Ernst Plischke: Modern Architecture For The New World : The Complete Works

Book Description

This volume is the first comprehensive survey on the Austrian-born architect Ernst Plischke (1903-92) a key figure in Modernist architecture. His admiration for Le Corbusier is reflected in both his private housing and urban projects, and there are stylistic affinities to the work of Rudolf Schindler and Alvar Aalto. After emigrating to New Zealand in 1939, Plischke retained the characteristic traits of his work, such as his use of intense color and variety of materials. This monograph showcases the astounding scope of Plischke's accomplishments: his private residences and apartment buildings, high-rises and churches, furniture designs, and plans for entire towns. Numerous drawings, blueprints, and color photographs along with informative essays explore Plischke's key role in bringing European Modernist architecture to New Zealand.

Book Description

Presenting diverse ways to depict nature, this book offers expert guidance for drawing with pencil, pen, ink, and charcoal, and painting with oils and pastels. A comprehensive historical review of the genre - from early European and American schools through impressionism and expressionism to contemporary landscape art - provides artists with a solid understanding of this type of art. Tips and techniques are provided for working outdoors, capturing nature's textures, and rendering the most important landscape components like light and shadow, changing skies and clouds, and rushing and tranquil water. Clear, illustrated, step-by-step demonstrations are included throughout.

Customer Reviews:

Inspirational and full of information.......2006-10-30

I have painted "plein air" for a number of years, first in pastel and now moving into oils. I was very glad to find this book of Richard McDaniels, which I have been voraciously reading over the last couple of weeks. His palette and brush strokes really speak to me, and his colors SING with clarity and beauty. I appreciate the many samples of his work included in the book, which inspire me to delve deeper into my own compositions and experiment with varying colors. He writes with a knowledgeable, carefully-thought-out and well-articulated manner, and is often surprisingly humorous in his prose. I have learned much by coming across this book - for example, being reminded how to approach the laying out of values in beginning a painting. This is essential, and something many people do not grasp! His many samples showing the various stages of a painting are informational and helpful.
I have read the important "Carlsen's Guide to Landscape Painting" and Richard's book is a modern version of a classic- destined to become the Bible of Landscape Painting. We pay a modest sum for what we would've paid several hundred dollars for in a workshop, just by purchasing and reading this book. It is a must for any painter's personal library. Painting is a lifelong learning , and this book is many breaths of fresh air to help us along our way.

All things to all people.......2006-07-11

The best things about this book are the cover and frontis images. It covers everything about the rules of making art, but doesn't really inspire. Nothing in the text sings "Nature" to me, instead I felt that it had all been said before.

Comprehensive, insightful, easy to follow, informative.......1999-10-19

There is no doubt about it. This book is definetely comprehensive. It is also extremely well-organized and quite readible. I like the fact that the book can be used equally by a complete beginner or by an advanced painter. There is material to help a novice get started, yet the author (McDaniel) provides insightful guidance that will even help the experts.

The demonstrations of different techniques are direct and easily understood, with clear examples and superb artwork. It is enlightening to follow the process of creating paintings and seeing the artist use such a wide variety of materials and techniques.

The sections on composition and color are particularly informative, as is the discussion and helpful hints for painting on location and in the studio. He showed me a new way to see all the variety of shapes and color to be found in nature. The book is fun to read and has an easy, conversational style of writing that is relaxed, funnny and quite informative.

If you are interested in fine art in general, or landscape painting in particular, this book should be on your shelf.

Customer Reviews:

STREAMLINED LIFE-cycle assessment.......2000-06-23

MR. GRAEDEL PROVIDES A NEW AND FRESH INSIGHT IN THE CONCEPT OF LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENTS FOR PRODUCTS. HE PRESENTS TOOLS THAT CAN BE USED TO IDENTIFY ISSUES IN THE DESIGN STAGE OF A PRODUCT THAT AFFECT THE ENVIRONMENT AND ALSO HOW TO ESTABLISH PRIORITIES AMONG THESE ISSUES. THE USE OF A SIMLIFIED MATRIX SHOWING RAW MATERIALS AND PROCESS STAGES VERSUS SIGNIFICANT ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES PROVIDES A FRAMEWORK THAT CAN EASLY USED TO IDENTIFY IMPROVEMENTS. IT ALSO PROVIDE PRACTICAL EXAMPLES OF REAL INDUSTRIAL CASES AND EXAMPLES OF THE QUESTIONS AND CHECK-LISTS REQUIRED TO PERFORM THESE CRADLE TO GRAVE ANALYSIS.

