The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture

Book Description

The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture is a unique and fascinating exploration of the art and architecture that has been influenced and inspired by Biblical stories and Christian history and beliefs. Richly illustrated and with a Glossary of Architectural Terms and an extensive Bibliography, the Companion combines important general essays on the periods and styles important in the history of Christian art with hundreds of shorter entries that describe specific works, artists, themes, and visual images and which give the reader practical guidance on where in Europe to locate the works described. The most comprehensive reference work on Christian art and architecture available includes: * Detailed essays on periods and styles in art and architecture: Anglo- Saxon, Byzantine, Carolingian, Coptic, Early Christian, Gothic, Irish, Ottonian, Renaissance, Rococo, Romanesque; Mannerism, Neoclassicism, * General background on Christian doctrine, beliefs, and tradition: liturgical year, colours, vessels, and vestments; the Ten Commandments, Seven Deadly Sins, and the Two Trinities; Candlemas, Holy Week, Stations of the Cross, and religious orders * Forms of art influenced by Christian ideas: altarpieces, tombs, and caskets; illuminated manuscripts, mosaics, frescoes, and brasses; stained glass, portal sculpture, and standing crosses; fonts, fountains, and rose windows * Specific references to individual artists and sculptors and to their works: Fra Angelico, Bernini, and Botticelli; Marc Chagall, Eric Gill, and Stanley Spencer; the great painters of the Italian Renaissance: Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci * Places, buildings, and architects: Assissi, Ravenna, Venice, and Sistine Chapel; baptistery, belfry, cloister, chapter house, and churches: twentieth century, centrally planned, abbey, collegiate; Bentley, Brunelleschi, Wren, and Gibbs * Biblical themes, stories, and people as the subject of art: from the Old Testament Adam and Eve, Abraham, and Tower of Babel; the Nativity, Circumcision, Baptism, Life, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Christ from the Gospels; Miracle at Bolsena, Good Samaritan, parables, Apocalypse * Descriptions and explanations of images, icons, and symbols: allegory, attribute, emblem, and type; angels and archangels, symbolic beasts, birds, dove, serpent, and dragon; Signs of the Zodiac, rainbow, labyrinth, and Wheel of Fortune * Significant saints, popes, rulers, and patrons: saints Agnes, Agatha, and Catherine of Siena; saints Peter, Paul, Francis, and Jerome; Charlemagne and Emperor Constantine the Great; popes Clement VII, Urban VIII and Leo X; Doctors of the Church, St Augustine, Erasmus, and Knights Templar

Customer Reviews:

Beautifully done.......2000-03-09

I think the Oxford Companion books are wonderful and this is no exception. It is easy to read without neglecting scholarship and very thorough. Everything I have looked up for my project has been there in some form or another. It is an excellent starting point resource with an excellent bibliography.

The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture

Average customer rating:

The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture
Peter Murray~Linda Murray
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKVNZ2

Average customer rating:

The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture
Peter; Murray, Linda Murray
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OL21FC

Book Description

More than 1,200 citations, ranging from making masks in kindergarten to academic books on the anthropological theory of masks.

Customer Reviews:

A classic in the making.......2005-10-19

Hey, hey, hey, Boo Boo! What is a bear? If you're husky, hairy, and homosexual or pine for someone who is, you've got to pick up "The Bear Handbook." Quick: what straight actor looks better to you: Sean Connery with a beard or Ben Affleck without? If you said Connery, you've got bear-hunting potential. "The Bear Handbook" serves a real need today, and if you think not, take a look at those sophisticated men's fashion magazines with their smooth-chested boys-boys-boys. If you consider chest-waxing a barbarity on a par with foot-binding, assert your beardom and embrace your genetic destiny with the assurance of "The Bear Handbook." Whether bruin, bruinlike or bruin hunter, your odds of bagging the perfect catch are much enhanced with the wit, information and life-enhancing, common-sense wisdom of "The Bear Handbook."

