The Empire Books

An excellent well written book ! Being a descendent of one of the early pioneers of South Texas, this book really open up my eyes on how our early ancestors used the natural resources around them to built their homes and where proud of them. It also describes how the unity in the family helped them cope with the struggles of goverment changes. This book takes you back in time as if you where there to see it. This is a book everyone who is interested in early South Texas History must read. My hats off to Andres Tijerina.

Tijerina states that, "Tejanos founded the ranching frontier on their land grants... were the founders of the State of Texas". I agree that only Tejanos have lived and fought under six flags and that Tejanos are here to stay. Tejano Empire is a bold book, well documented, and difficult to lay aside once opened by a reader. Stories handed down for generations are finally put into print. Beasley's sketches depict tejano stories that will live forever. Bravo - Andres Tijerina and thank you.

Being a descendant of a pioneer ranch family in Duval County since the 1860's, Rancho San Buenaventura; after reading Tejano Empire it brings out the spirit of my greatgrandfather's and so many other rancheros of that era's way of life. I think this book will bring back self confidence to the many families in South Texas with ranching roots. With this book Tijerina helps fill the void of the much neglected history of the ranchos in South Texas from a Tejano point of view. The beautiful illustrations by Ricardo M. Beasley and Servando Hinojosa are also an additional plus. A definite book to add to anyones collection if you're into Texas history.

I wept when I read the first chapters of the book: "A life worth less than a penny" and "Why would a mother forget her children's birthdays?"

I enjoyed seeing that even in the dictatorship regime author coming from an uneducated family found a way to achieve significant success in both academic and business environments and played a key role in country's economic policy.

I was shocked to learn that just in one day Dr. Darakhovskiy in his late 50s lost everything he worked for - social status, carrier, culture and material possessions - to save his family's life.

It was not easy to read about the social isolation he has experienced once here in United States.

Finally, through this unique set of experiences and healthy outlook on life author ends up in the winners circle again.

It was interesting to see the major historical events of the 20-th century which shaped millions of lives through the prism of personal experiences and memories. I have discovered a new world of relations between people, experienced a broad spectrum of emotions and relived author's unique life story.

Read this book about life, humanity, love, friendship, fight and victories

I highly recommend this book. I helped to edit it and have come to be good friends with the author. He is a Jewish Russian American who came to this country in 1992. He tells a fascinating story of life in a Nazi labor campe at age five, his survival of a severe famine after WW II, his struggle as a Jew to get an education, his eventual rise to serve at the Academy of Science -- the most prestigious academic institution in the USSR, his surveillance by the KGB, and finally giving up everything but the clothes on his back to move to the USA in 1992. It is the story of a courageous man with an indomitable spirit who triiumphed over all the thorns of life to find the roses. He is a kind, gentle man who is a joy to know, along with his lovely wife Valentina. I urge you to read this book. You will not be disappointed.
Kenneth Cauthen

UNDER THREE EMPIRES is the story of Izyaslav Darakhovskiy's internment as a five-year-old in a Nazi slave labor camp, his rise from poverty as the son of a poor Jewish family in the former USSR to a position of privilege and responsibility in academia, and his decision to sacrifice his status and career to emigrate to the United States to bring his wife Valentine and son Henry and his family to a life of freedom from a repressed society. Written in English by a man who knew barely fifty words in the language when he arrived in the United States at the age of 55, the memoir is a triumph of Izyaslav Darakhovskiy's indomitable spirit. Both readable and informative, UNDER THREE EMPIRES is a testament to human survival.

Gotta have it. If you are at all interested in the origins of all the photocopier art passsed around from desk to desk and generation to generation...

White-collar frustration gets white-hot in this hilarious look into the minds of America's hardest working jokers. Water-cooler not included.

This book is a MUST HAVE for the office worker who enjoys handing out XEROX copies of great humor. Not only is this book extremely funny, it has captured an "almost lost history" of American folklore. Nowhere else can you get the ultimate source of good humor, that has detailed explainations of what and how each joke (or story) have come to being. Good information to educate the younger generation who don't quite understand the true humor of the past. Get a copy of this genuine relic of great writings of people like you and me. A modest collection of pamphlets, cartoons, stories, limmericks, "Top Ten", racial, religious, nationality, poems. etc... some of which you may have seen passed around the office at one time or another. Probably the best "bathroom book" you'll ever get your hands on.

This book is a must for all shelves! Where else could you in one book read the outstanding thinking, insight and prose from such writers as Rebecca Solnit, Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Dahr Jamail, Nick Turse, Mike Davis and Michael Klare among so many others, including Tom Engelhardt himself?!