Life-Cycle Assessment and SETAC, 1991-1999

Average customer rating:

Life-Cycle Assessment and SETAC, 1991-1999
North American Streamlined LCA Workshop
Manufacturer: SETAC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM
ASIN: 1880611740

Book Description

These life-cycle assessment publications are now available on an invaluabel CD-ROM

1) Public Policy Applications of Life-Cycle Assessment
2) Life-CycleImpactAssessment:The Sate-of-the-Art, 2nd Edition
3) Simplifying LCA: Just a Cut?
4) Fifth LCA Symposium for Case Studies
5) Sixth LCA Symposium for Case Studies
6) Seventh LCA Case Studies Symposium
7) Towards a Methodology for Life-Cycle Assessment
8) Allocation in LCA
9) Integrating Impact Assessment into LCA
10)Life-Cycle Assessment Data Quality:A Conceptual Framework
11)Guidelines for Life-Cycle Assessment:A "Code of Practice"
12)A Conceptual Framework for Life-Cycle Impact Assessment
13)A Technical Framework for Life-Cycle Assessment
14)Streamlined Life-Cycle Assessment: A final Report from the SETAC North America Streamlined LCA Workshop
15) Life-Cycle Assessment: Inventory, Classification, Valuation, Data Bases

Average customer rating:
Streamlined Life-Cycle Assessment
Thomas E. Graedel
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OIK8H8

Amazon.com

There's a belief that the rise of technology will make cities obsolete, as more people live where they choose and telecommute to work. The advent of portable cell phones, easy air travel, and hotel time-sharing encourages a sense of "placelessness"--and that bodes ill for urban clusters. But Joel Kotkin thinks this conventional wisdom is unwise: "The importance of geography is not dwindling to nothing in the digital era; in fact, quite the opposite. In reality, place--geography--matters now more than ever before," he writes. Cities will no longer be industrial or corporate centers, but rather magnets for intelligence and talent in a way they haven't been for quite some time. The paradigm is an old one:

Like the postindustrial metropolis, the preindustrial city, existing before the era dominated by mass production of goods and services, flourished by capitalizing on functions--such as cross-cultural trades, the arts, and specialized craft-based production--that could not be adequately performed by the far more numerically superior hinterland.

In this sense, the future city may have more in common with Venice during the Renaissance than Detroit during the Henry Ford era.

Kotkin does not believe all cities will thrive in this environment. He's particularly down on what he calls the "midopolis"--suburbs built mainly in the 1950s and 1960s to service the old-city model. They are now afflicted by crumbling infrastructures, rising crime rates, and declining schools. He cites Long Island and the San Fernando Valley as examples. New forms of city--Kotkin calls then "nerdistans"--are already rising in their place. They are self-contained suburbs that have few of the problems associated with urban cores, and they attract companies and workers tuned into the technological revolution. He names Austin, Texas, and Raleigh, North Carolina, as prototypes. Kotkin is a veteran business journalist who writes for The New York Times and other publications. He's written several other books, including Tribes, but The New Geography is his best yet: a smart combination of the reportage one expects from a top-drawer magazine article and the thoughtfulness one expects from a book. It may come to be remembered as a classic, an information-age groundbreaker with the influence of Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities. --John J. Miller

Book Description

In the blink of an eye, vast economic forces have created new types of communities and reinvented old ones. In The New Geography, acclaimed forecaster Joel Kotkin decodes the changes, and provides the first clear road map for where Americans will live and work in the decades to come, and why. He examines the new role of cities in America and takes us into the new American neighborhood. The New Geography is a brilliant and indispensable guidebook to a fundamentally new landscape.

Download Description

In the blink of an eye, vast economic forces have created new types of communities and reinvented old ones.

In The New Geography, acclaimed forecaster Joel Kotkin decodes the changes, and provides the first clear road map for where Americans will live and work in the decades to come, and why. He examines the new role of cities in America and takes us into the new American neighborhood.

The New Geography is a brilliant and indispensable guidebook to a fundamentally new landscape.

Customer Reviews:

20/20 foresight.......2005-05-11

This book is a better read in 2005 than it was when it came out in 2000 because it's easier to understand the map Kotkin was drawing now that we can see it played out across the country. Creative and artistic people are just now moving into downtown Los Angeles; the traffic in Austin is awful because they didn't plan on the kind of growth they got; Detroit still has not cohesive plan in place for growth.

But the book also puts these changes into historical context, so we know that our change isn't the first of its kind and will likely not be the last.

Could sprawl be dying?.......2003-09-08

A thoughtful analysis of technology's impact on society with some ideas that are worth acting upon.

