Book Description

Claude Monet is commonly considered to be the most consistent and representative of Impressionist artists.His painting, Impression, Sunrise (1874) inspired the official name of this movement.This book portrays Monet's work and vast influence in its historical perspective as it charts his life and career.Over 300 paintings illustrate his artistic experiments as well as his most successful works. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Excellent presentation of Monet's works through his career
This is an excellent book. Sproccati's comments in the beginning are clear and engaging. The best part of the book is the collection of color plates. This is a large book, allowing for large reproductions of many of his paintings. High quality paper, well-focused colorful plates, almost none of which are split over two pages, and well-organized and thought-out order make this an outstanding value. ... Read more

Book Description

The bestselling biography of the controversial artist, and a vivid account of the fast times in which he lived--and died

Painter Jean-Michel Basquiat was the Jimi Hendrix of the art world: in less than a decade he went from being a teenage graffiti writer to an international art star; he was dead of a drug overdose at age twenty-seven. Basquiat's brief career spanned the giddy '80s art boom and epitomized its outrageous excess, from its art dealers to its drug dealers, from its clubs to its galleries. A legend in his own lifetime, Basquiat became a fixture in the downtown scene and got involved with many of the period's most celebrated personalities, including Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and Madonna.

Phoebe Hoban's Basquiat, the first biography of this charismatic figure, charts the trajectory from the artist's troubled childhood to his volatile passage through the art world of white dealers and nouveau-riche collectors. As much the portrait of an era as the portrait of an artist, Basquiat is an incisive expose of the eighties art market that paints a vivid picture of the rise and fall of the graffiti movement, the East Village art scene, the avaricious dealers, and the out-of-control auction houses. Ten years after the artist's death, Basquiat resurrects both the painter and his time.

* A New York Times Notable Book
* Basquiat appeared on the Los Angeles Times and Voice Literary Supplement bestseller lists

"Compulsively readable. . . there is enormous value in it, especially in Hoban's depiction of the glitzy 1980s art world, which is sharply etched and deadly accurate." --Patricia Bosworth, The New York Times Book Review ... Read more

Reviews (17)

Good book, He think.
Don't look to this work for any information about Basquiat as an artist. This is a book about fame. It took Ms. Hoban 7 years to write about an artist whose career wasn't even that long. This is a book about the eighties, fame, and excess. You will not learn much about Jean-Michel by reading this book. You will learn about the climate of the eighties art world and the ever-present parasites that the enormous speculation over great artists can create(Braghoomian for instance). The photographs of Jean-Michel are interesting, but because of the ownership of the artist's works, none are present to look at while reading this work. Buy a book of Basquiat's work if you are interested in the artist. If you are interested in the vacuum of New York 1980's culture, check this out at the library--it's not worth purchasing.

Basquiat: We hardly Knew Ye
This book runs the gamut between gossip, stories of 80's excesses, and art history. The book is not so much a biography of Basquiat, rather a peek into the insipid world of the 1980's New York art scene. It has the usual "hangers-on" bottom-feeding on the talents of others, the "know nothing" art buyers driving prices up on marginal works, and the merciless art dealers who appear oddly enough to be the victims in this book. Basquiat does not deserve glorification, after all he was a drug-soaked addict and mooch, and this book provides none. It is a lively read that brings to the forefront the artists that drove the scene, the dealers that made them famous, and the host of actors that shaped the movement.

IF YOU NEED ONE BOOK ABOUT BASQUIAT, THIS IS IT !
I really love this book ! I buy a lot of art books all the time. Some of them are pretty bad, and one of the art books I recently bought only because it was published 20 editions already. And that one was really a disappointment. This book, however, is the BEST art book I have ever bought! It is a book I will always come back to read again and again. (I have finished it 3 days after I got it and now I am reading it the second time) If you need only one book about Basquiat, let this one be it, and you will make a great choice. The writer has great knowledge in art, and that make this book so much more valuable!

I cannot recommend the book called Widow Basquiat. Because nobody knows who should be called Widow Basquiat. There are at least 2 dozen girls fighting for that title and the money behind it, not-knowing that Basquiat senior has already got the best lawyer and inherited everything from his son.

Phonebe Hoban is a great Basquiat expert
Phoebe Hoban has shown that she is a great Basquiat expert. She spent 7 years to do research for this book, and that is why the book is filled with credible interviews, comments and fascinating stories. She is so honest and decent, and she is not afraid of affending bad guys or anyone for that matter. She even named all those drug dealers who sold stuff to JMB. I solute and applause to her great effort. In the end of the book, she also did not forget to write her visit to JMB's mother who is apparently suffering from her fraigile psychological condition. The writer told us the vivid scence at her home. The writer asked us not to forget this: while JMB's father got millions dollars by inhariting the entire JMB fortune, his mother who has been long divorced from his father, Basquiat senior, has been living in absolute poverty. Lawyers, this is your chance to make it. Even if you do not have much good conscience, just think about the estimated value of the JMB estate - (now valued over $500 million !) you should go and and visit JMB's mother today and start sueing JMB estate which is run by JMB's father. (by the legal arrangement, each party has 50%) This is one thing JMB himself will be pleased.

Informative - but somewat petty and gossippy.
I know that's a contradicition however one gets the feeling that the author was not a fan of Jean-Michele Basquait. His art or his work.

She seems to take an almost preverse pleasure in sharing the more "scandalous" aspects of his behavior.

There is much more time devoted to his alleged "drug abuse, whoremongering and venereal disease sharing" than his art work.

Overall, I learned some interesting information about his relationship with art dealers. The author seems particularly infatuated/intimidated with the recording artist/actress Madonna (who Basquait has a brief relationship with) and the art dealer Mary Boone.

But there is precious little about his family life, what motivated him or his connection to the Black community of which he was most assuredly. In fact, there seems to be a lack of respect for the African-American culture and the community as a whole.

I wanted to like this book, and it was very detailed,however much of it came from interviews, innuendos and third-persons accounts. Fufilling at some points, it often reads like tabloid journalism too. Some objectivity would have been nice, but maybe that's another book.

Surprisingly, I would recommend it to the Basquait fan, (for informational purposes) just check it out from the library or used stack. ... Read more

Book Description

More than any other artist, Edward Hopper (1882-1967) made the unique visual landscape of the American city his own. In his works, all-night diners, motel rooms, and deserted, after-hours offices are sparsely populated with isolated, brooding figures. While never directly narrative, his restrained and carefully handled oils and watercolors have a timeless, universal quality that has long struck a chord with a huge international audience.

