Renzo Piano Building Workshop - Volume 3 (Renzo Piano Building Workshop)

Customer Reviews:

Volume 2...not detailed...nor in depth...in between book.......2006-03-09

As much as I like Renzo Piano's works, he can learn something from Norman Foster to properly produce his set of books. These 4 editions are nice size (not heavy like Foster's) so you can bring to your job site or office if you want to show some examples. However, each building is not well documented. the plans have no measurements or too small to read, no scale, and the details are not complete enough. Simply, there are no coherent base of each buildings. Furthermore, the different editions sometimes cover the same building (ex.edition 3 covers Kansai Airport (perhaps too much), but it is also covered in edition 2.

Edition 2 seems to be a compilation of his works from the 80's but it is very difficult to figure out what exactly this book want to focus on. I recommend that Renzo Piano redo this whole editions of which he deserves.

Very, very enjoyable set of books.......2002-01-07

As a set this is a great achievement. The books are wonderfully produced with glorious photography, lots of drawings and sketches (both of larger structures and details), stylish typography and a clear, rhythmic page layout. It's a genuine feast to the eye. However, I was slightly disappointed by the first volume's first section, in which Buchanan sets the scene for all that is to follow by providing us some conceptual and genealogical background on Piano's art. Buchanan's lead essay is repetitive, diffuse, conceptually thin and strays too far from the substance of Piano's architectural practice. The section on the 'spirit of the workshop' is really a missed opportunity: instead of a detailed picture of the collaborative dynamics in this complex environment, we get a rather glossy account of Piano's role of 'scout, actor and editor' in the design process. The pages on 'early influences' again are rather sketchy, with brief references to a series of mentors and to the role of the Genuese cityscape on Piano's mental map. From then on the book takes wing: I was grateful for the inclusion of the work in the early Studio Piano, the Piano & Rogers venture (Pompidou Centre) and particularly of the fancyful, but fascinating experiments in the Piano and Rice period. It gives us an idea of the rather exploratory journey Piano had behind him by the time the Building Workshop was established (he was 44 then). Volume I then goes on to document the early years of the workshop. Generally this represents an inconspicuous beginning: we see a lot of fine craftsmanship but there is relatively little that takes your breath away in terms of architectural vision. Compared to the later designs, we see a modesty that is approachable, refreshing and invites careful study. With its mix of full page photographs and thumbnail pictures, sketches and plans, colours and greytones the book never tires. And this applies to the whole series. A laudable example of serious and effective book design! As a whole I have no reservations in recommending this set to anyone remotely interested in contemporary architecture.

Each Volume is SUPERB!.......2001-08-27

...This book along with the previous volume are Fabulous!. Great photo's/details/extensive information about each and every project. Bravo Peter on a great series. Volume 3, is a bit iffy. Even though it continues with the tradition of the other Volumes, it devotes approx half the book towards the kansai airport (which im not particularly fond of). Volume 4 is on the list, those of you in OZ already know about Auora Apartments, an apartment building designed as only the Piano Workshop know how. I'm glad the Piano virus has made its way to Down Under.....Lets just hope its catching! - Check it out.

What else would you expect........2001-08-27

What else would you expect.....a book full of fabulous buildings/details and information bound to inspire ANY student or architect. If your not inspired don't mention your name along with architecture in the same sentence. Truely a GREAT MASTER of the 20th and 21st Centuries.

AMAZING BOOK.......2000-07-26

When we talk about prices we should have in consideration that this is a high quality book for a little price, i think is really cheap. Advice: if you like Renzo Piano recent work, just buy it!

Customer Reviews:

A kick-start for watercolor artists!.......1998-08-23

This book is a celebration of color and the watercolor medium. Turning the pages is like watching a fabulous fireworks display. Each page reveals another explosion of beautiful color painting. Like fireworks, some paintings go off with a huge bang, and others are more muted; but each painting has something to say -- there are no "duds." Helpful comments by the artists give insight as to how and why each painting was done. If you're an artist looking for inspiration, this book can really give you a whack in the side of the head that will send you running to your paints. Even if you're not an artist, you'll enjoy the gorgeous colors and wide, wild variety of subjects and techniques. An astonishing book and well worth the price.

