Europe Books

I have been to Paris many times so I have seen the major sights and want to some lesser sights for my next trip. This book recommends many of these type of sights with good descriptions. I will take and use the guide on my next trip

This book is wonderful. Not only can one locate unusual spots to explore and soak up atmosphere; it is a treasure trove of historical and cultural minutia which add greatly to your enjoyment of these out-of-the-way finds. This is like having a Parisian friend who loves history and an entire library of reference books rolled into one. Kudos!

A charming book that will lead you to places known to seasoned and local Parisians. Not the run of the mill tourist spots. You will become part of "secret Paris".

A friend gave us this book before we left for a month's visit to Paris. We had been there, done that three times before, so we welcomed a guide to the kinds of places we had overlooked on previous visits. This book accomplished that. We visited more than half of the places and enjoyed almost all of them immensely.

I bought this book based on previous reviews. It is a wonderful little book with lovely photographs. I plan to use it to plan my next trip to Paris. The fact that all of the places mentioned are free to the public , is an added plus for travelers.

Dr. Nathan Stotzfus' "Resistance of the Heart" is one of the most authentic studies of the persecution of Jews during W.W.II by the younger generation of American scholars. It reminds me of Toland's book on Hitler and the Nazi movement in its insistance on direct sources to come as close to the "reality" of history as possible.

Dr. Nathan Stotzfus' "Resistance of the Heart" is one of the most authentic studies of the persecution of Jews during W.W.II by the younger generation of American scholars. It reminds me of Toland's book on Hitler and the Nazi movement in its insistance on direct sources to come as close to the "reality" of history as possible and avoid the deplorable illusions of "Hindsight Histiography". See my review on Marchione's "Consensus".
Rainulf A. Stelzmann, Pofessor emeritus, Univ. of South Florida

Dr. Nathan Stotzfus' "Resistance of the Heart" is one of the most authentic studies of the persecution of Jews during W.W.II by the younger generation of American scholars. It reminds me of Toland's book on Hitler and the Nazi movement in its insistance on direct sources to come as close to the "reality" of history as possible and to avoid the deplorable illusions of "Hindsight Histiography". See my review on Marchione's "Consensus".
Rainulf A. Stelzmann, Pofessor emeritus, Univ. of South Florida

Dr. Nathan Stoltzfus' "Resistance of the Heart" is one of the most authentic studies of the persecution of Jews during W.W.II by the younger generation of American scholars. It reminds me of Toland's book on Hitler and the Nazi movement in its insistance on direct sources to come as close to the "reality" of history as possible and avoid the deplorable illusions of "Hindsight Histiography". See my review on Marchione's "Consensus".
Rainulf A. Stelzmann, Pofessor emeritus, Univ. of South Florida

Resistance of the Heart : Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany by Nathan Stoltzfus is a well written book about the unsuccessful attempt by the Nazi's to exterminate Jews who married Germans of the Christian faith. The fact that the attempt was unsuccessful and that the overwhelming majority of the intermarried Jews were never sent to the death camps and survived the war leaves one with a withering feeling of "what if."

The central thesis of the book is that Hitler and Goebbels worry about the reaction of the Christian spouses led them to refuse to forcibly remove the Jewish spouse. They instead resorted to social pressure to force a divorce, so that the Jewish spouse could then easily be sent to the death camps. The social pressure was unsuccessful not because it was not intense, but because the Nazi's failed to give sufficient consideration to the bond between the spouses and the German antipathy toward divorce.

A central part of the story focuses on the attempt to round up the intermarried Jews in Berlin for transport to the camps. After the round up, but before their transport, they were housed in a building on Rosenstrasse. When word of this got back to the Christian spouses they surrounded the building and refused to leave until their husband or wife was freed. Amazingly, the Nazi's who murdered millions of Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others let thier prisoners go free. Goebbels reasoned that it was better to not force a confrontation with Christian Germans.

What is clear is that the Nazis were extremely concerned about German public opinion and were willing even to ignore their plans for the final solution where it ran counter to the public opinion of even a small part of Germany's populace. The "what if" relates to what would have happened if the greater part of Germany populace had taken the lessons of the Rosenstrasse Protest and attempted to stop the final solution. Certainly the conventional wisdom that they would have been ignored, or worse, must be rethought. In fact, the Rosenstrasse Protest was not an isolated incident, and numerous successful protests altered Nazi behavior. If more Germans, or the Vatican, had learned this simple lesson maybe millions of person would not have perished in the gas chambers of the death camps. It certainly puts to rest the excuse that there was nothing that cold have been done.