From paintings made in Paris in the early 1900s to iconic views of Manhattan created more than 60 years later, this book examines Hopper's work in the context of both American and European painting from the turn of the 20th century to the 1960s. The influence that film and other forms of popular culture had on Hopper is explored here for the first time. Published to accompany a major retrospective exhibition at Tate Modern in London, this stunning book is the definitive work on this quintessentially American artist. AUTHOR BIO: Sheena Wagstaff is director of exhibitions at Tate Modern, London. Peter Wollen is professor of film, television, and digital media at UCLA and a filmmaker, critic, and scholar. David Anfam has published widely on American art. Brian O'Doherty is an artist and critic and the author of American Masters: The Voice and the Myth in Modern Art. Margaret Iverson is professor in the department of art history and theory at the University of Essex, England. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Hungarian photographer André Kertész eventually became famous for his wryly poetic images of everyday life. But achieving that distinction was a long slog, and Kertész--who emigrated to Paris in 1925and New York in 1936--struggled for decades in near-obscurity and despair. Andre Kertész traces the artist's career with an engaging text and 250 exquisitely reproduced black-and-white photographs that span his long career.Throughout, he used his camera to create a visual diary of his life—haunting images suffused with a loner's sensibility. As a young man imbued with the romantic ideals of Hungarian nationalism, he photographed his handsome brother Jeno as Icarus, his exultant body silhouetted against the sky. Unable to find work after returning from the battlefields of World War I, Kertész tried his luck in Paris. It was the best move of his life. The City of Light was hungry for photographers to fill the new illustrated magazines. Avant-garde painters and sculptors opened up a new world of experimentation that prompted Kertész to photograph a series of female nudes seen in a funhouse mirror. And the new, lightweight Leica camera enabled him to snap scenes on the sly—a bum inspecting his toes on the banks of the Seine or a legless flower seller trying to tempt a passerby.

Book Description

Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia is anchored by Jack's reflections, dramatized by Hertz into first person narratives, of the early days of CalArts and the last days of Chouinard; the New York artworld; the trials and tribulations of finding and maintaining success; his inter-personal relationships; and his disappearance from the art scene.They are complemented by the dramatized first person narratives of Jack's friends, including John Baldessari, TroyBrauntuch, Rosetta Brooks, Jean Fisher, Robert Longo, Matt Mullican, and James Welling.There are provocative portraits of many well known personalities of the 80s, including Mary Boone, David Salle, and Helene Winer, all working at a time when "the competitive spirit was strong and often brutal, caring little about anything but oneself and making lots of money."Has anything changed? ... Read more

Reviews (1)

tells it like it is
This book is a must read for any artist, it is a realistic picture of the art world the way it was and the way things are done today. There is a poignancy in Jack Goldstein, and it is very moving. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Julian Schnabel burst on the neo-expressionist art scene of the early 1980s with huge, arresting paintings on collaged shards of smashed plates. A swaggering and contentious figure whose art no longer occupies center stage, he is probably best known today as a successful filmmaker. All the more reason, perhaps, for him to shore up his reputation by co-designing a mammoth book of his life and art. Julian Schnabel dispenses with commentary, except for the artist's own brief, broad-brushed introduction. Even the titles of his works are relegated to the illustrated index, which--despite Schnabel's proclivity for unconventional surfaces--omits any mention of media. Nearly 400 full-color reproductions trace Schnabel's output from 1976 to the present, interspersed with photographs of the artist, his family, and off-camera moments from the making of Before Night Falls, his film about the gay Cuban writer Reynaldo Arenas. Of course, all the famous Schnabel preoccupations are on full view, from the persistent references to Catholic ritual to the phallic imagery and the invocations of his wife Olantz. The newest mega-series, "Big Girl Paintings"--each face featuring a horizontal swipe of paint in lieu of eyes—-seems a hollow echo of the lively portraits of friends and family from the 1980s and 1990s. But die-hard Schnabel devotees will adore this lavish volume, which accompanies an international traveling exhibition that opens in January 2004 at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt, Germany. (U.S. venues have not been announced.) —Cathy Curtis ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Poor art by a poor artist
The reason there exists no body of critical literature on Julian Schnabel is simply because his art is so blatantly uncompelling, mediocre, and self-seeking, that no one has bothered in the past three decades to waste time writing about it. Nor will you find any illuminating text here, either (one imagines there is really nothing much to say about paintings this bad anyway) -- just a few Rolling Stone-esque photos of the artist to prove his hipness . . . Painting is still cool, right?

As big as his paintings are!
What a fabulous book of this monsterous artist. Very large paintings deserve a very large book. This book not only has photos of a whole lot of his artworks. But it also has many installation photos which give the viewer a sense of just how big and bold these paintings and sculptures are in real life. If only I could get to see more of his work in person. Preferrably the Zeus & Duende and Hat Full of Rain paintings. Along with his older black and white paintings which are rendered beautifully in this context. I only wish it had more writings by Julian. But hey if it's his writings you want, you can't beat C.V.J. It's a great book about his life as an artist. And also has some fantastic insights into the world of art.

Coffee Table Paper Weight
If you love "art" on weekends,this book can save you a trip to a modern museum.

Brush strokes and raw painted color come alive
Julian Schnabel is an extraordinary 368-page "coffee table" artbook featuring and showcasing the dramatic works of American artist Julian Schnabel flawlessly reproduced in vivid color. Brush strokes and raw painted color come alive with simple yet bold form, producing imagery that stays firmly in one's mind, in this superb presentation devoted entirely to Schnabel's art itself as beyond two pages of introduction there is no text present at all, save for (at the end of the book), a "Selected Exhibition History"; a "Selected Bibliography"; an comprehensive "Artwork Index" listing the titles of the artwork comprising this quite exceptional and highly recommended compendium.

Spectacular
This is an ellegant addition to any persons collection. Well aware you are I imagine of your familiarity with Julian Schnabels paintings, so I won't ramble on here. This is a smaller publication containing plenty of examples of his work, as well as writing by Julian regarding his work that gives fine insight. ... Read more

Book Description

As a restless kid on Long Island, Sam Kashner lapped up the beauty and madness of the Beats, living vicariously through the novels, poems, and stories of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William Burroughs. Their words were revolutionary, and they turned their very lives into art. Kashner didn't want to just study the Beats, he wanted to be one of them. So when he heard that Ginsberg had founded an unconventional writing program in Boulder, Colorado, he convinced his parents that college could wait, and became the first certificate student of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics.

In one motion, Kashner stepped out of a sheltered suburban life and plunged into the chaotic world of his idols. What he discovered was both everything and not at all what he expected. The Beats were facing their twilight years and feeling it in their joints and in their minds. Some of them, like Ginsberg and Burroughs, had achieved international fame, while others, like Gregory Corso, had not, and were coming to the realization that they might never receive the recognition they deserved. In his new role as student, secretary, and psychiatrist, Sam Kashner was caught up in the hilarity of the hijinks and the cross fire of old arguments, finding himself in hot tubs with Ginsberg and on field trips to the marijuana ranch cultivated by Burroughs and his ill-fated son, Billy.