Book Description

Acclaimed as the definitive volume on Kline, this book provides firsthand accounts of his Bohemian life and powerful work.

Franz Kline spent years struggling to find a style for himself and then achieved "overnight success" with his dramatic black and white abstractions. They were, in fact, so successful that they overwhelmed every other aspect of Kline's art, and as a result he has been oversimplified and underestimated. Now, after nearly twenty years of research, Harry F. Gaugh has written the definitive volume on Kline, which provides the first comprehensive view of his life and work, and reveals how unexpectedly complex they both were.

Using interviews and correspondence with dozens of Kline's friends and critics, and quoting from the artist's own letters, the author has created an evocative portrait of Kline's evolution from an ambitious art student in Boston and London to a penniless Greenwich Village artist painting murals in bars just to pay the rent, and finally to a mature artist in command of his own unique and hard-won style. Kline made his initial, admittedly modest, reputation as a figurative artist, and rare photographs of that early work--sketches from life-drawing class, portraits of Nijinsky, scenes of the Pennsylvania countryside--offer an intriguing background for his later paintings. Not until his late thirties did Kline begin to develop an abstract mode, working his way through a series of strikingly dissimilar styles. Dr. Gaugh illuminates how talent, training, experimentation, the influence of fellow artists, and pure chance interacted to yield the famous black and white abstractions. When he died in 1962, Kline had begun exploring the potential of vibrant color, and the vivid full-color reproductions of his late paintings make poignantly clear how much the art world lost with his death at the relatively young age of fifty-one.

With its detailed yet thoroughly readable text and 170 illustrations (many never before published) this comprehensive volume brings to light much new information about Kline and enriches the reader's appreciation and understanding of his art. Ê Other Details: 170 illustrations, 70 in full color. 9 x 11" trim size. First published 1985.

Customer Reviews:

Complete Kline.......2007-05-06

This book is a very complete and enlightening survey of Kline's art. The author chronogically covers all the aspects of the artist's oeuvre and, though it was written some 22 years ago, this publication is a must-have for anyone interested in the abstract expressionist movement. Many major paintings are thoroughly described, the text quotes many friends of Kline's (dealers and critics)stating previously unpublished opinions and is a rich trove of information.

The illustrations are unfortunately not as good as they would have been had the book been published more recently, which is why I do not give it 5 stars.

A COMPELLING STUDY.......2002-04-12

Franz Kline (1910 - 1962), surely one of the most individual artists, began as a representational painter, focusing largely on landscapes. It was in the latter 1940s that he began his landmark exploration of abstractionism, achieving plaudits with his black and white presentations.

Art historian and teacher Dr. Harry Gaugh spent some two decades researching the life and work of Kline. This amazing volume is testament to his study. "Franz Kline" holds over 170 illustrations and a fascinating account of the life of this landmark artist who died far too young at 51 years of age.

Dr. Gaugh utilizes interviews and correspondence (including Kline's personal letters) to offer a vivid picture of the artist as a student in Boston and London , then later as a part of Greenwich Village where he executed bar murals to keep the wolf from the door.

Kline's development as an artist is a compelling study, and an evocation of an important time in our cultural history.

- Gail Cooke

Book Description

Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead is a pop culture icon. Born in underground comix, the surrealist character is now one of the most recognizable characters on the newspaper pages, and is currently in production as an animated series to debut on the Showtime Network in 2002. Syndicated since 1986 by King Features, Zippy is read in over 200 newspapers seven days a week. Zippy's trademark non-sequitur, "Are we having fun yet?" has become so often-repeated that it is now in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. His likeness was graphittied on the former Berlin Wall, while Dan Akroyd is rumored to have created his Saturday Night Live characters, the Coneheads, after seeing Zippy for the first time.

With Zippy Annual 2001 (a.k.a. "Z2K1"), all of Griffith's hilarious strips from 2000 and 2001 are collected into one place to guide us into the 21st Century. Millennium fever never seemed so, well, absurd. Frivolity is a stern taskmasker, and these brilliant black-and-white dailies and color Sundays (Griffith is a master of color and the printing process of the newspaper page) spotlight Griffith's inimitably existential and surreal sense of humor. "Bill Griffith's nationally syndicated Zippy continually streaches the intellectual bounds of the daily newspaper strip," writes the San Francisco Examiner. Plus, it's damn funny.

