Sams Teach Yourself Flickr in 10 Minutes

An easy-to-follow guide to Canon's first touchscreen dSLR

Canon calls the EOS Rebel T4i/650D its most consumer-friendly dSLR, but there's still a lot to learn. Expert author and photography instructor Julie Adair King handles the subject in a step-by-step style that will boost your confidence. If this is your first dSLR, you'll find all the information you need to get going with your new camera and start taking great pictures. More than 300 fabulous full-color photos illustrate all the camera features and also show you what you and your Rebel T4i/650D can achieve.

• Canon's EOS Rebel T4i/650D is a consumer-friendly dSLR with touchscreen controls, expanded autofocus features, and improved low-light shooting capabilities; this friendly guide explains all the controls and helps you gain confidence with the Canon EOS Rebel T4i/650D camera
• Bestselling author Julie Adair King covers using auto, live view, and playback modes; how to dial in exposure and lighting controls; and how to manipulate focus and color
• Offers advice on situational shots, explains how to get images onto a computer for editing, and shows how to print photos or post them online
• Presents professional editing tips and plenty of beautiful full-color images showing what you can achieve
• Popular author has written more than 15 For Dummies books on Nikon and Canon cameras

Canon EOS Rebel T4i/650D For Dummies is the perfect how-to guide for anyone venturing into dSLR photography with this popular new model.

• The basics of musical terms, definitions, note-reading structure, and time and key signatures
• The foundations for chords and more complicated note constructs
• Exercises and sample pieces of music that range from playing simple notes to combining harmony and melody

Why, then, is The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire timeless? The author wasnt a post-modernist man trapped in an Enlightenment body; Gibbon had no conception of social history or archeology, his 18th century idea that climate affects morality is long out of date, and his analyses of the Middle East are hampered by his reliance on second-hand sources. But in 200 years no one has seriously challenged the framework Gibbon used to explain the fall of the empire. In fact, contemporary histories of Rome still owe a great deal to him.

Why? One reason is his careful use of documents. Decline and Fall relies mostly on writers like Ammianus and Sidonius, who tried to be impartial. Another is Gibbons almost superhuman objectivity; while individual characters are berated for this and that, the author is usually sympathetic to human foibles, and always tells his tales with as much complexity as the sources will allow. Which is one reason the works alleged hostility to Christianity is overstated; Gibbon said the religion played a role (not the role) in the fall of Rome, and even praises the new faith for breaking the violence of the fall, and mollify(ing) the ferocious temper of the conquerors. Theres one stumble, and thats the section on the various heresies and religious controversies of the 300s. Duty required Gibbon to analyze the niggling and sometimes incomprehensible arguments over Christs nature (and he confessed he didnt understand the passions behind them), but the historian gets bogged down in theological jargon and never makes it clear what role those heresies played in the fall until the end of Volume III. By then youve forgotten the details.

Thats a small scratch in the masterpiece. In two centuries no one has challenged his famous conclusion: The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. Today we have more details, but the trajectory Gibbon plotted has never been recalculated.

Decline and Fall is also a great read, and one of the best narratives in the English language. War, idealism, corruption, droll asides and the clash of civilizations fly along a brisk stream of prose. Its a big book, but the work moves faster than books a tenth its size.