A scholarly and introspective selection of essays.......2002-09-09

Compiled and edited by K. J. Donnelly (lecturer in Film, Television and Radio Studies, Staffordshire University), Film Music: Critical Approaches presents a scholarly and introspective selection of essays from connoisseurs of fine music who examine the contributions of twentieth century film music to the overall art form of film making. From analytic and interpretive approaches to music scholarship, to the profound influence of the music in classics such as King Kong and Citizen Kane, Film Music is a thoughtful, complex, and highly artistic critique and evaluation. Film Music is an invaluable contribution to both Film Studies and Music History reference collections and supplemental reading lists.

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Sheet music of 100 great songs of the 20's 30's and 40's

20'S, 30's & 40's Showstoppers

Manufacturer: Warner Bros Pubns
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0769273289

Customer Reviews:

Sheet music of 100 great songs of the 20's 30's and 40's.......2000-01-06

IF you are over sixty, you must have this book. It has all the great songs that you grew up with like Deep Purple, Star Dust, Thanks for the Memory, Sophisticated Lady, and You're nobody til somebody loves you, and 94 others. This are wonderful melodies about love and life from a bygone era. Some of the early scores lack the chord notations that I find helpful when I play the piano. But they have all the words, and many of the stars that introduced them on the stage or the movies. This is a great book.

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20's, 30's & 40's Showstoppers

Manufacturer: CPP/Relwin Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GSYL1K

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Some hard some simple

The value of logic, or the illogic of value?

Good book---too much algebra

Better than Sam Loyd!

The only logic book you'll ever need

Riddle of Scheherazade, The: And Other Amazing Puzzles, Ancient and Modern
Raymond M. Smullyan
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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My Best Mathematical and Logic Puzzles (Math & Logic Puzzles)

ASIN: 0679446346
Release Date: 1997-05-20

Customer Reviews:

Some hard some simple.......2007-01-06

Some of the puzzles are really great brainteasers a few of them are pretty simple....

The value of logic, or the illogic of value?.......2005-08-31

This book, by a well-known poser of puzzles, sets out of the order of a thousand logic puzzles in a format loosely styled upon the presentation of Scheherazade, but in a somewhat less entrancing way. The problem with logic is that there is just so much of it about. Perhaps the axiom 'less is more' might have been applied and some judicious excision of the more mechanical or repetitious examples been performed. The jewels are lost amongst the glass beads. Obviously by its nature mathematical logic eschews value judgements, but in the present case this seems to have been taken rather too literally.

Good book---too much algebra.......2004-09-01

This book is a good source of riddles, old and new. Unfortunately, a lot of the riddles are just basic algebra problems... and that's not very fun. But if you skip (or quickly work out) the silly algebra riddles, there are still a lot of other interesting riddles. And also there's a neat way to prove Gauss's summing rule in this book.

Also, I was looking for an errata for this book, but I couldn't find one, so I will just mention here that the answer to number 71 is incorrect. But, if you just remove the last sentence from the answer, then it is right.

Better than Sam Loyd!.......2004-07-27

This is probably the best book on logic puzzles ever written (aside from other Smullyan books, that is). It is witty, challenging, and has problems of all kinds. The first half is framed as a continuation to the Arabian Nights, with ingenious and original puzzles (aside from the occasional oldy snuck in) given an Arabian touch.
However, after those brilliant puzzles comes the greatest part of the book. The second half is a collection of puzzles, paradoxes, and even has a couple of chapters on coercive logic, invented by Raymond Smullyan himself.
I reccomend this book to any logic buff, or indeed to anyone who's ever enjoyed a logic puzzle. And if you don't fall into either category, then you need this book all the more.

The only logic book you'll ever need.......2001-02-02

Seeing my frustration at being thoroughly unchallenged in logic in my math class at school, my mom bought me this book. I owe her one. There are coercive logic puzzles, easy but sneaky riddles, and math games. There are liar/truthteller problems to keep you guessing for hours. That said, this is also a great book to read on a plane. It is so complete, you will never need another brainteaser book. That is, until you memorize all the questions.

Book Description

From the inventor of fractal geometry, a revolutionary new theory that overturns our understanding of how markets work.

Benoit B. Mandelbrot, one of the century's most influential mathematicians, is world-famous for making mathematical sense of a fact everybody knows but that geometers from Euclid on down had never assimilated: Clouds are not round, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not smooth. To these classic lines we can now add another example: Markets are not the safe bet your broker may claim. In his first book for a general audience, Mandelbrot, with co-author Richard L. Hudson, shows how the dominant way of thinking about the behavior of markets--a set of mathematical assumptions a century old and still learned by every MBA and financier in the world--simply does not work.

As he did for the physical world in his classic The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Mandelbrot here uses fractal geometry to propose a new, more accurate way of describing market behavior. The complex gyrations of IBM's stock price and the dollar-euro exchange rate can now be reduced to straightforward formulae that yield a far better model of how risky they are. With his fractal tools, Mandelbrot has gotten to the bottom of how financial markets really work, and in doing so, he describes the volatile, dangerous (and strangely beautiful) properties that financial experts have never before accounted for. The result is no less than the foundation for a new science of finance.

