Hong Kong Apothecary: A Visual History of Chinese Medicine Packaging

Book Description

Hong Kong Apothecary transports us to the exotic world of Eastern medicine, a world of oils, powders, pills, and cures for every known ailment from impotency to opium addiction. As peculiar as pink pills for pale people are the packages containing these medicaments. Author Simon Go has combed manufacturers , shops, and home medicine cabinets for years collecting the most compelling examples. the result is a visual cabinet of curiosities, a graphical pharmacopoeia.
Divided by type such as ointments, herbal teas, infused oils Hong Kong Apothecary presents the fascinating graphics and tantalizing descriptions of hundreds of medicines and gives us an insight into Chinese customs afforded only by examining the artifacts and customs of everyday life. many of these medicines are no longer produced, making Hong Kong Apothecary a memoir of a quickly disappearing culture.
This lavishly illustrated book is of interest as much for designers seeking inspiration in the unknown vernacular of commercial graphics as for anyone interested in Eastern medicine.

Customer Reviews:

A master class in practical packaging.......2006-08-27

I was drawn to this book originally for all of the fascinating stories it told about traditional Chinese medicine, but I became increasingly interested in what it had to say about different ways of packaging.

Packaging, in its simplest expression, is little more than a wrapper. As shown throughout Hong Kong Apothecary, good packaging can deliver so much more - a brand promise, a visual guide to the product, a sense of the genuine.

Regardless whether or not you "believe" in Chinese medicine or not, this book will reveal new ideas for how to deliver products of all sorts, and will give you a sense of how much more interesting packaging can be when its primary job is to tell a story.

(It doesn't hurt that the book itself is beautifully designed!)

For anyone who has wondered "what's in all of those little drawers" in the apothecaries featured in classic kung fu flicks, this should also be a big help.

A very original book on a common household item.......2005-01-05

Hong Kong Apothecary is a very entertaining read. As a Chinese-American, I grew up around different Chinese medicines and remedies all my life. But I didn't know that there was so much history, success, and scandal behind them until I found this book. Until I saw all the different designs together in one book, I didn't appreciate the intricate designs of medicine packaging either. I get nostalgic looking at some of these photographs. I say to myself, 'Hey! I've used this medicine before!' It's a fun book to read through and the designs make for very inspirational reference material.

A GREAT & BEAUTIFUL BOOK!.......2003-09-26

As a history buff with an interest in packaging and pharmaceutical history, I was enthralled by this book. With a beautiful layout and interesting text, this book taught me a ton about Chinese medicine and provided hours of entertaining reading.

Book Description

Snow babies appeal not only to Christmas enthusiasts, but to collectors of dolls, figurines, and miniatures. Principally manufactured in Germany in the early part of this century, these tiny grouted figures decorated cakes in England and mantel pieces in the United States. Today they are avidly sought by collectors, who still use them to create little winter scenes. This carefully researched and documented book explores the origins of snow babies. (Were they created to honor Marie Peary, the daughter of Admiral Peary and the first white baby born in Northern Greenland?) The collection of 700 color photographs, the largest ever published, displays exquisite all-white pieces and the smaller action snow babies. It also introduces the reader to the rare blue and pink snow pieces. Included are chapters on bisque Santas (over 150 of them), elves, dwarves, snowmen, buildings, animals, and other pieces that are collected and displayed with snow babies. A rarity scale and price guide are included.

Customer Reviews:

The "Bible" for Snowbabies.......2002-09-12

This is an excellent reference book. I have used it for years to help me date, identify, and price older snowbabies. There are many color pictures, all of which are clear and sharp. Good descriptions. Easy to follow price list. If you collect older snowbabies you will want to own this book. Watch Mary Morrison's website for a new book that she will be publishing. As good as this one is I am looking forward to the next one.

