Europe Books

Amazingly helpful and pleasent! The CD would not play. I called and spoke to David, who suggested I download Java 1.5. - Plus he sent me FREE Venice vol.2.
I really love the CD - images and narration are just lovely: informative, knowledgeable, beautiful. I have been reading several books about Venice, & the Venetian ghetto - and the cd made it all come alive.

Museum Planet's incomparable "talking book" guides to Venice are the next best thing to being there, offering a beautiful visual tour through hundreds of color photos, a knowledgable guide, in depth histories of the monuments. The best possible preparation for a trip to Venice, and a welcome review later, when the magnificent sites and views are brought to life again. Great gift for anyone who loves Venice, and who doesn't?

A very usefull and interesting CD Rom with many excellent photo's.
Keep up the good work. Hope other European Cities follow soon.

My attention was directed to a review here where my name was used regarding

A product I had never seen. So I bought the two CD-ROMs published by

Museum Planet--'Museum Planet Venice' Volumes I & II They're fabulous! I'm

Jewish, so the information on the Venetian Ghetto was particularly

interesting to me. Actually all of it was great. So buy these disks. Also

you can visit my website michelvanrijn.com for the latest dirt on the art

world. I particularly like to out ex-convicts like Al Taubman and tax cheats

and smugglers. Really the site is quite exciting if I do say so myself. Just

click on "latest updates."

michel van rijn

Whether you're a casual traveler or an experienced tour guide, a beginning graduate student of art history or a tenured professor who specializes in Venetian art, you're going to be overwhelmed when you get to Venice. As you step aboard one of La Serenissima's water buses and ply your way down the Grand Canal, your mind begins to spin. Every palace you pass is imposing, exquisite, saturated with history. No matter how much you think you know, you will be trying to recall important information for each and every astonishingly beautiful building. You can leaf through a guide book. But a much better way is to pop these inexpensive cd's into your lap top and listen to David Brown talk you through the whole thing.

Museum Planet Presents: Venice, Italy (vols I & II) is better than the kind of "acoustaguide" you get in a museum, primarily because it is so much more informative.

Say you're planning a morning ramble that will take in Ss. Giovanni e Paolo and perhaps later on Santa Maria dei Frari. You will be bedazzled by what you see in these churches; at the same time, you'll be besieged by a virtual commotion of visual data. With Museum Planet, what had been a jumble becomes comprehensible and knowable. It takes a lifetime to know Venice. Here's where you start. It really is the next best thing to being there; and it changes what it means to be there.

Author would do better if he was not so repetitive. Still it is worth reading as one realizes that Islamic Terrorism is not a new thing starting in recent years, but has deep historical antecedents.

For those , like myself , who are sick and tired of the hate-filled international campaign to destroy Israel , and anihilate her people , this informative and fascinating book provides an exploration of the roots of Palestinianism and anti-Israel hatred.
It outlines how the ongoing genocide against the Jews of Israel is in fact a continuation of the Nazi holocaust against the Jews of Europe.

Chuck Morse traces the story of Haj amin al-Husseini , the founder of the Palestinian
Movement , and ally and friend of Adolf Hitler , and a key player in the holocaust Against the Jews
Al-Husseini , the Mufti of Jerusalem , was a vicious enemy of the
Jewish people , in the tradition of Amalek , Haman , Torquemada , Chmielniki , and of course Hitler. His legacy continues today in the PLO , Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades ,
PFLP , Hamas , Islamic Jihad , Hezbollah , Al Qaida , and the regimes of Syria , Libya
And Iran , as well as the supporters of the genocidal hate campaign against Israel on the International Left , and some on the Far Right (like Pat Buchanan and David Duke).

60 years after the Nazi holocaust , anti-Jewish hatred reached another climax at the hideous anti-Israel hate fest , the United Nations Conference on Racism , in Durban , South Africa , where the Left demonstrated their common cause with Radical Islam ,
By embracing hateful anti-Zionist propaganda , and feverishly supporting the genocidal Program against Israel.

This evil festival of terror and hate in Durban 2001 , was the lowest point in human history , since the Nazi holocaust , and may a stain of shame always stay by the names of those who organized and facilitated this event.