Customer Reviews:

Good on explanation, light on math, heavy on boasting.......2007-09-22

(Mis)Behavior of Markets is a wonderful book for people looking to understand why modern financial modelling does not adequately explain real market prices and their fluctuations. The authors are quite good at pointing out the shortcomings of current models that can be easily verified by the reader with web access. They also give a decent overview of how an alternate mathematical view shows promise in improving our understand of market volatility. I took away from it that markets are far more chaotic than we currently appreciate (their view) and short-term investors will suffer the costs of this (my view).

There are two points where the book falls short. While it makes generous use of graphs to explain mathematical relationships, it could stand a fair bit more formalism in explaining the math. This isn't supposed to be an academic treatise, to be sure, but the informality made it hard for a skeptic to follow every logical step in the reasoning.

The book may be light on math but it sure isn't light on self-esteem. The author (I'm assuming these parts are chiefly written by Mandelbrot) feels the need to end most of his paragraphs with a reminder of how his contemporaries have underappreciated his groundbreaking research. I'm sure he's smart dude but I kind of assumed that whe

For the financial theorist in you.......2007-09-13

Mandelbrot is, of course, a genius. In this book Mandelbot attacks orthodox financial theory and substitutes a fractal view of how markets everywhere behave. It's all interesting and Mandelbrot writes in a very accessible style. The conclusions he draws are non-controversial (markets are turbulent, markets are far riskier than we think, etc). An alternative to evaluating risk and reward is offered and might be of interest to theoretical finance people and perhaps some people who trade as a hobby or for a living and like to ponder ways to avoid severe financial loss or ruin. Having known a few traders in complex financial derivatives who did experience ruin, the topic is of great interest to me. As a long term investor who relies mainly on index stock and bond funds and real estate for my investments, I'm happy to see Dr. Mandelbrot's wild graphs in a book and not on my financial statements (fingers crossed!).

Interesting Read .......2007-06-30

I found Mandelbrots piece is fairly easy to read given the material he is attempting to cover. It points out the errors of many of the modeling techniques which exist. I always find this helpful as possibly the most important part of any modeling exercise is to know where your model falls short and what it might not be able to predict.

The trillion dollar book.......2007-06-19

This book should be required reading for all of Wall Street's money managers. It would have saved billions of their clients' money.

Let's look at the Long Term Capital disaster. Intelligent people, Nobel laureates, so what went wrong? The answer is simple: fat tails! (The concept that supposedly one-in-a-billion events are, in fact, not unusual). Clearly, it was not lack of intelligence that caused their downfall, but a childish reliance on flawed financial theories.

Mandelbrot identifies and explains the flaws. True, he does not provide an alternative theory, but perhaps the whole point is that financial markets, being chaotic systems, are not predictable.

Let's look at another chaotic system, the weather. Here the parameters such as temperature, wind speed, humidity, are easily measurable. Yet, we still cannot predict the weather accurately for more than a day or two. How then can the stock market, which is far more complex than the weather, be predictable, when most of the parameters that affect it are not measurable, and some are not even known?

Perhaps the weakest part of the book is the beginning of a theory that Mandelbrot tries to found. He suggests that fractal equations produce charts that look and feel like real stock price charts, and that there might be some connection that can be exploited to predict or describe financial markets. He does not, however, go beyond this suggestion and hopes that someone else would develop his theory.

Bottom line: Mandelbrot's "fat tail" theory explains the financial disasters suffered by many "brilliant" money managers. It does not predict the market, but explains the risks of conventional capital market theories. It saves you money, and after all a penny saved is a dollar earned.

Fat Tails & Pocketbook Implications.......2007-06-14

As the growing evidence mounts that the foundation of CAPM, MPT and Black-Scholes' use of the Gaussian model (i.e. Bell Curve) for market fluctuations are false, what is one to do? The author attempts to warn us of these false models, not to specifically take aim at the authors, or to specifically make us money, but in an attempt to not lose it.

The 1st part of the book "The Old Way", the author provides ample background on how the most widely used finance models came about and the genesis of their theories (read as Gaussian). The second part "The New Way" provides additional background and reasons we should find alternatives, as we don't want to fall into the "man with the hammer" syndrome. The last section "The Way Ahead" is highlighted with Chapter XII in describing the ten heresies of finance so you can avoid them.

Whether you believe in fractals, or not, it is at least worth knowing their implications as power-laws, or scaling factors, do occur very frequently in nature. Some other worthy books on the subject that may be deserving of shelf space are The Black Swan, Ubiquity, and Deep Simplicity.

Of note, let us not forget, to quote Mr. Mandelbrot, "The origin of Gaussian analysis in astronomy conditioned scientists to assume that, in a messy world, there would always be a few anomalous bits of information, to be later ignored before the data crunching". Take for example that during the `80s, 40% of the positive returns from the S&P 500 came during just ten (10) days.

Misbehavior of Markets a Fractal View Of

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Misbehavior of Markets a Fractal View Of
Benoit B Mandelbrot
Manufacturer: BASIC BOOKS @
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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