McKim, Mead & White: The Masterworks

Average customer rating:

So close...and yet so far away

Gilded Age Masters

Overpriced and disappointing

Masterworks Still Vital to the American Landscape

The Rule of Taste

McKim, Mead & White: The Masterworks
Samuel G. White , and Elizabeth White
Manufacturer: Rizzoli
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
General | Architects, A-Z | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
United States | International | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
Reference | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
General | History & Periods | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
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The Houses of McKim, Mead & White

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ASIN: 0847825671
Release Date: 2003-11-22

Book Description

McKim, Mead & White rivals Frank Lloyd Wright for the honor of the premier architectural firm in American architecture. During McKim, Mead & White's most creative period (1879-1915), the firm received nearly 1,000 commissions, which include many of the most famous and important buildings ever built in America. Now, following Rizzoli's Houses of McKim, Mead & White, authors Samuel G. White and Elizabeth White here document the great non-residential works of America's greatest classical architects. In lavish color and archival photographs, the book includes the Boston Public Library, Newport Casino, the second Madison Square Garden, the Washington Memorial Arch, the Morgan Library, major works at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the campuses of Columbia and Harvard universities, Pennsylvania Station in New York, Bank of Montreal, American Academy in Rome, the Century Association, and the Harvard, Metropolitan, and University clubs in New York, among others. McKim, Mead & White: The Masterworks is certain to stand the test of time as one of the most important publications on American architecture.

Customer Reviews:

So close...and yet so far away.......2005-09-15

I had been panting over this book when I first learned of it's release and it was given to me as a gift, quite unexpected, considering it's costly list price.

1) Just because you are related to Mr. White does not mean you have the same gifts. Where architect White was a gifted visionary, builder and man about town, (not to mention murdered lover of Evelyn Nesbitt) author White is pedestrian at best and swinging from gilded-age coat tails at worst.

2) Some of the photography is excellent, and that is the reason this book still lives on my coffee table. However, I will warn you that much of it is flat and lacking in imagination.

3) For lovers of architecture like myself and others who would want to own this book, it is amazingly short of drawings such as elevations and cross-sections. To see these buildings on paper and then in lush color photographs would have been a better exercise than the travelogue style presentation in this volume.

In short, the book does have some lovely parts, but the whole is a bit disappointing. I don't know that I would pay retail for it, rather I'd look for a good used version, or ask Santa for it for Christmas.

Gilded Age Masters.......2005-09-04

Though the definitive book on these great architects work is still yet to be written, this book certainly does their work justice. I enjoyed the text and felt quite knowledged after reading it. I thought the pictures where bold and well selected, though not to the level of some books of this sort. I especially enjoyed the section on Penn Station, wow, what a building, it is so disheartening that it was leveled for a very mediocre building that may find itself meeting the same fate as Penn Station soon: poetic justice I suppose. I think instead of converting McKim, Mead, and White's Post Office Building into the new Penn Station, they should take the blue prints of the original and build it, this was the firms best work, it's a disgrace that is was so underappreciated by the city govenment a the time. At anyrate, if you have any interest in great Gilded Age architecture, you will certainly enjoy this book, just to get a peek inside some of the most exclusive clubs in America is worth the price of the book.

Overpriced and disappointing.......2004-05-27

Since the author touts himself as a descendant of Stanford White, one doesn't expect much in the way of critical perspective from the text of this book. More disappointing are the contemporary photographs - although reproduced at enormous size, they are oddly flat and lifeless. For a better book at a better price, check out "The Architecture of McKim, Mead & White in Photographs, Plans and Elevations"

Masterworks Still Vital to the American Landscape.......2004-04-05

When captains of industry like Morgan, Astor, or Vanderbilt chose to build grand edifices they engaged the services of the architecture firm McKim, Mead, and White. During the firms most inspired period (1879-1915), it built nearly 1,000 commissions, including many famous and important buildings that are still vital parts of the landscape and include: The Morgan Library, Boston Symphony Hall, Columbia University, and the American Academy in Rome.