This book is eye-opening and thought provoking. It is also very heartening to read the type of journalism that is so lacking in our mainstream media today. At least there are some writers out there willing to look into the issues and provide perspective.

Since TomDispatch's beginnings as an e-mail newsletter TomDispatch.com editor and creator Tom Engelhardt sent to a few select friends in which he culled news stories and commentaries from throughout the world--stories that curiously weren't appearing in the American mainstream media--TomDispatch.com has acted as the definitive source of reporting and commentary on our post-9/11 world and the spread of American imperialism throughout the world.

TomDispatch published the stories that readers weren't finding in their daily newspapers and monthly magazines--stories that reported and commented on the possibility of spending $1 billion on a WTC memorial, on the anonymity of Iraqi victims as a result of the U.S.'s invasion and subsequent occupancy, on the rhetoric used by President Bush throughout the Iraq war, and on the largely-underreported refugee crisis in Iraq, to name just a few.

Although TomDispatch makes it home on the Internet, the site's essays--as seen in this collection--are not clipped news stories or blog posts; rather, they're finely edited, thorough, extensive and wonderfully written and reported pieces of journalism. And the names of those who've contributed to the site and who also appear in this book are quite notable as well. The likes of Noam Chomsky, Bill McKibben, Rebecca Solnit and Mark Danner, among many, many others, have penned essays for TomDispatch that have been collected here.

Like finally flipping on the lights in a dark room, reading this book opens one's eyes to a whole world of imperialism and corporatism and to a class of plutocrats and crooks that never made it into the pages of The New York Times or Newsweek. When looking to make sense of this post-9/11 world, this is book is the place to start.

Sick of the mind-numbing propaganda and endless trivial brainwashing of TV and the rest of the Corporatist media? Do you want intelligent analysis based on fact and logic free from neo-con or any other sick corrupt ideology? TomDispatch is a good start. Read this book, and then subscribe to TomDispatch's emailed essays. Here's a link: http://www.tomdispatch.com/

This is a great, great book. Beats many table top art books.

I bought the book for its architectural content but received a very detailed history book as well.Its not only a precise compilation of Sinan's work it is also a good read. I recommend it thoroughly.

Over the decades, this has been the respected source. This is considered trusted by top blue bloods, including the sovereign Queens and Kings. It is presided by the King of Spain, H.M. Juan Carlos. Simple format that lists the orders each person belongs to, their occupations and other things. There are two sources of information on who is noble: The Gotha and the Handbuch des Adels. Stay to these books and you'll be ok.

_This is the ultimate power register of the ruling classes. Simply, this book charts the ruling Royal and Princely houses of Europe. Traditionally considered the last word in matters of succession, protocol, and marriage. Known for it's accuracy and the publisher's inability to be bribed or pressured in matters of inclusion or exclusion. The rock against which pretenders are wrecked.

_Not for the nouveau riche.

Our standard secondary school history jumps abruptly from Jamestown and Plymouth Rock to Lexington & Concord. The intervening 150 years are barely mentioned. The Jennings trilogy examines this period. In the instant volume we see the native Americans neither as passive victims nor noble savages but as politicians, diplomats, merchants and power players. Though probably doomed from the start due to the absence of immunity to European diseases, for a period of several decades they interacted with the early colonists on a basis of near parity. The Iroquois actually attempted with some skill the become the central player that would resolve the French-English rivalry and leave them at the center and in command. Jennings shows us that though this didn't happen and though the odds may have been against it such goals were far from fantasy. It's enough to cause one to imagine that "chutzpah" is a Mohawk term. One can only wonder, if the Indians had not been devastated by disease what the political map of North America would look like today.

