Customer Reviews:
The Archaeology of the British.......2006-01-14
This book is brilliant. It reminded me of a paleontology book where the author looks at the shells of ancient marine fossils and reconstructs their lives from the shape of the shells.
From the structure of the English Country House Girouard recreates the lives of those who lived in them. Not just the Lord and Lady but all those who lived and worked there. How many people were in this room during dinner? How did the food get to the dining area (usually a long trek. This minimized the chance the kitchen would burn the place down but mimimized the chance dinner hadn't congealed). How many people (ladies in waiting, servants, servants of servants) were sleeping in the room together in 1500, 1700 or 1890? The idea that one would actually have any privacy is a very recent concept.
A fascinating reconstruction of what life was like not just for the head of the household, but for all who lived on the estate.
Very informative.......2002-02-19
Don't be put off at first by the black and white photos. This book has some color photos, and I was at first hesitant to purchase this book because it seemed to be mostly black and white photography.
However, once I began to read this book, all thoughts about photos went out of my head! This book is informative, intelligent and thorough. The author has studied his subject very well, and writes in a clear and easy to follow manner. I really do find the floorplans to be an invaluable tool towards understanding the buildings the author is describing.
I am currently using this book as a research tool for my novel, but I did buy this book just for the love of the subject and I was not disappointed.
I would recommend this book again and again to anyone with a love of history and architecture.
This will become a fixture on your nightstand.......2001-05-13
Mark Girouard, an architectural historian, has traced the roles of form and function in England's Great Houses in this densely illustrated, sensitively written book. Floor-plans, innumerable photographs and drawings (many of homes now destroyed), and portraits pepper the text, which is readability itself.
The book follows a chronological path from the Mediaval Household to the present day. The text isn't dry at all. Delicious details abound: Bess of Hardwick pacing her Great Chamber of Hardwick Hall, waiting for the royal visit that never came in the instantly-dated house she'd built for this very purpose, ... The origin of the phrase "backstairs intrigues" (both political and sexual).... the slow but persistant birth of the aristocratic ideal of "privacy"--and how it affected dining halls....the rise of the great dilettante libraries (and the rooms to house them).....and the advent of the freakish innovation of indoor plumbing (and a picture of the Duke of Wellington's elaborate WC) are just a few tidbits.
Mr. Girouard doesn't neglect the "downstairs" portion of a Great House, because he's interested in the whole institution as a functioning unit. Some of the most intriguing photos are of beloved servants' portraits, and the almost Shaker-like beauty of a working kitchen or laundry. Included, also, is a printed "Summary of Livery Men's Duties, Etc., Etc.", of Hatfield House, and darned if it doesn't sound like instructions for empoyees at an indifferent New York hotel!
This book is a delicious retrospective, and will make any red-blooded Anglophile who longs for one of these faded leviathans very happy indeed. Now, if you need me further, I will be in the Orangery.
Customer Reviews:
An Informative Study of the Impact of Social History on Architecture.......2006-12-08
Mark Girouard's book, "Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History", is a unique study of the relationship between the social development of the English aristocracy and the architectural evolution of their homes. The book is arranged chronologically to show the structural progression of the social hierarchy in society and its impact on the buildings. The author delves deeply into the facets of life in each major period, from the Middle Ages through 1940, and relates these changes to the adjustment of the layout and design of their domestic structures. In the Victorian era, society placed a great emphasis on propriety, which resulted in an architectural separation of inherently male rooms, the billiards room and study for instance, from those commonly utilized by females, such as the morning room and boudoir. It is interesting to note, though much of the book is devoted to the social element, Girouard is trained as an architectural historian. Yet his exploration of the social aspect and its relationship to buildings is complete and highly detailed, without being long or tedious.
While other authors, such as Nicholas Cooper in his "Houses of the Gentry: 1480 - 1680", do detail the changes in society that guided the major design modifications of country house architecture, most do so in a much broader sense. Cooper, for instance, picks one time period to investigate and focuses on the architect and the stylistic features of the architecture as an example of art. Girouard traces the daily life of the occupants to explain the function and layout of particular rooms within a castle or country house. Much of Girouard's research is focused on the ceremony and daily routine as they played out in the layout of the homes. Some other authors, such as Gervase Jackson-Stops and James Pipkin in their work "The English Country House: A Grand Tour", do look at the evolution of the function of particular rooms, the dining room for example, but still place much of their efforts on the physical appearance of the room rather than its relationship to the house as a whole. Girouard is concerned with the use of the room and offers very little in the way of descriptions of artistic additions and appearance of specific examples. Girouard connects the English aristocratic society to their architecture in a way that no other author seems to have been able to do, through extensive research on ceremony and procedure of their daily lives.
