Great pictures but awkward content
584322
This book contains many high quality pictures of various aquariums  fixture designs. It covers all types of aquarium ranging from fresh water, marine, planted to coral tanks. The knowlege this book provided is broad but scattered and simply not comprehensive  enough for advanced aquarist. It is equally confusing and incomplete for the beginner aquarist. It describes VERY LITTLE on everything ranging from the fixtures, filtration system, lighting, the livestocks on both marine and fresh water aquariums. To some extent this book is a disappointment and a waste of paper. For example, one clearly can not depend on the 4 pages information provided by this book on choosing marine fish. This book could have some values to interior designers or architects who wish to incorporate an aquarium in his/her design.
3031878
This is a very cute book with awesome pictures, but the pictures are so detailed, already, with all the BLACK and gray! It doesn't leave a desired amount of room in the picture for our coloring and definitely NO shading details for us to do, as we like. The pictures are just way too dark for me. Now if the pictures weren't already shaded in, so dark, I would rate this book an 5! But, with the extreme darkness already added, it might as well, just be an black and white picture book!
4011534
In any given issue of National Geographic magazine, there will be a handful of photos that really wow me, a handful that interest me, and the rest that I glance at and skip over. This book is like that.

Other customer reviews criticize that the title (and subtitle, for that matter) doesn't match the contents; I agree.

That said, my only real complaint with the book is the same one I have with almost every photo book, and that is that the spine of the book splits the photos in half. Unfortunately, in this case, it only splits those photos that do live up to the book title, the wide ones.

I don't know of any photographer who would normally consent to have his or her photos mutilated then exhibited (except, possibly as part of a conceptual performance, or to make a point). Rendering the centers of these photos unviewable is just a shame. One could argue that it's a necessary evil in order to get the photos in a cost-effective format. The only solution I can think of would be to publish a smaller version of the total composition along with the double-page spread, so at least one would be able to see the photo in totality, then view the spread for detail.

As far as the photos, themselves, go: the magazine has always straddled the line between art photography and photojournalism. This book does the same. Overall, it's less about presenting art than about meticulously visual documentation.
3422484
I'm not fond of the layout - densely packed with B&W images - but the material is great!
4615341
Love the pictures but a book that is titled "for grown-ups" should have bigger numbers for the old grown-ups whose eyesight is not what it used to be
4123765
Great content and pictures, albeit some of it seems a little redundant. Physically its a big book (large and heavy) so makes it a little harder to read unless you are sitting at a desk... for the money spent it would have been nice to get an electronic edition as well to make an evening read in bed a little easier.
9787
This is a cool book with some incredibly nice photographs done in an amazing technology that should have been perfected by now and utilized in every medium instead of having been almost abandoned.  Many of the photographs are nicely erotic and well done.

However, I was disappointed that almost every truly erotic photo, especially those depicting erect penises or sex acts, had no companion photo and therefore no 3-D effect.  I was also disappointed that the publisher didn't have the good sense to make the wire binding large enough to accomodate the number of pages in the book so you could easily turn the pages without damaging them.

All in all, a nice addition to my library, but don't expect hot porn. Most of the photos are very 'soft' but nicely staged.
2477595
I liked the photography in this book but i can not believe how UNSHARP many of the shots appear to be. They are blown up way too much considering he works with 35mm equipment. The book layout is splendid but should be produced in half the dimensions of the current version. Best part is the distribution maps with the photos reduced and a brief write-up about the species and how the shots were taken.
3007162
The pictures themselves are awesome, no doubt!!

But the pictures looks like either from low-resolution source or with low printing quality. A little bit disappointed.
4195880
I really like this book BUT...a couple of the pictures are not the correct shape...looks like when they were copied..they were stretched.
kathi
4388037
great pictures, poor bookbinding  ---[i knew it ahead of time ] sometimes repetitive essays , good chronology
1417360
Brenda Tharp is a wonderful photographer.  The pictures in this book are awesome, to say the least.  Best of all, most are taken in the United States, so it's easy to see yourself going to these places and seeing the sites for yourself.  That said, she doesn't convey the nuts and bolts of how to come up with pictures like these very well.  She's kind of a "touchy-feely" author, using phrases like "what is the picture tying to tell you?" and such.  Like most creative types, she seems to not understand that some people (like me) just don't get that approach.  Still, she tries to explain it.  And she covers several techniques that other books don't.  A neat one was doing a double exposure with one shot in focus, and the other out of focus.  You certainly won't regret buying this book, and you will learn from it.  Just don't expect to suddenly have all the knowledge needed to replicate her results.
3502177
I loved the pictures.  The photographs are vibrant and happy and show children engaged in various activities.  My 1 yo and 4 yo both have been enjoying this book, and I know for the 1 yo it's due to the lovely photographs.

I was really hoping for an amazing story to go along with the photographs given that it's by Andrew Clements, who has written such wonderful elementary-level books, and here I was disappointed.  Clements does a decent job rhyming the text--I'm pretty picky about that but his doesn't sound overly forced.  But there's not a lot of wonderful cadence or any memorable lines here...the text is almost superfluous to the great pictures.

Another oddity is the subject matter.  In each spread, there's a picture of someone doing something with their hands and someone using a tool to accomplish the same task.  For example, holding a dog vs holding a leash on a dog.  The point of each picture seems to be that tools accomplish the tasks better and more efficiently.  Yet the title and the opening pages seem to suggest the book is about hands.  The take-away message about hands, though, seems to be that they are inefficient and inferior to tools.  Possibly that is true but it seems to be a strange message for a book with this title.  I would have expected pictures of people trying to do things with tools that can be more easily accomplished by simply using your hands.  Like, um, eating a PBJ...you could eat it with a knife and fork, but aren't hands so much handier for the job?  But that is the inverse of every two-page spread of the book.

That quibble aside, it's a satisfactory book and I'm glad to have it on my shelf.  I will not mind reading it multiple times to my children and I know they will ask for it.
4155891
Its ok not that easy to follow lots of random pictures , finding particular concepts in the chapter can be confusing , the index and glossary help a lot
784178
The book is massive and heavy. I admire Salgado's works. However a majority of the pictures are shown across two pages which I find a weird choice from the editor. Personally The book could have show most of the pictures on a single page and offer a book far easier to handle and more comfortable to appreciate the artworks.
4169839
The pictures in this book are quite nice. The paper is good quality. Unfortunately, there are several
pictures that spread across two pages and the binding makes it difficult, if not  impossible, to color completely.
3461554
This is a much more visual book than Petkevich's, which has detailed verbal explanations that take a bit of effort to visualize.  Unfortunately, some of the pictures in Shulman's book leave large gaps between frames, and it's hard to tell how to get from one position to the next.

There are some editorial or proofing mistakes that really hurt the book.  Figure skating spins and jumps are done in one direction (counterclockwise for most, clockwise for some) that the skater chooses early-on in their training.  Shulman explains this, and the fact that her directions are for counterclockwise spinners and need to be reversed by clockwise spinners.  Unfortunately the picture and directions for the one-footed spin are backwards, and describe a *clockwise* entry and spin when all the other spins are written for counter-clockwise skaters.  This will be very confusing for a begining skater who has no coach of their own!

In one or two other places a picture is reversed (mirror image), which again can be very confusing if you're trying to learn on your own and don't know that there's a mistake in the book.

There is a good section on modern off-ice strength training, including periodization.

Overall I'd recommend this book *in conjunction* with Petkevich's book: both have gaps that the other complements.  And of course there's no substitute for a real coach!