John Noble Books

The number of books on Alexander's campaigns which extol his genius as a military thinker are many. Few have taken up the task of the political fallout of Alexander's conquests when he met his end. This book, originally published in the late 19th century, attempts to fill that gap and does so with some success. After Alexander's death, the empire was broken up between Alexander's generals and fell into smaller empires with a common heritage but with their own cultural distinctives. Oft times they were at war with one another, becoming allies, then back at war again. It is an intriguing story of the people and empires that never lived up to their founder's talents. At times, the older and less familiar language constructs of the book make it difficult to follow but it is worth the effort and a handy resource to fill in the many gaps left by the Alexander histories.

The book was very helpful to define our Itinerary, however, we kept on bumping into the same people over and over because they had the same guide. I guess it is very popular because it is good. The only thing is, when you are abroad you don't want to be cooped up with people from where you came from. Also, it was hard to find good places to eat using the guide. There are also mistakes in the maps and street address, watch out when taking taxis to double check locations!

The Montcada (or Moncada) family held a notable place in the history of Barcelona and southwest France, and then of Spain generally, for seven hundred years. From post-Carolingian aristocrats (viscounts and what were called "vicars," though the meaning of the term was different from today), they became circa 1020 a castle-holding family and Great Seneschals to the counts of Barcelona. Soon, they were important advisors to the count-kings of Aragon-Barcelona, married into the ruling families of Béarn, Foix, and Aragon itself. At the same time, the family produced a series of archdeacons serving the bishops of Barcelona and filled other high ecclesiastical offices. In later generations (beyond the scope of this book), Montcadas were noted scholarly and literary figures. Shideler delved deeply into the Catalonian and other archives in order to redress the genealogical mythology perpetrated by earlier historians and has produced a new, well-documented lineage, combined with an astute study of the development and maintenance of lordship in medieval Spain.

When this book came out in the 1980's it was a shocker to realize that Germany is still going strong with movie making. Probably a lot of your favorites came out after this book was published. However the movies in the book are worth scrutinizing as a part of "The New German Cinema"

From the back cover:

In this, the first book to examine the New German Cinema as a whole, John Sandford provides a film-by film study of these seven directors [Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Jean-Marie Straub, Alexander Kluge, and Volker Schlondorff], locating their achievements within a frame of developments in television, drama, documentaries, and the political history of contemporary Germany itself.

What drew my attention to this book was the picture of Klaus Kinski from "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) and there is a great section on this film in the book.

There are probably hundreds or thousands of books that can introduce you to the basics of photoshop. I selected this one because it was on sale for one dollar at the local bookstore. Nothing about it blew me away, but it did a very efficient job of providing a first experience that got me from an absolute beginner to a qualified amateur in just under a week. The authors focus on teaching through tasks rather than explanations. Readers looking for in-depth detail will be sorely dissapointed, but I found the hands on exercises more valuable for actually learning the obscure menu commands necessary to acheive significant changes to photos.

The book tries to cover all of the basics of photoshop, but it's such a deep and complicated application that by the end there are entire menus and options that haven't even been mentioned, much less explained. Even some of the areas that have whole chapters feel as if they have been skimmed over - color and hue adjustments spring to mind. On the other hand, the chapters that cover the various methods of selection and image correction are very strong. Overall, the skills taught are perfect to enable a user to participate in online photo alteration contests on fark.com or worth1000.com.

A word of warning: this book is a great introduction but it does focus on the manipulation of photos, so a reader who wants to learn skills related to image creation might investigate alternatives.

This book is such a constant companion of mine that I have two copies; the first one is nearly worn out, heavily annotated. This reader of philosophy by John Randall, Justus Buchler and Evelyn Shirk is not a systematic treatment of philosophy, nor is it a consistent and in depth analysis of particular fields or schools of philosophy. Rather, it is a broadly drawn and wide ranging collection of readings covering almost the entire field of philosophy.

This book is meant to be a companion to the volume 'Philosophy: an Introduction', published as part of the same series. That text covers the field of philosophy in a systematic and organised approach -- this volume draws together primary texts with a minimum of commentary. The authors state there is 'no royal road' to philosophy -- that it is difficult reading, and primary texts in the field are often daunting. Where does one begin with the body of work by Plato or Aristotle, Aquinas or Hobbes?

