Behind the Times: The Decline and Fall of the Twentieth-Century Avant Gardes

Book Description

Does modern art, as the art of the past always did, "express the times," or is it a series of willful aberrations? Do we have any way of judging its success or failure? Bypassing art criticism and art theory, Britain's foremost social historian approaches the question from an entirely new angle. Professor Hobsbawm's thesis is that, unlike writers and composers, who have to come to terms with mass production and the technology of infinite repetition, painters still cling to the unique art-object, the product of the artist's own hands. The result has been a succession of increasingly desperate "avant-gardes," attempts to find relevance and meaning that--irrespective of the individual artist's talent--are doomed to failure.

Product Description

Traveling photographer Bob Krist shows traveling nonprofessional photographers how to bring home memorable pictures of people, festivals, wildlife, archeticture even aerial and underwater shots. Directions are detailed for composing landscapes with a variety of lenses, working in both natural and artificial light. Valuable tips tell how to pack and carry photo equipment, deal with airport and hotel security and prepare for various locations.

Customer Reviews:

A materpiece!.......2007-06-05

This is film photography that is fully compatible with the digital age. It is not so much on what settings he used but on the planning and preparation that matters the most. What was in his mind when the shot was taken is fabulous. While he shoots landscapes mostly at the time when we are either calling it a day or still sleeping in the early morning, there are certain tips that opens our views on not only what, but also when and how to take a shot! This is a must have book for travellers wanting to have beautiful memories of his/her travel. We will never reproduce the same scene on a given place or event but it will surely open our eyes on what to look for and how to be a more creative photogpraher. I agree with Bob that when you know what to look for then you will realize how abundant there is to shoot wherever you are!! A must have book indeed! I give it 6 stars but unfortunately 5 is the best there is to choose from!

Great book.......2007-03-01

I bought quite a few books before a recent trip to Kauai where photography was a large part of my experience. This book provided as much or more insight into how to approach a place and experience it through photography as any other I read. Part of the value of this book will be in re-reading parts of it over a few times, before any major outing, at least until you take what it's saying to heart. In the end, photography is an active thing, and reading about it will only take you so far.

Very Well Done Travel Photography Guide.......2006-07-23

Spirit of Place provides an excellent overview of travel photography. It is well organized, written clearly and concisely, and is filled with beautiful photos to help illustrate the points made in the text. The author discusses techniques to help you deal with various difficulties from how to find the best vantage point when shooting tall buildings to dealing with people that you may want to photograph. One thing that I really appreciated was that he also gave advice on which equipment to use in various settings and situations.

For travel photographers, the topics covered are pretty comprehensive. The author walks through some basics of composition. There is a full chapter devoted to working with various light sources and using filters to enhance that light. There are sections on skylines, architecture, shooting in the tropics, wildlife, and more. Each section is fairly brief. This book is more about giving general direction and ideas then trying to offer a detailed approach to all possible shooting possibilities. I found the level of coverage just about right. No one can provide detailed direction for every possible consideration for travel photographers so the author wisely offers some general advice to start you thinking and leaves it at that.

If the book has a weakness it is that it was written back in 2000 by a photographer who obviously didn't so much as scan his slides for further editing. This is strictly centered around film photography and that definitely limits the usefulness of the material focusing on film selection if you use a digital camera. Forturnately, most of his advice is sound regardless of whether you use film or digital so I would still highly recommend the book.

A wonderful book for everyone who is interested in shooting "right" when travel........2005-09-19

A very readable book. The samples are very helpful. And the author is thorough about everything you need to know about taking great pictures on the road. Highly recommanded.

Truly captures what it means to be a travel photographer.......2004-06-01

I love travel and I love cameras. Unfortunately, as many of us often discover, my photos don't always capture the essence of my travel experience. I know I've been frustrated many times that some quixotic quality of my travels is missing from my photo album.

Bob Krist's book has helped me to see that what I am missing is the spirit of place, which of course is different for every location and every traveler. While the book covers the basics of equipment management, shooting decisions and the like, it is less a technical guide and more of a philosophy of travel. His approach to travel informs his approach to travel photography. He seeks to be a "traveler," not a "sightseer," wanting to engage with the culture in which he finds himself. I find this concept to be especially helpful in pinpointing my own disappointment with my photos. While I follow his approach of being a traveler, I have hesitated to capture the people I meet along the way. It's that element I always feel I am missing in my work.

He gives some tips and insight into how to begin to approach people to get those great people shots, how to get past the initial fear of offending, and how to handle a situation where you might be refused.

Above all, the examples and photoessays speak volumes about how to approach such work. It is clear that Bob Krist is a master in his approach to capturing the essence of a place, whether it be the Jazz Quarter in New Orleans or a blinding snowstorm in Hokkaido. If you are looking for ideas and inspiration to improve the photos you bring back from your next adventure, I'd highly recommend Spirit of Place.

