Cultural Books

Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin is about big issues like the quality of justice enjoyed by Indigenous peoples and what sort of society we want to be. It is about the particulars of Hindmarsh Island and the writing of ethnography in the southeast. It is about anthropologists and anthropology. It is about the politics of knowledge in an oral culture and those of a print-oriented one. It is about women who insist on being authors of their own lives. And it is about belief, dissent, story-telling and story tellers.

"[A] compelling account that demands to be read... a meticulous piece of scholarship but very readable and accessible." Prof. Fay Gale, President

"[A] formidable collection...It leaves the reader wondering whether the outcome would have been different had the contents of the book been known at the time of the events it describes." John Toohey, former High Court Judge and former Aboriginal Land Commissioner

"Ngarrindjeri Wurruwarrin falls into the category of books which are likely to be valuable to almost all sectors of the reading public, and at the same time, to be criticised by almost all sectors of the reading public." Deborah Bird Rose

This work of scholarship by Diane Bell is a world away from technicist anthropology meant to be read only by specialists: it engages in a highly controversial contemporary landrights issue in a way which demonstrates the profound importance of the act of documenting culture in as polyvalent and multivocal a way as possible. She is also candid about the voices she would like to have represented and could not, those of the dissident women. For me the most valuable section of the book was its re-reading of early anthropology with an eye to the muted women's voice in it. This section demonstrates the systematic bias against recording the rich women's culture, which in the late twentieth century is the powerhouse of cultural reclamation and renovation in many Aboriginal communities. Without engaging in postmodern jargon, this book demonstrates a fine postcolonial and poststructuralist understanding of the complexities of symbolic analysis and the conditions of transmission of epistemologies, both by the Ngarrindjeri and white anthropologists. What the book demonstrates very powerfully is the gender-blind ethnocentrism of the discipline of anthropology, and its tendency to read Aboriginality through patriarchalised eyes.In particular, its assumption that men are the 'natural' makers and controllers of culture. It's a very westernised notion of power relations between the sexes, and one born of at least five millennia of patriarchy. It's a tragedy that 'women's business' as a lens for understanding the role of women in Aboriginal communities was employed in Australia as late as 1941, as by then much dominant-culture contamination and destruction of Aboriginal culture had occurred. It's surely time to pay more attention, as this book does, to the quiet but rich understandings of land and story and people that is vested in women's business. This book will inevitably create controversy because of the financial and deep political investments in the Hindmarsh Island affair, and the appalling bureaucratic fumbles and lack of respect which have marked the public utterances about it. To hear the proponent women's stories, in all their variety, is to be taken into a parallel and very moving universe of discourse, of which we need to learn the subtleties. This book is a great teacher of those. Frances Devlin Glass, School of Literary and Communication Studies, Deakin University

What a delicious selection of quotes about fashion! This book would really help me explain to people why I am obsessed with getting all dressed up in costumes, outfits and accessories. The gorgeous illustrations add to the charming cuteness of the book. These quotes show that there is real meaning and philosophy behind fashion and it's form of self-expression. Clothes and appearance really do make a difference!
An essential book for fashionistas. I shall cherish this book forever!

Toby Tobias' adorable book takes the questioning element out of my daily clothing puzzle. This morning, Edith Sitwell told me to 'be myself'! The in-put from great minds of the past is a radiant rainbow of fun, humor, delight and wit. Ballerina@Large.Dash-Dot

Tobi Tobias' new book, Obsessed by Dress, brings delight far beyond the sensual pleasure of holding a book that is exactly the right hand heft for the object itself. It corroborates ones joy of personal adornment through quotes from those who have the wit and style through the ages to say what you have been thinking and feeling all along about why have arrived a this particular persona. You become marvelous in your own eyes.

One doesn't have to be a clothing aficionado to have a rewarding time with Tobi Tobias's "Obsessed By Dress." A small-size book with a biggness of content, "Obsessed" is alive with famous-person clothing quotes, meticulously researched by Tobias, reflecting her passion for Dress and great writing. Dickens, Proust, Virgil, Keats, Dior, Dorothy Parker, and RuPaul are among those quoted.

This is a lovely book, full of wit and surprises. It's obvious that Tobias has chosen quotes from books with which she is familiar, rather than compiling a hodgepodge of witty bon mots, selected at random. The bonus, in addition to making one think about fashion and its place in civilization, is reminders of books one has read, or wants to read, or should.

