1 comments about Attending Marvels (Phoenix Series).

1. A quick summary of this book would describe it as a fossil hunter's journal from the 1930s. However, humorous, matter-of-fact descriptions of people, politics and the unexpected make this book an excellent choice for any reader.

1 comments about Artwise Chicago Museum Map - Laminated Museum Map of Chicago, Illinois - Streetwise Maps (Artwise).

1. I thought this map was actually more informative than the "Streetwise" version. This also includes good information on the Hyde Park area, and has information on the subway and bus lines. A good general map of the city. It's not big, so you can throw it in your pocket.

No comments about Lonely Planet Chicago City Map (City Maps Series).

4 comments about Edward Weston: The Last Years in Carmel.

1. Not just a great presentation of Weston's last productive years, the essay by the Chicago Art Institute's Curator of Photography provides the best understanding to date of what it means to be a mature artist - and why it was that Weston was viewed by his peers, including Ansel Adams, Minor White, Imogen Cunningham as the consummate photographer, the proof that photography like other forms was capable of synthesizing interior and exterior realities into works of profound emotional and aesthetic power. A great contribution!



2. Edward Weston was one of the most squirelly, yet most talented photographers in the history of the medium - he rarely smiled, wore women's clothes, never learned to drive, married a woman 30 years his junior, lived in a shack in Carmel and loved philandering with Tina Modotti and others. He died with $300 in the bank in 1958, yet his photograph of a Circus Tent went at auction a few years ago for $266,000. His influence on photography and photographers was immense. Two of his four sons, Brett and Cole, became accomplished image makers and his grandson now carries on that same tradition, even living in the same shack on Wildcat Hill in Carmel. This book covers roughly the last 10 years of his photographs 1938-1948. The images are superbly produced and well-chosen but the text was a bit overbearing and heavy on the theory that in the last years Weston was overly concerned with death which was represented in his images. Certainly his images of Point Lobos are a bit dark and morose with pictures of dead trees and pelicans, but that's Point Lobos! During this period he also made whimsical images of his wife wearing a gas mask in the nude and playing a flute while a cat looks on with a surprised glance. Weston was full of LIFE, not death. Thirty years before his death in 1958 he made an image of a corpse at a time when his relationship with his future wife was rosy and he was spending time with his beloved sons. His final work does not seem any more concerned with death than it was in his earlier years. But, forget the text! Photography books are similar to Playboy magazines anyway - we buy them to look at the pictures, not read the text!! This is a terrific book and I can't wait to view the actual images at The Art Institute of Chicago.



3. A finely printed book that features more than the regular images that every other book has. The essay is a very worthwhile read. It offers wonderful insites to the photogrpaher at the end of his working career.A real must to any Weston colection of books.



4. This is a catalog for a show currently at San Francisco MOMA, launched in Chicago last year. (Weston came from Illinois and did most of his work in California.) It is essentially a re-edition of Weston's My Camera On Point Lobos, published in 1951 and again in 1968. The major change is text by David Travis replacing excerpts from Weston's daybooks in the original.

   The text is intended to humanize someone who is mostly mythical by describing and interpreting events in the last years of his life at Point Lobos. It presents the author's analysis of Weston's career, state of mind and the evolution of his late style. There is little or no new material here and the analysis is strained, but thoughtful.

   There are some intelligent comparisons presented of Weston's late and early views of the same subject. As a collection this is not a good introduction to Weston. It is a good final chapter to the Daybooks and a beautiful collection of reproductions. It is also a good companion to Ansel Adams at 100, showing how these two friends viewed many of the same subjects so differently. It would be a good addition to reading Charis Wilson's Through Another Lens, showing many pictures of domestic life including Weston's children, cats, and many of Charis Wilson. There is a lot of "inside baseball" here, both explicit and implied.

   There is at least one important image in the show that is not in the catalog and there are many important omissions from the show itself, which make this a poor place to start studying Weston's work. For the record, both Weston and Adams experimented with color in the late 40s, shooting the same images in color and black and white. The color images aren't good but they are a very good way to show why their respective monochrome images are so strong.

   It is worth repeating that while the printed images are as good as any you'll see, they are not even close to the 8X10 contact prints in the show. This really matters in Weston's work. If you have a chance to see the San Francisco show, before it is put away for another 10 years, you will also see additional earlier prints from SFMOMA's outstanding permanent collection which put the theme of the show into context that is missing from the book.

   This is Weston when he was only satisfying his own search for meaning, not making statements or presenting his vision to the world. These are his final meditations and he knew it. They are by far his richest and most abstract work and worthy of a lot of study.

No comments about Lakeland Walks and Legends.

3 comments about They Wrote on Clay: The Babylonian Tablets Speak Today (Phoenix Books).

1. Before the beginning of this century, the only information we had about Ancient Babylon was from the Bible. Consequently, most of the literature that I have read on the subject (written during the height of Iraqi Archeaology in the 1920's and 30's) has been on a religious note rather than a historical one. This book changed all that. It brought a highly academic subject to the layman. It is a simple, informative account of how the real Babylonians lived. It describes the Babylonians as an advanced people who appreciated art and literature, as well as entering into contracts and having mortgages. It is a great introduction to an ancient civilisation.