(Gwyn is an enthusiastic photographer who, among other things, travels overseas each summer with teenagers as a People to People delegation leader. Yes, teenagers!)

Book Description

Book Three in the Couriers saga hits the rewind button on the lives of everybody's two favorite urban mercenary couriers and goes back, way back, to 1993. Moustafa's a dirtbag grunge kid selling weed by the cube at Astor Place, and Special's a riot grrrl with a mean streak, looking to carve a place for herself in the criminal underworld. How do these two unlikely partners meet up and become the tight-knit team they are now? Meet Johnny Funwrecker, the hilarious larger-than-life Chinatown mob boss and role model for little street rat hooligans all over.

Customer Reviews:

Comic Book Action At Its Finest.......2005-02-28

Brian Wood and Rob G have done it again. Fans of the previous Couriers graphic novels will not be disappointed. Special and Mustafa are 2 of the coolest characters in comics right now and "The Ballad of Johnny Funwrecker" is a prequel story that reveals how they met and how special got her scar.

Great characters, beautifully choreographed action sequences, smart dialogue and one hell of an origin story. Order it, read it and make sure you have plenty of hot sauce.

Book Description

A catalog of life-enhancing projects and activities

Here is the best science has to offer the common man: 100 activities guaranteed to excite your mind, challenge your body, and fill you with wonder.

The editors of New Scientist--one of the world’s leading science and technology magazines--have handpicked things they would most like to do during their lifetime:

- Swim in a bioluminescent lake.
- Listen to an iceberg being born.
- Measure the speed of light with chocolate.
- See Saturn’s rings.
- Make liquid nitrogen ice cream.
- Walk in a dinosaur’s footprints.
- Walk up walls like a gecko.
- Taste the world’s weirdest food.
- See your own DNA.

Some of these activities you can do immediately, some you can dream about, but every one will stimulate your imagination. From the amazing to the merely adventurous, the eccentric to the utterly memorable, they will broaden your horizons and make you appreciate the potential of the world we live in.
And if you think life is too short, how about becoming a diamond or nailing a murderer after you die?

Book Description

This is the first collection of more than 1,800 films dealing with Hispanic topics, themes, and characters arranged chronologically from 1898 to 1935, with indepth annotations, cross-references and four separate indexes. This is a study of Hollywood's treatment of Hispanics worldwide, those living in South, Central and North America, the Philippines and Spain. Employing a historical framework, the author has organized the work for those interested in assessing the effects that motion pictures have had on the viewing public in establishing and perpetuating accepted stereotypes. The role of censorship, the Production Code Administration, the Motion Picture Society of the Americas, the Latin American market, and Hollywood's version of Hispanic history are fully covered. The Black Legend of Hispanic barbarity has existed in literature since the sixteenth century. The early film makers, and later Hollywood, merely transferred the Black Legend to the silver screen and continued the accepted point of view created since the first conflict between England and Spain for supremacy in the Caribbean. This work also shows the relationship between film and foreign policy, how films have frequently justified and glorified North American intervention in the affairs of the Latin nations throughout the Americas. Each entry includes a brief scenario which details the film's Hispanic connection: a stereotype, a historic interpretation, a specific nation, associated behavior or attitudes, a list of the Hispanic actors and actresses. Reviews, bibliographic citations and archival locations are provided.

Average customer rating:

32 pages of very basic information

Insider's Secrets for Winning at Roulette: Tips, Techniques & Strategies for Beating the Casinos at Their Own Game
Donald Currier
Manufacturer: Las Vegas Insider
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Roulette | Gambling | Puzzles & Games | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
General | Puzzles & Games | Entertainment | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1890030074

Customer Reviews:

32 pages of very basic information.......2001-06-28

This book has 32 pages of basic information about the game of roulette. 80% of the book explains the rules of the game.

Winning Tips for Casino Games (Signet Reference)

Average customer rating:

Helpful information condensed in a short space
Most concise and comprehensive book on gaming
These are Winning Tips!

Winning Tips for Casino Games (Signet Reference)
Consumer Guide editors
Manufacturer: Consumer Guide
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Reference | Subjects | Books

General | Sports | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0451185765

Customer Reviews:

Helpful information condensed in a short space.......2001-07-29

When I moved, I found this book in my library. I go frequently to southern Nevada, but I no longer have the money to sustain the losses one can incur even if one is a good player at "21." I do enjoy gambling, and had decided to try video poker. I was presently surprised to find that with the information on pp. 43-48, I could turn a machine with a decent payout schedule into a positive expectation. I left Nevada with a net amount higher than I had seen from "21" in quite a while. The information in this book has made me a great fan of video poker played statistically properly.

Most concise and comprehensive book on gaming.......2000-08-05

I really like this book and have recommended it to others. It covers all the basic casino games. The descriptions are clear and concise. It is small enough that you can even put it in a coat pocket for a trip to the casino.