Out of this rich material Kashner brings us a funny, touching, and irreverent portrait of the Beats never before seen: one that explodes the myths surrounding these American icons, but one that is also deeply felt and full of admiration. After reading this book, you'll never look at the Beats in quite the same way again.

When I Was Cool is also a very personal journey of a young man coming of age on the Beat slope of Mount Parnassus ("the Lower East Side" of the Rockies), a kind of Holden Caulfield for the postmodern era.

Reviews (9)

Interesting but not necessarily accurate
I have no way of knowing how much Sam Kashner remembers about what happened to him thirty yars ago. What I can say is that almost every statement he makes about music in this book is wrong:

*Jim Carroll's "People Who Died" isn't about his friends who died of heroin overdoses, it's about friends who died in a variety of ways.
*Graham Parker's record is called "Squeezing Out Sparks," not "Sparks Fly Upward." But Kashner couldn't have heard it when he says he did because it wasn't released until 1979.
*If we're to believe the chronology in the book, Kashner's girlfriend has a poster of Johnny Rotten in her house in 1976 and the Go-Gos came to Boulder in early 1977. The fact is, very few Americans would have known who Johnny Rotten was at the time, since the Sex Pistols didn't put out their first single in the U.K. until November of that year. And the Go-Gos, of course, hadn't even been formed yet.
*The band that Kashner remembers as Loud Fast Rules was surely the New York punk-pop band, the Stimulators, whose first single was a song called "Loud Fast Rules" and who were friendly with Ginsberg, but they didn't exist in 1977 either.
*Ginsberg played live and recorded with the Clash in the early 80s, but the band didn't tour America until 1979. And Ginsberg never appeared in a Clash video called "Combat Rock" (or any other Clash video) because that was the name of an album not a song. He did appear on a song on that album, however.
*Ginsberg did record a new wave-inspired single called "Birdbrain," but again it wasn't released until 1981.

Yes, these are minor quibbles, but it only takes a few basic factual errors, which surely could have been checked by either the writer or his editor, to throw the accuracy of the whole book into doubt and to make the reader wonder how much of what Kashner says happened actually did.

A Great Memoir About an Alternative Academy
When I Was Cool by Sam Kashner is one of the best books ever written about the so-called Beat poets, or as they were more commonly called, the beatniks. This is in large part due to the fact that he was in an ideal place to witness several of the leading writers in this movement do their thing for a prolonged period of time.

Kashner was the first ever, and for a time the one and only, student at the Jack Kerouac School for aspiring writers at Boulder, Colorado. This was an attempt at an alternative school that went unaccredited throughout its existence.

The Jack Kerouac School was both founded and lead by Allen Ginsberg. Among its alumni were such luminaries as William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Ann Waldman as well as Ginsberg himself.

Kashner kept copious notes and a diary in which he recorded the various goings on at the school. That being the case, When I Was Cool offers readers a portrait of a time and place and people that has since gone by the wayside. It is well worth the reading time of anyone with an interest in the 1970's scene.

Well Spoken
Sam Kashner is a writer of flawless virtue but noticible simplicity. He did an audacious deed by creating a book that helps merely a bit to understanding the complex beauty of the idols of our nation; the beats. Sam Kashner gave life to the literal meaning of America's swelled and drunken past that wove itself into a fine threaded combination of poetry and writing. He did a wonderful job and showed merciless compassion for the people that mattered most to him. The book is a true wonder and was made to be read to unravel some truth to the loved era of the beatnik generation.

Not cool
I set out to read this book because I am very interested in the school itself, which I still maintain, but I was sorely disappointed with the book itself. It should have been divided into two seperate stories, one about Kashner and one about the school--but how could he write a memoir and not include how "cool" he was--hanging out with the beats?

I most certainly agree with Chris Jansen's list of problem's with this book. The obscure literary references were incredibly frustrating, it just led to me feeling alienated and uneducated. At one point Kashner refers to Ginsberg as a "jambon" for no reason but to, apparently, demonstrate his talent at remembering French words for food.

Don't waste your money on this one, wait till your library gets it, or, if you're desperate to own it, until it comes to paperback.

Boulder was Cool once !
Kashner writes with a humility that grows on the reader. The first half of the book was a sort of get acquainted period and the second half was frequently a gutbuster laugh. Of all the Beats he met Corso was his best pal. Ginsberg gets the wilting pansy label and Burroughs Sr comes off a lot more human and funny then most other portraits. The style of memory memoir is fine with mini chapter style. A fun read. ... Read more

Book Description

During the course of an illustrious 50-year career that took him from the Bauhaus to London, Harvard University, and then New York, architect Marcel Breuer (1902-1981) generated a huge, influential, and remarkably varied body of work. Among his hundreds of buildings are such architectural triumphs as the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

This is the first comprehensive study of Breuer's architectural oeuvre. To write it, architectural historian Isabelle Hyman utilized for the first time extensive unpublished archival material and collected hundreds of photographs, plans, and sketches. While Breuer has been best known for his tubular steel chairs and other furniture designs, this book makes clear why he received dozens of architectural honors and awards and was called "a monumental figure among modern architects."
295 illustrations, 35 in full color, 384 pages, 10 1/2 x 10 1/4" ... Read more

Reviews (1)

LA Architect Magazine Book Reviews
In his six-decade career as a Bauhaus teacher and furniture maker, as a collaborator with Walter Gropius in London and Cambridge, and as head of his own office in New York, Breuer deserves to be ranked with the great 20th-century formgivers. And yet he never did achieve the fame of Mies, though he was far more prolific and humane, or of Gropius, though he was a much better designer. If he is remembered today it is for the Whitney Museum in Manhattan, the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, and his modern houses in New England; however, as this comprehensive survey shows, there was much more-mostly forgotten and quite out of fashion. This eloquent, handsomely illustrated volume may help to shift public perceptions and stir admiration for the architect's tough, sculptural take on modernism. ... Read more

Book Description

"Two years before I started drawing, my wife was run over by a subway train. Sounds really terrible, I know. But, well, this book is about how art and New York City saved my life." When Danny Gregory's wife was severely injured, his life was changed in an instant. Searching about for meaning for what had happened to his little family, he began to create a richly illustrated journal of his life. Gregory as driven to record and comment on every aspect of his life, from dirty dishes to cathedrals, from hospital wards to life-drawing classes, from brunch with Hell's Angels to book shopping at the Strand. This unique book chronicles his discovery of drawing, his wife's rehabilitation, his son's infancy, and the life of the city he loves. Funny, bittersweet, romantic, and perverse, Everyday Matters is an inspiration, an invitation to look for the beauty and significance in the details of our daily lives. ... Read more

Reviews (19)

Special, Intimate, Lovely
Everyday Matters is such a special, intimate, lovely book, it's hard to know where to begin singing its praises. To open the book is to steal a look inside the sketchbook (a.k.a. the heart and mind) of a man who has just realized that drawing might help him see everything more clearly -- including seeing his way into a whole new life, one in which his wife is in a wheelchair. And that man happens to live in and draw pictures of New York City, which he adores.