Haj Amin al-Husseini was born in Jerusalem , in 1895 , and fought in the Ottoman Trurkish Army , against the British , during the First World War. In 1919 , he established a secret Moslem Youth Group , al-Nadi al-Arabi , which organized violence against the British , the Jews of Palestine , and moderate Moslems.
In March , 1920 , al-Husseini instigated attacks against innocent Jews praying at the Western Wall , in Jerusalem , followed by anti-Jewish pogroms by armed Arab gangs in Jaffa , Rehovot , Petach Tikva , and other Jewish towns
In 1922 , al-Husseini was appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem by the British. He organized a reign of terror against moderate Moslems who showed any sign of accepting the Jews , and in 1929 organized further pogroms agianst Jews in Jerusalem , Motza , Hebron , Safed , Haifa , Tel Aviv and Jaffa , as well as Jews living in the countryside. The ancient Jewish community of Hebron was destroyed.
After the massacre of the Hebron Jews , al-Husseini disseminated photos of the slaughtered Jewish corpses with the claim that the dead where actaully Arabs killed by Jews!
This type of blood-libel is today frequently used against Israel by the Palestinian Authority together with the Axis of the Islamists and the International Left , and is widely dissmeninated in the media and universities worldwide. As Morse points out : " The preposterous and quite bizzare proposition prsented today is that the State of Israel and it's armed forces are deliberately and knowingly killing innocent Palestinian Arabs. Such propaganda ,serves the same purpose today as it did in the time ofal-Husseini, not to mention mediaeval times , namely as a means of fanning the flames and hatred , and stoking the fires of genocide against the Jews.

After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 , Al-Husseini proceeded to set up a Palestinian Arab Youth Group , known as the Nazi Scouts. In addition , Arab organizations modelled on the Nazi Party where set up in Egypt , Algeria, Tunisia , Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.
In August , 1995 a graduating class of Palestinian Authority cadets , who would later engage in the mass slaughter of Jewish men , women and children , marked the occasion with a Nazi style straight Sieg Heil salute. Fawzi Salim al-Mahdi , a commander of Fatah's Force 17 , Arafat's elite Praetorian Guard , which would play a key role in suicide bombings , was known as Abu Hitler , because he named his two sons Eichmann and Hitler.
In 1936 , al-Husseini made contact with the German Nazis , and with their backing launched the Arab revolt , in which thousands of Jews where butchered to the chlling cry of `Itbach al Yahud' - `Kill the Jews'. In 1937 , al Husseini met with Adolf Eichmann , in a cordial meeting , that would cement the al-Husseini-Hitler Alliance. Eichmann reported glowingly of the `national and racial conscience' among the Arabs of Palestine who hung swastikas and portaraits of Hitler in their homes.

That year the mufti fled from the British to Lebanon , and thence to Iraq. After organizing a failed pro-Nazi coup in Iraq , al-Husseini fled to Nazi Germany , where he was installed as a guest of honour , who frequently met with Hitler , and was present at the 1942 Wannsee conference where the `Final Solution' to the Jewish question was adopted. Al-Husseini organized SS Brigades of Moslems from the Caucuses , the Middle East and Bosnia , including the infamous Hansar Brigades of Bosnian Moslems , which killed thousands of Serbs , Roma and Jews. He is reported to have visited Auschwitz and urged the SS guards there to be more dilligent in their work of extermination. In 1943 , he interceded with the Hungarian authorities to prevent to prevent 900 Jewish children from being shipped to Palestine. The children where instead sent to Auschwitz , where they perished.

After World War II , al-Husseini escaped to Egypt , and organized the Arab war effort to destroy the tiny fledgling State of Israel. He formed a band of Arab terrorists , called the Jihad Muqqadas , who launched attacks on Jewish civillians. Until his death in 1974 , after which his shoes where filled by his nephew Yasser Arafat , al-Husseini continued to devote his life to the destruction of Israel. The evil of al-Husseini and Hitler lives on , in the terror and propaganda war against Israel. Perhaps the idea of Jews living as a free and prosperous people in their own land is what fuels the rage of those who hate Israel.

May God bless and protect Israel , and scatter and destroy all those who hate Israel.

Haj Amin al-Husseini represented the opposite of the noble Emir Faisal Ibn Husein, the enlightened Arab King of Hejaz who had cordial relations with Chaim Weizmann and wanted to achieve a peaceful Middle East with co-operation between Jew and Arab.