2. THEY WROTE ON CLAY : The Babylonian Tablets Speak Today. By Edward Chiera. Edited by George G. Cameron. 235 pp. Chicago and London : The University of Chicago Press, 1964 (1955). (pbk.)

   The civilizational achievements of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians only started to become known over the course of the last century or so. For our new understanding of the past we have to thank archaeology, in particular for its discovery of many tens of thousands of baked clay tablets which have miraculously preserved the complex cuneiform writing system, languages, and literatures of the ancient Mesopotamians, and for the patient decipherment of these tablets and other cuneiform-bearing artefacts by a small and dedicated group of international scholars.

   The literature on this subject today is vast, and much of it is accessible only to specialists. Of the studies that are generally available - such as those by A. Leo Oppenheim, Samuel Noah Kramer, and Thorkild Jacobsen - most tend to be aimed at a more scholarly type of audience, the kind of people who like detailed footnotes, precise references to sources, bibliographies, etc., and little seems to be available in the way of a more popular treatment for the general reader.

   This is where the present book comes in. Edward Chiera, though a competent and respected scholar, was exceptional in having an ardent desire to share his knowledge by making the results of his research readily and entertainingly available to the general reader. Consequently, instead of giving us, for example, a lengthy and detailed analysis of the religious ideas or political history of the Babylonians, he has chosen instead to offer an absorbing excursion into the common life of this ancient civilization.

   Chiera's 'They Wrote on Clay' is both well-written and easy to read since the pages are small, the font used is gratifyingly large and readable, and there are numerous black-and-white photographs and line drawings which illustrate various aspects of life in the near East : people, places, animals, domestic scenes, archaeological sites, buildings, artworks and other artefacts etc. These illustrations perfectly supplement Chiera's written account, and although many are contemporary, they do serve to suggest something of what life must have been like in the past.

   Chiera has managed to pack an awful lot into this small book. We learn about the discovery of the ancient cities, the amazing libraries of clay tablets that were unearthed, the exciting story of the decipherment of the complex cuneiform writing system, the worlds of business and religion, of kings, priests, scribes and ordinary folk, and of their multifarious doings, and of much else besides.

   The author clearly loved his subject, and it's invariably from such writers that we get the best books. So if you're looking for a well-written, well-illustrated, easy-to-read popular treatment of this fascinating world, a world that is vastly more important to you than you may realize since it is there and not in Greece that the real roots of Western civilization lie, you'd be hard put to better 'They Wrote on Clay.'

   And if Chiera succeeds in whetting your appetite, as I'm sure he will, you might go on to read one of the best-loved stories to come out of that world, the deeply moving story of the adventures of Gilgamesh, his friendship with the wild man Enkidu, and his search for immortality. I'm pretty sure that, if you don't already know it, you would very much enjoy that too. One good popular edition of this story that can be recommended is:

   THE EPIC OF GILGAMESH : An English Version with an Introduction by N. K. Sandars. Penguin Classics Revised Edition. 128 pp. London : Penguin, 1972 (1964) and Reissued.




3. I found this interesting book to be a very good source of translated inscriptions, some of which found their way into my own recent compilation "Wetlands of Mass Destruction: Ancient Presage for Contemporary Ecocide in Southern Iraq". From all the reference books I consulted for my writing project, this particular one was of a handful of those I found to be most useful in terms of the diversity of material presented.

2 comments about City Dog: Chicago (City Dog series).

1. Whoever wrote the Chicago edition either is map impaired or does not live in the area. They also are west suburban phobic. All the stores, bakeries etc. that are directly west of the city are listed under south suburban. By omitting a west suburban chapter, this book is less appealing to people who live in that area.
   
   Last time I looked, Evanston was in Cook county. The editors place it sometimes in Lake County, sometimes in Cook.
   
   I recently discovered that while the information gatherers are from Chicago, the book was mapped into locations in LA. Hence the inaccuracies. It is an excuse, but one from which many lessons should be learned. Don't always count on those computer maps. It is not like looking at the atlas yourself.
   
   Hopefully, in a later edition these errors will be corrected.



2. A friend of mine told me about City Dog Chicago, and I was very pleased to see accurate reviews of local pet businesses in my area.
   
   Not only were the reviews honest and accurate, the book as well informed me of tons of helpful dog services available in my neighborhood that I would have never known about. I think City Dog is a must-have for any busy dog owner living in the Chicago area.
   
   Sincerely,
   Melissa Green
   Chicago, IL

1 comments about Chicago's 50 Best Places to Take Children (City and Company).

1. This is an awesome book for parents or anyone who is always looking for something to do with children. I can't wait to get this book for every one of my friends and family members who have kids. Finally, something that fits in my purse and is a veritable treasure of information about where to go to inspire, educate and entertain children!

1 comments about Great Chicago Stories: Portraits and Stories.

1. This book captures the personality of our amazing city, in all its honesty, in all its glory.

No comments about Culture and the City: Cultural Philanthropy in Chicago from the 1880s to 1917.