Besides the delights of Gregory's words and images -- which are sometimes funny, and other times poignant -- the book also serves as a nearly overwhelming incentive to pick up a pen and draw. And by drawing, to see objects again for the first time. If by publishing the book Gregory wished to remind people to look at the world around them with fresh, hungry, sensitive hearts and eyes, he has succeeded with this reader.

A fabulous book
This is a wonderful book, full of fabulous drawings and stories.

Makes you to look at the small details of your life in a fresh way. Would make an amazing present for anyone - I had it as a christmas present but had to wrestle it out of the hands of different family members who were all just as enthralled by it.

Is great to read as a journal / art book but also SO INSPIRING for anyone who would like to or does draw. Danny's weblog is also worth checking out at www.dannygregory.com for even more inspiration!

This is the type of book you don't read just once, everytime you pick it up, you notice something different. Will be buying more copies as birthday presents!

A winner from so many perspectives
If you want to be inspired to draw, or to write, or to live more fully, or best of all to do all three simultaneously, (and if you only have 60 minutes to move closer to your goals)- Everyday Matters is a must read. It's real, charming, witty, whimsical, and teaches art and life lessons that can be applied BY ANYONE. For all those who say "but I can't draw" and even more for those who say "but what shall I draw" this has some answers to the first question and many to the second. It's hard for me to say whether Danny is a better artist, writer, or philosopher. Fortunately we get all three in this slim volume. I can't wait for his next book.

I loved this gem of a book--
The drawings of everyday objects are delightful and lively, and the story that winds around the images is touching and uplifting. This is a book that I share with my high school students to show them ways that they can use drawing and journaling to help work through those curves and dips that life deals out to us.

Slow down and savour this gem of a book.
I loved every moment I spent with this book, from the gorgeous cover to the heartfelt drawings and journal entries throughout. Well done, Danny Gregory. Not only can you draw, you have inspired another to do the same. ... Read more

Book Description

A brilliant father-son biography of the scandalous life of movie star Errol Flynn -- and of his son's equally glamorous yet doomed career as a war photographer in Vietnam

On April 6, 1970, the charismatic Sean Flynn rode his motorcycle into a roadblock, was captured by the Vietcong, and vanished into the jungle. Errol's son shared his father's good looks, charm, athleticism, courage, and artistic talent. But Sean also inherited his father's love of risk, compelling him to lead an equally romantic but tragically brief life.

The story of both men's chillingly similar lives begins with Errol. He was born in Australia, where his mother either beat him or ignored him. He spent his early adult life in the savage outposts of New Guinea as a tobacco planter, gold prospector, bird trapper, diamond smuggler, and slave trader. By the time fame arrived, drinking, drugs, and sex with underage girls assured him legendary status for recklessness, as well as an early death.

Sean was obsessed with his father, a remote and mythical figure. Never able to break free from Errol's overpowering legacy, Sean established his own heroic reputation. The father played a daredevil on screen, the son -- as brilliant and daring as his father -- was driven to increase the stakes. His final gallant and suicidal gesture carried the Flynn tradition to its inevitable conclusion. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Two Stars for Sean
I have to agree with Mr. Hurst's eloquent review, and I'll put it more succinctly: this is a lousy book. Why write a biography of Errol Flynn, of all people, if you're going to do it with no humor and with lordly disdain? It's like a biography of Tom Sawyer written by his half-brother, the tattle-tale goody-goody Sid. Like many, I guess, I picked it up in order to read about Sean Flynn, since there is so little out there about him. But as noted, Sean is reduced to three chapters presented as endpapers. One might conclude there wasn't enough to his short life to make a full book... if there weren't so much other evidence of the biographer's tendency to stop researching once he has enough evidence to support his (rather ugly) pre-determined thesis.

A JOYLESS TREATMENT OF A JOYFUL, ROLLICKING LIFE
Jeffrey Meyers, best known for his works on such literary figures as D. H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, is a gifted, at times brilliant biographer. Here he brings to his treatment of Errol and Sean Flynn his knowledge of the world's great literature. Meyers can take almost any figure and make him acceptable from a literary point of view. Who else could find a parallel between Errol Flynn and Edgar Allan Poe? One can imagine a future Meyers biography of Bugsy Siegel, with frequent allusions to Julius Caesar, Faust, and MacBeth.

Meyers's gift for finding parallels between disparate people's lives is especially impressive. I found those between the lives of John Barrymore and Flynn to be especially compelling and insightful - more so than those between Errol and Sean. With reference to Sean, few will feel competent to judge the validity of Meyers' sections which reincarnate his last days.Some of it I found persuasive, but other parts - especially some of the links in the chain of logic - seemed weak; the recreation of "the facts" may be a bit too confident when dealing with mainly hearsay evidence.

In the main section of this book Errol Flynn comes across as a tragic, forlorn, dejected, melancholic sociopath. The habitual choice to put Flynn in a darker rather than positive light surfaces in numerous ways, as in Meyers' handling of Basil Rathbone. All biography involves some shading of details, which usually goes under the heading of "literary license." But the deliberate reshaping of a quotation by rearrangement and omission, for the purpose of producing the desired result, is disingenuous - a distinct "no-no" for afront-rank biographer.At the top of p. 146, a long comment of Basil Rathbone is subtly rearranged so as to produce the desired result � to contribute to Meyers' overall scheme of the father-son shared death-wish. It creates a false impression of what Rathbone actually wrote about Flynn, and leaves one wondering how many other things have been cleverly reshaped in order to fit the thesis.

The question therefore lingers:Does Meyers actually get under Errol�s skin (or that of Sean for that matter)? The answer, I fear, must be no - despite what Meyers and his publicists say.Meyers, in my opinion, is far too detached in his literary mien to explore effectively a man like Flynn.His Flynn is a two-dimensional, black-and-white figure who set out to destroy himself. The real-life Flynn was an infuriatingly complex, three-dimensional, Technicolor personality. Meyers is a very careful writer, but he also tends to be a cold, dispassionate, joyless writer, with an occasional tendency toward shading and over simplification. One gets little sense of the joi-de-vivre of the Errol Flynn of this book. Flynn was at heart a very, very funny man.