The book is very well researched and written. It is well worth reading.

Richard Pipes does a good job at laying out the workings of Russia's Tsarist Regime. What I found to be most interesting and persuasive is Pipes' frequent contrasts between Russia and Western Europe. For instance, he looks at the status of the nobility and the strength of the church. In both instances, Pipes draws a clear path as to how, in Tsarist Russia, these institutions became virtual extensions of the state bureaucracy (in sharp contrast to Western Europe, where they often served as brakes on royal power). In addition, Pipes places Russia squarely in the sphere of Asian (specifically Mongol) influence. As evidence, he points to close similarities between the Khanate and Tsarist "patrimonialism." In doing so, he de-emphasizes the oft-stated argument that Russia was the close heir to Byzantium. Finally, Pipes continally demonstrates how Tsarist policies laid the groundwork for the Soviet system (though the latter took those policies to a far bloodier and more extreme conclusion). My only criticism of the book is that Pipes does not deal directly with the issue of Russia's "national minorities" (beyond a quick mention of the Jewish Pale of Settlement and several Polish rebellions against Russian rule) and the attempts by the Tsarist regime to "Russify" those groups. I think that this would have been quite relevant to look at in Russia during this period. I am looking forward to reading Pipes' writings on later events in Russia.

I think this is the best of what I guess you would call Pipes' "Revolutionary Trilogy." "The Russian Revolution," perhaps two or three times the length, is impaired a bit by Pipes' sometimes tedious moral-pointing. "Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime" seems a bit less ambitious than the other two, and in any event it is surely the one least likely to survive the torrent of new material that is becoming available after the fall.

What distinguishes Russia in Pipes' eye is the tradition of "patrimonialism" -- as a political category, a coinage of Pipes' own, though with its roots in Weber, in Hobbes and Bodin, even in Aristotle. Pipes means to denote "a regime where the rights of sovereignty and those of ownership blend to the point of becoming indistinguishable, and political power is exercised in the same manner as economic power."

"Despotism," Pipes continues, "has much the same etymological origins, but over time it has acquired the meaning of a deviation or corruption of genuine kingship, the latter being understood to respect the property rights of subjects. The patrimonial regime, on the other hand, is a regime in its own right, not a corruption of something else."

This is a brave assertion, and Pipes remains faithful to it. Indeed, the core of the book is perhaps his chapter entitled "The Anatomy of the Patrimonial Regime," where Pipes tries to show how utterly different is the tradition of governance in Russia from the tradition in the West -- even in Western nations that we might think of as "reactionary."

There are other virtues to this book. His introductory chapter on the environment is perhaps worth the price of admission, as he retails the grim arithmetic of topsoil and grain production. His discussion of serfdom provokes all kinds of questions about the relationship between serfdom in Russia and slavery in the West.

A work of just 318 pages can hardly pretend to be the last word on the history of a great nation, and Pipes maintains no such pretention. I take it as given that much more could be said to inform, expand upon, or criticize, Pipes' perspective. But as a framework for approaching the study of Russia, it is hard for me to see how it could be bettered. As a provative contribution to the literature of political analysis generally, I should think its claim is equally strong.

This book is an absolute must-read! Before I read this book the history of Russia was a weakly connected sequence of contradictory events to me - that I wasn't able to organize in my mind in any comprehensible way. After reading this book I see a clear picture of my country's history. I suddenly understand what is going on. Every historical event, every action of a historic person suddenly falls into place, I see their meaning. This book provides you with an understanding of the real issues that have been troubling Russia for the past 1200 years. You will understand Russia and you will understand its people. The mext time Russia is on the news, and you have some Russians making a statement or conducting some action - you will understand where they are coming from when they are doing that.

This is indeed a brilliant book. Any one who wants to understand Russia should read it. I can not praise it highly enough. Please get a copy and learn and enjoy.