Written by Samuel G. White (great grandson of Sanford White) and Elizabeth White, McKim, Mead, and White: The Masterworks documents non-residential works of America's greatest classical architects. This new book showcases twenty-four public buildings in remarkable detail. The majority of the buildings included in The Masterworks are still in use however several notable examples; Madison Square Garden, Penn Station, 4 pavilions at the World's Columbian Exposition, and Madison Square Presbyterian Church were demolished long ago.

The architects spared no expense when they created their masterworks and it is apparent that Rizzoli Publishers spared no expense in producing this lovely book. Contemporary color photographs by Jonathan Wallen document the buildings as they are today capturing the totality of their grandeur as well as their finest details. Fascinating archival photographs illustrate how the buildings appeared were when their doors first opened. And almost every building profile is augmented with elevation drawings, sketches, watercolors, and other rare background material. An informative text accompanies each profile. It sheds light on the personalities of the architects, their sources of inspiration, the personalities who commissioned the buildings, and the times when they lived and worked.

The Rule of Taste.......2004-03-04

One of the most handsome books on architecture of recent years, beautifully written in a style that is concise without being in the least off-hand. You may find yourself mourning the passing of an age when so much distinguished architecture enhanced our cities, and mourning equally the fact of so much of it being taken for granted (and in many cases, heartlessly demolished)

One regrets, however, that the book's designers have gone the fashionable route of having its pages printed in a nearly matte-finish.
Rather than being the velvety ideal, here the photographs seem compromised by this technique. A good example is the photograph of the library at the University Club,( New York). What must be the most complexly rich and improbably Italianate room in North America comes off looking disapointingly murky and flat.( The author/photographer's previous book, Houses of Mc Kim Mead White, while employing the same approach, was rather better printed.)
But this is a quibble; the book is ravishing.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Introduction to Watercolor Techniques.......2001-10-10

If most beginners are like me, they dont realize the full range of artistic expression that is possible with watercolors.

This book shows you what is possible, then shows you how to do it. It covers the basics very well, including flat washes, graded washes, wet-on-dry, bulding up colors, wet-in-wet, as well as a full range of special techniques (masks, scumbling, stippling, sponge painting, craping, knifing, glazing).

The book features hundreds of micro-lessons, each illustrated with color photographs that show how to gradually achieve the desired effect. The examples used to illustrate these techniques also show what wonderful results you can get with watercolors.

This book is both instructional and inspirational.

Highly Recommended. An excellent companion to Marian Appellof's Everything You Wanted To Know About Watercolor, though I actually preferred Appellof's book to this one.

Tracy Kirkley from Auckland, New Zealand.......2000-07-03

This book shows step by step technique and guidance to create your own watercolour masterpiece. My mother sent me in search of a good book to help in her hobby, and I stumbled across this one in a local library, and she suggested it was a "must have" for any budding watercolour enthusiast. It shows step to step instruction on how to not only layer your watercolour, but a wide variety of other techniques previously unknown by myself or my mum ! The text is written clearly and all steps are illustrated and explained for the amateur or someone more experienced. This book would make a welcome addition to watercolour artists across the board.

The North Light Illustrated Book of Painting Techniques

Average customer rating:

wonderful resource
Great Addition to any artistic reference library
Wonderful Book
useful but not at the top
Great resource!

The North Light Illustrated Book of Painting Techniques
Elizabeth Tate
Manufacturer: North Light Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Instructional & How-To | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Mixed Media | Other Media | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Painting | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Reference | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 089134148X

Customer Reviews:

wonderful resource.......2007-04-28

This is full of lots of pictures and great for a student of painting. They cover everything. You will love it and use it!

Great Addition to any artistic reference library.......2006-09-07

I too checked this out of the library first and then went on to buy it. This book is well organized and will introduce you to various techniques that you can work up on your own or go forward and do more research on. It is the kind of reference book that will allow you the knowledge that a paticular technique is available when you otherwise might not even have known about it....This will sit right next to my How To on leaves, flowers, animals, pen....and I would recommend to others also. Every page has a creative idea that will push you onward to better creations. I am glad I bought it.