The book opens with a chapter about the overall function of a country house as a "power house," the symbol of the influence and authority of the owner. This sets the stage for his view that the house is a physical manifestation of the social hierarchy of society and the floor plan exhibits the lord's relationship to others in the house, including guests and servants. A great portion of the text explains the roles of the servants within the building, and details the duties of each position and how they developed with the changing society. The author traces the progression of the aristocratic homeowner's lifestyle through the major English historical periods. This chronological format provides an excellent framework for illustrating the development of the positions and how the rooms inside functioned within the whole of the house. He explains the ceremony involved with the meals held in the hall of a medieval castle and the movement of the position of the highest ranking lord during meals from the floor of the hall, to a raised dais in the hall, outward into a grand chamber and spreading farther into withdrawing rooms and bed chambers. One of the major points made in the book is how the idea of privacy develops and how the lord retreats farther and farther into his own personal domain. To accomplish this task, the author draws on a variety of sources, including contemporary literature, surviving correspondence of those who lived in the homes, and the records kept by the residents. He draws upon many primary documents and has firsthand knowledge of the places he discusses. Girouard almost completely ignores the decorative and stylistic development of the architecture, instead, focusing his attention on the functionality of the rooms that would be found in most country houses of the period. He chose examples based on how they displayed the typical organization of the household.
The overall appearance of the book fit well with the content; however, there are some formatting choices that could be improved. The font chosen for the text was easily legible and appropriate for a scholarly publication. There was an excellent balance between the amount of text and images included within the book. Most of the images are in black and white, though there are a significant number done in color. The crisp detail, quality, and number of the images make up for the lack of color. The most useful images are the floor plans, which clearly illustrate the points made by the author in the text regarding the layout of individual rooms, how they developed, and their relationship to one another. One criticism of the book is that the images do not always correlate to what is being discussed or are located several pages after the text to which they relate. I felt the images could have been dispersed through the text in a somewhat more organized manner and the captions could be more consistent in their correlation to the image. Sometimes the captions are found directly under the image, but other times they are at the bottom of the page or on an opposite page. The bibliographic information on all of the photographs is located at the end of the book, which saves space within the book for text. Included with the photographic citations at the end of the text are all of the notes for each chapter. Their inclusion at the end is a choice that, while conserving the space on the page for more text and images, also creates a tedious task for the viewer, who has to continually flip to the end of the book to learn all of the pertinent information.
At the time of publication, Girouard held the position of Slade Professor of Art at Oxford University in England. Girouard is a prolific author, having written various other publications relating to English and other western European architecture, especially aristocratic homes. Some of his other titles include: "Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History", "The Victorian Country House", and "Robert Smythson and the Elizabethan Country House". In 1967, Girouard was awarded the Alice Davis Hitchcock Medallion by the Society of Architectural Historians, which is granted to the most outstanding architectural book, written by a British author or a foreign author about British architecture. He is a well-known scholar on the subject of English country house architecture. In the Preface to the book, Girouard explains his interest in the social structure of life in the English aristocracy and how he applies that interest to his field of architectural studies.
Within the text, Girouard does an excellent job of clearly expressing his points in a manner that would be coherent even to those without a developed knowledge of architectural vocabulary. His mixture of social history and architectural development is a captivating read intended primarily for those interested in social history or architecture, even if they do not have a background in either subject. The only portion of the text that can be somewhat confusing is the job titles of the many servants. However, this is almost entirely unavoidable due to the great number of jobs and their changing nature through time. This is especially true when servants took on new titles or the job responsibilities are divided among several new positions, as with the yeomen who developed into valets and butlers in later generations. The language is easily understandable and illustrates the author's point very well. The content of the text is an excellent reference for those doing research in the field, but will also appeal to readers who are simply interested in social history.
The supplementary materials added to the end of this book are extremely useful. All of the notes for each chapter are included here, after the body of text. They are separated by chapters and offer the reader information on the sources utilized by the author. While their placement within the text may not have been the most practical for the situation, their content is exemplary. The notes begin with an explanation of Household Regulations, which are the records and rules governing large aristocratic and royal households from the Middle Ages through the Eighteenth Century. The author explains the common abbreviations for some of the institutions he regularly consulted and included in his citations. One example would be the Historic Manuscripts Commission, which is referred to as the H.M.C., throughout the notes. The author considered that the audience might not understand what would be common abbreviations to those in the field. Also contained at the end of the text is a seven-page index. The index is comprehensive and covers almost all of the pertinent ideas, people, and places included within the text.
