Systematics of the onocleoid ferns, (University of California publications in botany)

Book Description

Teamed together for the first time - The American Book of Tables and the Koch Book of Tables! Here are house tables for both Placidus and Koch, diurnal motion tables, log tables, time tables and much more. Includes complete step-by-step instructions on erecting a horoscope in the special bonus section written by Rob Hand and Joshua Brackett, "How to Cast a Natal Horoscope." Makes calculating charts simple, painless and accurate.

Combine this book with any American Ephemeris and Atlas and you have everything you need to calculate precise planetary positions and house cusps.

Customer Reviews:

Easy to use reference for the calculation of cusps.......2004-01-30

This is the book of tables that I originally trained with, so I suppose that it will always be my favorite. It is based on the Placidus system of house division, but I have never seen any flaw with this model. If you use any of the other house division systems you will no doubt find these tables to be of limited usefulness. Otherwise, you have all the well laid out and easy to read tables that you need for locating house cusps: tables of houses for 0 to 60 degree north, solar-siderial time correction, time correction for longitude, diurnal motion of the sun and planets, semidiurnal motion of the moon, etc. There is even a convenient table of longitudes and latitudes for major cities in both the U.S. and the rest of the world.

There is even a clearly written introduction on how to cast a natal horoscope with included examples. Of course you are also going to need a good ephemerides for planet location. I recommend the Rosicrucian ephemerides in conjunction with this book.

An essential tool for the serious astrologer.......2000-02-13

Sure, you can do it all with a computer now--but will you know what it is you've done? With this book, you'll be able to accurately figure house cusps (Placidus or Koch) for virtually any birth time and place (extreme latitudes excepted). If you also buy a decent ephemeris, you'll be able to cast horoscopes like a pro. I definitely think knowing how to do it by hand adds something to the experience.

Customer Reviews:

A Precious Gem.......2007-09-11

When i had first seen the book walks through Napolean and Josephine's Paris i immediately looked to see if there was one about Marie Antoinette. Alas there hadn't been one printed yet but i was informed that one was in fact in the making. I was very excited and preordered mine immediately. When it arrived i immediately read it cover to cover and was very inpressed by the wealth of knowledge contained n the little book. It even includes the addresses of several shops and bakeries that catered to the French Court including M. Bertin's studio where she constructed much of MA's lavish couture. This book is a little gem and i cannot wait to use it when i visit Paris.

Misguided! .......2007-05-08

This book is over one hundred pages long, but only about ten pages are actually devoted to the book's title!
There are only two uneventful walks through Paris, the first one being only just slightly more interesting.

The maps provided are extremely poor, and the extra information provided by the author is nothing you could not obtain from a good guide book, or from the internet.
It is certainly not worth paying the price for the information in this book!

The majority of the book talks about various residences associated with Marie Antoinette in her lifetime, coupled with a terribly written account about the ill-fated Queen. The author seems to have really forgotten about her title!

DO NOT be fooled by the other five star reviews! This book is definetly misguided, and what it does contain has been said before.

Pocket rocket!!.......2007-02-13

What a treasure this book is. Not only does it have pictures that I haven't seen anywhere else, the information is a history enthusiasts treat!
The size of the book, which adds to it's charm, is suitable to take with you as it guides you along in the footsteps of Marie Antoinette.

I simply loved it

Essential to any Marie Antoinette fan.......2007-01-09

and to everyone who wants a different historic tour through Paris...

Read this engrossing little book before Marie-mania breaks out........2006-09-18

Arriving on the eve of Sofia Coppola's film about Marie Antoinette is Ms. Haig's gorgeous book, packed with facts, sidebars, and many of the author's own collection of illustrations. Beginning with her introduction to the French court outside Versailles, Marie Antoinette's ascent to fame and fast fall is documented by Ms. Haig in a style that is both objective and yet with a clear affection for her subject matter.

