Thomas Eakins was a firm believer in the importance of the male nude as a subject for drawing, and encouraged his students by insisting that they no only draw from the male nude but spend recreation together in the nude, and this book clearly demonstrates that he practised this.

The text is relatively brief, what follows is a collection of about 50 images including Eakins' paintings but predominately his photographs of the posing male nudes that he he had his students draw, along with photographs he took of his naked students engaged in activities such as swimming.

With ten full-colour plates of paintings, and most of the sepia photographs also reproduced in full-colour the beauty of this book is in its illustrations. It is well produced with most of the images full-page in size, and often sensible presented against a neutral background as opposed to the stark white page. The book includes a chronology, bibliography, notes to the text and an index. ( )