Yes, there are other books that tell you much more (in my opinion, way too much more) about one certain game or a certain few games. I have found no other book that covers so much in such a straightforward manner.

I'm a pretty smart guy. Just tell me the rules and the basic strategy and I can figure things out. I don't need to be told how stupid I am if I ever even think about playing Let It Ride or Caribbean Stud. I don't need to hear "war stories" about how the author made his living gambling and why his "system" is so great. I don't need a treatise on Probability and Statistics. (I have a degree in Mathematics, thank you). This book doesn't bore you with any of those things. It gives you the facts and leaves it up to you to decide how to gamble.

In addition to the rules and basic strategy there are straightforward tips on etiquette, interacting with the dealer, and tipping.

PS- In second place, I would put the Fodor's guide to Las Vegas.

These are Winning Tips!.......2000-05-09

Whether you are embarking on that Monte Carlo night in your home town or a livin' it up Las Vegas gampage, this is a book to get!

The author covers several areas from Slots, to the table games, including one of my favourites, Roulette.

Awareness is key, why learn the expensive way? Making rookie mistakes learning by paying through the nose. Get educated and pick up some great tips and understand the rules.

Well written and worth it, you'll spend more on 2 minutes in blackjack or 5 minutes at slots.

You won't have the odds against you with this book.

Average customer rating:

Light, Western-bias, but worthwhile

Book was written for everyone and serves no one

A Misleading Book Title

A very good book, so why am I disappointed?

From kingdoms to democracies...

The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style and Your Life
Thomas W. Malone
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Popular Economics | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
General | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Management | Harvard Business School Press | By Publisher | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Decision-Making & Problem Solving | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Management | Management & Leadership | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
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Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century

The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization

Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything

Fourth Generation Management: The New Business Consciousness

ASIN: 1591391253

Book Description

A renowned visionary on organizational theory provides the first workable model for creating—and managing within—the organization of the future.

Malone shows us that our current notions about decentralization and empowerment merely scratch the surface of what will be possible as technological and economic forces render “command and control” management obsolete.

In its place will be a “coordinate and cultivate” approach that will spawn entirely new types of decentralized organizations—from internal markets to democracies to loose hierarchies—that reap the scale and knowledge efficiencies of large organizations while enabling the freedom, flexibility, and human values that drive smaller firms.

Customer Reviews:

Light, Western-bias, but worthwhile.......2005-11-11

The bottom line in this book is on page 33, with a table showing how the cost of moving a page of text around the world and to an infinite number of people has gone from astronomical to zero. In the author's view, this changes everything.

The book is somewhat shallow, written for undergraduates, and very western in bias--as I ranted to Interval in 1993 ("God, Man, and Interval" easily found via Google), until these benefits can reach every impoverished individual in the world, so that they can begin using information access to create wealth, then we are simply in isolation.

Interestingly, the zero cost of communications comes at the same time that we pass the "peak oil" point and the end of cheap oil, the end of free water, and the rise of pandemic disease.

In that vein, I give the author high marks, taking the book to 4 stars from 3, for his emphasis on values. There is an ethical underpining to this book that is helpful. There is a broad literature, some recognized by the author, others not, that suggests that we made a very serious mistake when we disconnected work from kinship, and commoditized the human employee. The gutting of the pension funds and the destruction of local production in the face of Wal-Mart using cheap oil to ship US jobs overseas are just the latest examples of how our loss of perspective and ethics at the top of the food chain has hurt our economy and our people.

I believe that the author is on target with his emphasis on communications, but he does not address the other half of the equation, "sense-making" or collective intelligence. For that aspect I recommend Howard Rheingold's "Smart Mobs," and Tom Atlee's "The Tao of Democracy." General Alfred M. Gray, then Commandant of the Marine Corps, drove this point home to Congress in the late 1980's when he said that the Marine Corps, alone among the military services, had communications and intelligence under the same flag officer "because communications without intelligence is noise, and intelligence without communications is irrelevant." You need both.

One important point the author does not cover since he avoids addressing the needs of the Third World is this: the Department of Defense has enormous stores of abandoned communications satellite "residual capability," that last 10-20% of a satellite that has been junked in favor of a newer fancier model. My Air Force colleagues tell me that a national project to make that capability available free could support T-1 connectivity across Africa, South Asia, the Caribbean, Central America, and South America.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Government is not yet in the information age, and not yet able to realize that it is Internet connectivity to all, not guns over all, that will bring peace and prosperity to the Earth. I do believe this author understands that, and I hope he expands his vision to embrace intelligence, and global access.

Book was written for everyone and serves no one.......2005-09-13

This has all the makings of a good insightful text; yet falls flat. The underlying themes are that we are moving from disconnected to structured to unstructured connected economies of communications and that the authority for work completion is being returned from the corporate power at the top to the shared corporate responsibility (my words). Little is said beyond that. There needs to be more; much of the work that has been completed since the 1900s was not considered.