When I purchased this title in a used bookstore for two dollars, I was somewhat apprehensive about its scholarly quality, author biography not withstanding. Upon reading, however, I must say that I felt Pipes admirably illumined what is a very complex economic, social, and cultural subject. Specifically, his thesis concerns the manner in which the Russian state, under various formative influences, developed an essentially proprietary attitude towards land and subject alike. In Pipes' view this has been the primary determinant of all Russian history following Mongol domination. I myself make no pretenses to be an authority on the subject, but Pipes' use of evidence generally convinced me of the credibility of his claim. I would recommend this title to anyone interested in a general account of the pre-revolutionary Russian state apparatus.

This book on Tigers does what so many others fail to do - it provides context and analysis on the success, or lack thereof, of the Tiger tank.

Most other books on the Tiger tend to emphasize the qualities of the tank when it fought at the very tactical tank-on-tank level. This book, while noting the positive aspects of the tank at that level, considers how the tank actually functioned at higher tactical and operational levels. The bottom line - it didn't do that well.

The reason the tank was mediocre is because of its limited operating range and especially its mechanical unreliability. Even on simple road marches of 20-30 miles a number of tanks would break down, which meant that few went into combat. At the same time, once engaged, even full strength battalions would be combat ineffective within days, not due to enemy fire but to breakdowns. This was especially true during defensive actions where, when their lines of communications were threatened and they had to retreat, more Tigers would be destroyed by their own crews than were destroyed by the enemy.

Whether destroyed by the enemy or their own crews the effect was the same. For example, the Tiger battalion with the best kill ratio (1:50) saw the ratio drop to 1:12.8 when the total number of Tigers lost to breakdowns, and then destroyed by their crews, and other causes is also considered. The next best battalion had a kill ratio of 1:19 which drops to 1:7.1 due to the Tigers being destroyed by their own crews and other causes. This meant, and what frequently happened, is that although the allies may have had to confront Tigers when they had no choice, they more frequently attacked weaker units on the Tigers' flanks, forcing them to withdraw and breakdown.

All-in-all an excellent book with great analysis. You cannot understand the Tiger without reading this book.

This book features operational analysis of Tiger battalions. I was surprised to find concise maps of each operation in this book. While I am still reading it, I felt a brief positive review was in order.

This book is a study of the German Tiger tanks. The writer starts with a brief summary of the early history of the tigers. Then goes on and discusses many battles that had the tigers. He then presents his conclusions that they were are great tank but the Germans never developed a proper military doctrinal guidance that could have used them. As such they were used mainly as tank killers. In this I think he makes a strong case.

However I am not sure that he has proven his case that the tigers were that much better tank killers compared to other German tanks. For example, I have read of some Panthers devastating Allied tanks too in figures equal to what he quotes of Tigers. Overall in both fronts for different reasons the Germans tanks tended to do better.

In the west the Allied tanks were deficient compared to German tanks in armour, mobility and armament. This can be seen as in August in Normandy the Germans had about 1,400 various tanks while the Allies had about 6,000. The Allies losses in tanks were about 3:1. Then put in all the allied air and artillery and you get a feel of the problem.

The Russian figures are disputed with wide range but its clear that overall the Germans lost far fewer tanks then the Russians. The Russian loss ratio is probably higher then the West.

Its an interesting question considering the high cost of the Tiger weapon system. Which the writer does discuss.

Overall the tiger, I wish had more description. The battles are well discussed. The maps are extremely good. I hope that other historians that use this book copy him in producing such maps. The book is certainly worth reading if you are interested in this subject.

great book, this is second one i got. first one i lost after barely reading it. love it. good stories about how individual units lived & fought

Very careful in the historical documentation. Very sharp in the critical assesment of the tactical doctrine underlying the battlefield deployement of the Tigers.

This gorgeous giant book, measuring in at 16" x 12", capture the beauty and uniqueness of Ireland through spectacular photographs. At times in this book, not only do you see a panoramic photograph spanning two 16" wide pages, some actually extend further through a folding flap to measure over 38" wide! In addition to the beautiful photographs the authors have included detailed written descriptions.

People of all ages that are interested in the history, landscape, and culture of Ireland will thoroughly enjoy this book. The list price is $75 according to the inside flap, making it a bargain at the current Amazon price.

This is the best photo book of Ireland I have seen over ten years, and the text is excellent.