Snow Babies, Santas and Elves: Collecting Christmas Bisque Figures

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Snow Babies, Santas and Elves: Collecting Christmas Bisque Figures
Mary Morrison
Manufacturer: Schiffer Publishing, Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MHN3WS

Book Description

Tired of flipping from one program to another, using FreeHand to design graphics and Flash to animate them and publish them to the Web? Macromedia Flash MX FreeHand 10 Studio streamlines the process by letting you use FreeHand and Flash in tandem, from one interface, to create professional vector-based graphics and export them to print or the Web. And you don't have to pick up two separate books to learn how to do it, either. Macromedia Flash MX FreeHand 10: Advanced Training from the Source is an accessible, hands-on tour of how to use FreeHand to augment and enhance Flash.

With Macromedia Flash MX FreeHand 10: Advanced TFS, you learn by doing. Each lesson focuses on one real-world project that uses components of FreeHand and Flash, showing both what you can do with the programs and exactly how to do it. The opening lessons give you a solid foundation in the basics: how to combine text and graphics, work with paths and points, use layers and styles, and prepare files for print or the Web. From there, learn how to drag and drop illustrations from FreeHand to Flash--maintaining symbols and layers--and then instantly publish them to the Flash Player. The accompanying CD-ROM contains all the files you need to complete each project, plus final versions with which you can compare your own results.

Customer Reviews:

Superb Art and Story From Greatest 20th C Adventure Comic.......2005-05-06

This collection of newspaper comic strips form the October 1943 - April 1944 continuity. Flight Officer Terry is now a busy fighter pilot since an Axis spy, the notorious Sanjak from the 1938 continuity, is feeding information to the Japanese and the beautiful Grett Murmer, secretary to a team of Chinese financial experts, is in deadly danger. Taffy Tucker, Colonel Corkin's romance interest, learns the secret of French pilot Capt. Midi and the result is a duel between P-40s. Terry then leaves China for India, where he runs into the notorious adventuress Burma. Burma is still on the run from the British authorities and Terry trails her to a remote kingdom whose police chief, Singh-Singh, is Pat Ryan's one-time opponent, as is Mrs Singh, née Cheery Blaze.

Episode 19 of this classic comic strip is another highly enjoyable adventure with superb plotting, amusing characterization, and excellent art. Milton Caniff, the most influential artist of the comic strip, is at the top of his form. Highly recommended!

Book Description

The Rhine River is Europeís most important commercial waterway, channeling the flow of trade among Switzerland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. In this innovative study, Mark Cioc focuses on the river from the moment when the Congress of Vienna established a multinational commission charged with making the river more efficient for purposes of trade and commerce in 1815. He examines the engineering and administrative decisions of the next century and a half that resulted in rapid industrial growth as well as profound environmental degradation, and highlights the partially successful restoration efforts undertaken from the 1970s to the present.

The Rhine is a classic example of a 'multipurpose' river -- used simultaneously for transportation, for industry and agriculture, for urban drinking and sanitation needs, for hydroelectric production, and for recreation. It thus invites comparison with similarly over-burdened rivers such as the Mississippi, Hudson, Colorado, and Columbia. The Rhineís environmental problems are, however, even greater than those of other rivers because it is so densely populated (50 million people live along its borders), so highly industrialized (10% of global chemical production), and so short (775 miles in length).

Two centuries of nonstop hydraulic tinkering have resulted in a Rhine with a sleek and slender profile. In their quest for a perfect canal-like river, engineers have modified it more than any other large river in the world. As a consequence, between 1815 and 1975, the river lost most of its natural floodplain, riverside vegetation, migratory fish, and biodiversity. Recent efforts to restore that biodiversity, though heartening, can have only limited success because so many of the structural changes to the river are irreversible.

The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000 makes clear just how central the river has been to all aspects of European political, economic, and environmental life for the past two hundred years.