Armed with a few quotes from this book and a little black dress, one could conquer any cocktail party in fine style!

This was a most excellent book. I found it hard to put it down. If you are interested in reincarnation and the Ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs then this is for you. Very well written!

Knowing Hanny El Zeini and all of his family since years and having them as dear friends, knowing them as broadminded and intellectual, helpful and adorable people far away from any obscurity but with both feet on the ground, I have to admit after also having read his second book about Omm Sety that there must be quite some more than scholarship usually teaches us. Hanny El Zeini does not tell us any cranky stories here!
Though myself not believing in reincarnation, I must say that Omm Sety showed us that there are more ways for revealing the hidden things than just digging deeply enough somewhere in the sands...
All those who are with me still on the side of logic should nevertheless read this book and ask themselves how we could enable our full capacities leading to results the classic scholarship would not have allowed to postulate - but also how we could find ways that the acceptance of those findings is advanced in our world - having in mind that Omm Setys "knowledge" is hardly to bear in our days' scientific world - and nearly everybody would firstly shout out: "Amentia!". But I feel, it was just deepest love and affection that made possible what Omm Sety showed us.

As books go, this one was desert for me. I am a beleiver in reincarnation anyway and a lover of Egyptian history. With this book the two naturally go together. The author is not only credible as far as getting his facts right, he is also sincere and, I might add, a friend to this amazing woman the world now knows as Omm Sety. I read the book in one sitting. It is an adventure, a love story and a good case for life beyond this life. I highly recomend it.

I've just finished reading "Omm Sety's Egypt", and wanted to say what a delightful book it is. I recall seeing a documentary a few years back centered around Omm Sety that left me wondering. Hanny & Catherine did a remarkable job of fleshing out that fascinating character in a warm, compassionate manner that also was quite scholarly. As a long-time student of ancient Egypt, I will never look at things the same way again, which can be called "growth", I think.

A glimpse, however seemingly fantastic, into our ancient world is a golden opportunity to learn things the strictly academic world does not offer. It's been my firm belief for decades that the fields of archaeology and Egyptology in particular have had their heads in the sand, so to speak. New discoveries are being made daily; I just wonder how many of them are getting swept under the rug because they don't dovetail with accepted theories.

I think I accept the experiences of Dorothy Eady because of a pet theory of mine. Greek mythology, I think, tells about the deceased being dipped in the "river of forgetfulness". If reincarnation is real, and I think it is, that might describe a "seal" placed on the consciousness at death, which would serve to separate "lives" from one another, to prevent contamination and preserve the purity of each individual "life". Traumatic injuries or near-death experiences might rupture that seal somehow, perhaps even provide a "link" to another place/time, as in Omm Sety's case. We know so very little about the "soul", but every testament like Dorothy's opens up a new window of exploration, and adds a missing piece to the puzzle of life.

This book will be read and re-read until it's dog-eared, I'm sure.

Through-out my life which has lead to eventually owning an Egyptological academic bookshop I have felt influenced by the lady known as Omm Sety. When I first read about her in a Reader's Digest book "Strange Stories and Amazing Facts" at the age of 12, I was smitten with the idea of past lives. My own interest in Ancient Egypt was already well rounded at that age. This was just another part of the jigsaw for me.

I have gone on to know several people who knew Omm Sety and I have visited her grave in Abydos. The first book I imported for my business in 1988 was Abydos, Holy City of Ancient Egypt. If you can get a copy do so as it was Omm Sety's seminal work.

Having said all of the above I highly recommend this book to readers, I read it over a few days, some of the information in this book you will find in earlier writings such as the Jonothon Cott book mentioned by the other reviewers, but this book rounds out the picture, it also covers Omm Sety's marriage and more information about her son, Sety.

Therefor this book now fills in the gaps in our knowledge of Omm Sety, what an extrodinary women she was, in her own way she influenced Egyptology greatly although many Egyptologist will only talk of that privately, she was also a great humanitarian and did very good works for the village surrounding Abydos temple.

I enjoyed the book very much and I hope that one day Hanny el Zeini will publish Omm Sety's complete diarys and notes to absolutely complete the picture.

Whether you are a academic Egyptologist, a past lifer, a romantic, or just interested in Strange stories I feel you will enjoy this book, and you'll want to buy a couple of copies for it would make a great gift.

Blessings to you Omm Sety your amazing life is an inspiration to all.