This is a great book to give to someone who will be traveling to Ireland in the future, has visited before, or is just a huge fan of this amazing country and wants a good coffee table book. The photos are gorgeous and really showcase the beauty of the Emerald Isle. There's also a great variety of photos: not just from one area of the country. It also gives you a bit of historical background. There are several pages that fold out to reveal huge panoramic shots. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves Ireland. It really is spectacular!

First of all, please note that this is a coffee table-type book. It is oversized and oddly-shaped. So if that bothers you, steer clear.

BUT the size is very appropriate to the pictures! It's a large-rectangular book that fits the panoramic wide-angle photography inside of it! The photos are intensely colored and the paper used in side the book is a thicker, glossy high-quality paper. Some of the most gorgeous photographs of Irelands landscapes, castles and towns are in this book. It also includes a bit of history.

FYI... the book normally comes with a slip-cover that has the same cover design printed on it that the actual book cover underneath has. Nice touch. A lot of books of this fashion do not have the same cover printed on the actual book itself, but only the slip-cover.

Very nice. If you love photography or Ireland...or both....this is the book for you!

I bought this book because my dad's side of the family is Irish and I'd hoped to one day go. The book is a gorgeous addition to my photography book collection...and my desire to go to Ireland has been upgraded from 'one day hope to go' to 'can't wait to go!'.
--Vicki Landes, author of "Europe For The Senses - A Photographic Journal"

This book reveals a great talent that was taken from us. The richness of the sentences, their imagery and use of language reveal a great depth of talent. Who knows what Mozart might have done if he'd lived another 36 years? A slim volume worth every penny.

This is an excellent novella. It's a thin book, but not a quick read. You should read carefully and savor the beautiful passages and the exquisite details. This book carries a great literary observation of both the beautiful and the ugly, each written with equal accuracy.

It's essentially about a Polish father whose mental health is rapidly deteriorating. But, of course, the story is not that simple.

I'll quote one part I think properly exemplifies his writing: "Sometimes at night, the Demiurge would appear at the bedroom window, bathed in the dark purple glare of Bengal fire, but it only looked for a moment benevolently on my sleeping father whose melodious snoring seemed to wander far into the unknown regions of the world of sleep."

Bruno Schulz seems to go relatively unrecognized amongst US mainstream literati, but he should never be overlooked. He was one of the great contributors to European literature.

Certainly worth the Amazon price of about $9.00.

This is the only of Schultz's pieces I've read, but I look forward to reading more.

The Street of Crocodiles is the story of a year of Schulz' childhood, an obviously fictional year, but a time that was mundane yet fantastic, commonplace and bizarre. Through his child's eyes, events, sensations, ideas and thoughts are conveyed with brilliant, dazzling imagery, vivid, almost too-bright pictures are painted with words in a way that is both surreal, magical and ordinary.

The novel is split into thirteen chapters, each of which focuses on a different part of the Polish city of Drogobych, or on an aspect of Schulz' home life. 'Birds', for instance, is the story of his father's obsession with the winged creatures, beginning with the importation of rare bird's eggs from Africa, Holland, Hamburg, and ending with a vast aviary in the attic, with arranged marriages between different species of birds and, finally, with his father joining the birds, perching and squawking and flapping his wings. Or, 'The Street of Crocodiles', the false namesake of the book - which was actually titled 'Cinammon Shops' in Poland - a decadent, dirty arrangement of streets and buildings where anything and anyone is a commodity for purchase and use. However, The depravity, the immorality, the cheapness of the Street of Crocodiles is so great that they fail even at being depraved, revealed to instead be a mockery of a corrupt suburb, a sham crudity, a false crime. The other stories are similarly bizarre, by turns brilliantly insightful - The Birds chapter, while suitably odd, could also quite easily be read as a man's attempt to occupy himself upon a forced retirement, and failing because he doesn't know of any other life but work - or delightfully, guiltily weird and interesting.