The selections in this book average 15 pages or so; the shorter among them (such as St. Anselm's argument for the existence of God) can be but a few pages, while the longer pieces include Berkeley's discourse on the difference between things and ideas, Mill's discussion of free will, and Kierkegaard's piece on despair. Even the untutored in philosophy will recognise many names -- Plato and Aristotle are included several times; other names such as Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Hume, Bacon, and Hobbes are joined by less well-known but important philosophers such as G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Schopenhauer, and Ryle. There are 34 selections in all, grouped under two broad categories: Philosophic Criticism, Definition and Analysis; and the Development of Philosophic Perspective.

A primary purpose of this book, apart from providing source readings for the companion volume, is to stimulate the reader to further investigations. The passages are relatively short so that they are more easily digestable; each of the sections contains reference material so that students may engage the full texts at their leisure.

One gets a good sense of the diversity of ideas and thinkers from collections such as these; this one is particularly good at drawing together reading that emphasise both the ideas in philosophy as well as the method of philosophical thought.

While the maps for Madrid are more or less useless, Barcelona maps were easy to use, and information on both cities was generous. Unfortunately does not cater as much to budget travellers as it used to. Information on Valencia was a little sparse. It's a good security blanket though on sights to see and stuff like that. Kinda misses out on all the really good grub holes in Valencia though. How is Padi's not mentioned?

Seems to be pretty thorough. Using it to plan Spain and Andorra trip in June.

I use Lonely Planet and Guide Vert/Green Guide on most of my trips. They complement one another well. Lonely Planet had some good recommendations for hotels in Barcelona; and for all the sites we went to the historical background, opening times, and descriptions were very well done. Spain is a tricky country in terms of opening hours, as many museums close for 2 or so hours in the middle of the day. As we did not have a car, information concerning metro stops, train station locations, etc. were quite useful.

As usual, LP lacks in the maps (they are detailed enough , but the black/white format makes it almost impossible to read); and lack of photos makes it difficult to decide what to see. Whatever happened to the pictures/thousand word thing?

LP is oriented towards the backpacker/middle-means traveler. But even if you are traveling in luxury, this is a more than sufficient guide except for the maps.

as usual, a travel guide filled up with essential information, history background of every place, saving tips, touring ideas... what else to say? Lonely Planet are the best travel guides for far.

We spent the last 22 days backpacking all over spain and we found this book very helpful.. The maps were very accurate and were plentiful.. (unlike frommers portugal guide which only has a few maps in the entire book). The description of the smaller cities, even some small villages were included and helpful.. It is true about some opening and closing times and the admission rate was different than the book, but those change all the time.. I expected to pay a bit extra for admission and in general, most sites open around the same time during the day anyway..
We stayed at several hostels and found many different travellers from different countries than the states used the same book for their plans..
We got a good use out of this book and would strongly recommend it to those who are planning a trip to Spain to see just more than Madrid and Barcelona and Sevilla.. Frankly, a tourist information booth at major cities in general are the way to go for updated information on restaurants and events....
The only thing I would have a different opinion on is some of the hotel author's selections which I found if fair, maybe not worthy of the title...

So you have already seen the present and former capital, and now you would like to see the "real Russia", or you have adopted a child from Murmansk, or you are meeting a prospective bride from Magadan (don't laugh--whenever I answer questions from people who are traveling to regions outside of Moscow/St. Petersburg, 80% are going for adoption or marriage!). There are almost no current guidebooks to regions such as Perm, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Volgograd, Crimea, Minsk, and the Far East. The 'Lonely Planet Russia, Ukraine & Belarus (Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, 2Nded)' has the largest area coverage of any guide currently published in English.

It is also ideal for those taking a river cruise between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The coverage of the famed Trans-Siberian route is ok, although I think the 'Trans-Siberian Handbook' and 'Siberian Bam Guide : Rail, Rivers & Road' do a better job for those particular regions.

The Moscow/St. Petersburg sections are ok as well, although I think anyone spending more than a few days in each of those cities should look into guides that cover only those cities.

Restaurant, hotel and travel information are good, although could use more details. The history sections are adequate considering the scope of the book. Also, the twice-yearly updates at Lonely Planet's web site, although lacking in breadth and depth, provide some more timely information than what appears in the book.