This book provides a profound, insightful survey of many issues individuals need to take a good look at -- and our society needs to know -- to heal on a very deep level.

We have been programmed to live in fear. We are controlled and manipulated by fear. It's time to break out of the fear box. Many years ago, Gerald Jampolsky wrote, "Love Is Letting Go of Fear" based on "A Course In Miracles".

If you'd like to live a higher quality of life, read this book, study A Course in Miracles, Combined Volume: Text, Workbook for Students, and Manual for Teachers and start releasing fear/guilt. The more you divorce yourself from fear and guilt, the more awake, aware, alert, free and alive you will feel.

If you were circumcised, don't overlook the importance of letting go of that trauma... such an early, preverbal unhealed wound can be a big obstacle in the way of feeling love. See my book on FGM in the USA, The Rape of Innocence: Female Genital Mutilation in the U.S.A..

We all deserve love and respect and protection from harm. We all deserve to be free of fear. And the good news is, if it had a beginning -- which fear does -- then it will have an end... "Healing is always certain" and "All healing is essentially the release from fear."

Here was another library book that I just had to own! More than another self-help book, Chris Largent did an admirable job of explaining how paradigm conditioning has worked throughout human history - but more so toward America's present-day societal paradigms and how we got here.

Simply put, everyone of us is the product of our biological, physical, educational, emotional, and media environment. From birth, we have our innate survival instincts which start with recognizing we'll get some attention if we cry. Subconsciously we learn how to maniuplate those around us and yet, we are just as manipulated. In other words, we become addicted to our paradigm - sometimes good, sometimes bad - thing is, once you recognize the patterns, you feel great become you know you can change your world.

This book is not a fast read. Not that's it's complicated, it's just worth your time to absorb the message and find out surprising things about yourself, your family, your community, your friends, your government. Highly recommended.

This book is a brilliant, inspirational guide to recognizing the inherent addictive and destructive nature of many dominant paradigms in our civilization. The authors weave their discourse around the spiritual insights of Rumi and Native American steps to "peace." The authors delineate how paradigms function and protect themselves from the threat of alternative approaches. They also expose the addictive nature of paradigms that dominate modern culture, while offering guidance for those wishing to consciously evolve and transcend the self-limiting, divisive patterns that dominate society. This book is a powerful, enlightened examination of what keeps humanity oppressed, allowing us to reflect on ourselves and the world around us. For those who recognize the flaws in existing patterns and paradigms, this book will resonate and provide insight into how we can individually and collectively develop a progressive, expansive framework for human civilization. I highly recommend this book!

An easy to read, yet compelling work on how various paradigms are manipulated by business, education and our government. The authors Denise Breton and Christopher Largent suggest that we have the power within ourselves to create new paradigms and reclaim our original potentials. A great book to share with those who want to learn more about conspiracy and are open to ways we can transform ourselves.

Jaye Beldo: Netnous@Aol.Com

The content of this book is excellent, wonderfully written, down-to-earth, very readable, eye-opening...I believe everyone who seeks true freedom, should read this book. I would have given it 5 stars, unfortunately the publisher appears to be part of the problem to which the authors refer. One of the messages in this book is that we don't really reach our full potential while being controlled and having our soul stifled. One result being goods and services that are not top quality (money being the most important, not people, not quality)...when I got to page 33 of this book, the pages started falling out. I had to laugh, given the incredible paradox in that and wondered what the authors would think of it. Even considered that it was an additional synchronous message pointing to how this controlling society is presently crumbling. The pages continued to fall out as I read... I decided to write the publisher and see if they would -shift their paradigm- and either send me a new book or refund my money. Yes, I had bought the book month's before from Amazon...but, apparently that's too late for an Amazon refund. The publisher (not surprisingly) said I should contact Amazon. Darn, no paradigm shift there :( Breton/Largent, I loved your book, but please find a new publisher, so other's can actually pass this valuable information on...all in One -peace- :)

I have heard of the story and what he did in the past, but not in this detail written for children. I am very proud to be Japanese, and hope my sons, for whom I purchsed it, will feel the same way because they are half Japanese and half American. This book could be an asset to anybody with Japanese blood.

When reading this booki was amazed that so few would do so much for so many,Ive never heard of a story like it. What suprised me even more was that the man who saved all those Jews was a Japanese, if i remember correctly where an axis power during WW2 and allied with the Germans. This man must have really followed his heart if he was to defy his own country, and for that i really admire him

I used this book as an introduction to the Holocaust for my 7-year-old. Rather than starting him off on the atrocities, I used this well-written and beautiful book to start him off with learning that we Jews were once in grave danger, and there were some people who took care of us when they could, even though it was a difficult choice.