As an author, Schulz had an amazing gift for painting pictures with words. In addition to each little story having a main, plot-driven theme, they all have a secondary, emotional theme. An early chapter, describing Schulz' wandering through an abandoned part of his home which opens up into a field of flowers - yes, you read that correctly - is brilliantly depicted: the golden field of stubble shouted in the sun like a tawny cloud of locusts; in the thick rain of fire the crickets screamed; seed pods exploded softly like grasshoppers. Or there is, in a later experiment of Schulz' father gone awry, this homage to animals: Animals! the object of insatiable interest, examples of the riddle of life, created, as it were, to reveal the human being to man himself, displaying his richness and complexity in a thousand kaleidoscopic possibilities, each of them brought to some curious end, to some characteristic exuberance. The narrator's useage of adjectives, verbs and nouns - or more specifically, the selection of these words - changes as the focus of the chapter changes. While awaiting a dirty train in The Street of Crocodiles, the vocabulary changes from a mild array of purely cataloguing words to 'snake', 'squat', 'coal dust' 'heaving breathing' 'strange sad seriousness'. The 'Gale' chapter, about, unsurprisingly, a fierce gale, is an elemental delight, the words ravaging us just as the weather ravages the characters. It allows Schulz quite possibly his most brilliant line: They blinked in the light, their eyes, still full of night, spilled darkness at each flutter of the eyelids.

It is interesting, when reading The Street of Crocodiles, to see just how much Schulz anticipated both the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and the fantastic whimsy of Italo Calvino. Their style, techniques and ideas are found here, in juvenile form, intermingled with a skill that takes the breath away. Schulz' pen was unfortunately darkened much too soon, thanks to a case of petty internal politics between SS soldiers, which resulted in the Polish Jew's death, and it is our great loss.

I first heard about this book through the pages of the 5-star novel "The History of Love." What is most unusual about it is the author's lack of intention to actually publish his writing. This book is a manifestation of personal letters he had addressed to a geographically distant friend. It is by no means an easy read. The language is powerful and supremely complex and requires absolute focus and sometimes the need to reread a paragraph a few times to truly appreciate the intense magnitude of brain power that this author possesses. This is a book of highly exaggerated proportions. Schulz takes "magical realism" to another level.

Convoluted ideas that twist into abstract thoughts walk through dark alleyways and emerge triumphant. This is how I would describe Schulz's writing. This is not the sort of book you can breeze through but rather, like a dense and flavorful truffle. You will want to savor every word, let it sink in and roll it around in your grey matter before you can appreciate its true meaning and beauty. There is real depth and symbolism in Schulz's writing. That said, it is certainly not for everyone. If you're looking for a lighthearted bedtime read, skip this book. On the other hand, if you're looking for mental stimulation and a book that truly promises an escape from reality, you won't be disappointed by this street of crocodiles.

I am not sure I got this book in a real way. I had heard of and read of Bruno Schultz as a writer of the Shoah(The Holocaust) but the events of the Shoah are not a direct part of this story. The Shoah connection is given in the fact that Schultz was murdered by the Nazis.
The book itself I found disconcerting, bizaare, and difficult. It is filled with descriptions , word- pictures which seem at the one hand beautiful, and on the other somewhat unreal. I suppose what bothered me above all is the narrator's tone and relation to the events which are happening.
As the major action of the work relates to the physical and mental deterioration of the narrator's father I was taken aback by the lack of human sympathy displayed . In fact the whole disconnectedness of the human beings in the book to each other is another thing which makes the work so troublesome.
There is a world in this book, a mind in this book which is not like anything I myself have experienced even in reading.
But however beautiful some of the images given by this mind it seemed to me so fundamentally alien that I could not really grasp it.

I read Holocaust memoirs because of my need to learn more of what my people went through during this time of hell on earth. How hard it must be to write down and re-live this part of one's life. After reading many such memoirs, Ruth Elias's story was extremely powerful to me, in that she is a woman (like me), married (like me) and a mother (like me). She survived through the most horrific and unspeakable horror that can befall a human being. How many of us could survive under these conditions, and yet continue to live, really live, and experience more of the good in other people and in life? She was capable of literally starting over and telling others about her experience. What a wonderful, strong and intelligent woman she is! Don't miss this one. I'm going to make it a permanent part of my book collection.

This memoir goes to show that, despite what some people might say, it really is true that no two Shoah memoirs and experiences are exactly alike. Rutinko Huppner (now Ruth Elias) grew up in a rather wealthy family in the former Czechoslovakia, and after her young mother divorced her father when she was 6 years old, Rutinko and her older sister Edith were raised by a single father, with help from their uncle Hugo (their father's brother) and his wife Irma, along with a whole slew of grandparents and other aunts and uncles. Later on their father remarried, though Ruth and her sister, teenagers by then, really resented their stepmother and tried everything they could to make her life miserable. Being wealthy, Rutinko and Edith had access to things that their friends, neighbors, and classmates could only dream about, such as sausage for school lunch, a car, being driven to and from school, vacations in the mountains, musical instruments and music lessons, and a lot of other great stuff. They even had the money and connections to get permission and papers to leave Czechoslovakia for England after the Nazi takeover in 1939, though she and her sister decided not to go through with it due to their father's ill health and wanting the family to stay together through this difficult time.