With this pocket-size gem in hand, trace the young queen's first visit to Paris. As with her previous book on Napoleon and Josephine, Ms. Haig is a welcomed companion as you trace Marie Antoinette's footsteps, pointing out details and ancedotes overlooked by more traditional tour books. Her eye for detail makes incidents come vividly to life, such as the invasion of Versailles and the Queen's brave curtesy on the balcony before an incensed mob.

A warning though: don't even open this book with travel plans in mind. A trip to Paris and its environs will be irrestible after reading this wonderful book.

Monet's Garden: Through the Seasons at Giverny

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Monet's Garden: Through the Season at Giverny

Monet's Garden: Through the Seasons at Giverny
Vivian Russell
Manufacturer: Stewart, Tabori and Chang
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Impressionism | Schools, Periods & Styles | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Painting | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Garden Design | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Landscape | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 1556704151

Customer Reviews:

Monet's Garden: Through the Season at Giverny.......2000-04-26

As a long time fan of impressionist art, Claude Monet and gardening, I found this book very informative. The setting is Monet's former home just outside Paris, France. The book details how the grounds were renovated under Monet's direction and how upkeep continues on the grounds today. Many of the settings such as the Lilly Pond are pictured and described in detail. This book is well worth the purchase price for Monet fans.

CCEL Classics CD: works by Saint Augustine, John Calvin, John Donne, Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawrence, Martin Luther, Saint Teresa of Avila, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas a Kempis, John Wesley, and more!

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CCEL Classics CD: works by Saint Augustine, John Calvin, John Donne, Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawrence, Martin Luther, Saint Teresa of Avila, Thomas Aquinas, Thomas a Kempis, John Wesley, and more!
Dr. W. Harry Plantinga
Manufacturer: Christian Classics Ethereal Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM

General | Christianity | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

Product Description

The most important spiritual writings of Christian history are available on this Classics CD by the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) at Calvin College. It contains 118 Christian classics, including three versions of the Bible, several commentaries, Bible dictionaries, readings, spiritual guides, sermons, poems and journals -- all in a convenient, searchable form. Books are available in HTML and PDF formats. The easy-to-use CCEL Desktop software powering the CD enables users to browse and print books and install additional books from the Web. The top-of-class search engine can search for words or phrases in books, in authors works or in the whole library. In addition, it can search for dictionary definitions of words and commentary or references to scripture passages. The interface is a Web browser. The CD is compatible with Windows 2000+, Macintosh 10.3+, and most Linux versions.

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compared to Randall White's "Prehistoric Art"
Wonderful, factual, unbiased.....
Journey Through the Ice Age

Journey Through the Ice Age
Paul G. Bahn , and Jean Vertut
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | History & Criticism | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Prehistoric & Primitive | Schools, Periods & Styles | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Ancient | History | Subjects | Books

Spain | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0520213068

Book Description

Some of the oldest art in the world is the subject of this riveting and beautiful book. Paul Bahn and Jean Vertut explore carved objects and wall art discoveries from the Ice Age, covering the period from 300,000 B.P. to 10,000 B.P., and their collaboration marks a signal event for archaeologists and lay readers alike.
Utilizing the most modern analytical techniques in archaeology, Bahn presents new accounts of Russian caves only recently opened to foreign specialists; the latest discoveries from China and Brazil; European cave finds at Cosquer, Chauvet, and Covaciella; and the recently discovered sites in Australia. He also studies sites in Africa, India, and the Far East. Included are the only photographic images of many caves that are now closed to protect their fragile environments. A separate chapter in the book examines art fakes and forgeries and relates how such deceptions have been exposed.
The beliefs and preoccupations of Paleolithic peoples resonate throughout this book: the importance of the hunt and the magic and shamanism surrounding it, the recording of the seasons, the rituals of sex and fertility, the cosmology and associated myths. Yet enigmas and mysteries emerge as well, particularly as new analytical techniques raise new questions and cast doubt on our earlier suppositions.
A comprehensive, up-to-date analysis of all that has been discovered about Ice Age art, Bahn and Vertut's book offers a visually rich link with the past.