While the premise of this book is not new, Kotkin's thoughtful analysis of how technology has and is changing our geography puts this book securely in the "must read" category.

Kotkin's premise is that technology is changing America's landscape as much or more than did the Industrial Revolution. While, in some respects, technology has de-personalized our society (and there are many tangible examples; the malling and sprawling of America with "category killer" retail and soulless master planned communities), it has also emerged as a great unifier causing people to seek more connection, not less. Moreover, technology has enabled more choices, particularly on where one chooses to live and work. Consequently, the notion of "place" is more important than in the past and consumers of place are more demanding and sophisticated.

What all this means is that we are seeing a very positive evolution back to "Renaissance" type cites (populated by artisans, small business and niche players enabled with technology) where place and commerce are wed. Conversely, we are also experiencing the segregation of the "haves" of technology and subsequent wealth from the "have-nots". Further segregation, Kotkin argues, will erode the very positives that are emerging.

Kotkin takes pains to organize his argument and does so by citing both historical markers (i.e.-Fall of Rome, the Dark Ages and The Enlightenment/Renaissance) with geographical categories that describe our emerging urban landscape (ie-Valhallas, Nerdistans, Urban Cores and Midopolis).

My one complaint is that Kotkin didn't give enough airtime to the issues around how the segregation of the classes will potentially erode the more positive impacts of technology. This subject emerges only toward the end of the book with poignant comparisons to the Fall of Rome.

While some of the rosy "Internet Era" optimism (copyright 2000) is evident here, the gist of the message remains completely valid. This is an excellent book. This "New Geography" is worth thinking about and acting upon. Kotkin's last two lines are illustrative; "As people and advanced industries hunt the globe for locations, they will not necessarily seek out those places that are the biggest, the cheapest, or the most well favored by location. Instead they will seek out a new kind of geography, one that appeals to their sense of values and their hearts, and it is there that the successful communities of the digital age will be found." Do you live in one of these communities or not? Bravo!

Good book but heavy with PC stuff.......2003-05-05

Interesting and good book but he keeps telling us how wonderful immigrants are and how they revitalize cities. He mentions orientals and the businesses they start over and over but never about the Mexicans that are so much more common, with large families paying relatively little in taxes but putting a tremendous burden on local governments which in turn tax more and drive taxpayers to less "diverse" jurisdictions. Just look at California, the state with the largest portion of its population foreign born. Its a financial basket case. And New York can show you two smoking holes in the ground where mighty towers once stood. I wonder what Kotkin thinks about these immigrants' contribution to the new geography?

Fine book, but a little euphemistic.......2002-04-22

This is an even-handed, non-cheerleading account of how people are moving to different locations in America based on their "skill level" (by which I think Joel primarily means IQ): e.g., Nerds are moving to Nerdistans like Silicon Valley and Research Triangle, while Rich Nerds are moving to Valhallas like Aspen. Lots of good insights, although his celebrations of how immigrants are reviving cities kept me wondering how who caused them to die out. Reading Joel is kind of like talking to some wealthy liberal who has just bought a house in an all-white suburb but can't quite ever mention the name of the people who he's trying to get away from.

The new economy + new urbanism = new geography.......2001-07-14

You've heard it said that location is everything. City planning, urban geography, explanations of agricultural patterns, and the theory of industrial location all owe their existence to German geographers who were the pioneers of location theory; men such as von Thunen, Weber and Christaller. Edward Ullman introduced the concept of central-place theory to the US before WWII. The idea then has a long history of explaining the way things are.

All that will come to an end if it's up to Joel Kotkin. He sees the new economy with its emphasis on communication and technology as permanently seperating us from our dependance on place. This isn't revolutionary, or even a new idea. The belief that technology is more important than any physical space or location has long been the mantra of the netheads of the new economy. What else are we doing but proving the reality of this when we submit and read reviews at Amazon, and participate in a community that only exists in cyberspace?

Where THE NEW GEOGRAPHY truly breaks new ground is in the argument that the information economy has two "faces". These involve different processes and business that are beneficial to the "self-contained high-end suburds" or "nerdistans" but also, and very importantly, other elements have "taken on a decidedly more urban cast." It's a fairly good book that will be enjoyable to those with interests in geography, urbanism, and technology; it's therefore broad enough but unfortunately not deep enough to really satisfy all.