A good and usable guide to the entire Russia is still to be written. There are objective reasons for this - the country is huge, and 99% per cent of its territory has no hope of receiving meaningful numbers of tourists. Covering such an area adequately would be an incredibly difficult and expensive task; there is no travel publisher in the world at the moment willing to invest so much for so little expected in sales.

People who come to Russia mostly visit Moscow and St Petersburg, although a few also wander to the "Zolotoye Koltso" (Golden Ring) around Volga river - old cities of Vladimir, Suzdal or Uglich. If this is your case, the choice is easy: just pick one of the city guides (DK Eyewitness recommended - really the best, Fodor's Moscow and St Petersburg is also good, or try Rough Guide for less inspired but more exhaustive listings).

The question is - what to do if you go deeper into the country? Say, places in the Urals, or Russia's Far East? Well, you probably will have to dedicate a lot of effort to picking out nuggets of information from the Internet - preferably armed with some knowledge of the Russian language. Prepare your itinerary bit by bit, seek recommendations, write e-mails to people. It is time-consuming and requires effort, but you do not have a choice if you want to prepare for this trip properly.

Alternatively (an easy way, but not a good one) - buy this book, but make sure you have a pinch of salt on you. A spoonful of salt, rather. Or better make it a sack of salt. The shortcomings of this book have been noted by others: hopelessly outdated, inaccurate, poorly researched. There is a distinct feeling writers either did not visit some of the places they wrote about or spent very little time there. As for pricing information, you will be better off with a random number generator or a casino roulette than this book. I have never seen a guide where price information would be so disconnected from the reality.

There is also a matter of certain arrogance and disrespect to local culture, noted by one reviewer. Lonely Planet is famed for not pulling any punches and giving writers a lot of freedom to voice their opinions, but at times the feeling of writers' perceived cultural superiority is over the top.

So is this book worth buying at all? Well, maybe, if you don't mind carrying around something of very limited practical use. Luggage allowance permitting, you might as well have it - one out of five telephone numbers shown in the book might be still valid, some of the addresses may be accurate. Opening times? Here's rule of thumb: try between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays, chances are, the place will be open. It may occasionally prove useful, for the absence of a better choice, but please do not have excessive expectations.

The same is true for Belarus - the country is no more welcoming to travellers than Libya or Sudan, nosy travellers risk imprisonment and serious travel writing is practically non-existent. You can try using Lonely Planet, or you can get an excellent listings magazine Minsk In Your Pocket.

For Ukraine, choices are better. The country is relatively well-covered by general Eastern Europe guides, there is brilliant Hippocrene Language and Travel Guide to Ukraine (by Linda Hodges and George Chumak), or Ukraine Culture Shock by Meredith Dalton. Generally, you will find Ukraine friendlier to Westerners than Russia or Belarus and, most importantly, not preoccupied by desperate superpower ambitions and constant need to reassert its greatness.

I gave this Lonely Planet guide one star not only because you have to give it at least one star under Amazon system. The book deserves a star because it attempted to cover Russia, Ukraine and Belarus first. Commendable ambition, but sadly, the result is very poor. Maybe they will put together a better team next time, give it a bit more time and check their writing more meticulously.

If you are planning only for staying in Moscow and St. Petersburg or want to travel with the Transibirian Train, don't use the book - there are better ones. This guidebook has it's strength certainly for the broad (and thus mostly not very deep) information and it is quite all right if you are travelling AROUND in Russia and visit also some of the smaller cities.

A fine thing I found out was the (sometimes a little too small) maps of nearly every town and the information about how to get to the place and how to leave it again.

On the other hand, the information about hotels' prices is VERY old and out of date completely. Expect to pay 2 to 4 times more than published in the book, Russia has get more expensive since the book has been written! So it is still better to check for hotels on the internet or to ask taxidrivers to lead you to a cheap one and if there's no place left, just go on with the same taxi to the next one. However if you don't care about paying sometimes around 60 Dollars or more a night then this doesn't matter anyway and the information about the hotels themselves is still right.

This has been replaced by an updated edition (which eliminates Belarus). Search for 1740592654, or look under "Our Customers' Advice" above. It is still a great guide for your journey of Discovering Russia.

It is always best to get the most current guidebook, as attractions, hotels, restaurants and transportation options do often change--AND THEN VERIFY THAT INFORMATION!