Customer Reviews:

compared to Randall White's "Prehistoric Art".......2006-07-23

I wasn't sure whether this book or "Prehistoric Art: The Symbolic Journey of Humankind" by Randall White would be better, so I bought them both.

It turns out that they are both excellent books. Both are loaded with color photographs of artifacts famous and less well-known. Both have scholarly, informative text, considering anthropological and historical contexts, the techniques and materials used by the artists, the history of the study of prehistoric art, and plenty of cautious speculation about the functions the art had to its artists' communities.

They are organized quite differently: Bahn's moves from topic to topic: chapter 7 is on portable art, chapter 8 on rock shelters and cave art, chapter 9 on outdoors art, and so on. But White's book has a regional arrangement: chapter 4 is on Western Europe, chapter 5 is on Central and Eastern Europe and Sibera, chapter 6 is on Africa, the Near East and Anatolia, and so on.

Obviously you can see that White's book has more of a global focus than Bahn's. In fact, Bahn's third chapter deals with prehistoric art outside of Europe; in every other chapter he focuses on European art, especially the caves.

Although Bahn's book devotes a chapter to "Portable Art" such as jewelry and miniature statues (including the famous "Venus figurines"), White's book has a far superior coverage. On the other hand, Bahn has better coverage of interesting issues such as how to reproduce prehistoric art for public enjoyment, dating issues, and forgeries.

If you are primarily interested in European cave art and will be content with a glance at the rest of the world, then Bahn's book is better for you. Personally, although Bahn deals with some interesting issues that White neglects, ultimately I prefer White's global perspective; further, I appreciate his introductory comments about modern Western art and cultural assumptions, and consideration of what might be universal in human art.

Incidently, when it comes to books about art, for some reason I prefer hardcover to paperback; and at this time White's book in hardcover is available at great discount on Amazon, making it almost as inexpensive as Bahn's.

So, my preference is clear. However, I want to emphasize that despite my partiality to White's book, they are certainly both excellent, and I do not think one of them is clearly, inherently better than the other. It just depends on what you are looking for.

Wonderful, factual, unbiased............2002-08-05

After a brief overview of the "oldest art in the world" and a discussion of the caveats associated with the term `art' as applied to extinct cultures Bahn describes the problem of taphonomy where knowledge of another older culture is shaped by the survival of artifacts. He also discusses the problem of controlled and limited access to ancient sites, as well as the use of modern photography to capture and transmit information about these sites to a larger audience.

Next, Bahn discusses different kinds of ice age art, which he categorizes as: 1) parietal art which takes the form of wall paintings and sculptures, floor tiles, and other large relatively immovable blocks of stone on which "signs" have been worked. Wall art can be incised, sculpted (additive or subtractive), or painted. 2) portable art which takes the form of figurines, musical instruments, tools, weapons, pottery, and other items that could be easily carried. Surviving portable items are generally made of ivory, bone, or ceramic clay or some other relatively durable inorganic substance.

Bahn then describes how analysts attempt to date ice age material. At one time, scientists believed ice age art could not be dated because it was either inorganic or the methods available for dating organic material were clumsy and destructive. Recent improvements in dating techniques have changed that. For example, charcoal (an organic substance) was frequently used by ice age artists to create the black outlines seen in many wall paintings. For years, scientists thought the black paint was manganese dioxide, an inorganic substance. Since only a pinprick of paint is now required for radio carbon analysis, scientists have been able to test the black paint, discover it was carbon based, and date it.

The book is filled with wonderful technical material as well as plenty of stylistic and other material of interest to art historians. I most appreciated the section that reviewed the various theories about "Why" ice age art was created. Was it art for art's sake? Was it the work of hunters practicing sympathetic magic? Was it a fertility ritual? Bahn pretty much dismisses these theories with practical observations about their shortcomings. What he does not dismiss is the creation of the ice age art for mythical purposes associated with healing rituals. Parietal ice age art is located inside dark passages near water. Often this water derives from warm springs. Sometimes the water flows from dark passages into the daylight. Often, mysterious markings that correspond to the seasons and the moon can be found at the entryways to cave chambers. Does this circumstantial evidence point to ritual undertakings that involved a Mother Goddess?