Wonderful Book.......2005-09-07

This art book is good for everyone. It covers all sorts of art problems that you might be having. Visually it is a beautiful book. I highly recommend it to artists of any level.

useful but not at the top.......2005-05-11

The book is useful in the sense of being a quick resource to learn about (or recall) painting techniques. Lets say you hear or are told about an specific technique for your painting. You will find about it right away. Do you have doubts about the generals of a technique? Check it on the book.

The drawbacks of this book are that the author does not go deep into some techniques and If you are trying to find a book to guide you or to give you a sense of an specific medium (pastels, oil or acrilycs) it is better to look for other book since it is going to be a cumbersome task to do it in this book the techniques are ordered alfabetically, not by medium. So, lets say that you are interested specifically in pastels. Then you will have to skip trough al the pages in order to find all the techniques that may apply to pastels.

Great resource!.......2000-08-03

Great book for techniques in mixed media. I have to admit i checked this one out at the library first and realized when it was a month overdue and i was still having problems returning it that i should just buy the book. Tate gives great ideas on different effects that you can acheive while painting etc... but i was also hoping for some more actual finished product examples where she illustrated the ideas presented. It didn't hinder the wonderful inspiration and ideas too badly, but it'd be nice to see more of the final works- or different ways you can incorporate the uses shown. I use this book all the time when questions arise or i just want something cool to inspire me.

Book Description

After the horrendous events of September 2001, photographer Peter Elliott loaded his cameras and some clothes into his car and began a cross-country journey, looking for the flag. He found it everywhere: painted on a retaining wall in Tacoma, flying over a trailer in Bozeman, carried billowing by a lone man walking a sandbar in Florida, made of plastic cups stuck in a fence in Mississippi, draped over a fake horse in Salinas, immaculately hanging from a Beverly Hills mansion's window.

Home Front is both a tribute to the profound emotions of the country and a testament to Elliott's eye. His genius in these eighty-seven arresting images is to wed these serendipitous meetings with the flag to a language of light and composition that draws as much from classic landscape photography as it does from urban visual idioms. Elliott manages to convey here America's stirring and complex national character, one in which those who have not benefited from the nation's prosperity nonetheless feel the same sense of pride as those who have. With its inspiring introduction by Julia Reed, Home Front is the record--both somber and joyous--of Elliott's encounters with spontaneous patriotism.

Book Description

Travel Becomes Us is the memoir of two very naive and inexperienced nuns who make a journey to Israel and Europe in 1977. Luggage weighs them down and they can not even read the menus; however, they still push on with dauntless enthusiasm. Real difficulties occur when stones are thrown at them in Israel and a conductor tosses them off a street car in Italy. Then outside a deserted lonely train station at one in the morning, they are almost adducted and robbed, only to be saved by their guide book! This is a book to make you laughed at their blunders and decide travel is truly the ultimate learning experience!

Customer Reviews:

GREAT!.......1999-08-16

This book is really fun, and full of creative ideas for the whole family. The recipes are fun and easy as well as the decorting and game ideas. These Penny Whistle books are brilliant!!

Book Description

Foreword by William J. Perry. Most of us experience the interactions of cryptography, communications, and computers as we go about our daily activities. While on our laptops, we conduct secure financial transactions and communicate about business and personal matters. But not long ago, only people with special security clearances working at secured communications centers had such access. This book looks at how this dramatic transition came about.

J. V. Boone presents a historical overview of technological developments in cryptology and the closely associated fields of communications and computers. Having directed research at the National Security Agency (NSA) for years, he is well suited to tell the story. Boone identifies milestone accomplishments and activities in the three fields to provide an introduction to the talented people who have led developments and applications. He includes illustrations to give a feel for the equipment and systems, but his book's focus is on the essential ingredient for success in cryptology: brainpower. Everyone from high school students to policy developers in government and industry will be drawn to this concise history of the joint progress of cryptology, communications, and computers. Although he writes primarily from a military intelligence and command/control viewpoint, there are no involved explanations about how individual pieces of equipment function and no elaborate mathematical presentations. For those whose curiosity he has stimulated, he provides additional references.

Customer Reviews:

Should Read, "A Brief History of Cryptography".......2005-12-09

Overall, this book is a short and easy read, but falls short of the title: "A Brief History of Cryptology".