On the other hand there is something un-humorous, at points even tiresome, about INHERITED RISK. The whole thing is written from the point of view of Greek tragedy. It is doubtful that after reading it the reader will have chuckled even once. This is a major failing in a biography of Errol Flynn. The ever-so-literate Meyers, in all his zeal to analyze him - to dissect him into his component parts and to isolate his various destructive influences - has somehow let the real Flynn elude him.

There are other anomalies in INHERITED RISK. In one of his appendices (p. 326), Meyers breaks down Flynn's films into three categories: "best," "seeable," and "poor." With all due respect to Meyers, the list is bizarre, and may call into question his cinematic judgment.Is "The Roots of Heaven" (1958) really a better film than "They Died with Their Boots On" (1941) or "Adventures of Don Juan" (1949)? What cinematic myopia would place "The Sisters" (1938), "Edge of Darkness" (1943), and "Northern Pursuit" (1943) - not to mention "Silver River" (1948) - into the "poor" category?

Despite the dual photos on the front of the dust-jacket, the book is not really an analysis of the relationship of the two men, Errol and Sean, along the lines of Sir Edmund Goss' FATHER AND SON. The disparity in the treatments is made clear by the arrangement - Sean constitutes the endpapers (totaling a mere 49 pages), while the main section deals with Errol (244 pages). There is thus a serious question of balance.

Also, Meyers' central idea of Greek tragedy - that of the fatal character flaw of the father being reproduced in the son, leading to the latter's inevitable doom, does not really come off - no matter how energetically Meyers tries. One gets from this book the clear impression that the lives of the two Flynns were a complete waste.That may well have been true of the son, but it can't be said of the father.Errol Flynn brought untold joy to millions worldwide � and still does to this day.

INHERITED RISK is a missed opportunity. With all the research that went into the book, it could have been the best Flynn biography ever written.But throughout most of it Meyers� staid approach just doesn't hold the reader�s attention. There is also a procrustean feel � the impression that the lives of these two men are being stretched and cut to fit the "Greek tragedy" model that Meyers is pushing.Such shortcomings, sadly, mar what otherwise might have been a monumental biographical achievement.

Two subjects with the same pathos
There is a tendency to describe people whose lives veer into chaos far more frequently than our own as troubled.The balance is provided in this book by rendering an account of how superior the lives of ERROL AND SEAN FLYNN IN HOLLYWOOD AND VIETNAM seem compared to the rest of us.I'm partial to this account because I was already a fan of the Flynn associates in Nam:Tim Page, Michael Herr, John Steinbeck IV, Robert Sam Anson, and Dana Stone.Dana Stone gets credit for taking the photo in Ha Than in 1968 in which Sean Flynn, "In full battle dress and holding a grenade, with arms outstretched and right boot in midair, he charges over the top of the hill and attacks the North Vietnamese enemy. . . . After the officer was wounded, Sean saved the day by assuming one of Errol's movie roles, leading the charge himself and killing an enemy soldier."(pp. 55-56).There are few pictures of Sean in this book, but real fans will have the collection in REQUIEM:BY THE PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO DIED IN VIETNAM AND INDOCHINA, edited by Horst Faas and Tim Page.

The picture of Sean Flynn and Dana Stone on motorcycles in Vietnam, c. 1970, facing page 97, might be rough for those whose expectations were shaped by Jack Warner's "considerable shrewdness and a clear grasp of public taste."(caption to picture 11).Errol Flynn was interesting enough to dominate the first 29 pictures in this book.Then number 30 shows Sean Flynn with a friend, Steve Cutter, in 1958, and the final page of pictures shows the contrast between the highly professional look of an American studio portrait, c. 1962, and how Sean and Dana would look when last seen by Western eyes.

If armies are usually considered highly disciplined, as well as the most modern, civilized mechanism for establishing order in the midst of chaos, Sean and Dana miscalculated how outrageously the enemy in Cambodia would be striving for something else, that they hadn't counted upon.A journalist card issued by the U.S. Department of Defense was supposed to be sufficient to convince the inhabitants of this planet that they possessed the opportunity to have their story told to the world, and the cameras should have convinced the enemy that the main thing the Americans wanted to take was pictures.Part of Sean's trouble was that he was expecting to see more than the usual amount of trouble.The previous year, Sean spent a few days in jail in Djakarta because of a 17-year-old high school girl, daughter of a Caltex corporation lawyer and a princess from Sumatra,"named after a Hindu goddess."(p. 49).For me (still an effetely snobbish reader and broadcaster of my own opinions), being in the army was like spending two years with the Djakarta taxi driver who drove Sean and the girl to her home in his Mercedes taxi.The taxi driver assumed that the girl was the hot attraction that Sean thought she was and returned with a Chinese businessman.The story is related partly in words that Sean wrote to his mother November 2 and December 4, 1969, which admitted that Sean "stepped out of the bushes swinging a baseball bat.He smashed the car's and windshield, then attacked the driver.The Chinese customer meanwhile had fled."(p. 49).

Tying it all together like this book does is a hoot:"American officers expected extraordinary courage from Errol's son and Sean always met their expectations.Accompanying the 4th Division's long-range recon patrollers for a month, Sean walked point on dangerous four-man patrols in the northern Highlands.He stayed in a besieged bunker at Kon Tien where, in only three days, 375 Marines were wounded."(p. 51).As famous as Sean Flynn became, it might still be possible to find 375 Marines who remember being wounded in the same bunker at Kon Tien, but it seems more likely they were wounded at Con Thien when Sean was in some other country.Sean probably had more combat experience than most of the guys on walking recon patrols for the 4th Division, who previously were more likely to have some incident of looking for a lost pet in their childhood than of finding anything in the Highlands.Most of the 4th Division called it the Central Highlands.Up north, where the Marine operated, Con Thien was at one end of the McNamara Line on the map on page 127 of HISTORICAL ATLAS OF THE VIETNAM WAR by Harry G. Summers, Jr.According to an official count in that book, 3,077 mortar, artillery, and rocket rounds struck the base there during the week of September 19-27, 1967, only three months after Sean Flynn photographed the results of the six-day Arab-Israeli War, when, "On his way back from Sinai, Sean dragged a recoilless rifle behind his rented Volkswagen and gave it to Mandy Rice-Davies (who had been implicated in the John Profumo spy-and-sex scandal in Britain and had emigrated to Israel) to decorate her discotheque in Tel Aviv."(Meyers, p. 45).

Most of ERROL AND SEAN FLYNN IN HOLLYWOOD AND VIETNAM is devoted to the life of Errol Flynn, pages 59-303.His death of a heart attack was rather pathetic, as the doctors in those days seemed better able to find heart problems in an autopsy setting than "when Flynn suddenly felt sharp pains in his back and legs."(p. 295).A doctor told him to ease the pain by lying on the floor."After an autopsy, the coroner found that his death was caused by myocardial infarction (blood not reaching the heart), coronary thrombosis (clot in the coronary blood vessels) and coronary atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries)."(p. 295).Errol's mother, Marelle, wrote to Sean two months later that "my poor boy knew that he had not long to live.He had several heart attacks, & had been warned seriously only a short time ago."(p. 295).

