I had this book for a visual communications class,as a required text,and was disgusted for the majority of the book. The first issue I have with it is that there are few color plates in the center of the book, and yet the author makes reference to color aspects of images that appear in color nowhere withing the main body of the text. Images are frequently referenced and placed on different spreads, and in a number of cases the text obviously had not been updated from the previous version, and the image referenced was in fact the wrong image. Images were of low resolution and in some cases too small to pick out the detain being discussed. For a book about "reading images" this was hardly a successful venture. At points in the text the author seems to have fallen and taken head trauma - as in this quote from pages 246 and 247 "The three 'possessive attributes' Epstein emphasizes are the Angel's long hair, his wings - and his balls." His balls? WTF mate? Loss of academic credibility there friend. Aside from the crass observation, we don't even get to see said "balls", or the hair, or the wings. The angel figure is mostly hidden from view by another body in front of it. The author does this often, as if we are supposed to be "intimately" familiar with the piece in question.This book is full of unfounded opinion, horrible images, and shoddy academic intelligentsia.

Avoid it if you can, and if you are an instructor looking for a textbook, do yourself and your students a favor, and find something else.