Everyhting you needed to know...and then some!!.......2003-10-12

This book, following in the footsteps of others, such as THE PREPPY HANDBOOK, not only provides really good information about the subculture of the Gay community but does it is a true bear style- with FUN! And after all, that's what is is all about isn't it? FUN??!?? From setting up your own "Bear's Den" to what to have on the bookshelves( this book being one of many) this handy book will inform and amuse you and your friends for a long time to come- why not check it out? I think you will find it GRRRreat!!!

Satire is always Dangerous.......2002-11-11

Stereotypes are rampant in any society. Usually when we think of people being harmed by a stereotype we think of other, more powerful groups, picking on minorities. What do you do though if the minority you are part of (gay men) ignores you because you don't fit the stereotype (not athletic, young, expensively dressed with expensive tastes in clothes, etc)? Well you can establish communities and band together for your betterment as many bears have done. However, there is also a point in which a group must laugh at itself, and Kampf's "The Bear Handbook" is one of the signs of that time. I've talked to Bears I know and they remember the big uproar when this book came out -- seems that some folks did not understand that it was first and foremost a satire. As satire Kampf's book does its job very well -- it makes you laugh while pointing out how bear community may be repeating some of the stereotyping and social confinement it rose against.

cute little lifestyle book on gay bears.......2001-12-03

This is a lighthearted, illustrated book about bears (chubby, hairy gay men) and their culture. It includes a lot of living hints such as names for different goatees, computer emoticons in order to describe one's self, etc. For anybody who tries to collect all literature on bears, you must own this book. I only have two critiques. First, there is only one picture of a man of color in it. Second, the book casts all bears as butch: like mama bears don't exist!

Sorry guys, I didn't like it........2001-08-20

Well. I like playing with Bears but I didn't like this book. It didn't really say anything. Just that Bears are guys that are usually bearded, hairy, overweight and they like porn sites on the internet. They're intelligent and friendly people. There you go. You no longer have to buy this book. Get out there and meet some of these guys if you're interested.

Product Description

Boxed Miniature.

Average customer rating:

Not a credible book

A great source of ideas for business people

A must read for executives, managers, architects & analysts

I would have given it more than 5 stars if I could have!

Great SOA Overview for Non-Techies

Service Orient or Be Doomed!: How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business
Jason Bloomberg , and Ronald Schmelzer
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Similar Items:

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): A Planning and Implementation Guide for Business and Technology

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design (The Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computing Series from Thomas Erl)

Enterprise Architecture As Strategy: Creating a Foundation for Business Execution

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Compass: Business Value, Planning, and Enterprise Roadmap (The developerWorks Series)

Service Oriented Architecture For Dummies (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

ASIN: 0471768588

Book Description

How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business

"The real value of this book is that it makes SOA and Web services, which are critical and business-transforming, crystal-clear to the layman, both business and IT leaders. The book stays focused on the real-world issues facing business and government institutions today. In an industry full of experts of many stripes, Ron and Jason are the real thing: savvy, experienced, and realistic. They have produced a must-read book for management."
—Paul Lipton, Senior Architect, Unicenter Web Services and Application Management Computer Associates

"This is by far the finest publication on SOA of our time. From cover to back, Service Orient or Be Doomed! strips away the layers of confusion most IT stakeholders face when confronted with enterprise architecture, and illustrates pragmatic and practical paths towards a sustainable and efficient enterprise architecture. Both the technically savvy and the bean counters will enjoy this book that speaks to the critical points they need to understand."
—Duane A. Nickull Senior Standards Strategist, Adobe Systems, Inc. Chair, OASIS SOA Reference Model Technical Committee Vice chair, United Nations CEFACT (UN/CEFACT)

"If you're looking for a guide that's based on reality, this is it. These guys know how you can service-orient your enterprise and have the best chance of success. This book is the best SOA tool you can buy. I'm recommending it to everyone."
—Dave Linthicum, CEO, BRIDGEWERX

"Jason and Ron are experts on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and have written the first book that is aimed at helping a nontechnical businessperson understand why the SOA computing revolution is critical to business. Rather than provide a nerdy death via buzzword book, Jason and Ron take a humorous, clever, and insightful romp through this new technology and how it impacts business in general."
—Brad Feld, Mobius Venture Capital

Authors Jason Bloomberg and Ronald Schmelzer-senior analysts for highly respected IT advisory and analysis firm ZapThink-say it all in the title of their new book, Service Orient or Be Doomed!: How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business. That is, if you fail to service orient your company, you will fail in competing with the organizations that do.