Extremely well written Biography!
As a long time fan of Errol Flynn, I had to buy this latest biography.This is probably one of the best written biographies on Flynn I have ever read.It is right up there with MY WICKED WICKED WAYS by Flynn himself.This book is painstakingly researched with obvious assistance from the Flynn family for accuracy.No outrageous claims are made as in the past books about the actor.It is downright eerie how parallel Sean and Errol Flynn's lives really were.Definitely a must read for Flynn fans and highly recommended to those who love all things Classic Hollywood.

Reviewed by Miriam van Veen

Sean's fate seemed pre-ordained, perhaps even his goal.
Jeffrey Meyers has written one of the great father-son biographies, told in the bold and cutting style of his earlier triumph "Bogart." The introductory quote from Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender Is the Night" brilliantly keys the reader to the appeal of these two legends -- "There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions, who will do anything."

While there is more than one legend as to the details of Sean's death at the hands of his Vietnamese and/or Cambodian captors, the author's research drew him to a reasonable, if not yet provable conclusion. There are good arguments both for and against each of several sketchy accounts of Sean's alleged execution.The focus of this book, however, is the impact of the life of the father on the psyche of the son.Meanwhile, others drawn to the mystery continue to pursue the facts of what happened to Sean and his friend Dana Stone. How unfortunate that the Vietnamese government has never come forward with the facts in its possession on the fates of any of the ten international journalists captured in the same area during early April 1970.What outdated political sensitivities could possibly justify the damage done for over three decades to the surviving families and friends of these brave journalists?

It is encouraging that other recent works including "The Eagle Mutiny" by Richard Linnett and Roberto Loiederman and "The Last Battle" by Colonel Ralph Wetterhahn have attempted to focus on those left behind on the battlefields of Cambodia.Perry Deane Young's "Two of the Missing" is a great account of the disappearance of his colleagues Sean Flynn and Dana Stone.Tim Page's "Requiem" provides a stunning memorial to the work of each of those photojournalists lost in Cambodia and his documentary "Danger at the Edge of Town" continues to provoke admiration, argument, and most importantly further investigation. ... Read more

Reviews (4)

5K stars, susan is incredible makes great tattoo's
i love her. i have never been so mesmerized by
an artist before. sure georgia o'keeffe, and more
but susan just because my favorite artist in the
past 4 yrs. i have several tattoos from the
goddess cards on my arms, which are connected.
i hope someone else writes a book about her
life, etc. ...

A must-have for any Susan Seddon Boulet afficionado
I've purchased several S.S.B. books in the past because I love her work, but I was frustrated with these books because they were exclusively picture books that revealed nothing about the artist herself or the life she was living.

I was also frustrated by their lack of artistic documentation found in the other S.S.B. books. I wanted to know so much more about Boulet and what inspired the images I was seeing (not to mention the dimensions and what -medium- and technique was being used to create them) and how they progressed over time.

This book -finally- provides all that, and then some. It's well written and beautifully printed with page after page of brilliantly colored and detailed pictures of Boulet's work.
This book ties these fantastic pictures of her work to the storyline of her life so that you can easily follow the progression and draw associations from what was going on in Boulet's life to what was going on with her art.

The reader gets to experience all the phases of Boulet's journey, watching her style and confidence unfold over the years, through her experiments with printmaking to the serendipitous ink spill that led to a crucial stylistic element emerging in her work.

The book never wavers, never flinches away from the reality of the story, even when it wanders into the sad and dark territory of Boulet's eventual decline from breast cancer.
The reader is allowed to explore with the artist the darker territory of the end of her life and view the transcendent imagery that manifested as a result.

There are a few small "irritations" that this book does indulge in, the prevalence for discussing pieces wildly out of order for example, or the fact that Susan's son was mentioned once or twice and then utterly forgotten as a major element in her life (even though she wrote extensively about how important motherhood was to her as a theme). But overall, I have to say that these idiosyncrasies are easy to forgive in light of the richness of the overall feast.

Everyone to whom I've shown this book, who is at all a fan of S.S.B's, has purchased their own copy and I can't leave it out on the table without people snatching it up and poring over it - I think that says it all.

A Comprehensive Review of the Artist and her Unique Talent
Susan Seddon Boulet - A Retrospective, by Michael Babock, beautifully recounts the life of an internationally-known Bay Area artist, while a well-chosen selection of her paintings and sketches documents the many changes in her style, her use of new techniques and materials and, ultimately,her inner struggle with the concepts of life, death and resurrection as she courageously battles the cancer that ultimately claimed her life in April of 1997.

Boulet, whose body of work numbers in excess of 3,000 pieces painted from 1970 through 1996, began to draw and paint at a very early age. In the 1970's, after her husband died, she began to blossom as an artist, and her work in the 1980's and 90's reflects her growing confidence in her own very personal vision and style.

Boulet was a consummate master at painting multiple layers and levels of detail that only reveal themselves as one looks at a painting over and over again. From the painting "Dreams", with its rich panoply of animals, fishes, and architectural details, to Penelope, with its dark overlay of emotion and reflection, the body of work chosen by the writer to reflect Susan the "person" is a wonderful companion to the thoughtful prose of the text.

Pomegranate Press, the publisher of the Retrospective, allows the author full license to capture Susan fully, as artist, visionary, personal friend, humorist and story-teller. This book, with its emphasis on portraying Boulet's magical touch at bringing the mundane and the spritual into proximity as they relect the human condition as well as the universal "inner landscape", will inspire and comfort those who knew and loved her, and those who loved - and love- her work.

Those who have only seen reproductions of her work through the many calendars and notecards that have been available for years through Pomegranate Press, will be thrilled by the clear, color-accurate reproductions in this book. A "must have" for all the lovers of the magical paintings of Susan Boulet.

One of the best unknown artists of our times
Having just received this book today I haven't had time to read it closely. All I can say in regards to my first look through this book though is "WOW!" I'd rate it far higher than a five-star if that were an option.

Having been a Susan Seddon Boulet fan for a few years, since discovering her calendars published by Pomegranate, I have eagerly awaited new books about her life and artwork. Out of all of them, which are all wonderful, this one is by far the best.

The book is a biography of Susan Seddon Boulet's life from her childhood to her death in 1997. It is much more than that, though. It is filled with full color pictures of her wonderful, fascinating artwork. It also includes excerpts from her journals and diaries and gives the reader a beautiful account of who she was.