"The Rhine: An Eco-Biography is the first true environmental history of a major European river. The story Mark Cioc tells in these pages is both fascinating and cautionary. What happened to the Rhine during the 19th and 20th centuries was unquestionably one of the success stories of modern history, a triumphant example of the human benefits that can flow from harnessing natureís power to benefit humanity. But an immense price was paid for those benefits, so much so that by the closing decades of the 20th century, enormous efforts were being expended to recover some of the creatures, ecosystems, and natural processes that had once been sacrificed to the dream of progress." -- from the Foreword by William Cronon

Customer Reviews:

The Life and Times of the Rhine.......2006-03-26

Marc Cioc's book The Rhine: An Eco-Biography is a detailed case study of the impact of human engineering on arguably the most important river on the European continent. It is a history of both the Rhine and of the Rhine Commission, the international body created in 1815 to oversee the river and mold it into what amounts to a commercial canal. Utilizing a variety of scientific sources as well as historical accounts of the various agencies that had control over the Rhine, Cioc reveals that human changes to the river that took into account only the immediate, commercial impacts of their actions severely damaged its biodiversity and vitality. However, he argues, recent efforts to compensate for earlier destruction of the river's ecosystem are achieving moderate success.

In his book, Cioc traces the history of efforts in the past two centuries to control the Rhine and make it more useful for human commercial and industrial ventures. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he argues, were a time of great ecological change for the river, the most dramatic since the Ice Age. The Rhine was seen as a "multipurpose" waterway, using by the various countries through which it flows for a variety of purposes, from urban sanitation and transportation to industrial production and power generation. Under the guiding hand of various commissions and communes, river engineers took on the Rhine and tried to shape it into a more commercially useful river. Just as John F. Richards argues in his book The Unending Frontier, European colonizers were awed into wastefulness by the abundance of natural resources they found, most politicians, business people, and scientists believed for decades that the Rhine was simply too vast to ever be harmed by waste or overuse. Seeing the river as an "imperfect canal," countries and companies attempted to straighten the river, standardize its flow, and eliminate its floodplains.

All of these efforts to tame and harness the Rhine had incredibly deleterious effects on the rivers' diverse ecosystems. Cioc argues that these attempts to simplify the river into a commercially useful tool effectively destroyed the diversity of habitats, flora and fauna that once populated its banks and waters; this is not unlike William Cronon's argument that European colonizers simplified and thus de-diversified the natural environments of New England (Changes in the Land). The coal and chemical industries, particularly in Germany, polluted many tributaries to the point of biodeath, as did the use of the waters as an urban sewer and waste product repository. Efforts to reshape the river eliminated floodplains and other important natural habitats like islands, which not only eliminated a great deal of animal and plant life but also increased the risk of flooding in many areas. As Cioc reveals, those who failed to see the Rhine as a natural system and instead perceived it as a machine were responsible for creating long-term environmental damage in exchange for short-term political and financial gains.

Cioc's book is sometimes difficult for a reader without any scientific training; his close examination of the river's biological profile is thorough, but often challenging to follow. The non-chronological organization of many of the historically-focused chapters also makes it hard to keep track of the historical context in which changes to the river were made. And Cioc's rather gloomy tone often makes humans out to be the evil destroyers of nature - although it's possible that this feeling was unavoidable on his part after discovering the wholly negative effects of industrial use on the Rhine. But Cioc ends on a more hopeful note; his cautious optimism about current Rhine restoration projects is certainly heartening, and shows that humans can actually encourage biodiversity as well as eliminate it. In general, the book is a comprehensive and fascinating account of a very important world river.

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How to Make Your Child a Winner
Victor B. Cline
Manufacturer: Walker & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Parenting | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
General | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
Accessories:

Braun IRT 4020 ThermoScan Ear Thermometer

ASIN: 0802771653

Product Description

To be added

Customer Reviews:

A detailed history of the U.S. Navy's "Seabees".......2005-05-06

Now in a newly updated third edition, U.S. Navy Seabees: Since Pearl Harbor by historian and author Jay Kimmel is a seminal and detailed history of the U.S. Navy's "Seabees", the military construction units that played key roles from their inception just after the attack on Pearl Harbor, through their often hazardous duty throughout the battlefields of World War II. By the end of the war the Seabees numbered some 325,000 personnel. The Seabees went on to serve with distinction in the Korean Conflict, Vietnam War, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq as those emergency, war-time, battlefield crises required both their construction and fighting skills. Enhanced with 200 illustrations in a large, 232-page, paperback format, U.S. Navy Seabees is a unique and welcome addition for personal, academic, and community library American Military Studies reference collection and supplemental reading list.