Marc David Miller, Discovering Russia, New York

Any guide which tries to everextent itself by covering a too big an area will shortchange the reader, inspite of the best intensions. This is the case with this nitty-gritty Lonley Planet guide to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. I've found the information for Ukraine far less useful than in Linda Hodges' guide to Ukraine. Lonley Planet treats Russia, Ukraine and Belarus as if it still were part of the same country it was 11 years ago. All three countries have their unique pluses and minuses, and, lets face it, deserve their own individual guides. The reader is not being made aware enough and therefore does not really appreciate the fact that, for example, Russia and Ukraine are very different from one another, and any similarities are far less common than once assumed.What I liked best about the Lonley Planet guide,and the same is true for their other guides, are the details about the obscure and less-known hotels and restaurants.

This Guide lives up to "Lonely Planets" reputation as a publisher of well researched Travel guides. It's the only guide you really need to "Walk Spain Flat"!

All the basic info is provided, Maps, discriptions,and language in easy to read format {although now that I'm in my 60's the print/font seems smaller??}. For walking Spain the guide is a "must have" piece of equipment.

I walked the Camino in 2001, using the 36 pages of the 2nd edition guide, in conjuction with the Confraternity of St. James Camino Frances. I found a large amount of excellent info in the 36 pages, and have been recommending it on our Camino web page ever since. The refugios change so rapidly that you shouldn't rely just on one guide. When I saw the recent negative review from a 2003 pilgrim, I went out and bought the 3rd edition, to see if there were drastic changes. The changes were few, and were all improvements - a list of refugios at the beginning, bolder print on the maps, so they are easier to read, slight rewording of some of the text. The authors of the Camino segment are still Nancy Frey and Jose Placer. Nancy has a PhD from University of California, Berkeley, and has written a well respected book on the Camino: Pilgrim Stories. The two of them own the On Foot In Spain adventure company and personally lead walks on the Camino and other treks in Spain. The history in the Lonely Planet segment is authentic, though necessarily condensed. I stand by my original recommendation. In addition to these 37 pages, get the Confraternity Camino Frances guide, and get either Davies and Cole's guide or John Brierley's guide.

You will find some errors or changes needed in all of these guides, due to conditions changing on the trail, overlooked typos, etc. When you do, help future pilgrims by sending an email to the publication's website so that they can revise the next edition.

I think some of the reviewers' comments below are probably correct but none of them are serious drawbacks. True, the maps in this guide are not EXTREMELY detailed, but if you want a really detailed topographical map, you can always get one. The actual trail descriptions in this book are painstakingly detailed -- it even gets tedious. So if you can't find every tree along your route marked on the maps here, just use your imagination a little and wing it.

"Walking in Spain" describes thirty or so of the best trails in Spain, highlighting trails in Mallorca, the Alpujarras Mountains of Andalusia, the area around Valencia, Castile's Sierra de Gredos and Sierra de Guadarrama, the Spanish Pyrenees, Galicia, and the Cordillera Cantábrica. Hikes vary from longer hauls like the 23-day Pyrenean traverse and the month-long Camino de Santiago to shorter 5- and 6-day hikes and walks you can do in less than a day.

I've used the guide to get some great ideas for an upcoming hiking trip to the Alpujarras Mountains and the Sierra Nevada and have found it extremely useful. It lists numerous places to stay, ranging from 30- and 40-euro "pensiones" to dirt-cheap hikers' "albergues". You're not going to find a list of every single cheap place to crash your head here (if you did, you would have a book twice as big as this one), but you won't find yourself stranded. There's also a bunch of affordable eating places listed in this book.

A plus for hikers who want to tackle all or part of the famous St. James pilgrimage route is that the guide's recommended day-to-day itinerary drops you off at the end of each day in towns where you can get food and water. A chart also shows the distance between each official "albergue" and the next.

This book comes up a little short on cultural information, but you can always take a look at Lonely Planet's general guide to Spain. Recommended. Five stars.

I used this book to plan a loop-hike in Sierra de Grazalema in Andalucia. Luckily, the inn keeper informed us that the book had published the hike in reverse of the intended route, due to some sort of copyright issue.

If we would have followed the book's instructions, we would have had a more difficult hike, and might have gotten lost. The inn keeper said that many hikers have complained of getting lost after following this book, since all the arrows are pointing in the opposite direction, and the cairns aren't necessarily even visible from the route, if you follow the book. Once on the hike, we could see that he was correct. I found Lonely Planet's inclusion of this "backwards route" to be extremely unethical.