The family were able to go into hiding in a few different cities, where they enjoyed a relatively secure and happy life. Ruth and Edith even found the time to have romances and to be active in a secret Jewish youth group. However, there was eventually a raid on the area, and Ruth, Edith, their father and stepmother, and their aunt Irma were taken away to Theresienstadt (Terezin). Their uncle Hugo wasn't taken because he was very sick in the hospital and dying of cancer. Once in the large ghetto, they found themselves separated from their father, since men and women were quartered separately. However, shortly before they arrived, Ruth's boyfriend Koni and his own family had been deported, and this relationship ended up saving her life, since if Koni hadn't married her while she was sick in the hospital, she would have been deported along with the rest of her family when they were. From this point on out Ruth was along but for the friends she made, and she and Koni weren't even able to properly live together as husband and wife for some time. However, even in the ghetto love blossomed, and eventually Ruth discovered she was pregnant. After doing absolutely everything to try to find a doctor who would give her an abortion, she ended up being deported when she was two months pregnant, and was one of the few women who survived in that condition instead of being murdered on arrival. A lot of circumstances came together to save her life and to keep her alive even in spite of her condition, many of them decisions she had only a split second to make if she wanted to live. Eventually she had to make the most difficult and heartrending decision of all when her baby was born, so that the infamous "Dr." Mengele wouldn't kill them both.

Once she was no longer pregnant, Ruth was viewed as a healthy fit young worker, and was transferred, along with her friend Berta, who had also been pregnant, to Taucha, a subcamp of Buchenwald. In this camp, they were put into a special privileged work detail, which accounted for their eventual survival. After being liberated, their group of Czechs made their way home and found that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, their loved ones just were not coming home and that they'd had to start over again from scratch. I was surprised to learn that many young people like Ruth and her boyfriend Kurt just lived together after the war instead of getting married, since they had to wait two years before their missing spouses could legally be considered dead, even though everyone knew what had most likely befallen them. Ruth also had to make the difficult decision to divorce her husband, who had survived as well, because they'd just grown apart and she felt he hadn't acted very appropriately towards her when they were in the Family Camp at Auschwitz. A few relatives came back, but no one from her immediate family. It was with this new family of two that she left Czechoslovakia for Israel shortly after independence was declared, and just in the nick of time, before the Czech borders became closed.

Mrs. Elias went through some of the worst things imaginable (a number of times she even writes about how hard it was to just almost matter-of-factly type such heavy words like "None survived" or "They were probably all gassed"), and yet she came through everything alive and determined to start again, to make a new life for herself in her own homeland, to make sure that no one ever looked down on her or abused her ever again. It just goes to show that the human spirit is an amazing thing.

This book never lags and never loses your interest. It is very well written. It is an inspiring and insightful account of a woman's courage and determination to survive the Holocaust. I only wish the book continued because I wanted more. Very highly recommended.

I finished reading Triumph of Hope this morning, after starting it two days ago. I simply couldn't put it down. The author, Ruth Elias, is nothing less than extraordinary. The way that she expresses her memories, through her style of writing and description, helps us to get one step closer to understanding an experience, which we can never really comprehend, because we were not there. Mrs Elias's life is remarkable, and through reading her book I thoroughly believe that she is a genuinely lovely, kind and warm person. It is such a tragedy that the Jewish people of her generation went through turmoil and absolute hell. But through this book, Ruth's aims - to spread the message that the discrimination and racism they experienced should never be repeated - are being achieved when a single person reads her book. Her message is being spread over the world, and I am glad that i was able to read Triumph of Hope. I intend to share this book with my family and friends, so that they can read of such an incredible woman, and a generation of people who refused to give in. I sincerely recomend this book to anyone who is thinking of buying this, for themselves or for others.