Unfortunately Al-Husseini's ideology of hatred won out. As Grand Mufti of Jerusalem he spearheaded the imperialistic or utopian strain of Islam that has turned into a modern hydra. In 1920 he organised the murder of Jews who were praying at the Wailing Wall, and he never looked back. Throughout the rest of his time in Palestine he furthered his murderous designs because of the British policy of appeasement, with further campaigns in 1929 and from 1936.

In the 1930s Al-Husseini became a proponent of Hitler, eventually settling in Berlin where he encouraged the annihilation of European Jews and planned to become the leader of the Arab world in expectation of an Axis victory. He unceasingly promoted the Holocaust and Nazism amongst the Arabs. This strain of Nazism was a blend of National Socialism and fundamentalist Islam that would make deep inroads into the Arab world.

After the war Al-Husseini fled to Cairo where was instrumental in accommodating fleeing Nazis and organising for the destruction of Israel. The hatred of Israel now took on a Leftist flavour as the Soviet Union became the champion of the Arab cause. Arab leaders like Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat were all influenced by his hateful ideas.

Al-Husseini did not only target Jews, but also moderate Arabs and the free West in general. Nazism was the spiritual and physical bridge by which Islamic extremism became prominent in the Arab world. He introduced the demented belief that utopia could be achieved on earth by the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of the Jews.

This malevolent Islamo-Fascism is the cause of much of the misery in the Arab world today and at the root of the hatred of non-Muslims, particularly the United States and Israel. In this, the extremists are assisted by international leftists. The Western democracies are now tasting the fruit of a decades long policy of appeasement towards this odious movement and its demonic founder.

But there is still a chance that the legacy of Emir Faisal might prevail, although recent developments in France and Europe as a whole do not look promising. Al-Husseini was without doubt one of the most evil personalities of the 20th century as meticulously documented in this revealing book.

Plenty of black and white photographs enhance the text, illustrating Al-Husseini's meetings with Nazi and Arab leaders, and of Bosnian Muslim brigades in World War II.

There are nine indices with documentary evidence of the historical narrative. Appendix A is the Balfour Declaration of 1917, B provides excerpts of the correspondence of King Faisal, C is the Weizmann-Faisal Agreement of 1919, D provides a dialogue between Lord Peel and Husseini from the Palestine Royal Commission Report.

Appendix E gives the minutes of a meeting between Hitler and Al-Husseini, F is an excerpt from the diary of Al-Husseini on his meeting with Hitler, G is a letter in which he asks the Hungarian government to send 1000 Jews to their death in Poland instead of allowing them to escape to Israel, H is his address to Arab-Americans and I is the Palestine National Covenant that denies the right of Israel to exist.

The text concludes with a moving prayer for the state of Israel by the Chief Rabbinate. It is a prayer that all true Christians would do well to heed and incorporate into their worship in these trying times. The book concludes with notes, an index and biographical information on the author.

I also recommend The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy by Stephanie Gutmann, Our Hands Are Stained with Blood by Michael l Brown, Dream Palace Of The Arabs by Fouad Ajami, Israel: Life in the Shadow of Terror by Nechemia Coopersmith, Myths And Facts by Mitchell G Bard and Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam And The American Left by David Horowitz.

Peace: The Arabian Caricature of Anti-Semitic Imagery

This is an important book for many reasons, especially for providing one especially significant and important aspect concerning the origin of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The author's thesis is that Al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, successfully merged his Islamic fundamentalism with the theology of Hitler's National Socialism. He supported the final solution in Europe, rallied Muslim troops to support and perpetuate the final solution, planned to import the Holocaust to the Middle East, and influenced future Arab generations. As a historian, the author pulls together many esoteric events (such as the Weizmann-Faisal peace agreement)that may surprise those who thought they knew the history pretty well. Morse illustrates how one individual can spread enmity and hate for thousands across generations. Recommended for those who want to gain more insight.

A very informative and revealing book on the role that Al-Husseini played in bringing about the dangerous situation in which we, in all the world, are living today. It leaves many questions unanswered, though, like: how or why the British, and later the French, favored this psycho so unashamedly. The crimes of this devilish man being left unpunished -even covered-up- claim for an explanation that is not offered here.