But the book is the reason I even ended up on this beautiful hike, and it has a lot of good information. I don't know if there is a better guide available. But I DO recommend verifying/checking your route with someone local and NOT relying solely on the book for planning your route.

I am walking the Camino de Santiago now and can only comment on the Lonely Planet in this context. Day after day I become more convinced that Lonely Planet's researchers have never been on the Camino. They make much of the albergues or refugios but all this information is printed on the back of pilgrims' credencial (price one euro not 25 cents as LP claim). All of the other places where one might stay are hardly mentioned if at all. Punte Reina is described as a one street village, absolutely wrong! The trail leaving the same town is totally mis-described and all the trail mythology plagiarised from other sources takes up space that might be given over to hard facts. Distances are frequently misleading because of sloppy language. A typical example, is something like ¨"start from the crossroads, you'll pass x, y and z and continue for 5 kms to reach a crossroads¨." So where does the 5 kms start, at the crossroads or is it x,y and z? Whichever you choose you'll be wrong, there's no consistency. It happens time after time. An iron bridge near Estella is described as wooden. All small errors you may say but it just piles up day after day. Do not waste money on this useless book. What you need to know is what awaits you at the end of each day when you struugle into the next place after 20 or 30 kms only to read more vague errors from this.

When I saw this book I knew I had to read it because it was going to be about the true history of the German Army and not full of anti German propaganda. After the intro there are quotes from some famous germans, mostly from the military, who glorify war. Then the book starts with the Prussian king Frederick William's lust for building up his army in the early 18th century and from there it talks about Pruissa's army conquests and losses all the way up until the 1950's. The book is full of little interesting tidbits about the German military like how they came to look at war and how they trained which is what helped them become the world's best military time and time again through it's history. The book is very easy to read through and you'll be done in no time.

I did have some problems with the book like how they only talked about the Prussian army and not the other german armies out there like Austria's. Another thing that really bothered me is that the author wants you not to think about the Germans as Jew hating Nazis but as a war loving people. The author goes on about how all the Germans love war and that's all they want in life, including todays Germans. It is true that the Germans loved war but that was a long time ago and I think that things have changed after all a lot of Germanic cultures also loved war a long time ago but you don't hear anything about the Scandinavians still wanting to go on Viking raids or about the English trying to takeover the seas again.

This book might turn people off to the Germans if they think that they all love and want war until each and every one of them is dead, but if you can ignore the author's personal beliefs about Germans loving war then I'm sure that you'll enjoy this informative book.

'Jackboot' is at once a history of German militarism and a deep look into the mind and spirit of the men who constituted it. Laffin's stated goal is to give the much-maligned German soldier his proper due, and in this, he succeeds. Initially, he seems to have a deep admiration for his subjects, but as the book continues it becomes clear that his attitude toward the German soldier is more of a grudging respect: "I am no apologist for Germans and especially not for the Prussianistic of them; they are fundamentally a hard race, but it is wrong to allege that the entire army was one of sadists." With that said, he prefaces his book by asserting his belief that all soldiers are "the most genuine and worthwhile people who have ever existed." Laffin spends a significant amount of time examining the German armies of old, namely the Prussians and their immeasurable influence on German militarism. Among the influential personalities covered in depth are; Frederick the Great, Clausewitz, Scharnhorst, Moltke, and Hitler. Although most of the book concentrates on military leaders and campaigns, Laffin does also offer some valuable insight into the lot and mentality of the ordinary soldier "from the ranks."

Some reviewers have criticized Laffin's use of generalizations to describe certain aspects of German militarism and it's soldiers. I would argue that if there was ever a case for generalizations to be legitimate, the German military would qualify. For centuries, the German was bred for war, and the single-minded warrior spirit was drilled into them from an early age. They were an honor-driven and martial society that had essentially one way of doing things, and individualism was not a trait that was encouraged. And while there are exceptions to every rule, it seems evident that the average German readily accepted his soldierly fate and eagerly sought the glorious "death of heroes."