I have read dozens of Holocaust memoirs, and although they are always touching and intense, none have caused me to feel such grief for the author as this one. I literally had to stop reading and bawl my eyes out for a good 10 minutes. This woman endured so much, and with such grace, that you cannot help but be invested in her story. Highly recommended.

Seriously, I think a lot of this book. The artwork is wonderful; the story is wonderful. We had to buy this copy because we wore out our first one.

Another great book by Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson. Nice story and great artwork. Recommended if you already own and like Ferdinand.

So glad it's back...this classic book on how different people can get along. Not just for kids.

"Wee Gillis" is a classic of children's literature, and this is an excellent new reprint. There is no dustjacket, but the book has a very strong cardboard cover and good quality paper.
The book combines an interesting commentary on the cultures of the Scottish highlands and lowlands with a simple and rather old-fashioned story of how a boy takes his place in the adult world.
The black and white illustrations complement the text beautifully, and almost tell the story on their own.

Originally published in 1938, this one is a delight to see back in print thanks to New York Review Books. The Scottish setting is charming and the central message, to be who you are, is important. Not content to be a hunter like his father's family or a farmer like his mother's family, Wee Gillis finds his own place in this world as a bagpiper. Baby boomers will be familiar with Robert Lawson's illustrations from such children's classics as Rabbit Hill, Ben And Me and The Story of Ferdinand, also written by Munro Leaf. I adore this book so much I named my dear and very independent Cairn Terrier puppy Wee Gillis.

Not knowing much about this period, I was quite interested to find out more on this era.

This book gives us an over view of what is known of the time. I was stunned to find how little is known of this time. What we do know is that the period went though some dramatic changes? However how we don't know. There are unfortunately few written sources of the period and the archaeologist have little at present to help us.

An Age of Tyrants: Britain and the Britons A.D. 400-600
Christopher A. Snyder
The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998
ISBN 0-271-01780-5

This is a wonderful book to bring to life a cohesive mosaic of the two centuries that followed the removal of Britain from the Roman Empire to the arrival of the papal mission under Augustine in 597.

Published within the past few years, this book bring together many of the latest elements in the trail of King Arthur available to the modern scholar. His book is filled with the most credible theories based on academic consensus, drawing from the most recent translations and comparisons of ancient sources.

What is most singulary worthy of this book is the lack of judgement on the topic of Arthur and Merlin. After laying out the entirety of the context within which Arthur and Merlin may have lived, these two characters are dealt with only in a brief three page appendix. Snyder describes the historical basis for the two characters then ends his brief discussion without trying to postulate who they actually might have been. "What the historian can contribute, however, is a better understanding of the period and place in which Arthur and Merlin may have lived for those who wish to pin down these legendary figures to time and space."

Indeed! This is precisely what he has done. Anyone interested in playing Pendragon or reading Arthurian literatute will appreciate how he frames the era in terms of these "tyrants" -- self-made men who usurped traditional authority to re-establish order and deal with the chaos of the dissolution of the Roman empire.

As a scholar what I like is that the author has made a thorough documentation of where he gathered all of his information. This book itself is short, at 260 pages of text including appendices. Yet it then has 124 pages of rich and curious notes and a lengthy bibliography from which he cited his information.

Christopher Snyder is Associate Professor of History and Chair Department of History and Politics at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia.

It is very refreshing to read a book about this period of British history that is not obsessed with the Arthurian legend, interesting though that is. Mr Snyder uses the little written evidence there is from the 410-600AD period to try and form a picture of the conditions at the time. The second part of the book discusses the archaeological evidence in depth and the final part constructs a coherent picture of what life must have been like in post Roman Britain using the evidence of the first two sections. Arthur and Merlin are mentioned in an appendix and at a few points within the text but only to point out that the historical evidence cannot say one way or the other whether these personalities existed.

Mr Snyder has settled on the title "An Age of Tyrants" to describe the era as being preferrable to "Sub-Roman Britain". I'm not sure if this title is adequate but it is superior to the somewhat demeaning "Sub-Roman" description. This period was clearly not as savage as has previously been thought.

My only minor criticism is that I would have preferred to see more illustrations of the archaeological sites and artefacts but overall I found this an extremely interesting book that was difficult to put down.