About 130 pages of fast and furious read. Very relevant to understand today's crisis between the suicidal West and the paranoid Muslim world. It has some very good analyses of the Palestinian conflict. It covers many issues related to the terrorism suffered by Israel thru the personal observation of relevant figures, not only Al-Husseini.

A book covering the whole 20th century, and practically the whole world geographically.

The Holocaust denial that is emerging in some parts of the West is a clear sign (as referred to in page 100) of more trouble on the horizon.

Do you still not know that God will bless those who bless Israel, for truly it is His people? So, also, he will crunch those who mistreat her.
Things pass slowly but surely. This short book gives a tremendous global view of what really matters in the world today. Capture the vision.

If you have read more than a few books about the history of our world from 1930 to 1945 you may begin to have questions about the National Socialist Movement and the course and effects of its government of Germany. These are questions like:
- Was the National Socialist movement in Germany a unique event or was it a part of a larger historical process in the terrible 20th century?
- What was the relationship between the Nazi led government and the governance of the German economy?
- Was Hitler the author of all that happened in the Third Riech or was he an enabler of many things that were potentially present in Germany?
- What, exactly, was Hitler's role in the destruction of the European Jews?
- Was German(read Nazi?) foreign policy driven by a master plan for world conquest (or domination?) or improvised and opportunistic?
- Was the Third Reich a socially liberating event to the lower middle class or was it a reaffirmation of traditional hierarchy and power structure in another guise?
- What did German resistance to the National Socialist movement and government actually amount to?
- How is it possible to consider National Socialist genocide as part of a normal historical account?
- How is is possible to do objective and empathetic history in the face of the moral values of the Nazi movement and government?

If you find these questions significant and interesting, there is no better single book to read. Each of these questions is covered by Mr Kershaw more or less in two phases. First there is review of the schools of interpretation promulgated by various historians, most of them professional, and then the author makes his own judgement and evaluation of the contentions at hand. Of particular interest to me is the very thorough coverage of the views and controversies among German historians of the last sixty years as these are rarely reported in the US media. Mr Kershaw does not completely ignore the work of popular historians but it is clear that all the points of view they may have are in fact covered by the range of views among the academic community. The author's personal insights and judgements seem well considered and generally appropriate to me.

I think the only area these professional historians have trouble with is the area of the emotional and psychological appeal of the National Socialist movement to so many Germans. I think to really confront that confronts all of us to acknowledge that there may be a darker side within us that could be touched by the myth structure of racial homogeneity and purfication. Consideration of that question of good and evil is just
beyond the job description of a professional historian and belongs to the philosopher or theologian.

Of particular value, and only to be expected, is the extensive bibliography and the sometimes illuminating foot notes. The concerns of some reviewers about the dense terminology should be noted. Part of that seems to be the result of translating terms from German that come out as rather involved hyphenated words in English. On the other hand the issue is that some of the problems studied here are complex and the answers are not simple and ways of talking about them strech our vocabulary. Ultimately my view is that real knowledge and understanding sometimes involves hard work and digging through this text is work. So be ready to do that or don't bother.

If you have read a number of popular histories of the Nazi period, I recommend this book and The Art of the Third Reich (seperately reviewed) to grasp the tangible and intangible aspects of the terrible and instructive time.

This book does an excellent job of outlining the current historiography of the Nazi regime. It is really only meant for scholars and it is fairly dense even for them. Kershaw does a masterful job of capturing each of the debates and this is really a great book if you want to write about Nazi Germany but don't know what to focus on. It is still relevant even today and does a great job of outlining the current debates that need to be addressed by historians.

Kershaw is God. This book is the bible for any scholar of the Third Reich.

I first read Kershaw's Adolf Hitler: Hubris and Nemesis. I couldn't put it down. I then picked up Kershaw's The Hitler Myth. Also an excellent read. I then moved on to The Nazi Dictatorship and within the first 5 minutes I realized I was in over my head. I am a 38 year old lifelong student of WWII. I have been reading about WWII since I was a kid. And I have a Masters degree. Yet this book was way over my head. This book is a HEAVY read and in my opinion is probably meant for history scholars, not amateurs like me. I'm giving it 5 stars based on the aforementioned works by Kershaw and the assumption that this book is of the same quality. But I didn't read it.