Book Description

Muchas veces, los fármacos que nos recetan son necesarios y pueden salvarnos la vida. Pero la inmensa mayoría de medicamentos no deben utilizarse más allá de lo estrictamente necesario. Los remedios naturales pueden ayudarnos mucho a recuperar la salud y a independizarnos de los medicamentos farmacéuticos. El presente libro recoge una serie de remedios tradicionales y curiosos procedentes de muy diversas culturas, que durante cientos, tal vez miles de años, fueron eficaces para curar las enfermedades y las dolencias de nuestros antepasados. Por ello, es muy posible que también sean de utilidad para el hombre de hoy.

Many diseases and conditions for which we turn to modern medicine can also be treated naturally with healing herbs, medicinal food and other natural remedies. The authors, both experts on healing herbs, lead the reader through the vast world of natural remedies.

Average customer rating:
The Opium war, 1840 - 1842: Barbarians in the Celestial Empire in the Early Part of the Nineteenth Century and the War By Which They Forced Her Gates Ajar.
Peter Ward. Fay
Manufacturer: University of North Carolina Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000OIR8DK

Book Description

"A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey" examines how the promised land of Israel has been seen and interpreted differently over the course of Jewish history by those who call it home and by the many other individuals and cultures it has affected. The first glimpse of the promised land was God's description to Moses of "a land flowing with milk and honey." Since that time, the land has been more than a geographical or political entity. Visions of Israel have proliferated—uniting, dividing, and inspiring individuals and societies for thousands of years.

The fourteen contributors to this volume draw upon a variety of scholarly disciplines to consider how and why Israel has been interpreted in so many different ways. Topics include the transplanting of the idea of Zion to a sacred mountain in New Zealand; the roles of archaeology and cartography in shaping perceptions of Israel; the understanding of classical Islamic followers; the multiple meanings of "milk and honey"; the vision of noted engraver and photographer E. M. Lilien; how the land inspired two German-born Jewish women poets; the current meaning of Israel to its political right; the distinct visions of Israeli sculptors and of artist Hermann Struck; images of Israel that appear in Egyptian films; the perceptions of first-time American Jewish tourists to Israel; old stereographic photo tours of the land; and the perspectives of British millenarian missionaries in nineteenth-century Palestine.

Customer Reviews:

Highly Recommended for Raptor Rehabilitators.......2005-03-17

At last we have a book which focuses on and deals with many of the issues faced by rehabilitators and educators as well as falconers.

The information is presented in an easy-to-read manner, with informative, easily interpreted tables and diagrams. It is clearly aimed at a worldwide audience and at the same time is one of the first "care and management" books I've found to include information on Australian species as well as those from Europe, North America, Asia and Africa.

This is a book that belongs on the shelf of anyone active in raptor rehabilitation, if not for their own enlightenment, then as an invaluable training tool and curriculum guide for new trainees.

As a rehabber and adult educator, I can see this book going straight to the top of my 'Recommended Reading' list.

Comprehensive and thoroughly "reader friendly".......2005-01-03

As predatory birds, raptors a a critically important part of avian ecosystems. The collaboration of experienced and seasoned raptor experts Richard Naisbitt and Peter Holz, Captive Raptor: Management And Rehabilitation is a critically important reference work on the treatment and release of injured wild and captive raptors. Comprehensive and thoroughly "reader friendly", Captive Raptor covers the general care of raptors, raptor diets, raptor medicine, raptor aviaries, raptor behavior and training, the release of rehabilitated raptors, and monitoring released raptors. Enhanced with a wealth of useful tables, graphs and drawings on the successful methods of treating and caring for captive raptors, as well as a profusion of full color photographs throughout, Captive Raptors is an invaluable and necessary addition to personal and professional raptor management training and reference collections.

Captive Raptor Management: Common Raptors of the U.S.

Average customer rating:

New Raptor Book is a Valuable Addition!

Captive Raptor Management: Common Raptors of the U.S.
Alida Morzenti
Manufacturer: Wildlife Pub
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 0966092368

Customer Reviews:

New Raptor Book is a Valuable Addition!.......2000-04-17

Captive Raptor Management by Alida Morzenti is an outstanding book on raptor management. Well written and easy to read, this book has invaluable information for the raptor rehabilitator or raptor educational personnel. The raptor terminology and classification section, along with the detailed natural history chapters will serve as a quick and informative reference on the different raptor species and their specific requirements while in captivity. The health examination section of the book is basic but comprehensive. The guidelines for maintaining the health and appearance of the captive raptor are well thought out and useful. Recommendations for housing the captive raptor or preparing the raptor for release back to the wild are presented in a thorough and useful manner. I highly recommend this book for all of us working with raptors, either for release to the wild or for educational purposes. Andrew McBride, CA Foundation for Birds of PreyVickie Joseph, DVM, Avian Diplomate, ABVP

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books