This provocative new book takes service orientation out of its more familiar technological surroundings within service-oriented architecture and introduces it as a philosophy that advocates its rightful place within a business context, redefining it as a new way of thinking about organizing your business and its processes.

Informal, challenging, and intelligent in style, Service Orient or Be Doomed!: How Service Orientation Will Change Your Business shows you how you can best use technology resources to meet your company's business goals and empower your company to go from "stuck" to "competitive."

Customer Reviews:

Not a credible book.......2007-05-26

I was very disappointed with this book. The authors do not appear to have done adequate research, or were unable to draw reasonable conclusions. Here is a quote from page 27 where they discuss what they call the IT Rat's Nest.
"Remember, the reason people go down the path to the Rat's Nest is because at every step they select the cheapest, most expediant options and don't consider the long-term gains over short-term benefits"
What a bunch of crap. I have worked as an employee and as a consultant at 50 different companies and I can say that this is overwhelmingly NOT the reason for the rat's nest (which I agree exists). In reality, there are many reasons for the Rat's Nest including technology shifts, skill changes/availability, changes in hw/sw economics, changes in business and most frequently mergers/acquisitions. Yes, customers sometime take the cheap path, but often they just make mistakes, or are affected by other events, while they are trying to do the correct long-term thing. A well-designed DCE or CORBA app, no matter how well designed, is a legacy problem at this point no matter whether the IT people took a short-term or long-term approach. This is a big difference and the authors should have discussed that rather than copping out with a superficial, categorization. They might discuss all this in better detail later in the book but after 50 pages (my personal limit for giving the benfit of the doubt) I stopped reading this book. At that point I no longer thought the authors had the credibility to offer solutions when they clearly do not even understand the problem.
Can anyone make a recommendation for a more insightful SOA book?

A great source of ideas for business people.......2007-05-09

Service Orient or be Doomed is an excellent approach to SOA for non-technical people who wants to make IT based businesses flexible enough to match markets evolution.
This is my sixth purchase of the book. I bought it for my personal reading during 2006, and after that I decided to buy additional copies to give as a gift to some of my business colleagues here in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Great book, easy reading and full of concepts and new ideas. I strongly recommend it.
Javier Bazo
Buenos Aires
Argentina

A must read for executives, managers, architects & analysts.......2007-03-06

Overview

Having read a number of other SOA books, I've developed a pretty sound foundation of what SOA is in terms of the technologies that form its basis, and the relative importance of introducing a service abstraction layer between the business and IS domains.

However, this book (Service Orient or Be Doomed!) caught my attention for two fundamental reasons:

1. It has a strong Amazon rating, and
2. It provides a business (vice technical) perspective on the importance of SOA

I started reading the book late last week and quickly found it to be very well written and absolutely compelling with respect to the message that it conveys. The book's message looks something like this:

* Companies need to be more agile than ever in order to compete in today's economy
* Existing technical solutions are inflexible and prevent business agility
* Service-Oriented Architecture can result in increased business agility, more flexible technical solutions and significant ROI over time
* To make SOA viable, the business itself must become Service-Oriented, which means the technical concepts of abstraction, encapsulation and design-by-contract are now important business constructs that result in a more loosely coupled relationship between business activities (e.g. processes) and automation technologies
* SOA requires the "business" and "technology" domains to converge around a new business organizational construct referred to as service domains
* IS must rethink its organization and technology strategies to better align with the Service-Oriented business
* Resistance to Service-Orientation and SOA is expected because of the level of requisite change
* To overcome the expected resistance and create business agility, SOA must be championed by a senior person or group
* SOA must be planned for, and must begin with small, targeted pilot implementations
* SOA (a discipline) is not equal to Web Services (a technology)

As one editorial review put it:

"Jason and Ron are experts on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and have written the first book that is aimed at helping a nontechnical businessperson understand why the SOA computing revolution is critical to business. Rather than provide a nerdy death via buzzword book, Jason and Ron take a humorous, clever, and insightful romp through this new technology and how it impacts business in general."