Christopher Snyder says the inhabitants of what is known today as England, Scotland, and Wales would not have called themselves Britons before the arrival of the Romans. In pre-Roman days they would have been known by names associated with their tribal affiliations. Many of the individuals might have referred to themselves as 'Combrogi' or 'Cymry' the latter a Welsh term referring to friendship and/or love of place. The Romans named the "big" island across the "English" channel Brittania. About 400 years after they arrived, the Romans formally withdrew from Britain and left behind a changed place (and probably a few ex-Romans) -- including the name by which the inhabitants knew themselves.

For a long while scholars referred to the period following the departure of "official" Rome and the final "conquest" of Britain by Angles, Saxons, and Jutes the 'dark ages'. More recently, scholars have referred to this era, which stretches from about 400-600 A.D. 'sub-Roman Britain'. Christopher Snyder says he would prefer to call it the Brittonic Age, although his book title names it AN AGE OF TYRANTS.

Snyder's book is divided into three parts. First, he explores the written record -- the writings of Britains Patrick (5th Century) and Gildas (6th Century) and other non-Britonic witnesses. He discusses Latin terms from the extant written material, such as the word "tyrant" which was construed differently by different people in different places speaking different languages. Snyder suggests the "tyrants" described by St. Jerome or the Honorable Bede may not have been as badly behaved as the negative connotation of theit term suggests. In fact, Snyder says the tyrants distant churchmen described may have been more akin to the "tigern" or Celtic lord.

In the second part of his book, Synder discusses the archeological record of the Brittonic Age--which has been overlooked and undervalued as it falls between the rich material record of the Roman (Cirencester, Bath) and Anglo-Saxon (Sutton Hoo) periods. I found this section of the book illuminating as Snyder has systmatically inventoried and synthesized the evidence from a many "digs" into a coherent whole.

In the third section of his book, Snyder uses the material from parts 1 and 2 to describe life in the Brittonic Age in various kinds of settlements (towns, villas, forts, etc.) and the social structure of the people including aspects of government, religion, military, and economic. He says the Britains were a Romanized-Christian people who did not revert back to the tribal behavior that existed before the coming of the Romans.

Snyder is a professor at Marymount University and for all I know he is a member of a religious order, but having graduated from Georgetown University myself, I know that religious affiliation does not mean one cannot be objective. However, Snyder's conclusion that pagan ways disappeared in the Brittonic Age as the population became Christianized may not be exactly accurate.

Based on a reading of the material in Snyder's book and other material, I suspect Celtic ways and the Christian ways merged into an entirely new religion. According to Snyder, Pope Gregory suggested at one point that as the clergy converted pagans they should adapt "pagan temples and rituals to Christian usage in nonviolent ways." I think that is exactly what happened, and I think that explains in part why The Blessed Virgin Mary became so important in Great Britain--which Snyder, a professor at MARYmount might have noted.

I must admit, like so many others, I was originally drawn to the post-Roman period by the "historical King Arthur." But the period is a rich and diverse one, worthy of study in its own right--not only as "Arthur's Britain." In this incredible volume, Chris Snyder--probably the greatest expert on post-Roman Britain alive today, in my opinion--paints a picture of Britain that is anything but a "sub-Roman" "Dark Age." If you ever raised an eyebrow when your history textbook skipped from the Romans in 400 CE to the Anglo-Saxons in 800 CE, then you should read this book. If I had begun with a volume like this when I began my foray into post-Roman Britain, my how farther along I'd be now!

As with most of these DK Eyewitness guides - they are great for kids and adults. Very informative and surprisingly detailed. We purchased this to accompany our viewing of the Tutenkahmen exhibit. It worked great! My son has become an Egyptology enthusiast.

This is the Ultimate Ancient Egyptian sticker book. Besides being colorful and interesting, the stickers and various forms and shapes explain how they were used in Ancient Egypt and are historically correct. It is a useful learning book for any child or adult interested in ancient Egypt history and well worth the price.

I got this book because my 5-year old wanted to learn more about the ancyent Egypt. The images are pretty cool, but the information and contains are randomly written (maybe this is good for older kids that already know some about the ancient Egypt culture). However, you could get a better introductory book for 10 bucks more.

THIS DK BOOK WAS JUST VERY INTERESTING.
HISTORY IS THE BEST


KYLE VENTURA
(...)

It's a great book.
And besides I love to study about ancient Egypt, it's just so interasting.