Customer Reviews:

Zippy + Griffy = Irrational + Rational America...........2001-02-06

....you probably have to be in the quanta to get it.

Zippy is more or less an insane borderline type creation who digs yellow muu-muus with red-orange polka dots and has a penchant for empty calories like in Ding-Dongs and on the road icons like Big-Boy and the Doggie Head. He often spews forth some kinda jibberish that seems non-sequitur and contrary to Griffy's many rantings about America's loss of innocence, America's excesses, and America's pop trash.

These comic strips turn out to be the ultimate in a hip experience without doing something illegal. I have notice these wordless strips of Zip going thru some kinda mind trip and right a few days afterwards Griffy does the same--is Griffy becoming insane like Zippy? Or is everybody else raising to Zip's level of awareness? Who's to say?

But these observations of America are scathing--in fact, "The Simpsons" does the same type of satire, but, of course in its later years, it has lost something. Not so, "Zippy". Griffith pokes fun about selling out to Hollywood and franchising Pinhead muu-muus and cutie beanie baby dolls for mass consumption. He also 'one-ups' film makers like the Coens who does small town America well...he rants about bumperstickers and baseball caps worn backwards and pickup trucks with rifle racks and old men having meaningless discussions over coffee in diners and tee shirts covered with meaningless messages and ketchup.

They started out in the 60's Underground. I began to notice Zip/Griff in those stacks of my older brother's comics (my older bros and sis were bohemian types--not exactly hippies and not exactly leftists) where I also noticed a lot of R. Crumb, "Fat Freddy's Cat", etc, etc...Then in the 80's they started showing up in mainstream daily newpaper strips. I was, like, "Woah, man...the world's catchin' up with the counterculture." Nope. What happened is the counterculture became sophisticated and intelligent and began reaching to higher standards. The rest of America in the 80's had become better looking but dumber. Remember...?

And "Zippy" captured that. And it still does. Read for yourself and tell me that America has not been lampooned well by "Zippy"...and the all the other characters in their flights of fancy and crazy and sharp witted observations.

A triumph of comic art.......2000-08-18

These last two years have been a high point in Bill Griffith's productivity, and it is good to be reminded of it. Rather than a chronological arangement, as was the case with the earlier Zippy Quarterlies, this is set out by "subject area;" Zippy and Griffy, Zippy by himself, diner conversations, etc. Another helpful feature is an annotation section, giving references to the subject matter of the strips.

Griffith is a lover of roadside icons such as the endangered Doggie Diner head, and refers to them often. For example, I had seen an "Octopus Car Wash" in Madison, WI, and was interested to note that he had seen one in Milwaukee. I'd be interested in knowing how many franchises are in this chain, as I can imagine these icons gradually disappearing.

Not every strip of the past two years has been included; for example, one of my favorites (from Jan. 14, 2000) in which the Doggie tells Zippy "We've lost the war," and sheds a single tear as he describes the humiliation of being put on exhibit in a museum, is missing. Nevertheless, many little treasures are to be seen, and I for one will be revisiting this volume over and over again.

ZIPPY ANNUAL! ZIPPY ANNUAL! ZIPPY ANNUAL!.......2000-08-12

The ZIPPY ANNUAL is another great compilation of weekday/Sunday Zippy strips from the papers that carry them. These strips are unlike anything else festering and gathering dust on the comic pages today (yes I mean BLONDIE and BEETLE and HAGAR, etc.). These are truly unique and, seriously, should be revered and cherished by people who demand more than simple punchlines.

