New York's 1939?1940 World's Fair (NY) (Postcard History Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Well over half a century ago now and the greatest Fair of them all still captures the imagination. Everything was just right in 1939 for this wonderful extravaganza of streamline architecture and the promise of new products and processes to make things available for all on every Main Street. This postcard history does its best to capture the optimism of the Fair but unfortunately I don't think it does a very good job.
Most of the cards in the book were originally color illustrations of the various pavilions and sites. This type of graphic product used bright garish colors and frequently created shapes of buildings and outdoor scenes with color only. The cards, as reproduced in the book, just don't work in black and white, while the few postcards that were originally photographs, either in color or black and white look fine. You can see plenty of these bright cards on Fair websites in color or search out Herbert Rolfes 'The 1939 New York World's Fair in Postcards' (ISBN 155562068X) which has fifty-two full color cards and wonderful they look.
Two excellent black and white photobooks are 'The New York World's Fair 1939/1940 (ISBN 0486234940) with 155 photos by Richard Wurts with excellent coverage and detailed captions and a coffee-table book by Paul Van Dort '1939: New York World's Fair Photo Collection' (ISBN 0972646809) 150 pages with 271 photos. This book, amazingly, is priced at $19.95 with Andrew Wood's book list priced at $19.99 for less pages and pictures. Incidentally you can get the Van Dort book from the author, just put his name into Google or A9 and click World's Fair on his website.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.


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The 1939-1940 New York World's Fair promised a new age of global communication, nationwide superhighways, and suburban living-and it delivered. Crafted by designers such as Walter Dorwin Teague, Norman Bel Geddes, and Raymond Loewy, the twelve-hundred-acre fair in Flushing Meadows sold visitors a streamlined world of consumer goods-teardrop cars and smoking robots, electric dishwashers and nylon stockings-manufactured by companies such as Westinghouse, General Motors, and AT&T. In New York's 1939-1940 World's Fair, insightful narrative accompanies dazzling postcards, advertisements, and illustrations of Democracity, Futurama, the Lagoon of Nations, and the famed Trylon and Perisphere, recalling the promise and optimism of a fair that enchanted forty-five million visitors.

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San Francisco Bay Area Murals: Communities Create Their Muses 1904-1997 Review

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(More customer reviews)My nomination for a perfect, crystalline Saturday: Follow Drescher's guide through San Francisco neighborhoods to find murals on walls glowing against the September sky. The title is right. Humankind doesn't let nature alone in Bagdad by the Bay. We have been filling walls with our color and figures since the walls have stood in the City. That most curious of monuments, Coit Tower, brimming with the muscular WPA murals, tells California's story in paint. The murals in the Haight vibrate with psychedelic counterculture; those of the Mission and Western Addition not only deliver the messages of the Latino and African American neighborhoods but have become identified as centers of the communities. People meet at a mural in San Francisco, just as they might meet at a fountain in Rome. Of course, the book records the outstanding art across the Bay and down the Peninsula, but for me the best part of the book was its putting together city maps and pictures of murals so that a reader can experience the favorites. The fancy semiotics, art techniques and materials are all here, conveyed by a recognized authority, but the author is wise enough not to get in the way of the always revolutionary, ever traditional mix of color, lines, architecture and geography. A keeper.

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MLB Series 13 Extended Edition Figure: Moises Alou San Francisco Giants Grey Jersey Review

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(More customer reviews)McFarlane's MLB Series 13 is made up of Extended Edition Figures because the idea was to include baseball players who switched teams for the 2005 season. Thus we have the third figure of Randy Johnson, now as a New York Yankee, second figures of Pedro Martinez as a New York Met and Larry Walker as a St. Louis Cardinal (that last one got out right before Walker played what may well be his final game since his retirement this winter is anticipated). Then there is the first figure of Moises Alou, who played this past season for the San Francisco Giants. However, the seasons before that Alou played for the Chicago Cubs and I find it ironic that the figure is shown catching the ball on the warning track at Wrigley Field in front of the ivy covered left field wall.
Virtually all of the baseball figures that McFarlane has released to date have been free-standing figures. If they are wearing the team's white home jersey then you know which baseball park they are playing out, but with the grey road jerseys such things are open to interpretation. But there is no doubt with this one and you have to think that they were planning on having Alou as a Cub for either Series 11 or 12 released earlier this year when the trade changed the figure's uniform but not the backdrop. Then again, maybe the people at McFarlane Toys just have a wicked sense of humor and maybe we can look forward to seeing Derek Jeter dive into the stands at Yankee Stadium or Manny Ramierez in front of the Green Monster.
Notice that Alou is using both hands to catch the ball, thereby showing appropriate technique and adding to the educational value of this toy. You can also tell he plays hard because whoever paints the dirt on these figures has gone to town with Alou. It is nice to see that Alou has finally received a figure because I always think of him as having suffered one of the most bizarre injuries in baseball history near the end of the 1993 season. In a game at St. Louis after hitting a ball into the outfield Alou rounded first base and then turned to retreat back to the back. His spikes caught in the AstroTurf and he suffered a dislocated left ankle and compound fracture of the leg. The injury ended his season and threatened his career, but now we are a dozen years down the road and Alou is playing for his father Felipe in San Francisco, where the elder Alou and his brothers Matty and Jesus all played for the Giants (sometimes in the outfield at the same time, which meant sitting down Willie Mays to accomplish). Moises Alou has a career batting average of .301, has 297 career home runs, and has driven in 100 or more runs in five seasons and was brought to the Bay Area to bat behind Barry Bonds, who, ironically, was injured almost the entire season.
McFarlane has already announced its figures for the 2006 pre-season, with MLB Series 14 consisting of Mark Mulder of the Cardinals, Bobby Abreu of the Philadelphia Phillies, Aramis Ramirez of the Cubs, Jeff Kent finally getting his first figure as a Los Angeles Dodger, Jason Veritek of the Boston Red Sox getting his second, and American League MVP Alex Rodriguez getting his fourth figure and second in two years as a New York Yankee. But the biggest news could well be the Cooperstown Series 3 which has Mickey Mantle and Don Mattingly of the Yankees, Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates, a second figure of Nolan Ryan as a California Angel, Carlton Fisk (either a Red Sox or a White Sox, maybe both, they have not yet said), and Jackie Robinson. So far I have only been collecting the retired Yankees, but Jackie's #42 has been retired by everybody so I am planning on picking that one up as well. These figures are all due for a February release, so plan ahead baseball fans.

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Feel a part of the Major League Baseball action with collector figures that are finely crafted with superb detail. Moises Alou is ready for the game in his Giants uniform. Figure includes a handsome display stand and measures 6" tall.

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