Natural Stone a Guide to Selection, is a goldmine of information. The true-to-color plates appeal to the aesthetics while the no-nonsense technical information allows to distinguish between stones suitable for various uses. Whether you are shopping for a new kitchen or floor surface, or simply wish to appreciate how generous Mother Nature truly is -- this is a resource for chosing marble, granite, travertine, or stone.

O'Donoghue's account of the rebel leader Liam Lynch is personable and endearing, made that much more interesting in that the author knew commandant Lynch during that monumental and tumultous period in Irish history. The author reveals the mindset and extreme dedication of the quiet soldier who was admired by those in his command and the enemy alike. This is no more evident than in the desription of the respect that both pro-treaty conservatives and anti-treaty radicals gave to Lynch in the period leading to civil war. No other historical account of the violent yet distinguished life of Liam Lynch, IRA general, has ever been written.

The Nuremberg Mind gives detailed accounts of a series of Rorschach tests given to the imprisoned Nazi leaders while they awaited trial at Nuremberg. The ink blot tests were administered by Dr. G. M. Gilbert (author of the excellent book Nuremberg Diary) and Florence Miale. All comments given by each defendant while he was examining the cards (including a running talley of the time that had past between each comment) is included in the study. The book also includes color images of the 10 ink blot cards used (I was surprised to find out that several of the ink blots included designs in red, blue, green, yellow, and orange).

I admit that I am skeptical about such psychological studies, and I did find certain weakness in this book. First, previous knowledge of the grim deeds of the Nazi leaders can certainly have an influence on the final analyses of their Rorschach tests. Gilbert was a Jewish American and, understandably, may have had some biases when conducting the examinations. After obtaining responses to Card X from Reichsbank President Walther Funk, for example, Gilbert suggested "that last picture might have been a concentration camp" (p. 79). Another example is exhibited in Miale's analysis of Hermann Goering's interpretation of Card VI as a bedroom rug: "[Goering's] capacity for warmth and understanding is used by him for obtaining sensuous pleasure rather than for developing real human relationships" (p. 92). In another case, Hans Fritzsche (a radio propagandist and hardly a big-time Nazi who would later denounce the regime) was labeled a "blind, torn psychopath" by Miale because the radio broadcaster saw a torn map in Card VII. Preconceived notions about the personalities they were analyzing probably had some influence on such responses.

More revealing are the patterns of responses by the subjects Hans Frank, Funk, Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Frank (the "Butcher of Poland") made several references to alcohol in his responses. Funk made startling sexual references during his tests. Goering made quick and confident responses to the cards and became impatient when certain areas of the cards did not fit his designs "snapping his forefinger at the three red spots [on Card III] as though to brush them off" (p. 87). Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner gave the least number of responses to the cards. The former quickly gave one response to each card or would simply reject them, the latter took a very long time on each card and, in some cases, would contradict his own responses (quite understandable from a man conditioned to follow orders). Such patterns revealed a great deal about the subjects' personalities, much more than did Miale's or Gilbert's isolated comments.

I believe that the Rorschach test can be useful in an analysis on one's personality. The test, however, is useless if the impartiality of the examiner is in question. It is possible for the Rorschach analysis to reveal more about the person conducting the test than about the subject himself. There are no universal guidelines for interpreting a subject's response and thus an examiner may--however unintentionally--introduce his own thoughts and preconceptions to the study. What saves the usefulness of this study is that the defendant's comments are printed verbatim which allows the reader to do his own analysis and come to his own conclusions about the top personalities in the Third Reich.

Ths was the first book we bought about Occupied Japan. We were bran new collectors and found that we learned a great deal from this book. Now that we have been collected for some time we still use this as refernce for pricing items. The only prolbem I find with this book is that evertime I find an item I want to find a price for there is no price indicated in the price guide. Very frustrating. I would still recommend any collector owning this book it gives alot of very good information and anyone can learn alot from this. We do like it and would suggest every MIOJ collector own this book.

GOOD FOR AGES 9 AND UP ALSO IF YOU WANT QUICK AND EASY FOLD

I have one of the first copies of this book. It is excellent for kids and will keep them interested in Japan and its culture. It can be hard to find, which is very unfortunate, but there are a few copies out there.