Amazon.com

In The Amateur Wendy Lesser marries two literary forms, autobiography and essay, with remarkable results. True to the spirit of the critical essay, she discusses any number of subjects in a profound and analytical way; yet in the course of reflecting on, say, vocabulary or philanthropy or dance lessons, she imparts a vivid portrait of the woman behind the ideas. Consider, for example, how Lesser bounces between intellect and slapstick. An examination of the relationship between critics and artists in "Passionate Witness" ("When you attach yourself to a cherished artist, as I have attached myself to Mark Morris, you cede to that artist a certain portion of your own intellectual development. You are not just the learned critic, commenting on the work, you are also the novice, being molded by that work") gives way to a wacky tale of high art and low comedy in "A Night at the Opera"--complete with stomach cramps, a visit to the aid station, and an eye-opening introduction to behind-the-scenes doings that rivals any drama being enacted on the stage. Over the course of 24 essays a picture gradually emerges of all the phases of Wendy Lesser's life in the world and of the mind.

Whether she's discussing her disastrous affair with a young Englishman during her postgraduate years at Cambridge, the poet Thom Gunn, or her cat, Ralph ("I had a cat without a nose"), Lesser does so with intelligence, humor, and deep insight. Reading her is something like having a conversation with an old friend--that delightful sense of kinship even when you disagree. --Alix Wilber

Book Description

The Amateur is an inquiry into how we discover our passions and how they discover us. "I am very conscious," writes Wendy Lesser, one of our shrewdest cultural observers, "of having made choices in my life. You can't plan how the choices will turn out. But you can certainly make them." In The Amateur Lesser explores some of the choices she has made in pursuit of an old-fashioned but indispensable vocation: an independent life of letters. She discusses the place--California--in which she grew up; the institutions-- Harvard, Cambridge, Berkeley--where she received her formal education; the writers, artists, and performers who deepened her critical understanding; and, finally, the literary journal she founded, The Threepenny Review, which she still edits and publishes out of the Berkeley apartment in which it began nearly twenty years ago.

Lesser describes both the events in her own life and those she has witnessed on stage, screen, canvas, and paper, noting noting how both experience and art teach us to observe, to discriminate, and to make sense of one another. Written with her trademark intelligence, quiet wit, and elegance, The Amateur is a beguiling work of autobiography.

Customer Reviews:

Not very interesting.......2003-05-28

The author's observations are simply not very interesting, and her life is rather blase, although she, herself, finds it endlessly fascinating. She strikes me as a wait-to-talk, rather than listen-and-respond, luncheon companion.

Lesser is More.......2002-06-09

Only a sourpuss could dislike this engaging, enlightening and well-crafted autobiography by Threepenny Review's founder and editor, Wendy Lesser. In two dozen essays, we not only learn about the great obstacles inherent in starting a literary journal, we see how Lesser developed as a reader and observer. This is a delightful read filled with Lesser's wonderful observations on love, art and publishing. I highly recommend this book.

a different approach to the essay.......2001-01-17

Wendy Lesser has written an engaging book or half-critical, half-personal essays, a form that has gone out of style. She should be commended for reinvigorating it.

A disappointing, unengaging autobiography.......2000-05-04

The Amateur: An Independent Life of Letters by Wendy Lesser is a semi-autobiographical book of short essays. The chapters are in a loosely chronological order, only some pertaining directly to the author's life and career path; the others are simply essays on topics that interest the author. The confusing format of the book -- part memoir and part essay collection -- is a macrocosm for what is wrong with not only the book as a whole but the writing in particular. The book follows no plan or path, and arrives at no ultimate destination, fitting neither genre snugly. Moreover, the essays themselves are unfulfilling, leaving out much detail and ending or changing direction abruptly, neither satisfying as a group nor as individual pieces.

The cardinal rule for writing an autobiography is that the author should have led an interesting life that the reader will want to learn and read about. This is the first major problem with Wendy Lesser's book. She has written about her life and no doubt her close friends and relatives will enjoy reading about it, but I did not. She is a native Californian daughter of divorced parents who was educated in the lofty surroundings of Radcliffe College and in the company of some illustrious classmates (most notably Benazir Bhutto, the future president of Pakistan, whom she then affectionately called "Pinkie"). After college she spent time as a consultant to various liberal and governmental organizations advising them on the more esoteric aspects of social justice policy. She finally found her calling as a writer and editor, and has published several books, in addition to founding and editing The Threepenny Review, a literary journal. I'm not sure why, but I found myself saying repeatedly to myself, as I read this woman's memoirs, "Who cares?" It may be that Lesser focused too much on the details of her life that would have been more appropriate in a journal, while ignoring the more interesting bits. I would have liked to have read more about the genesis and life of her publication, The Threepenny Review, rather than about her childhood, her hobbies, her self-admittedly insignificant consulting career, and her opinions about culture.