Previous reviewers have also criticized Laffin's conclusions that the Germans will one day march again. And while I agree that this seems unlikely at the moment, I wouldn't dismiss it arbitrarily. In another book I've recently read; Fuhrer-Ex:: Memoirs of a Former Neo-Nazi(1996) the author claims that the Bundeswehr is still trained in terms of "racial enemies" and is particularly indoctrinated with fear of a "yellow flood" from China. Just some food for thought. On a side note, am I the only one that thinks its funny that the soldier on the front cover looks like a black guy? Anyhow, I found this to be a solid look into German militarism and the German soldier. Definitely worth the read for anyone interested in the subject.

Laffin has a great idea. He wants to examine the characteristics of German soldiers and German militantcy since Prussian times. He tells us early on that he wants to overcome steretypes and "tell it like it is." What the reader gets is a history light version of the German military over the course of two hundred years, full of generalizations, and stereotypes. Unfortunately, some of Laffin's favorite rhetorical crutches are comments like "in typical German fashion", "...having the typical methodical Prussian mind...", and "They set about planning it at once, in typical Germanic style..." The French army is in one case defeated because of "effeminacy." Some of the ideas presented seem to be more opinion than carefully researched analysis. Finally, Laffin's conclusion (writing in 1965) is that German officers are intentionally making the Bundeswehr look bad in NATO exercises as part of a conspiracy which will see German soldiers on the march again to dominate Europe. Well, even in 1965 that was laughable. Anyone familiar with Germans today is well aware that it would take decades of militant socialization for Germans to ever again march on a neighboring capital... unless it was a protest march on Brussels.

The best parts of this book, and those worth reading, were written by someone else. The chapters on WWI and WWII are full of excerpts from soldier diaries and letters and are absolutely fascinating. So, if you read this book, realize you will have to wade through a lot of opinionated garbledy-gook on your way to the good stuff. And, in Laffin's favor, he does make some effort to portray the German soldier as a patriot, instead of simply a Nazi stooge as too many historians are likely to do. On the other hand, he does at times lapse into all kinds of steretypes about Germany and Germans.

Finaly! An author who has the courage to give the lorals (and expose the pitfalls) of German soldiers from the 18th century, through WWII. I was aghast to find that in my college senior level WWII history class, our sole text on the Whermacht was written by a former Israeli solidier! As a grand-child of soldiers of Germany, I applaud this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in a realistic, soldiers view, of the German Armies.

"Jackboot" is a terse, readable little overview of the German soldier in training and battle from 1713 - 1945. It serves as an enjoyable speedwalk through the history of modern German arms and their leadership, from the Hohenzollern kings of Prussia to Adolf Hitler, trying to capture not so much the specifics as as the "feel" of German militarism, its cultural roots, its successes and its failures. In this the author, John Laffin, succeeds. Although he is wont to oversimplify and make generalizations due to his awe of the German soldier in general, he does make a habit of pointing out interesting and little-known historical tidbits, such as the fact that Frederick the Great lost almost as many battles as he won and that France was responsible for something like 11 of the 14 wars which occurred between her and Germany. Laffin has an eye for this sort of detail, and the book is better off for it.

The main weaknesses are the book's brevity - it's the type of thing you could devour on a medium-sized plane ride -- and its conclusions. As it ends its survey in 1945 it makes little attempt to examine the army of the modern Republic, the Bundeswehr, or German society since 1945, and therefore makes some prognostications about the future of Germany which will strike the modern-day reader as laughable and ridiculous. Laffin (writing in 1965) is convinced the Germans "are not done with their jackboots yet." The reason for this faulty conclusion (I think it's safe to say it is faulty) is, I'm convinced, because he spent most of his time talking to veterans of the war, i.e., middle-aged Germans, and not the young ones entering the Bundeswehr. Laffin was quite right in estimating that a substantial part of the older generation in no way reconciled the defeat, embraced democracy or abandoned right-wing expansionist politics. This was proven by the rise of some right-wing parties in the 1950s. However, these parties never connected with the youth of Germany, and by the 1960s a secondary, aggressive movement to prosecute former Nazis broke out in the country, carried out by the very thirtysomethings who Laffin was assuming were going to be "marching" again quite soon. Right wing politics have never recovered in Germany, and I agree with the other reviewer who said that it would take decades of subtly-increasing nationalist feeling, some economic catastrophes, and probably a European war to prod Germany into struggling into her "jackboots" again.

Having said that, I would still recommend "Jackboot." It is a fun, entertaining read, with a lot of great quotes ("We are here to teach you how to die") and provides a basic foundation for an understanding of German militarism.