3/4 of the way through reading the book out loud to my son, I started to cry a little. The story is poignant, of course, but more than that, the writing captures the meaning in such a simple and straight-forward way.

I would recommend this book to anybody, Jewish or not Jewish. It is an excellent introduction to the concept that life can be dangerous, along with the idea that good people exist, AND that any one of us can choose to be a person who makes a difference.

The writing makes it clear that Sugihara was risking his and his family's lives to do the right thing. And, the writing makes it clear that being the child of someone who is willing to do the right thing can be difficult, but well worth it.

A beautiful book.

When reading this booki was amazed that so few would do so much for so many,Ive never heard of a story like it. What suprised me even more was that the man who saved all those Jews was a Japanese, if i remember correctly where an axis power during WW2 and allied with the Germans. This man must have really followed his heart if he was to defy his own country, and for that i really admire him

Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania in 1940. As the Germans invaded Poland, thousands of refugees flooded into Lithuania begging for visas that would allow them to travel to safety. Despite repeated orders from his government, Sugihara signed travel visas around the clock and saved thousands of Jewish lives. He followed his conscience knowing full well the social and professional consequences that would follow. The drama of the events and the courage of Sugihara and his family make this true story unforgettable. Dom Lee's sepia tone illustrations complement the story and convey the desperation and fear of the refugees and the bravery of the Sugihara family.

My five-year-old daughter was fascinated with this book even though it didn't include fairies, animals, or dinosaurs. I was very happy with the information they presented which gives some basic information about Dr. King while not treating his death in such a way that might overly upset sensitive children like mine. The illustrations are wonderfully done and my daughter looked them over carefully for a long time. It is a wonderful opportunity to launch more discussions about racism and the way we treat other people because of their gender, race, or religion.

I LIKE THE STORY BECAUSE HE TOLD THE LIFE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE.WHEN HE WAS A LITTLE BOY HIS FREINDS SAID THEY COULD NOT PLAY WITH HIM BECAUSE HE WAS BLACK.

Martin Luther King , Jr was born in Atlalta , Goagia. He was born on January 15 , 1929. He led the March of Washington on August 28, 1964 and gave his speech.
THe book was really great.

DR.king was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1929. He played football when he was a child. He couldn't play with his friends because he was black and they were white. He wanted to change this and changed the world.
I really like the book. He inspired me to keep the Golden Rule.

DR.King was born in Alanta Gorgia. He like to play football &baseball. He played football in his backyeard. One day his friends couldn't play with him because he was black. He wanted to change this and changed the world.

Among the lighter and more overlooked sorrows of living in a post-terroristic era of conflict is all of the fun that could once be had, but no more, like - arguably - everything that takes place in this engrossing and extremely, extremely funny book, but one in particular: cleaning out one's refrigerator by mailing everything rotten (there's a way to do this with no postage, though you'll have to read this book to find out, and if you were to try it now, you'd have 10 SWAT teams on your doorstep in 36 hours or less) to everyone who might have ever annoyed you in some way.

Sigh...

Read this book, and I promise you'll never forget it.

-David Alston

This is the ultimate prankster handbook, an inspirational guide to mischief and mayhem. It is one of those books you can read bit by bit as there is a lot of material to absorb (not that you couldn't read it all at once, but it's like a rich cheesecake, you will want to savour each bite instead of gorging). The interviews are of varied allurement, some yielding more elation than others, but then you can't please everyone all of the time. Some of the stories told seem almost too wild to be real, until you see the accompanying photographs or news clippings and realize that some people have far better stories to tell than you or I ever will. And they aren't kidding, either.
Definitely makes my top 5 must-have "non-fiction or reference" books.

I lost my first copy of this in Nags Head in 1993. That's OK, it should be shared with as many people as possible because the pages are filled with shocking, playful, silly pranks from a host of prank 'generes.' A guy blows himself up at a high school reunion, another paints american flags on snails and on and on and. The books seems to capture a pre-PC time also: the 1980s.

What fun! This book is packed with great interviews with people who like to make trouble. All are amusing and all are inspiring. My personal favorites are the Henry Rollins and the Earth First! interviews. The Rollins interview makes me laugh just thinking about it, and the Earth First! interview is exciting to read. It makes me itch to go out and prank away. An excellent and informative read.