I couldn't agree more. The authors obviously understand the technical side of SOA, but they've gone the extra mile and actually provided a more business-side treatment of Service-Orientation that makes a very strong case for the need for most businesses to implement changes - and in many cases large, difficult changes - or ... in their words ... be doomed to inflexibility and failure.

The first five or six chapters of the book focus almost entirely on building a case for the need for Service-Orientation by providing historical perspectives on such things as the dot-com bubble and even back as far as the Industrial Revolution. For non-technical readers (e.g. business folks), the first few chapters may be a little ho-hum, but for the technical reader, the content of these chapters lays a strong foundation upon which the remainder of the book is based. In particular, the authors demonstrate how existing technologies, including middleware, EAI and even standalone Web Services, handcuff the business by creating less-than-flexible solutions that are very resistant to changes ... changes that the business MUST make in order to remain efficient and competitive.

More than any other SOA book that I have read (and I've read most of them), this book effectively makes that case that new shared mental models need to be developed and advocated wherein business- and technical-concerns are integrated into a holistic view of the business that is centered on the notion of a business Service that depends on an array of equally important business resources, e.g. people, material, technology, time, money, etc. In effect, the existing walls between the business and IS domains need to be removed, and in their place a service layer abstraction created that allows the business to compose solutions from Services that conform to meta-data driven "contracts."
The net effect of this approach is a more loosely coupled continuum between business operations and the resources (including technology) that facilitate those operations.

However, this new Service-Orientation and overarching SOA landscape introduces new complexities and abstractions as payment for the increased levels of flexibility and business agility. To manage this new complexity, the business needs enterprise architects and enterprise architecture that drive the Service-Orientation perspective into the enterprise's SOA architecture, and manage the organizations "meta-requirement" for overall business agility.

The authors suggest, and I agree, that a new breed of "Service-Oriented Architect" is desperately needed by the business in order to champion the SOA principles and architectural mandates represented by the Service-Oriented approach.

As an example of the sort of quantum changes that need to be made by a company in order to embrace and adopt Service-Orientation and SOA, the authors note that Services are never really "complete", nor are their requirements ever stable. Instead, the business requirements that a Service may address are subject to frequent change as the business continues to adjust its goals and objectives to meet a continuously fluctuating business environment. Therefore, customary software development lifecycles (SDLC) (e.g., waterfall, spiral, iterative, etc.) are not applicable to Service development because SDLCs assume that a project is completed and a deliverable is promoted into a lifecycle that results in the deployed artifact eventually being retired. However, in the Service-Oriented paradigm, a Service is never completed in the sense that development work is done. Instead, the Service is constantly subjected to new requirements and ongoing refactoring activities in order to keep the service relevant and useful to the business.

Perhaps most importantly, the book puts the concept of a Service squarely in a business context and shows how loosely coupled Services can be composed into business solutions without any direct knowledge of (aka coupling to) underlying technical resources that ultimately implement the service. The authors go to great lengths to demonstrate how important the resulting "loosely coupled" relationship between business logic and program logic is to the business' overall agility.

Lastly, I thought that the authors did a fantastic job of demonstrating how current technologies and solution techniques are too narrowly scoped and result in overly tight coupling between business and technical resources, inconsistent with the requirements of Service-Orientation and SOA. Thus, they make a strong and logically based argument that major changes are needed in order to successfully bridge the business and technology concerns into a cohesive enterprise model that exhibits the necessary quality attributes needed to make the business more agile.

Without reservation, I would highly recommend this book to any company stakeholder and all managers, technicians, architects, analysts and executives interested in and/or concerned about business agility, Service-Orientation, SOA, risk management, process control or corporate compliance (just to name a few).

Strengths

Overall, I thought the book's greatest strength was its underlying "business side" emphasis relative to the whole Service-Orientation issue. The authors set out to convince businesspeople of the need to adopt Service-Orientation and SOA, and I believe they did a great job of doing just that.