This is a really good Pippi Longstocking book! It's not so many girls that's strong as her... and not many boys either. In this book she and her friends goes to the circus, and Pippi really likes it. It's so funny when she shows the strong man that shes stronger than him... Almost every one loves Pippi, cause she's so charming and nice. And al the Pippi books can be read by both children and grown upps. I can really recomend this book.

I learned a new word the other day, and through coincidence it seems to refer directly to Elizabeth Pilliod's "Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori." "Microstoria" is a term for historical information discovered through the analysis of documents that recount the daily activities of ordinary individuals. Though it's arguable that many of the individuals whose stories Pilliod weaves into "Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori" were anything but ordinary, microstoria is still her method, and her book demonstrates her mastery of it. The book is about the difference between the evaluation of the three eponymous painters in Giorgio Vasari's canonical "Lives of the Artists"-the 16th-century compendium that still shapes today's received ideas about the Italian Renaissance-and the actual facts about their lives, their interrelations, and their contemporary reputations, as painstakingly unearthed by Pilliod in the course of ten years of research. What she discovers-that Pontormo, Bronzino, and Allori held very different places in the art world and in the evaluations of their peers and patrons than the second-string status ascribed to them by Vasari and perpetuated by centuries of unquestioning acceptance of his work-should come as no surprise to anyone more familiar with the painters' works (scores of which are beautifully reproduced throughout the text) than with the traditional scholarship that has served to obscure them.

Pilliod's mission here is the rescue of these three great artists from an official history based on ancient, unreliable, and hostile opinion. In order to execute it successfully, she needed to be fluent in various versions of various languages from the 16th century to the present; adept at discovering, navigating, and mining myriad libraries, archives, collections, correspondences, museums, and middens; au courant with about 450 years of previous criticism; a skilled, sensitive psychohistorian; a fearless detective; and an x-ray-eyed connoisseur. Part of the treat of reading "Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori" is witnessing the author's command of all those skills and more, displayed in lucid and entertaining prose.

"Pontormo, Bronzino, Allori" may well mark a pivot point in our understanding not only of the artists it vindicates, but of the too-infrequently examined mechanisms of art history as well. Read it if you're an art lover; read it if you're an art historian; be sure to read it if you're a scholar of the period.

Potsherds, it seems, are as important to archeologists as bones to anthropologists. They both last. They both tell part of the human story. Somewhat in the tradition of Osa Johnson's famous chronicle, *I Married Adventure* of the previous generation, Florence Lister takes the reader along with her family through five continents and many years in search of ceramics, ancient and colonial.

Florence and her husband Bob, both archeologists, with their two young sons in tow, pursued pothunting in such diverse places as Glen Canyon in the American Southwest before it was inundated by Lake Powell and the Aswan High Dam area in Africa before it also went underwater. From the 1940s to the 1990s, they did a great deal of contract archeology, i.e. investigating areas such as dams, highways, pipelines and the like that contain historical debris such as potsherds, bones, tools and tiles before they are swept away by modern civilization. The Listers contributed considerably to the body of knowledge about connections between pueblo Indians of the American Southwest and those of Mexico and Mesoamerica as well as trade routes that brought colonial pottery from Spain and Italy to the Americas. The hard science is made more lively and interesting by the personal details.

For example, the JFK assassination occurred when the family was in Wadi Halfa in Africa. Their Nubian servants insisted on sending a cable of condolences to Mrs. Kennedy, who had played an active role in the "Save the Monuments of Nubia" campaign. Near Escalante in Utah, they uncovered more evidence about the disappearance of Everett Ruess. They discovered dishes Cortez used and roofing erected by Columbus' party. They found Genoese pots in Spanish ports, investigated porcelain in Japan (at the "climbing kilns"), T'ang pottery in China, amphorae in Greece and, like detectives, discovered old paintings depicting pottery that had found its way from Seville in Spain to the Americas.

This book sort of grows on you. At the beginning, the language is a bit stilted and self-conscious, but after the author gets into the groove and finds her zone, you begin to participate in the exciting life the family led (not without some danger; they got mugged in Jamaica and got into another tight spot in Morocco).

If you're at all interested in archeology (incidentally, the American spelling is "archeology" and the British is "archaeology") you'll relish this account and remember both scientific conclusions and personal anecdotes. If you're not at all interested in the subject, you won't even be reading this review anyway. But for the former group of people, it's a good, informative, and exciting read.