I first saw this book in Ravenna, Italy, the capital of mosaics where I was taking a workshop, and I passed on buying it there. But I'm glad I bought it. One of the things I like about it (Goodwin is a very good technician) is the way she has taken different mosaic material -- stone, smalti, vitreous glass, ceramic, broken china etc. and made different birds so you can see what the properties of the tesserae bring to the design. While everyone feels it's necessary to write history on mosaics, Goodwin's is particularly interesting. Even though I'm not a huge fan of all of her work, I did like this book quite a bit and I'm pleased I have it in my collection.