Who was she? She is a visionary artist. Her artwork is dreamy and fairy-tale-like in many respects, but that doesn't mean it isn't bold and daring. Her artwork is something you have to experience to believe. It is powerful. It makes you want to know the mind, the person, the soul behind it. This book has it. ... Read more

Book Description

Peggy Guggenheim emerges in Mistress of Modernism as the ultimate self-invented woman, a cultural mover and shaker who broke away from her poor-little-rich-girl origins to shape a life for herself as the enfant terrible of the art world. Peggy's visionary Art of This Century gallery in New York, which brought together the European surrealist artists with the American abstract expressionists, was an epoch-shaking "happening" at the center of its time.
Dearborn's unprecedented access to the Guggenheim family, friends, and papers contributes rich insight to Peggy's traumatic childhood in German-Jewish "Our Crowd" New York, her self-education in the ways of art and artists, her caustic battles with other art-collecting Guggenheims, and her legendary sexual appetites: her lovers included Max Ernst, Samuel Beckett, and Marcel Duchamp, to name a mere few. Here too is a poignant portrait of Peggy's last years as l'ultima dogaressa -- the last duchess -- in her palazzo in Venice, where her collection still draws thousands of visitors every year.
Mistress of Modernism is the first definitive biography of a woman whose wit, passion, and provocative legacy come compellingly to life. ... Read more

Book Description

For five centuries, Leonardo da Vinci has stood alone as the quintessentialRenaissanceman—the incomparable artist, writer, thinker, and inventor who most powerfullytransformed his world. In this dazzling new intimate biography, award-winningauthorCharles Nicholl creates a portrait of the artist for our time—a biography thatbringsLeonardo to life as a complex man living in a fascinating, dangerous, quicklychangingworld.

Drawing freely on his own original translations of Leonardo’s notebooks as wellasnewly discovered contemporary accounts, Nicholl captures the very texture ofLeonardo’s mind and the pungent visceral impressions he transmuted into art.Detail bybrilliant detail, Nicholl reconstructs the life and times of the artist, fromhis troubledchildhood as the illegitimate son of an established Tuscan family to his yearsofapprenticeship in the burgeoning art world of Medici Florence to his unrivaledachievements in a breathtaking array of disciplines and media. Here, too, arecompellingnew answers to the enduring mysteries of Leonardo’s sexual orientation, the trueidentityof the Mona Lisa, and the early experiences that inspired his lifelong obsessionwithhuman flight.

A writer of irresistible charm and quicksilver imagination, Nicholl takes usfrom thebackstreet artists’ studios of Florence to the glittering palazzi of the Medici,Sforza, andBorgia families as he pursues the most extravagantly talented and maddeninglyelusiveartist of all time. The result is a biography of rare grace and penetration. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Somebody should have like, hipped an editor, Lord and Lady.
Like so many bios today, there's a good book in here somewhere. But as wrought, Dig Infinity is an absurdly long, poorly edited work. Oliver gets all kinds of facts wrong and is egregious when it comes to people's names (Preston STURGIS? CINDY Miller for Donald O'Connor's sidekick instead of SIDNEY Miller? And that's just two). What a shame that such a great subject and such obviously hard work have actually done the impossible...made Lord Buckley boring. The best way to read this book is to skip much of Trager's endless and repetitive analysis of his Lordship's work and just peruse the oral histories.

A most immaculately hip biography
Oliver Trager did such a fine and thorough job on _The American Book of the Dead_ that I had high hopes for his biography of the great Lord Buckley. It's even better than I expected.

Trager's approach is suited to his subject. Rather than write a straightforward biography -- which would be difficult in any case because there are so many unanswered and unanswerable questions -- Trager has opted to tell His Lordship's life story through a sort of montage of mostly oral history. For this purpose he has interviewed, apparently, just about every living person on this sweet swingin' sphere who knew the Hip Messiah or was directly influenced by him in some way, and supplemented the interviews with excerpts from articles and other sources.

This approach makes the book read a bit like an extended episode of "Biography," flipping back and forth between the interviewees' reminiscences and the author's comments. It's not at all hard to follow; Trager even uses a different typeface for his own comments so we can tell what's narrative and what's not, and each interviewee/writer is clearly named at the beginning of each excerpt. (Each is introduced the first time one of his or her comments appears. If you forget who somebody is, you can flip to the back of the book and look up his first appearance; there's a list.)

It's about time somebody did a biography of The Lord of Flip Manor, and Trager's approach is highly appropriate to his subject. For example, by telling the story through the voices of others, he's able to present all the conflicting theories about Buckley's mysterious death without having to decide which one is most likely to be true. And more generally, since so much of Buckley's persona was realized through his interactions with other people anyway, it's fitting to present his life through the responses he created in the people around him. (You'll be amazed at the people he's influenced. Some of them are pretty obvious -- Robin Williams, Captain Beefheart, and so forth. But James Taylor? I've been listening to him for thirty years and I'd never have guessed -- and yet there's a song on _New Moon Shine_ that quotes directly from "God's Own Drunk.")

If you're a Buckley fan, you'll enjoy Trager's book. If not . . . well, I don't really know how to explain to you who and what Lord Richard Buckley was. Was he an entertainer? A saint? A scoundrel? A bodhisattva? A con man? A raconteur? A shaman? A swindler? An evangelist? A shameless moocher? An artist? An agent of God? A prankster? A drunk?

Well, yeah.

Above all, His Lordship was a sweet cat who blew a solid ace lick, and the way to meet him -- really the only way -- is to hear him. The book includes a CD with lots of good stuff on it, including several of His Lordship's raps and snippets from an interview with Studs Terkel. If you want to buy (or already own) the CD _His Royal Hipness_ (which is a re-release of _The Best of Lord Buckley_ and, if I'm not mistaken, the only Buckley CD currently available), don't worry about redundancy: the only overlap is in the two selections "The Nazz" and "People," and even these are different recordings.

Also worthy of mention: a very thorough discography and bibliography, and a selection of hard-to-find photographs.

I'm surprised by other readers' comments about poor copyediting/proofreading. Sure, I spotted a handful of typos, misspellings, and such, but I didn't think it was an unusually high number. Most of them, unsurprisingly, are in the transcriptions of the oral interviews -- references to e.g. "Tom Leherer [sic]" and "Betty [sic] Davis" and that sort of thing. (Also, readers who know what "erstwhile" means will be amused at one or two points, notably the introductory remarks on former Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten.)

And I don't think the format looks "pasted together" at all; on the contrary, I think Trager has done a marvelous job combing through many, many hours of interviews and putting the bits into coherent order.

On the other hand, I have to admit that there are a few things that could have been better handled. For example, there are many references to Buckley's "hat trick" during the first portion of the book, but we don't find out what the "hat trick" actually _was_ until something like page 182. At least a topical index would have been helpful here (though frankly it's not a job I'd have cared to tackle).