Perhaps fearing inadvertently stating some piece of classified data, the author has chosen to focus on the cryptography vice cryptology. Cryptology is the combination of cryptography (making codes) and cryptoanalysis (breaking codes).

Indeed, this book is more of an analysis over the combination of advanced mathematics, communications theory, and networking in the development of modern secure communications.

This reviewer recommends "The Codebreakers" as a far better substitute.

Provides more than just a history of cryptography communications: it covers how it affects our daily lives.......2005-11-07

J.V. Bone's A Brief History Of Cryptology provides more than just a history of cryptography communications: it covers how it affects our daily lives; from secure financial transactions and communications to common cryptologic secrets. Boone provides a historical review of technological developments in cryptology and computers, covering major achievements and activities across the field. His is a lively account which may come from a military intelligence background, but which avoids the confusing jargon common in cryptology explanations.

perhaps more use of the author's background?.......2005-08-06

This could certainly have been a much longer book. Boone gives us a precis of cryptology through the centuries. Though with a natural emphasis on the last hundred years. Because it in only within this period that mechanical and then electronic calculators and computers came to the fore, thus enabling ever more sophisticated algorithms and countermeasures.

But both during and before this period, the book is a tribute to human ingenuity. For all the power of the latest computers used in encryption, they are merely idiot savants.

Given the author's background, it is a pity that he could not have striven to write more, about strictly declassified matters. Which would have played to his strengths in his professional experience. While the historical material in the book is well written and accurate, other authors have covered those matters well. His comparative advantage perhaps was not put to full use here.

Book Description

The essays in this collection offer new evidence and new conclusions on topics in the history of African Americans in Virginia such as the demography of early slave imports, the means used to regulate slave labor, the situation of female hired slaves in the backcountry, African American women in the Civil War era, and the Garveyite grassroots organizations of the 1920s.

Book Description

This volume of the handbook covers a variety of topics with three chapters dealing with a range of lanthanide magnetic materials, and three individual chapters concerning equiatomic ternary ytterbium intermetallic compounds, rare-earth polysulfides, and lanthanide organic complexes. Two the chapters also include information of the actinides and the comparative lanthanide/actinide behaviors.

Average customer rating:
Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture
Sylvia Lavin
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Criticism | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0262122685

Book Description

"Eight million Americans a year cool their heels in psychiatric waiting rooms. Design can help lower this nervous overhead."
-- Richard Neutra, 1954

Sylvia Lavin's Form Follows Libido argues that by the 1950s, some architects felt an urge to steer the cool abstraction of high modernism away from a neutral formalism toward the production of more erotic, affective environments. Lavin turns to the architecture of Richard Neutra (1892-1970) to explore the genesis of these new mood-inducing environments. In a series of engaging essays weaving through the designs and writings of this Vienna-born, California-based architect, Lavin discovers in Neutra a sustained and poignant psychoanalytic reflection set in the context of a burgeoning psychoanalytic culture in America.

Lavin shows that Neutra's redirection of modernism constituted not a lyrical regression to sentimentality but a deliberate advance of architectural theory and technique to engage the unconscious mind, fueled by the ideas of psychoanalysis that were being rapidly disseminated at the time. In Neutra's responses to a vivid range of issues, from psychoanalysis proper to the popular psychology of tele-evangelical prayer, Lavin uncovers a radical reconstitution of the architectural discipline.

Arguing persuasively that the received historical views of both psychoanalysis and architecture have led to a suppression of their compelling coincidences and unorthodoxies, Lavin sets out to unleash midcentury architecture's hidden libido. Neither Neutra nor psychoanalysis emerges unscathed from her investigation of how architecture came to be saturated by the intrigues of affect, often against its will. If Reyner Banham sought to put architecture "on the couch," then Lavin, through Neutra, leaps beyond Banham's ameliorative aim to lure contemporary architecture into the lush and dangerous liaisons of environmental design.

Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture

Average customer rating:

Form Follows Libido: Architecture and Richard Neutra in a Psychoanalytic Culture
Sylvia (Author) Lavin
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OR8WAE

Customer Reviews:

Perfect Novice's book.......1999-11-15

Having never painted the usual way, I took to this method like a duck to water. I'm afraid this method may spoil me! I found some of the concepts odd at first, especially the purple underpainting for everything, but then I remembered that Rockwell started his oil paintings with a Mars violet underpainting; and besides, the results are beautiful! I'd say that if you've never done a watercolor before in your life, here is a safe way to plunge into a new medium with good results!