While some of the historical background material may be old hat for some readers, I thought the authors did a good job of comparative analysis and in doing so provided a larger referential foundation that was effectively reused throughout the book.

Also, I found the authors' treatment of the concept of loose coupling to be one of the best non-technical examples that I've seen in quite some time. I expect that all readers, especially business managers and executives, will grasp the otherwise heavy-weight concept of coupling in such a way that the virtues of SOA will become more apparent from a business operations perspective, rather than a purely technical (e.g. encapsulation and data hiding) one.

I thought the authors did a great job of describing the role of an architect, and in particular the unique idiosyncrasies of the Service-Oriented Architect role. Additionally, they made a very strong case for the need for an Enterprise Architecture group and went so far as to suggest that EA may need to "own" the company's SOA effort and be properly budgeted to do so.

Finally, I think one of the book's most compelling arguments is that major changes are needed vis-à-vis the status quo in order to realize the business benefits manifest in the Service-Oriented paradigm. Implementing Web Services is not enough (it's actually an anti-pattern (read: bad)). Rather, the business needs to incorporate IT into the business planning process, and IT needs to prepare for that role by rethinking its integration strategies (in particular) and probably implementing a non-trivial reorganization in order to eliminate silos and embrace service domains.

Weaknesses

Overall, I didn't find many weaknesses with the book.

However, if I had to finger one aspect of the book with a critical eye (which doesn't necessarily imply that it is a "weakness"), I would perhaps suggest that the books content is very poignant in its assessment of the current state of IT practices, and clearly suggests that more than one legacy IT role may be on the chopping block when a well-formed SOA practice is finally implemented. I expect that some readers may quake in their boots when they read some of the harder-hitting assertions made by the authors. However, I tend to agree with most (if not all) of the author's points.

On second thought, there is one observation that I made which I am comfortable noting as a weakness. Throughout the book, the authors note that a Service is exposed as a Contracted Interface that defines the relationship between the service consumer and the service provider. Given the critical role of the Contract and the central role that it plays in the whole SOA service abstraction layer, I found it noteworthy that the authors never really provide an example of what a contacted interface would look like (format) or consist of (content model).
Otherwise, no other weaknesses noted.

Recommendations

I would highly recommend this book to all interested parties of SOA or Service-Oriented business architecture and analysis.

Perhaps more importantly, I would encourage the book's widest dissemination among business and IS leadership teams. Ultimately, the book's message is intended for them.

I would have given it more than 5 stars if I could have!.......2006-09-29

I truly would have given this book more than 5 stars if I could have, but Amazon allows only a maximum of 5. This is the only book that I know of that treats the notion of service orientation from a "business first" perspective, portraying technology as an enabling factor rather than a primary factor. And that is exactly the way it should be.

The authors also provide very valuable historical information regarding "how we got here" (e.g. history of the World Wide Web, etc.) which is a necessary part of understanding and applying the concept of service orientation. I highly recommend this book to both business and technical audiences. For business folks, it will provide them with a deep understanding and appreciation for service orientation and - as the title says - how it can truly change your business; and for technical folks, it will enable them to "stretch their mind" to see the true potential of technology when it is applied and viewed in the manner conveyed in this book.

A must-read...the only book of its kind. Bravo Jason and Ron!!!

Joseph Chiusano

Great SOA Overview for Non-Techies.......2006-07-30

Right from the beginning, the authors warn that this is not a technology book, but rather a business book about how new technologies will affect the business, what advantages they can bring, and how they will affect the organization. The book has a great outline which covers the topic from soup to nuts.

An entire chapter is devoted to the concepts of architecture, Enterprise Architecture and the relationship of SOA and EA. The authors clearly understand, and stress, the importance of an enterprise level approach to service orientation and identify the EA / SOA organization as the likely or best place for many of the artifacts, initiatives and other factors critical to SOA.

If you're struggling to explain SOA to the business or you're trying to implement or introduce SOA into your organization, pick up a copy of this book and pass it on the manager, business, CIO or CEO. This will be a great aid in getting the concepts of SOA (and incidentally, the importance of architecture) across to them.

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