It would also have been nice if, in summarizing Lord Buckley's influence on the world of literature, Trager had thought to mention Spider Robinson, who works a Buckley reference into just about every science fiction novel he writes and who has probably done more than anyone else to keep Buckley's influence alive among SF fandom.

But it's always possible to pick on little omissions with a work like this. Trager has made a massively successful effort on a monumental task -- a task that, for him, is clearly something between a labor of love and a vision quest. God swing him.

Great Subject--Poor Presentation
Lord Buckley certainly deserves to be the subject of at least one major study, and for that reason alone, we should be grateful "Dig Infinty" exists and we should thank its author for the public service he renders. But as the other reviewers here have indicated, the book itself is rather slapdash: it's poorly edited and highly repetitive. A shorter, more concentrated, and zippier text would have done much more work on Buckley's behalf. To this I must add that one of the bigger weaknesses of the book is the author's own miscalculation of Buckley in general. For the author, Buckley seems to provide some sort of acid test, a way of telling the cool from the uncool. And because of this overarching "hippie" ethos, Buckley becomes for the author a kind of "in" currency, a fetish if you will, something that can be traded and used as a sort of tool. Buckley, of course, was the antithesis of this "acid test" or "usefulness," and because of the author's own wish to use Buckley to portray his own insider's perspective, we have to wonder just how well the book portrays Buckley. In short, Buckley worked for inclusion, but the book falters in its purposeful stance on exclusion.

His Lordship deserves such fealty
A fascinating if disjointed study of the art [mostly] and life [not as much as one would wish, but it's tough to catch up with the detritus of vaudeville and walkathons] of one of the most original and most influential comedian/orators ever to grace a stage, a view that people ranging from George Harrison to David Bowie to Frank Zappa to Steve Allen to James Taylor to Lenny Bruce all shared. Anyone who hears Lord Buckley -- and there's a half-hour audio CD included with the book so you can sample his hipsemantic style -- has to become curious about the man himself. This book finally helps to explain, and paints a fan's-eye picture of a gone cat who sweetly and profoundly decided to regard everyone he met as a potential member of his own Royal Court. I start with five stars for the subject and dock it one for the overly repetitive and pasted-together oral-history format, which skips around too much for comfort, and for the publisher's lousy copyediting and proofreading job.

Lord Buckley Lives ! ! !
I have to give this book 5 stars on the subject alone. Its about time that someone sat down and took the time and effort to let Lord Buckley's story be told once again. - - I do have a problem with the narrative style of the book, but its probably moreso a matter of taste... Rather than telling the story, the author basically reprints one interview after another... and kinda pastes his sources together so Lord Buckley's story is told in the interviewee's own words... Many of these interviews come straight from the pages of magazines and radio interviews with people who knew him and they're strung together to create a sense of a coherent dialogue. The end result... some fascinating stories (I almost fell off the bed in laughter a few times... Lord Buckley's sick off stage pranks and antics often rivaled his actual act) but lot of repetition and choppy reading. I also felt that the author merely glanced over his childhood and evolution into the entertainment world, though in all fairness much of the information has probabably been lost to posterity. - - Overall, its a fascinating subject, the CD alone is worth the cost of the book... and the book really will pull you into Lord Buckley's sick world. - - Interviewees seem to include a cast of thousands... from Royal Court members to hiers of the legacy from the Rock and Roll and Comedy World... Move over Lenny Bruce, His Lordship is back ! ! !

CD includes some interviews by Studs Turkel, The Nazz, Murder, Ode to a Policeman... about 34 minutes... Well worth it ! - - ... Read more

Reviews (6)

I never get tired of this book.
I agree with the other reviewers' comments about the excellence of the Eichler homes and this book. I have many design books, but I keep coming back to this one and never tire of the clean, modern--but not cold--design. I wish Ditto, et al. would produce a video on the subject.

Eichler Homes : Design for living
As a little kid, growing up in Southern California in the 1950's, I admired these cool, streamlined houses. I wondered where, or who they came from. Now I know. They were Eichlers'. Or damn good Eichler clones. Whatever the case, this book does a good job showing this type of architecture. Plenty of great,crisp, photography.

A book to keep going back to again and again
I refer back to this book several times a year. It's a great introduction to Joseph Eichler and what he accomplished, through his ideal of a modern home for the masses. Some of the homes in this book are truly dream houses for any modern architecture fan. The book isn't full of photos dating from the late 50's/early 60's as one might expect - it's mostly later day photos of beautiful Eichler homes with excellent interior design. For me, this was the only weak point of the book, and why I couldn't give it five stars. I would have enjoyed seing more period photos of the homes, to try and see what the original owners saw when they purchased their homes. I realize that Jerry Ditto et al had to make a hard choice in this regard, and they chose to go with beautiful photos from the current day. After reading this book, you will yearn for your own Eichler, and wonder why more modern homes haven't been designed since. You'll see that Joseph Eichler and his ideas were 50 years ahead of their time, with many of the items found in his homes just now coming into play. A great book for any fan of modern single-dwelling architectue, and a must have for any Eichler owner.

The Definitive Eichler Book
If you are an Eichler fan, an Eichler owner, or are just interested in studying mid-century modern architecture built for the middle class, this book is a must-have. Filled with color photographs of many different Eichler homes in Northern and Southern CA, and drawings of layouts by architectural teams such as Anshen & Allen and Jones & Emmons, this book tells the story of Joseph Eichler as told by his son. I have actually never come across any other books on Eichler, so this is the one to have thus far.

Interesting read, wonderful photo's
If you enjoy this book, I would suggestthat you also check out "Palm Springs Modern"The aesthetics are very similar. ... Read more

Book Description

For more than a dozen years, an unassuming, quiet-spoken woman dominated Disney design. The stylishness and vibrant color of Disney films in the early 1940s through mid-1950s came primarily from artist Mary Blair. In her prime, she was an amazingly prolific American artist who enlivened and influenced the not-so-small worlds of film, print, theme parks, architectural decor, and advertising. At its core, her art represented joyful creativity and communicated pure pleasure to the viewer.Her exuberant fantasies brimmed with beauty, charm, and wit, melding a child's fresh eye with adult experience. Blair's personal flair comprised the imagery that flowed effortlessly and continually formore than a half a century from her brush. Emulated by many, she remains inimitable: a dazzling sorceress of design and color. ... Read more

Reviews (8)

Most influential Disney artist a woman?? Yes!
As a woman illustrator and designer in the entertainment industry, and having grown up with Disney, I was stunned and thrilled to learn about Mary Blair! How did this amazing talent remain so obscure? I graduated from a prestigious art/design school that was right next door to Choinard where Mary attended in Los Angeles, and I work in the same field, and none of us (fellow graduates or work collegues) had ever heard of her! What a shame! All of my life I'd floated through and