Innovative Approach to Watercolor.......1998-10-28

A fantastic little book. The author draws with watercolor paint! In otherwords, instead of the usual wash or broad strokes that most painters use to complete their paintings he builds pictures with a wash and then painting thin small strokes or daubs of the brush as if it were a pen. The results are facinating.

Each chapter has a project/demonstration and lists exactly the brushes used, the paint, surfaces, etc. By following the instructions you learn a new approach to watercolor painting. The process is not unlike egg tempera painting (which I also do) except with watercolor paint. After reading this book and completing the acorn project I am ready to begin the next project. I know I am going to have to incorporate more of this style of watercolor painting in my new work.

Customer Reviews:

A useful and interesting book.......1999-04-13

Covering topics as diverse as National Policy, Electronic Commerce and Education, this book provides valuable insights into information technology in the Asia Pacific region. The editors have achieved a useful and interesting book by bringing together papers from authors with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences.

Book Description

* Have the information you need at your fingertips
* Learn how to document all landlord/tenant agreements
* Track your revenue and stay organized

Customer Reviews:

Dont buy this ,go to a library and read it........2007-02-19

Go to a library and read it.has a 3 inch floppy for forms.Most newer computers dont have floppys anymore.

For any landlord looking to simplify the paperwork.......2002-09-06

Simply Essential Landlord's Kit is a highly useful, very practical guide and one which is especially ideal for the novice landlord with no previous experience at renting apartments, houses, or commercial properties to tenants. Packed from cover to cover with reproducible forms, a wealth of informative tips for getting started, The Simply Essential Landlord's Kit is enhanced with a disk offering printable files of the forms in MS Word and PDF format. Simply Essential Landlord's Kit is a user-friendly and strongly recommended resource for any landlord looking to simplify the paperwork while professionalizing their business.

Book Description

Dr. Jensen has traveled the world on a quest to learn how other cultures deal with illness. This extraordinary book compiles much of the knowledge he gleaned and includes a wealth of information on dietary deficiencies, healthy circulation, herbs, tonics, exercise, and much more.

Book Description

A thrilling and thorough investigation, spanning sixty years of recent history. The first and most detailed book about Mussolini and the secrets carried with him at the time of his death.

Average customer rating:

Don't leave home without it!!

Waterfowl of Eastern North America
Chris G. Earley
Manufacturer: Firefly Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Birds | Field Guides | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
General | Birdwatching | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Ornithology | Zoology | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
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The Great Gallery of Ducks and Other Waterfowl

ASIN: 1554070589

Book Description

An indispensable field guide and reference for birders.

The eastern Continental Divide from Florida to Ontario contains the world's largest network of freshwater lakes, rivers, wetlands and coastal waters. It is home to an astonishingly large variety of ducks, geese, and other waterfowl.

Waterfowl of Eastern North America is a richly illustrated pocket-sized field guide for birders and naturalists. Full-color photographs show these birds in their natural habitats in each season.

Comparison pages group similar-looking birds on a single spread for quick reference. Concise and accurate information on each species includes:

Common name
Biological classification
Identifying features
Seasonal changes to plumage color.

The detailed information on each species is concisely organized and includes the differences between male and female, seasonal and immature plumage, morphs and distinctive markings.

The coverage includes:

Ducks and geese
Swans and pelicans
Loons, grebes and cormorants.

Waterfowl of Eastern North America also features essential information for birders who want to support conservation groups that protect waterfowl and their quickly disappearing habitats.

Customer Reviews:

Don't leave home without it!!.......2005-09-18

This book contains two pages for each species and is an excellent reference guide for specific field work. Large closeup color photos with seasonal plumages, seasonal range maps, silhouettes, calls and sounds made, nature notes, plus additional comparison charts in the back, make this field guide a must have for the beginner to advanced birder. It's lightweight and easy to carry with plastic coated pages. You won't be disappointed!

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