Lesser's writing on any one subject, whether it interested me or not, lacked cohesion and sometimes even a point. Her sentences were often abrupt and choppy, and lacked explanation. For instance, in describing her college days at Radcliffe, she whets the reader's appetite with her mention of "Pinkie" Bhutto, initially describing her as "innocently giggly and high-spirited," and later "brassily ditzy, bubble-brained," but then says "long after I had ceased to see her, she all at once dropped the mask and became a serious, wily politician, her father's rightful heir. The change seemed sudden; yet if you had asked me, even as a freshman, to guess who among my acquaintance would eventually become a world-famous political figure, I would not have hesitated to answer, 'Pinkie Bhutto.'" And there she ends her narrative, leaving me asking, "Why did you think that?" That is a question I found myself asking repeatedly throughout her book.

Another failing of Lesser's writing is that it seems not to have been edited all that well -- a supreme irony since Lesser's main claim to fame is that she is an editor -- and many times I was left to wonder why she included certain sentences or whole passages, since they made no sense to me. I found myself writing "What? and Huh?" in the margins a lot, when for instance she described a boyfriend's studio thusly: "The smell of the place was close and oppressive, as if several pairs of sexually active old shoes and socks had been closeted together for weeks." What does this mean? Another egregious error in editing comes as she inadvertently draws a metaphor for her own inept writing, when she writes: "For a year or two I had been writing monthly book reviews for a local organ called the San Francisco Review of Books, which ranged in quality from the somewhat interesting to the truly atrocious (ranged within each issue, I mean). She probably meant that the books ranged from somewhat interesting to truly atrocious, but her misuse of syntax makes this sentence mean that her reviews ranged in quality. Unforgivable for a self-styled wordsmith to write this way, and even less forgivable for a self-proclaimed editor not to have caught the mistake. Moreover, the author seems not to grasp the basic Strunk and White rule about when to use "I" or "me," which she bungles on the very first page of her book and again in the second chapter.

Finally, Lesser has a truly annoying habit of assuming information in referring to certain literary or artistic works in a shorthand way that makes the reader seem ignorant if their significance does not leap to mind. She also is a name-dropper, a pretension that is unnecessarily belittling to the reader. I do not recommend reading The Amateur, precisely because its title holds the key to why it was so poorly written.

Most engaging........1999-05-12

I found these essays delightful. I admire intensely the creative path the author has taken in her life, and I find her writing most engaging. This book may be of special interest to those who like to read about a writer's literary passions.

Book Description

Tomorrow The Train is a travel memoir of an incredible journey to the world record on rail travel. Mona Tippins set out alone to break the Guinness World Record. Her journeys took her through thirty-three countries. The twenty-seven chapters of this book reveal some of the adventures she experienced along the way. She was robbed, beaten, and chased by drug addicts. More than once she was mistaken for a prostitute, a spy and a beggar. She traveled 79,841 unduplicated miles. Mona broke the record in February 1997, and was listed in the 1998 Guinness Book of World Records.

Customer Reviews:

Fascinating Travel Memoir.......2007-02-01

TOMORROW THE TRAIN is a riveting memoir of Ms. Tippins' rail travel to thirty-three countries. Although her intent was to break the Guinness World Record, which she did in 1997 traveling 79,841 unduplicated miles, all on her own, she also crafted a colorful memoir of her fascinating experiences. The author acquaints the reader to each countries' peoples, customs, points of interest, their idiosyncracies, thiefs, drug addicts, gypsies, beggers, and everyday normal people. Exotic names like The Chopin Express and Poland, The Glacier Express and Switzerland, The Artic Circle and the Scandinavians, The Trans-Siberian Railway: Moscow to Vladivostok,and many, many more are some of the rail lines Ms. Tippins ventured into courageously. She experienced snowstorms and floods, trouble in Berlin, crossing to Great Britain, over the Irish Sea, the long way to Spain. Crossing the Gila River at Coolidge, Arizona she came to the Gila Indian Reservation, onto New Mexico's "Face of Cochise" a mountaintop resembling a giant face, across the Continental Divide, down to Texas and into Mexico, among other places, too many to list here. All these places have a story, which Ms. Tippins writes about eloquently. Travel books are a wonderful way to vicariously experience other countries and this book fits the bill. Buy this book and "see" the world.

