Our Picks Reviews - Page 23

Put your observational powers to the test with these three collections of picture puzzles, side-by-side photographs identical in almost every way—except the handful of teeny differences that your eagle eyes must spot. Originally published by LIFE magazine, which ignited the picture-puzzle craze you see in various other magazines today, these delightfully addictive visual challenges, in varying levels of difficultly, will provide hours of enjoyment for all ages.
—Neil Pond, American Profile

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The essays from 20 experts are informative. The explanations of weather phenomena, mysteries and mechanisms are fascinating. And the evidence for global warming and climate change are impossible to dismiss. But the photos—Wow. More than 100 large-format color images capture the awesome, fleeting grandeur of tornadoes, floods, lightning storms, icebergs and other meteorological marvels. Weather will turn your coffee table into a window that brings you up close and much more personal with the raw recklessness of the elements than you’ll probably ever find yourself in real life—you hope.
—Neil Pond, American Profile

from Amazon.com

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Circle the wagons and settle in with the kids for these six family-friendly westerns featuring rugged homesteaders, adventurous tykes, romping ponies, loyal dogs and an assortment of other wilderness characters. Most of these flicks came and went from theaters with little fanfare in the 1970s, but there’s an unpretentious charm to the simple, low-budget production values and solid moral groundings of Pony Express Rider, Against A Crooked Sky, Baker’s Hawk, Seven Alone, The Red Fury and Where The Red Fern Grows. And it’s a kick to see where Alan Hale Jr. ended up after his role as “The Skipper” on Gilligan’s Island—washed ashore in Arizona as The Red Fury’s kindly frontier doc!
—Neil Pond, American Profile

from Amazon.com

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Christmas wasn’t always the warm-and-fuzzy holiday we know today. This colorful collection of antique illustrations from 19th century postcards, advertisements and storybooks reveal the season’s much darker roots, with depictions of creepy Santas, rat-roasting fairies, bawdy carolers and bawling children getting their bundle-of-switches comeuppance. For anyone who likes the smorgasbord of holiday sweetness tempered with a little pinch of seasoning salt, Christmas Curiosities makes a perfect stocking stuffer.
—Neil Pond, American Profile

from Amazon.com

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Before they moved on to devote all their efforts to West Wing, writer Aaron Sorkin and director Thomas Schlamme created this Emmy-winning half-hour comedy-drama about a fictitious cable-TV sports show, which hit the airwaves in 1998 and lasted two seasons. This deluxe re-release includes all 45 episodes and two full discs of additional features, including a profile on actor Robert Guillaume, whose real-life stroke during the first season was worked into the plot, and commentary from ESPN employees on just how well the show captured the details of a fast-paced workplace very much like their own.
—Neil Pond, American Profile

from Amazon.com

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During the 1930s and ’40s, the government-sponsored Works Progress Administration (WPA) paid hundreds of out-of-work artists to create millions of posters promoting American ideals, optimism, events, programs and advice for everyday living. This coffee-table collection of almost 500 illustrations presents a stirring, mostly forgotten and wonderfully diverse portrait of a nation pulling itself back together in every way after the onset of the Great Depression, then facing the fight of its life as World War II sent shockwaves around the globe.
—Neil Pond, American Profile

from Amazon.com

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From its humble origins (a wooden slingshot!) to its heyday astraddle an empire of baby boomer playthings, the Wham-O “fun factory” is practically synonymous with inexpensive, far-out, kids-just-gotta-have-it toys. This colorful salute to the company behind the Frisbee, the Hula Hoop, Silly String and Hacky Sacks also points the playful way to hundreds of other, lesser-known Wham-O delights, like Instant Fish, the 27-Color Pencil and SuperElasticBubblePlastic. Super-Book paints a rainbow of retro-toy memories.
—Neil Pond, American Profile

from Amazon.com

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Until his death in 2004, renowned photographer Richard Avedon captured with his camera the many moods and personalities of movie actors, comedians, singers, Broadway stars and other famous folks who lived in—and for—the spotlight. This collection of more than 200 large-format images, culled from Avedon’s archives and stretching across the last half century, open an elegant window on a shiny, days-gone-by show-biz world as seen through one of world’s most celebrated celebrity-trained lenses.
—Neil Pond, American Profile

from Amazon.com

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Take a Halloween hop to the dark side with this wide-ranging collection of freaky facts, way-out stories and scary, stranger-than-fiction tales. Nature’s oddities, history’s mysteries, weird laws, famous hoaxes, murderers, madmen, phobias, UFO encounters, ghost sightings, haunted houses and hundreds of other delightfully unsettling, wildly entertaining tidbits will keep you riveted until long after the leftover trick-or-treat candy is gone.
—Neil Pond, American Profile

from Amazon.com

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Hip, irreverently hilarious and politically prickly, Tom and Dick Smothers’ network TV variety series lasted for three years before CBS censors pulled its plug in 1969. These 11 final-season episodes present a who’s who of musical and comedic guest stars, a bonanza of bonus materials—including segments originally deemed too controversial for prime time—and a retro reminder of just how far the show was willing to go for a laugh during a turbulent era when the nation really, really need one.
—Neil Pond, American Profile

from Amazon.com

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