A good history of the oft-overlooked SeaBees.......1999-02-04

This concise history of the SeaBees offers many first person narratives and sometimes a true gritty feeling for the struggles of SeaBees in war and in peace. Kimmel features activities from the islands of the Pacific in WWII to modern peacekeeping and relief efforts. Much of the book reads like a history textbook but he comes a long way in documenting the sometimes less glamorous but still vital jobs that SeaBees have been called to complete. However, he seems to write more about the fighting part of the motto "We Build. We Fight." Overall I recommend it to fill the missing chapters of the proud SeaBee history. This should be the second SeaBee book in any SeaBees library next to "Can Do".

Book Description

This book examines the formulation of British and American policy between 1945 and 1955 towards one of the most hated regimes of this century. The Franco question though apparently not of the first importance in the evolution of Cold War policy, nevertheless haunted British and American governments during this period. It posed a problem which epitomises the difficulty of dealing with pariah regimes. As such it highlights for historians the attempts of these two governments to straddle the contradictions inherent in the emerging dual system of the United Nations, or internationalism, on the one hand, and the older system of balance of power, played out by the super powers as the Cold War. Set as it is in the domestic and international context, it also exemplifies the problems faced today by individual governments and by the United Nations in dealing with questions of intervention or non-intervention in distasteful regimes.

Customer Reviews:

Intriguing Look at Cold War Hypocrisy.......2005-01-05

The double standard used to judge Francoist Spain is demonstrated in this well-written book about the immediate post-WW II world. Indeed, the standard still exists among many who still buy into the myth of a democratic "Republican" Spain (as Republican as Pol Pot's Kampuchea was Democratic.)The tension between a decaying British Empire and a muscular, confident USA on this issue made Franco supremely smug about the West ultimately coming around to his anti-Soviet way of thinking. In the face of guilt-ridden France and Britain's intransigence towards Franco's participation in NATO, the US took the toro by the horns and signed a bilateral agreement giving base rights in Spain. The book is a little light on the Soviet side of the issue but the author's focus was on the Anglo-American conflict over Franco. I recommend it for any student of the early Cold War.

Anglo-American Relations and the Franco Question, 1945-1955

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Anglo-American Relations and the Franco Question, 1945-1955
Jill Edwards
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OL8F0C

Average customer rating:
Birds of Field and Shore: Grassland and Shoreline Birds of Eastern North America
John Eastman
Manufacturer: Stackpole Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Birdwatching | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Reference | Outdoors & Nature | Subjects | Books
Ornithology | Zoology | Biological Sciences | Science | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0811726991

Book Description

75 drawings, 5 x 8
Praise for Stackpole's John Eastman bird guides

"This is one of the most invaluable bird guides to be published in quite some time."- Booklist

"Eastman's nature biography, along with Hansen's beautifully rendered illustrations, bring the lives of birds and their habitats closer to the human eye and heart."-ForeWord

"Presented in a readable, easy to follow narrative . . . a well-researched look at the birds and their lives."-Eirik Blom, Bird Watcher's Digest

Birds of Field and Shore describes how 42 common grassland and shoreline birds nest, mate, and rear their broods in spring; how they feed in summer; whether, how, and where they migrate in fall; and how they survive in winter. This seasonal approach, together with an emphasis on ecological niches, distinguishes Eastman's books from other field guides. Precise illustration complements informative text, making Birds of Field and Shore an appealing and educational guide for birders of any skill level.

Entries are arranged in taxonomic order based on DNA testing. Selected bibliography and index are included.

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