Although not historic in framework, yet using Jared Diamond as a source, the text ignores the entire trade routes that dominated pre and post civilization. The book assumes that informal universal networks are a new cultural and economic phenomenon; which is clearly not the case.

The ability to communicate in quasi-real-time; with the ability to deliver instantaneous
information based products and services and hard and soft goods to any part of the world within less then a week has changed the world view and meanings behind work and work-space. And in agreement with the author, corporations who continue to view their products as `safe' from market pressures or who continue to measure labor in terms of us vs. them are likely to find that others within the global environment have found alternative ways to provide that goods or service.

I was surprised to see that there was no addressing of how the changes in the length of tenure of white and blue color workers has resulted in them becoming less tied to any given organization; which would have more effectively supported both the argument and the implications that needed to be addressed in greater detail. Sadly, unlike many business texts, this book was lacking in recommendations for action. I wanted to scream at the book; please give me something...

The book might be a good read for those who have not read business books before or for a beginning level MBA student; others can do better by looking elsewhere. It is very accessible, and not a difficult read; once I was done reading it, however, I felt like I had just left a motivational session; I felt pretty good while I read it, but then after I put it down, it was pretty much fluff.

A Misleading Book Title .......2005-03-22

The book poses a very good question, one that most people are thinking about - "What will the future of work be in an outsourced global environment? " But sadly Malone never risks making any futuristic predictions. This book captures the history of functional organizations and a some recent radical organizational models.
Internal trading concept for sharing scarce resources within an organization was rather interesting. In the final chapters Malone goes in-depth about the consulting industry's model of resource deployment, but he seemed to have missed out the key role that Resource Deployment Managers play in serving customers. As an earlier reviewer mentioned the concepts are over simplified and repetitive. It was an interesting read for me until I finished 2/3rd of the book, when I started to slowly discover that the book was repeating concepts and the author is reluctant to be making bold predictions as the title suggested. If you just want an interesting presentation on different organization models currently in practice then this book may be for you but if you are looking beyond the present then you will be disappointed.

A very good book, so why am I disappointed? .......2005-03-01

I know I have enjoyed reading a book when I have a number of pages dog eared for future reference and/or I take notes. I have done both in this book. Yet, I fell disappointed. Why?

My theory is that Dr. Malone has attempted to write a book for the masses, but has oversimplified his thinking in an attempt to reach the broadest audience. I finished the book yearning for more theory and more case studies. I know that the Internet can be used to decentralize work. I know that large companies such as Intel have internal "auctions" for products and resources. But how is this applicable to a 3-person company? I see the consulting firm example in multiple places. How many times can eLance be metioned as an example without being repetitive?

I recognize the challenge in taking a sophisticated body of research and distilling it down to a book for the masses. Trust me, I've flipped through a few of Dr. Malone's research papers. I would like to see a second edition, expanded to include a bit more theory and more thinking along the lines of how these concepts are applicable to both large and small companies.

From kingdoms to democracies..........2005-01-30

It turns out that Thomas Malone of MIT is the person who (along with a colleague) coined the term "e-lancer" (i.e. electronic freelancer) back in 1998. This book takes that concept and expands it to outline Malone's view about how business is in the process of a metamorphosis from dense, centralized hierarchies to loose, decentralized networks of workers, specialists, and consultants. Like the transition from kingdoms to democracies, he feels that the rise in accessible communication technology will give employees a greater degree of control in how their companies are run.

He spends the first half of the book explaining how such a system is possible and providing these examples. Malone touches on a great many modern examples of this in action, from websites like Elance, Ebay, and Amazon to the freeform open-source creation of the Linux operating system to more traditional companies that have a decentralized, employee-centered viewpoint.

The last half of the book focuses on how to go about implementing these sort of decentralized systems, like internal and external marketplaces where employees can bid on jobs and use reputation systems to track their success and efficiency. In addition, Malone touches on the need to incorporate human values into the very corporate structure, to motivate people to take part in them.

While the book provides a lot of great starting points, it's clearly an academic approach and only an introductory one at that. It's not a how-to manual. There are many aspects of this revolution that are unclear. For example, how will such a revolution affect health insurance, which many people get through their companies? Would companies or workers be able to band together to create massive co-op-like organizations that can successfully take advantage available to large-scale groups? Malone acknowledges that steps would have to be made to deal with these and many other issues. In most cases, he addresses some possibilities, but they are by no means all-encompassing.

To return to Malone's analogy of the transition from kingdoms to democracies, history has shown us that merely stating the need for a transition isn't enough ... it takes people working hard to figure out how the day to day operations of such a system can work. Malone makes it sound possible and, more importantly, appealing.

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