I love this book. I thought I was the only weirdo out there, but this book inspires me to be weirder. Great interviews with Dead Kennedy singer Jello Biafra, Abbie Hoffman and Henry Rollins. One of the few books I pick up weekly, even though I've read it from cover to cover many times. Still cracks me up.

10 stars! I agree with all of the previous reviews here, please read them all! I just want to add that it is a very unique book, heavily endorsed by the likes of Tom Waits, Allen Ginsberg, and others (on the most recent editions' liner notes). I have been a career pro musician for over 30 years and this is one of Thee Best true stories about the origins of Jazz music, America's greatest original art form, and about All music for that matter, that I've ever read. We Love you, Mezz! Also want to point out that Mezz was a sideman musician on many of Fats Waller's great recordings, that's how I first came to know of him. He played inventively with humor and with tons of feeling on all of the Fats' stuff.......check it out!

This is quite a yarn. I leave it to others to debate Mezzrow's place in jazz history. I found it interesting as a social study. Tales of 1920s gangsters and prohibition, the Chicago and Harlem music scene, and race relations. Of course, it's not always clear how much of this is true and how much may be a product of Mezzrow's (or Wolfe's) desire to make the story better.

For me, Mezzrow came across as the ultimate wannabe. He wanted to be a black jazz musician from New Orleans. He was a Russian Jew, born in Chicago. He lived the life, the music *was* his life (except when opium was his life), but he could never fully be what he wasn't.

Compare, for example, Louis Armstrong's autobiography "Satchmo." Armstrong matter-of-factly tells about his life, not wanting it to be anything else. Mezzrow is always trying to be something he isn't and never can be. He was an interesting character.

It's a good read.

Often considered a highly unreliable autobiography, 'Really the Blues' is really an insight into the personality of Mezz Mezzrow rather than a factual retelling of his life events. Milton 'Mezz' Mesirow was a Jewish-American jazz clarinetist born in 1899 in Chicago. Mezz quickly showed a penchant smoking marijuana early in his life. But he also showed a penchant for jazz music, like his mentor Louis Armstrong, for whom he briefly may have served as manager.

Although Milton "Mezz" Mesirow is generally remembered as not being a very technically skilled clarinetist, Mesirow in-fact was very knowledgable about his instrument and about the workings of the jazz music industry. Milton's life was often a reflection of the demands of the music industry. His personality could best be viewed as a product (or reaction) of the rough-and-tumble environment of mob-controlled, Prohibition-era Chicago. Due to the uncertainty of the circumstances abound, Mezz was a fearless rebel rouser. He took risks, such as smuggling some twenty joints into a New York night club. He was stopped and caught by the police, a violation for which he was arrested and taken to prison. When he arrived, Mezzrow successfully persuaded the prison guards to let him stay in a black section of the prison by convincing them that he was African American.

In addition to music, race relations emerges as a major theme in the autobiography. Mezz married a black woman, played music like a black person, and was more interested in black culture than white culture. Mezz also dealt marijuana in spades. His marijuana dealing perhaps earned him higher distinction than his jazz playing. In the lingo of the time, "Mezz" became slang for marijuana. Milton also gained the nickname "Muggles King," at the time "muggles" being another slang word for marijuana.

The fast writing style featured by Mezz and Bernard Wolfe makes 'Really the Blues' a fast-paced, entertaining, and image-packed read. Mezz's narrative style is a self-assuring one, making 'Really the Blues' read as if Mezz were present in the room and actively trying to engage the reader. Consequently, the insight that the reader gets into Mesirow derives not just from the stories, but in large part from the narrative style itself. Mesirow's psychology is revealed to the reader through his nonchalant word choice, liberal syntax, and the larger philosophical method by which he organizes his book.

Reading 'Really the Blues' is an experience. Mezz takes the reader on a ride through another time, an era defined largely by the times. The reader is also given an entertaining educational look at the life of an important, if somewhat marginalized early jazz musician, Milton "Mezz" Mesirow.

* You may have noticed that my last name, Mesirow, is the same as that of Milton Mesirow. There actually is a familial relation. My grandfather was a first cousin of Mezz (although Mezz was a good deal older). My grandfather kept up on what Mezz was doing and introduced me and my brothers to the legacy of Mezz Mezzrow.

