Some Books about Assembled - Happy Assembled Reading!

One of America's most treasured comic strips is releasing its eighth treasury, FoxTrot: Assembled with Care. And eight most assuredly will not be enough for fans of the funny pages. Bill Amend's FoxTrot debuted April 10, 1988, and 14 years later it's undisputedly among the most popular strips in newspapers. This colorful compilation of cartoons from FoxTrot's last two years again demonstrates that few entertainers in any medium are better at finding humor in everyday family life than Amend. At the core of much of the strip's wild humor is 10-year-old Jason. He tortures his parents and two teenage siblings Peter and Paige out of their minds with his computer and his pet iguana, Quincy. In this latest treasury, parents Roger and Andrea again have their hands full. In one strip, Jason boldly bursts into their bedroom in the middle of the night to announce that it's "2 a.m. and the lights still work." In another, Jason surprises his mom with a new beep for her computer known simply as "Defcon One." Jason also holds his own with his older siblings, spelling "My Sister Is Ugly" with the carved faces of 14 pumpkins. As FoxTrot surpasses the two million mark in book sales, it continues to demonstrate its timelessness with its always fresh, irreverent, and zany brand of family humor. Like other successful FoxTrot books before it, FoxTrot: Assembled with Care captures the humorous side of the trials and tribulations that come with daily family life like no other strip today..
Price: $7.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]

When global threats surface, they have to contend with the combined might of: Captain America, Storm, Iron Man, The Hulk, Giant-Girl, Wolverine and Spider-Man! Still, powers higher-up think their new computerized defenses will be even MORE reliable than our heroes. (Just wish they hadn't named the system ULTRON...!) Collects Marvel Adventures Mighty Avengers #1-4..
Price: $1.15 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The City Assembled is a history of the elements of cities: streets, public places, urban divisions (religious, political, and social), and the frontiers of city and countryside

Kostof follows the evolution of city components to modern times. He discusses "urban process": the effect on cities of natural disasters like the Great Fire of London and the Lisbon earthquake, war, and comprehensive redevelopment, compared with traditional patterns of growth and change. The current recovery from modernist extremes has made us look again at what we treasure in traditional urban life, and how we can recharge the old forms with contemporary common sense. Over 300 drawings, prints, paintings, and photographs help to tell the story, illustrating both patterns and uses, from the colonnaded streets of ancient Palmyra to gentrified London squares.

A fitting testament to the wide-ranging intellect of Professor Kostof, The City Assembled is at once an exercise in architectural and social history, a case study for the present, and a pointer for the future. 346 illustrations, 40 in color..
Price: $23.04 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Assembled in Japan investigates one of the great success stories of the twentieth century: the rise of the Japanese electronics industry Contrary to mainstream interpretation, Simon Partner discovers that behind the meteoric rise of Sony, Matsushita, Toshiba, and other electrical goods companies was neither the iron hand of Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry nor a government-sponsored export-led growth policy, but rather an explosion of domestic consumer demand that began in the 1950s.
This powerful consumer boom differed fundamentally from the one under way at the same time in the United States in that it began from widespread poverty and comparatively miserable living conditions. Beginning with a discussion of the prewar origins of the consumer engine that was to take off under the American Occupation, Partner quickly turns his sights on the business leaders, inventors, laborers, and ordinary citizens who participated in the broadly successful effort to create new markets for expensive, unfamiliar new products.
Throughout, the author relates these pressure-cooker years in Japan to the key themes of twentieth-century experience worldwide: the role of technology in promoting social change, the rise of mass consumer societies, and the construction of gender in advanced industrial economies..
Price: $26.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]