This book is a collection of short and dense summaries of other prominent works written on Nazism. Thoroughly researched and contanining a wealth of information, Kershaw's work is a valuable introduction for any researcher or college student. However, I think the esoteric rhetoric and scholarly details makes it kind of hard to digest for the casual reader not familiar with German history.

An excellant companion and suppliment to Martin Gilbert's early work The Holocaust which I have read many times. Well written with many pictures that only reenforce the words.

I peticulary feel great admiration for the author by the fact that he does not waste the reader's time by adding politcally correct 'victims' to the list of the persecuted as most writers on this subject have done to history's detriment. Though Gypsies are entitled to have the extent of their suffering at the hands of the nazis known. They too were forced into the ghetos and were often shoved onto the same trains and the same gas chambers with the Jews, though occasionally on thier own.

In this volume, including many photographs and artwork, Martin Gilbert charts the Nazi mass murder scheme, which they called the Final Solution,
which remains one of history's most despicable acts of inhumanity, callousness, murder and sadism. A new word had to be coined in the English language to describe it- genocide.
Gilbert begins by charting the background of European Jewry and the persecution they suffered.
Gilbert includes a chart of the pre-Second World War Jewish population of the countries in Europe from which Jews were to be murdered during the Holocaust.
They add up to almost 8 million.

Chapter Two charts the rise of Nazi Germany, and the pre-war persecution of the Jews by the Nazis.
It includes an analysis of the Nazi programme concerning the Jews which openly declared the aim of genocide against the Jews of Europe.
In September 1930, as German parliamentarians walked to the Reichstag for it's first session, in which the Nazi Party had it's first significant representation- 107 seats- crowds of Nazi youths cried out as the parliamentarians passed" "Germany wake. Death to the Jews".
This can easily be compared to the declaration of ""Jews! We have already dug your graves," by Hamas official Mushir al-Masri at a half-million strong rally of support for Hamas in Gaza's central square on Saturday, 15 December 2007.
Gilbert discusses the boycott of Jewish businesses by the Nazis, which one is chillingly reminded of when we see anti-Israel pressure groups launching boycotts of Israeli products and concerns today.
He charts the persecution, expulsion and book burning, the anti-Jewish laws passed at Nuremberg in 1935, and Jewish emigration from Germany, the four biggest destinations of refugees from Nazism before World War II, were the United States, Argentina, Britain and Palestine. The chapter covers the German annexation of Austria in 1938 and the 1938 pogroms against Jews across Germany and Austria, on 18 October 1938, known as Kristallnacht.
He also charts the Kindertransport, which one can study in detail in the following book: I came alone: The stories of the Kindertransports wherein more than nine thousand German and Austrian Jewish children- between the ages of three months and seventeen years- were brought to Britain after the Kristallknacht; the voyage of the St Louis, the ship carrying Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, which was turned back by the United States. An estimated 660 of the 930 Jewish refugees who were forced to return to Europe on the St Louis were murdered in the Holocaust; an article on those who helped Jews to escape Europe such as the Dutch woman Gertrude Wijsmuller and Portuguese diplomat Dr Aristides De Sousa Mendes.

Gilbert go's on to document the Jews who escaped from the Nazi death machine to fight alongside the Partisans across Eastern Europe.
He also has an article on the 20 to 30 000 survived the war in hiding. These 'hidden children' were those under the age of fourteen, many of them babies, whose parents managed to find someone- a non Jewish person or family, or a Christian institution- with whom they could live, without their Jewishness becoming known.
Books on more about this subject include Hidden Children


The article on 'Righteous Gentiles' is about the many thousand of non-Jews who risked- and in many cases lost- their own lives to save Jewish lives.

Chapter Seven discusses the Last Year of the War, which discusses Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1944, acts of individual defiance, Anne Frank in hiding, rescuers such as Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, the Death Marches, the Death Marches and the Fate of non-Jews such as the 231 800 Gypsies murdered by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945.
The article on the deportation centre at Drancy France, shows the identity card of Anny-Yolande Horowitz, together with her signature and fingerprint.
Anny-Yolande was born in Strasbourg on 2 June 1933 and deported to Auschwitz and murdered in September 1942, three months after her ninth birthday. The registration card, issued at Tours on 4 December 1940, notes that she is Jewish (juive) and that she is under police surveillance as a foreigner although Strasbourg, her birthplace was part of France when she was born.