Book Description

With many colourful anecdotes and vivid descriptions, this is the first authentic account of daily life at Government Communications Headquarters, Bletchley Park, the most successful intelligence agency in history. Described by Churchill as the 'secret weapon' that 'won the war', the men and women of Bletchley Park here combine to write their story in full. This book gives fascinating insights into recruitment and training, together with a full and accurate account of codes and ciphers and how they are broken.

Customer Reviews:

narrativ collection, mixed quality and coverage.......2005-10-31

like some other reviewers, this wasn't what i was expecting, but i was reasonably pleased with what i found. this book is a series of narratives by various people who worked at GC&CS (later to become CGCHQ) and Bletchley Park during WWII. their stories typically recount how they were recruited, their nervousness, and their most memorable moments. some authors describe how the codebreaking operations worked, including some of the machinery, which itself was fascinating.

the whole book isn't all cryptographers and code breakers, some of it is written by WRNS (or Wrens, young women in the naval reserves) who assisted the operation. and not all contributions were truly seen as positive, the final story describes a woman who left feeling as though she had contributed little to shortening the war.

it's good that there are multiple perspectives, although some of the overlap in the tales gets a bit frustrating. still, the length of the typical piece means that the story is over before it drags on too long, and others you wish went on longer.

the organization is good, the stories are arranged to slowly immerse you into the work and the world of Bletchley Park in the war.

the book doesn't just cover engma operations at BP, it includes some tales of field operations (which sounded quite daring and thrilling), and some work to crack japanese naval codes (the last section focuses on this).

probably best in conjunction with an official history. lots of good references are listed in the book, and some nice diagrams to contribute to the technical side of things.

The Secret Weapon That Won The War.......2004-03-10

After a long period of silence, many books about the accomplishments of Allied forces in breaking the codes and ciphers of German, Italian and Japanese forces in World War II have been published over the last twenty years. Most of these books have been either written by one of the individuals who worked on a few of the specific enemy codes, or an editor who crafted a story by interviewing a number of people who were part of the Allied code breaking effort. Unlike most of other books on the subject, Code Breakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park is a collection of 30 first hand accounts about the daily grind and life at Bletchley Park and its outstations written by different individuals who worked there during WWII.

First, a little background about the subject of the book for those who may not be familiar the British code breaking activities in WWII. Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), the British organization responsible for intercepting and decoding foreign communications, was moved from London to Bletchley Park shortly before the start of WWII to provide a safer location. Bletchley Park (BP) started as a small operation with less than 100 people in 1939. By the end of the war, BP had broken almost all enemy ciphers and codes, including the formidable German mechanical encryption machines Enigma and Fish, and intercepted and decoded thousands of critical enemy messages that changed the course of the war. During this process, the headcount Bletchley Park had grown to more than seven thousand including some of the leading mathematicians in the world like Alan Turing.

Code Breakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park gives as a cross section of the different kinds of people who worked at BP between 1939 to 1945. We learn about how they were recruited, what they worked on, how they attacked the problems, how they felt and what the general atmosphere was like.

The Old Vets Gather for a Last Hurrah.......2001-09-19

When the gag order was finally lifted circa 1970 on the Bletchley Park operations, a lot of scientific, historical, and technical histories appeared. And there was a great hue and cry among military and political historians that the whole history of the British and American war against Hitlerian Germany would have to be rewritten. Well, much of that has been proven to be just hyperbole but it is generally agreed that the war was shortened by about two years. But the closer the Allies got to Germany the less role Bletchley played for the German forces used landlines for most strategic communications from mid 1944 on. Also they had another machine known as FISH which was not as easily read as Enigma. This book is a collection of personal narratives of life at Bletchley and how tedious most of the work there was, no matter how essential. Harry Hinsley, one of the authors, was a "whiz kid" recruited directly from university and after the war became a professor without ever completing his studies. Over the years he has written the monumental multivolume official history of British intelligence operations in WW II and many historical papers. Alan Stripp, was one of the original operatives and served for many years.