Francis Jennings, long associated with the Newbury Library American Indian collections has brought his vast knowledge to bear on the subject of the Iriquois as the fearsome 5 or 6 nations who independently cowed both their fellow tribes and the English and French colonists. He proves it wasn't so with so many documents of which we have never heard in our schoolbook history texts that I wonder how such material escaped notice previously. In the process he slays some American Sacred Cows such as Francis Parkman. One learns that the Indian frontier was no such thing and didn't exist but was a commonly inhabited piece of terrain, peopled by various tribes and the European invaders who traded with them. Relations were, for the most part, reasonably amicable, which accounts for the fact that during later wars the Eastern Indians frequently exhibited what we call civilized treatment of enemies and prisoners. (Of course there were the exceptions, usually well justified.) But in the beginning, the Dutch, Swedes, English and French, all found it necessary to deal with the various tribes quite diplomatically in order to survive, and use them in their wars of empire with one another. Furs in return for trade goods were king. The undoubted reality is such a vast contrast with the accepted picture of our frontier that this book, as well as Jennings others in this series, should be required reading to repair the damage done in our schools by claptrap such as Parkman and other revered historians who followed his lead, writing off the Indians as barabarians and the frontier as a clearly delineated line across which whites stepped only if they were willing to take their lives into their hands. Instead we find two cultures living amicably in common communities up until the first half of the 1700's when the balance was upset by driving out the Indians such as the Delewares and Shawnees so that they located in the Ohio country and became relatively independent. The Iriquois had a large hand in this and it was their undoing. Read the book. It is a complicated subject but well worth digesting. I recommend reading it in small doses and having an atlas nearby.

This book does a brillint job of showing why the liberal institutions in the US give us the flexibility to dominate economically, educationall and in the media. It also goes into the prominent role the US plays in maintaining the inernational order. The book also claims that a strong militay and worldwide bases play an important role in peventing international anarchy. The case is made that the US empire is a voluntary one and that our alliances are essenial to maintining our dominence and international order. This is one of the very best and shortest book I have read on the question of the US empire.

This book basically dispells all the talk of weakness, in reference to Ameica, that we hear these days. The beginning is a little slow, but once you get into the topic chapters it becomes more interesting.
The authors point out that terrorism is a tactic. President Bush just started mentioning this in the last few months. However, the book has been out for a while.
The book is very good for international relations and political science folks. It is a very good book to pull facts out for your papers, research, and general education on the subject.

If anyone likes a "different" kind of tourism, paying a visit to Turkey with the help of this magnificent manual, will be a surprise. Any place and monument of archaeological interest, no matter of how small it is, has its short (although complete) or very detailed description. The merit of Prof. Akurgal was to write a really academic book, that works like a classical "Baedeker" guide. Each chapter leaves to the reader the desire to know even more, and the monumental bibliography gives the best help.
One year ago, I've visited the region of Caria with some friends-archeologists and this book helped me to appreciate this part of the world even more.
Another surprise is that Prof. Akurgal's book is not too huge: actually it can find place in any traveller's bag.

Is a must have. A very organized encyclopedia of almost all the ruins in Anatolia. Including isolated altars and temples, small cities and of course the big capitals of the ancient anatolia.

If you have it with you and you are driving along the Aegean cost of Turkey with and if you love ancient settlements and constructions you will have a lot to see on the way!

This review is written from the perspective of the amateur collector on a limited budget. It has been said that collecting ancient coins was the "hobby of Kings". It might also be said that reference books on this subject can only be afforded by Kings, and are certainly less affordable than the coins. Not so with the readable series by Wayne Salyes, past editor of the premier journal on ancient coins, The Celetor. Number five (better to write V) in the series focuses on coins minted by the Roman empire during its long slide into oblivian. Constantinople also called Byzantium, and now called Istanbul, was the capital of the Empire and the center of Christianity from its founding by Constantine the Great in the 4th century to its final demise in the 15th century when the city fell to Mehmet the (Turkish) Conquerer in 1453. Most of us think of Rome as the capital of the Roman Empire but the Eastern half of the empire, while not so glorius, lived a 1000 years longer. Coinage usually reflects the culture, and this is clearly illustrated in Sayles' presentation. It is filled with numerous figures of coins, maps, and geniology. While all of his volumes are usually regarded as "introductory" and for the "new collector" to distinguish them from the comprehensive catalogues used to attribute coins, this particular volume has been particularly useful to me as an affordable attribution reference. It is fascinating to see how the coinage changed from images of emperor and soldiers to images of Christ and crosses. This is a superb addition to the series, fills a gap in the literature, and whets my appitite for volume VI.

Wayne Sayles has created a masterpiece with his "Ancient Coin Collecting V - The Romaion/Byzantine Culture." This book is a great resource, it introduces all of the main themes in Byzantine coinage and directs the reader where to look to find out more.

This book goes at length to describe the denomination of Byzantine coins, the meanings of the markings, and has an article for each emperors and claimants to the throne, from 491-1453. At least every page has at least one black and white photo, many genealogies, excellent bibliographies and much more.

This is an excellent resource for anyone interested in Byzantine coins. This book is also offers are remarkably lucid description of the narrative of Byzantine history. Highly recommended.