Journey Through the Ice Age.......2000-12-28

As an artist whose work is inspired by the cave paintings of Lascaux, I am always on the lookout for new books about the prehistoric cave art of Europe. This book is a delightful addition to my collection. I should caution that I approach books like this strictly from a layman's and artist's point of view, as I have a limited background in archeology.

Before I read this book, I'd always considered the cave art of Lascaux as the "birthplace of human art" (which was how it was presented in most of my art history courses at school.) Now I realize that the artists of that period are actually almost exactly halfway, timewise, between the earliest evidence of prehistoric art, and the art of today. Each new discovery of prehistoric cave art seems to push back the "birthdate" of human art a few tens of thousands of years.

Rather than focusing on a single cave site, this book is a more comprehensive treatment of Ice age art, discussing caves across Europe, with references to caves in Russia and China. It presents a more complete treatment of all aspects of these caves, discussing anthropological characteristics of the people who created the art, similarities and differences in the artwork, theories about their signicance(mostly debunked here), forgeries, history of the caves' discovery, etc. The photographs are excellent, and many are of paintings and objects I've never seen before. The writing, though comprehensive, is also entertaining and engaging, a good read. I enjoyed this book immensely.

This book is unique to me for several reasons. First, the wonderful photographs not only feature the more widely known paintings inside the caves (referred to in the book as "parietal art" or wall art), but also the artifacts found in conjunction with the paintings--"portable art". I found more photographs of such objects than in any other book I've read. Many are of artifacts I've never read about before.

Also, almost every possible theory ever presented to explain these paintings and artifacts is examined--and most of them debunked. Somehow, this is reassuring to me as an artist--although it would be exciting to understand more about the purpose of the art, it is also satisfying to realize that there is still no encompassing theory about why these amazing paintings and artifacts were created. Their mystery is still profound, intact and untouched. The various theories and conjecture throughout the years about these caves, argues the author, clearly reveals more about US, as modern people, than it does about the cultures that created the cave art. We overlay our desires, prejudices and blind spots onto the art, and for the last 150 years, observers have tended to "find" what they are looking for in the paintings.

There is a whole chapter devoted to fakes and forgeries of Ice Age art, a subject I find fascinating. My favorite phrase in this chapter is a caption of a photograph (p. 81)"...the dot and plantlike sign near the dreadful hand stencil appeared after the first photographs were taken."

Book Description

This book brings together some of the rich and varied voices that continue to place Paris at the cutting edge of European cultural and intellectual life. From Francois Truffaut to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Eugene Ionesco to Marguerite Duras, from Jean-Francois Revel to Andre Malraux, the book
covers a wide spectrum of figures involved in such areas as film, theatre, poetry, philosophy, and political commentary.
As she interviewed her subjects between 1975 and 1985, British journalist Melinda Camber Porter set out to reveal the people behind the highly cerebral and complex ideas endemic to France and, through her interviews, to test the authenticity of their views and to oblige the "speakers" to make
their thoughts and theories accessible to a general audience. The dominant trends in French artistic and political thought thus emerge vividly in this kaleidoscopic array of portraits: the rise and demise of structuralism, the birth of a moderate feminism, the ambivalent attitude towards America,
French xenophobia, disillusionment with communism, the role of cafe life, cross-cultural influences, the predominance of the French film industry, and much more. The various "speakers" often appear to be in dialogue with each other as they disagree over many issues and discuss each other's work and
contributions.
Alive with the insight, wit, and occasional outrageousness for which Paris is famous, this book evokes the experience of living in a city that retains its historical role as a major international cultural capital and shows why it still nurtures the creative spirit.

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The French Through Their Films
Robin Buss
Manufacturer: Ungar Pub Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Guides & Reviews | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

Industry | Movies | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0804420890

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