The book illustrates the impact of social change on the architecture of English country homes, from the gentry of the Restoration, who adopted the styles of continental Europe, to the Victorian house owners, who avoided non-English vocabulary in architecture so as to appear less ostentatious and arrogant. Girouard highlights the way social custom shaped the layout of the house rather than the assembly of stylistic design elements. This book provides a unique perspective on the development of English aristocratic architecture. It is well organized and understandable. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the field of English History; the information on the daily life of the aristocracy can be useful to people doing research in other fields as well. Girouard manages a complete survey of the development of the castle and the country house from the Middle Ages through the early Twentieth Century, when the style of living no longer required the construction of new country houses and the general attitude towards those already in existence turned to the preservation of the historically significant buildings.
Average customer rating:
- Review of Eroticism and the Body Politic
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Eroticism and the Body Politic (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)
Manufacturer: The Johns Hopkins University Press
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ASIN: 0801840260 |
Book Description
By the end of the nineteenth century, women had become an undeniable force both in the public discussion of social life and in politics itself. Yet in art and literature women's bodies continued to be represented-- and domesticated-- by men. They were still more often the object of the artist's or writer's gaze than they were the subject of their own representing processes. The erotic potential of women's bodies, however, was far from a marginal concern in the elaboration of modern forms of politics, art, literature, and psychology.
In "Eroticism and the Body Politic", scholars from art history, history, and literature examine the frequent intersections between the body erotic and the body politic. Focusing on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France, they show how eroticized representations of bodies had a multitude of political and cultural meanings. The authors consider the eroticized body in a wide variety of media: from Fragonard's paintings of "erotic mothers", to political pornography attacking Marie Antoinette, to the "new woman" of fin-de-siecle decorative arts.
Exploring the possibilities of a multidisiplinary approach, the volume shows that eroticism had an impact far beyond the usual confines of libertine or pornographic literature-- and that politics included much more than voting, meeting, or demonstrating. At a time of general methodological ferment in the "human sciences", "Eroticism and the Body Politic" brings fresh approaches to the developing field of cultural studies.
Customer Reviews:
Review of Eroticism and the Body Politic.......2000-05-11
This is a scholarly work that brings together various essays on the influence of eroticism and pornography in the context of the political discourse. I concentrated on the articles pertinent to the French Revolution, particularly "The Diamond Necklace Affair: The Case of the Missing Queen," in which Sara Maza explored the disintegration of Marie Antoinette's reputation with the French public. Maza argued that the legal briefs written, published, and widely distributed by the lawyers involved in the prosecution and defense of the Cardinal de Rohan, con artist Jeanne de Valois, and prostitute Nicole Le Guay subtly and in some cases deliberately linked the Queen with the Jeanne and Nicole by way of merging their identities. This is a well-researched book, and easily understood and enjoyed by the casual reader as well as students.
Book Description
This fourth edition of Beyond the Zone System makes the science of photographic sensitometry both accessible and useful to interested photographers. It will appeal to any serious photographer interested in knowing how the materials and processes of black-and-white photography work. Instead of describing rote procedures to be followed blindly, this book provides the basis for understanding what needs to be done and why. This book relates theory to practice in a way that promotes a true partnership of science and art.
Beyond the Zone System bridges the gap between the more theoretical aspects of the photographic process and the popular empirical procedures used by many photographers in the attempt to predict and control the quality of their photographs in practice.
This book is intended primarily for photographers who use large-format cameras and black-and-white sheet film, but the basic information about how the B&W photographic materials and processes work will be useful to users of any B&W film format.
Beyond the Zone System, 4th ed. will appeal to any serious photographer interested in knowing how the materials and processes of black-and-white photography work. Instead of describing rote procedures to be followed blindly, this book provides the basis for understanding what needs to be done and why. This book relates theory to practice in a way that promotes a true partnership of science and art.
A direct, practical approach to the technical aspects of photography
Thoroughly updated throughout
New chapter on control of image gradation
Customer Reviews:
Unusual and technically superb photography text.......2004-09-24
Phil Davis was a professor at University of Michigan when he developed this intense system of exposure and development for classic film photography. The Zone System, as developed by Minor White and his associates, takes into account areas of shadow and highlight and has the photographer do some pretty fancy calculations for exposure and development. This system is particularly of interest to those who use view cameras that take a picture on a sheet of film that is contact printed or minimally enlarged. The contact print has miniscule grain and by following the Zone System, photographers have created exceptional images of great beauty that are unequalled in photography.
The problem with the Zone System is that it is complicated. Phil Davis spent at least fifteen years researching his version of this method, and this book is the result. Davis provides examples, charts, data, methods, instruction in using light meters. There are detailed examples of how to make test strips. This is a distillation of much of what he taught in his university courses. The method is said to be especially effective for studio photographers, whereas the traditional Zone System was definitely geared for outdoor natural light photography. If you are a film photographer who does their own development and printing, this is a valuable reference.
