Customer Reviews

Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to Post-Mode

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This book is wonderful for several reasons:

1) clear and concise; 2) inclusive of the audience; 3) makes art very approachable; 4) places art within its historical context and development; 5) quick reference;

I was exposed to this book after taking various humanities courses and found this book great. It does a much better job of making art accessable than books like Gardner and Janson. I was impressed that the book covered a variety of bases without leaving too much out.

The tone of the work was inclusive and allowed anyone with an interest in understanding methods, techniques, personalities and history of art to do well towards approaching that goal. It does not approach art for the few with a rarefied tone nor does it talk down to the reader.

The layout of the pages are done well and have a decent flow of text and image. It does not, thank god, go into list memorization which is the downfall of some compact versions of some topics.

Highly recommended for those who play academic tournaments at the high school and college levels. The topics covered and interesting personal history found in this book will be found at all levels of play. The pricing of the paperback version will allow people to compete very well indeed.

For home schoolers/educators this book is a good survey introduction and is portable enough for museum trips.

Very few books do so well with so much material to compress. Very impressive. The only thing I could wish further is a music history version of this work.