Not really what I'd expected.......2001-06-26

When I purchased this book I expected a coherent study of what Bletchley Park was like during its WWII heyday. I knew that its contents were derived from the collected input of a number of people who were at Bletchley at that time. It is actually a collection of short essays by these people. Each has a slightly different theme and focus. Some of the essay were quite interesting, but over all, I did not come away with any kind of coherent understanding of how Bletchley Park operated, what it was like to work there, etc. I wish there had been an over-arching narrative to tie the pieces together.

Lots of good info; some topics missing.......2001-01-11

This book is a set of essays by people who actually worked at Bletchley Park during World War II, and describes in some detail what they did. Much of it is dry reading. That's because real cryptology is mostly dry work; months of boredom interrupted by moments of joy or chagrin. For those who care about World War II cryptology this is a "must read," but read either the 1967 or the 1996 edition of David Kahn's "The Codebreakers" first; otherwise, some of this book won't make much sense, for lack of context.

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Australian Journal of Politics and History, published by University of Queensland Press on March 1, 2002. The length of the article is 637 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Codebreakers: the Inside Story of Bletchley Park. (Book Reviews). (book review)
Author: Paul Crook
Publication: The Australian Journal of Politics and History (Refereed)
Date: March 1, 2002
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Volume: 48 Issue: 1 Page: 134(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

Codebreakers : The Inside Story of Bletchley Park

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Codebreakers : The Inside Story of Bletchley Park
Alan (editor); Hinsley, F. H. (editor) Stripp
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OKBEZG

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Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park
F.H. And ALAN STRIPP (ed.) HINSLEY
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OLBKM2

Customer Reviews:

Mr. Davis delivers again!.......2004-08-13

Mr. Davis' well-earned reputation for writing excellence on the War Between the States shows yet again in this treatise on the early days of the Confederacy, the REAL reasons for secession, and the personalities who played pivotal roles in the birth of this brief-lived nation. If you get the chance to hear Mr. Davis lecture on this subject at a Civil War Round Table meeting, go. His speaking skills are as exceptional as his writing.

Confederate government in Montgomery.......2004-08-04

William C."The writing Machine" Davis has a very readable style that is so fluid you read without realizing it! He is a very interesting writer in that he brings color to history. Davis performs wonderfully on describing the factions existing within the legislative congress that created the confederacy. He draws from the letters of a great deal of the political giants of the provisional Confederate government and also uses a chronological approach to portray events of the creation of the Confederate government in Montgomery, Alabama. He concentrates mostly on the legislative events in the first few months of 1861; although, he descriptively and almost in detail paints a verbal portrait of the view of Montgomery. This book is definitely a good buy for someone wishing to learn about the Southern Confederate Constitutional convention!

Well-written account of founding of Confederate Government.......1997-04-25

I read this book this past year not having anything more than a general idea of Confederate history although I am a lawyer and very interested in U.S. constitutional legal history. I thought Prof. Davis did an excellent job of telling the story of the people and political forces which resulted ultimately in the writing and issuance of the Confederate Constitution. Davis's writing style is engaging, fast paced yet informative. The story "flowed," and the book was a "page turner." I felt he "got inside the head" of the principals of whom he wrote. I found that I particularly liked and was interested and intrigued by the figure of Alexander Stevens ("Little Aleck"). Davis's book made me want to read more about the Confederacy and about this remarkable Southern politician who served as the South's vice president

Book Description

This edited collection brings together the latest research into the range of sports known as football . With contributions by a large number of the leading international researchers in the field, the book aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice in football, and to raise the awareness of the value of a scientific approach to the various football codes.
The book contains nearly seventy papers, examining aspects ranging from match analysis and medical aspects of football to metabolism and nutrition, psychology and behaviour, and management and organization. Containing a wealth of research data, and a huge range of examples of how science can be applied; this book represents an invaluable reference for coaches, trainers, managers, medical staff, and all those involved in supporting performers in the many football codes.

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