Beyond the Zone System.......2004-05-30
The title of this book really summarized the book. It gives the theory behind the procedures that many advanced photographers already know and use. I don't know of many people who are going to apply his techniques directly, i.e. sensometers, etc. Rather this book gives a theoretical basis for some of the techniques that Adams and others used. It essentially gives university or grad level experiments to allow the reader to test and prove the concepts for themselves. So if you were looking for a "How to Book", you will be disappointed. Read Peterson's book, first. Learn how to apply the zone system. Then read this book to understand what you are doing.
Interesting but, too technical........2003-08-02
I bought this book to fill the gaps that the AA books left in my mind. The first chapters are really interesting and you'll learn about the Zone System aplied to printing and papers.
But then, I think it was to much for me when it started to get into drawing curves and testing materials.
That's the reason why I left the zone system behind. I'd rather take`pictures in the steet than draw lines and read neg densities at home.
If you want to be a ZoneSystem photographer, then this book will guide you through the real process that AA executed.
Interesting but, too technical........2003-08-02
I bought this book to fill the gaps that the AA books left in my mind. The first chapters are really interesting and you'll learn about the Zone System aplied to printing and papers.
But then, I think it was to much for me when it started to get into drawing curves and testing materials.
That's the reason why I left the zone system behind. I'd rather take`pictures in the steet than draw lines and read neg densities at home.
If you want to be a ZoneSystem photographer, then this book will guide you through the real process that AA executed.
A must-read for advanced photographers.......2002-12-26
This is a book all master photographers who shoot and print their own work should understand and use. It is a definitive work on the science and engineering of photo sensitive emulsions that applies not only to standard silver-halide photography but alternative methods as well like Platinum/Palladium, gum bichromate, cyanotypes, etc. although the other methods are not directly covered by the text.
This book was written for the "left brain" with all its formulas, methods and explanations. But, it is detailed enough that the brain does not have to fill in the blanks of information not included as is the case with many such books. There is a section that addresses a method of exposure form a more "right brain" view and draws on the experience of using a light meter for photographers who are at that level.
I do not believe how well written this book is compared to others dealing with the same subject. I wish I had found this book years ago.
Average customer rating:
- Pleasant enough collection of stories...
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True Story, Swear To God: 100 Stories (True Story, Swear to God (Graphic Novels))
Tom Beland
Manufacturer: AiT/PlanetLar
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True Story, Swear To God: This One Goes To Eleven (True Story, Swear to God (Graphic Novels))
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True Story, Swear to God: Chances Are
ASIN: 193205121X |
Book Description
Cartoonist Tom Beland tells true stories of his life with his wife, Lily, in this heartfelt valentine. It's intelligent and well written and unabashedly romantic. It's the kind of book that men and women who believe in the power of love and the existence of fate will want to take home and read again and again. In other words, this is a small story with big promise. Life is funnier than fiction. At least that's true for cartoonist Tom Beland. True Stories, Swear To God: 100 Stories is Tom Beland's unique look at everyday events. A California-based cartoonist with a tumultuous childhood and a strong sense of family leaves it all behind and moves to Puerto Rico to be with the love of his life. Weaving tales of innocence and wit, Tom welcomes you into his life and you'll soon be wanting another 100 stories.
Customer Reviews:
Pleasant enough collection of stories..........2004-11-10
Well this is unlikely to revolutionise the graphic novel genre, it is a pleasant little collection of stories with lovely art and a great deal of gentle humour.
I thought the tales about he and his wife were particularly warming, while I also enjoyed the stories about his childhood and father and the measures he takes to mourn his father's passing. While they are all quite distinct stories, they really do narrate and flesh out a character, which is perhaps the ultimate aim of such a work. As I have said, the art is quite lovely, simple yet detailed and very sweet.
However, I had a few small problems with the work. Firstly, I found Beland to be an exceptionally Americanised voice, while his repetitive odes to McDonalds began to annoy me. Additionally, I found some of his strips slightly sexist, such as the one about 'chicks' ruining baseball or the short story 'The Fem Tale'. While this was certainly not a conscious choice by Beland, it registered in my mind and made me appreciate the work a little less. Furthermore, there were quite a few stripes waxing lyrical about his success, his Einser nomination etc etc.
So while I really enjoyed the work for the most part, these repetitive aspects did grate on me and detract from the piece on the whole.
Books:
- Living Large in Small Spaces: Expressing Personal Style in 100 to 1,000 Square Feet
- Maison--Christian Liaigre
- Massive Change
- Mastering Autodesk Revit Building (Autodesk Revit)
- Meggs' History of Graphic Design
- Mini House Style
- Mobile: The Art of Portable Architecture
- Modern Architecture Since 1900
- Modern Retro: Living With Mid-Century Modern Style
- More Small Houses (Great Houses)
Books Index
Books Home
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