Milton "Mezz" Mezzrow was a white jewish kid who was born in Chicago in 1899. In his late teens he discovered the jazz music that was being played around the south side of Chicago in those days. "Mezz" fell in love with the sound of early jazz and with the excitement of the music scene. Chicago was a jazz center then, and Mezzrow heard many of the great pioneers of the music including Freddie Keppard, Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong and many others. Soon he bought a clarinet and began trying to play like his heroes.

The club owners who employed Mezzrow were prohibition era gangsters including Al Capone. The gangsters were interesting louts. Capone once wanted Mezzrow to fire a girl singer who was developing a romantic relationship with Capone's younger brother. Capone said, "she can't sing anyway." Mezzrow was so upset that he told Capone, "why, you couldn't even tell good whisky if you smelled it and that's your racket, so how do you figure to tell me about music." (sic) Feisty!

Mezzrow wrote this book in 1946, and he uses 20's era slang to tell his story. This is as groovie as a 10 cent movie, jack. It's also fun.

Mezzrow's maniacal enthusiasm for early jazz is endearing. Not many people who were actually present at the time considered jazz music to be important enough to write books about. Part of Mezzrow's purpose is to convince the reader that jazz music is important. One of the earlier reviewers compares Mezzrow's book unfavorably to Louis Armstrong's autobiography, Satchmo. Armstong's book is good, but Mezzrow's book is more honest than Armstrong's. Armstrong was born into dire poverty. His mother may have been a prostitute, and he was placed in an orphanage at an early age. His book cleans up the criminals and murders in his story so that they are merely "colorful characters", and he leaves out as much unpleasantness as possible. Mezzrow tells more of the whole story. He candidly discusses his drug experiences, and his jail sentences as well as his happier times.

An added bonus to this book is that Mezzrow leaves out all that boring background information that plauges other books, like who his grand parents were and what his childhood was like. Mezzrow's book starts right off with his discovery of music in Pontiac reform school.

If you like this book, or Louis Armstong's book, another good book by an early jazz musician is Jelly Roll Morton's book, Mr. Jelly Roll.

the hippest trip around...this book will grab you by the soul and spin you around. reading it changed my life.

What Northrup has to say is as interesting as the way he says it. I really loved his style of writing: chatty, wry, ironic, funny, serious--often at the same time.

I am so happy that he won the 1999 native american journalism award for his editorials, which appear in indian country today , news from inidan country and the circle. this book is wonderful and very funny! the poem he writes about John Wayne visitng Vietnam is a masterpiece and shows " the Duke" for what he really is a wimp and a wuz! get this book it's truly a gem!

This book is brutal without being harsh, funny without being lightweight. In a society where everyone (and I do mean everyone) is made to feel guilty for everone else's suffering, this is a breath of fresh air. The problems Northrup faces every day are aired alongside with the joys. For every pain, he offers a happiness.

And he never says you can't understand. He just offers another way to see his life.

Don't buy Ian Frazier's book if you want any kind of accurate picture of today's Indians. Buy this one instead - this is the book to get if you want to begin to understand the complexities of being an Indian. The author speaks to both the initiated and the ignorant. It's both a moving and a fun read.

I picked this book up at random while browsing the "Native American studies" shelf at my local book megastore, and I was quickly drawn in, reading it cover-to-cover in a day. Jim Northrop is an Anishinaabe who lives on the Fond du Lac Reservation in Northern Minnesota, and in this book he writes about reservation life, about Native American political issues, and about his own travels and experiences. One of the great strengths of this book is his honesty as a memoirist. While sticking largely to a humorous matter-of-fact tone, he does not shy away from his grief at his son's suicide attempt or his difficulties returning from war in Vietnam. Another strength is the conversational quality of the writing itself. At first it bugged me, short sentences put together into these meandering run-on paragraphs, but after some reading I began to think more of Italian vocal technique, where the tone continues, rising and falling, with words just dotted on the surface. Eventually it felt like I was just hanging out with the guy, listening to his interesting stories. There are times when the writing falls down, for example during an extended series of sports metaphors during a dicussion of racism, or in the rather forced series of kangaroo references when describing a tribal "kangaroo court". But despite these problems I found the writing compelling and accessible. I'm not qualified to analyze the political arguments he sometimes makes, but his perspective on treaty rights, sports mascots, and gambling will certainly stay with me, informing and broadening my thinking when I next encounter these issues in daily life.

For many years the world behind the Iron Curtain was a mystery. There were Sovietologists of all different kinds. One famous Daniel Bell essay gave I believe eight or so different basic ways of interpreting the Soviet Union. Hedrick Smith is a reporter and what he did in this outstanding work was to look into the ordinary life of Soviet society as far as he could. He explained then close to thirty years ago many of the anomalies of the system. And when I read the book then I felt I really was getting inside information into a hidden and highly significant world.

I cannot claim to be a student of Russian history, but I have always foudn the ironies and disconnects of Russian life interesting. I just read this book in 2004, and now understand today's headlines from Russia, and their nostalgia for the order of the brutal regimes that preceded the fall of the Soviet Union. This is, as someone else said, a classic, a must read, a requirement for anyone who needs to understand Russia. Don't worry about it being date; part of Russian culture is that they cling hopelessly to the old while being swept cruelly away by the new. The attitudes and longings portrayed in this book appear to still be the same.

I have been a student of the Soviet Union for many years, but did not come across this book until very recently, and I must say that I feel this one book does more to provide a picture of Soviet life than perhaps all the other study I had done previously.

While it is true that there is an "American bias" to this book, it isn't overpowering, and it leaves room for the "unbiased" student to draw plenty of their own conclusions. Overall I find this to be the least biased of all the western histories of the Soviet Union.

What I found most fascinating was the distinct parallel between American conservatives (who of course are anti-Marxist) and Russian conservatives of the time (where were very pro-Marxist).

As a student of Marxism, I fully understand this, but this book demonstrated it so well. In mentality, its safe to say that many of America's far right Republicans would have been among the USSR's Marxist orthodoxy.

This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Soviet Union, it will dispell myths on both sides.

Hendrick Smith is a New York Times correspondent that spent the years 1970-75 living in and among the Soviet people, studying both the people and the culture. As much as a westerner could he immersed himself in many aspects of their lives interviewing workers, peasants, government beaurocrats, physicists, writers, movie producers, dissidents and students. He came away with a picture of a passionate and conflicted people; at times warm and hospitible, fearful and paranoid, petty and tyrannical, cynical and apathetic, and proud and loyal. In a country where the state is in overwhelming control of nearly every aspect of their lives, where a stroke of the pen from a government beaurocrat could destroy a man's life for the slightest misstep, the Russian are hardy souls that have found many ingenious ways to cope and survive.

In a supposedly classless utopia Smith shows us a country deeply divided by class distinctions, much more so than anywhere in the west. With a haughtiness that rivals the most snobbish western aristocrat, the cultural elite enjoy a life that is completely out of reach of the common man. They get to shop at special stores, stocked to the gills with imported goods from all over the world (Soviet made items considered beneath them) while the rest of the country spends on average 22 hours a week per household standing in line for basic necessities. The blatant corruption and hypocrisy is startling, but don't you dare voice it. Smith claims that just a few weeks of this type of living would wither away the will of your average American, and I believe him.

Only a westerner living among the Soviet people could write such a book. He tells of his 11-year-old daughter, enrolled in a Soviet public school, coming home and practising military drills taught as a regular part of the curriculum, or repeating songs and slogans extolling the `Great Leninist State' and condemning America without really comprehending the meaning of anything she's saying. Soviets are taught from an early age to simply parrot the idealogical dogma that is fed to them on an almost daily basis without digging too deeply. The Russians are so used to being lied to by their own government that they assume all nations lie to their people, and the Soviet government uses this political cynicisim as an effective means of control.

Although many of these `facts' about life in the USSR are fairly common knowledge in America (especially if you grew up during the Reagan years), Smith puts a human face on it that transforms this grey, drab, and seemingly monotonous totalitarian state into a vivid and colorful mosaic of a sincere, intelligent and deeply conflicted people with a communal inferiority complex

Although this book is now rather dated (from the Brezhnev era of the 1970s) it still sticks in my mind as a very vivid portrait of Russia and the Russians...I read it in my late teens circa 1989 or so. I didn't read THE NEW RUSSIANS until a couple of years ago. Both are excellent books but I enjoyed THE RUSSIANS more, I think. Any student of Russia would do well to read this book even today...although it's no longer contemporary/current events it still captures like a snapshot the then-USSR in the late 70s, and even some discussion of the earlier times in people's memories then--Krushchev, Stalin, etc. I found the book insightful and still relevant when I myself I finally visited Russia in 1993. Should be available at most Public Libraries...handle with care, the copies will be old.