Another photo of one of the 11 400 French Jewish children who were murdered is of Camille Himelfarb-Sarnacka, born in Paris on 10 June, 1940.
In 12942 she was arrested with her mother in front of the Goncourt metro station in Paris.
On 16 September 1942 she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered there on on reaching the camp.
She was two years and three months old.

The last chapter deals with the Liberation of the Death Camps and some of the survivors such as children like Idel Levitan and Renja From, the homes found by survivors, the war crimes trials and holocaust memorials, the second generation and bearing witness, the lives of the children and grandchildren of holocaust survivors (most of whom live in Israel), and bearing witness.

The last article before the chronology and bibliography is the article 'Never Again' describing the meaning of the cry that Never Again would something like this be allowed to happen.

Martin Gilbert, better known for extremely detailed, research-heavy histories and biographies, has chosen to work from established primary and secondary sources in this history of the Holocaust. As a result, the reader with a strong background in this history will not find much new. However, the book is extremely well-written and very accessible--I read it in two sittings, and my 12-year-old brother has just started it.

In addition to effective writing, Gilbert includes some chilling photographs and reproductions of other primary sources. Especially disturbing are German documents cold-bloodedly noting that so many Jews arrived at such-and-such a camp, of whom X were killed immediately, and Y put to work.

Parents who believe their children are of an appropriate age might consider reading this book together as a way of introducing the most important, and most horrific, crime of this century. It is important.

I have been interested in the Holocaust for some time, and picked up this book because it seemed like it would be a good overview, and still give me the human side of the story. I was happy to find out that it was very well presented--every two pages is a new topic, and it is laid out with pictures, graphs, and personal recollections which make it easy to grasp. The book is laid out chronologically, which makes it easy to follow, and the language isn't difficult to understand.

Mr. Gilbert's grasp of history and what makes history accessible is discovered during the reading of this book. He seems to know that, with this topic especially, the use of personal stories personifies the experience for the reader.

A very good book, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Distinguished historian, Martin Gilbert, one of the world's leading authorities on the Holocaust, culminated three years of extensive pictorial research with this new and important illustrated volume, "Never Again: A History Of The Holocaust." Many of the book's photographs are from the massive permanent exhibit at the Imperial War Museum, London. Owing much to "those who have assembled the basic Documentation," his text is well written, easy to follow, and allows the horror of the events to speak for itself

In this visual chronology, Gilbert's narrative compellingly captures the richness of Jewish life in Europe before the rise of Nazism, the effects of antisemitism, and, ultimately, the destruction of much of European Jewry. Also portrayed is evidence of the desperate search by many Jews for safe haven, after 1933, from the horror which was to come. The knowledge that a multitude believed that such a thing as the systematic mass murder of millions was impossible, and/or that the threat would pass, is what truly consternates and deeply saddens. However, there were few places of safety to accommodate even those who did want to leave their homes.

Gilbert documents German military conquests and the spread of Nazism, beginning with Poland, and ending with Italy, Greece and Hungary; the establishment of Jewish ghettos throughout Europe, and life, (and death), in these walled-in communities from which few could escape; individual acts of defiance and group revolts in these ghettos - most famously the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, led by the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB); the stories of "Righteous Gentiles" who risked their lives to save the Jews; the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941; and the death camps. He also writes of the fate of slave laborers and those who were forced to participate in what were, literally, death marches; the liberation of the Jews; the war crimes trials from Nuremberg to Eichman. Interestingly, he addresses questions that are still being asked about the Holocaust today.

Included are individual stories, like those of Anne Frank, the children of Izieu and Otto Schindler. Reflections and testimonies of witnesses and survivors illuminate the period as do the extraordinary moving photographs.

Martin Gilbert's work provides an eloquent record which, at times, overwhelms us with the truth. Now, more than ever, as the survivors and perpetrators grow old and die, it is paramount to understand and give meaning to the grim record of human destruction. "Never Again" powerfully counteracts the dehumanizing nature of Nazi extermination. As the statistics "represent real people," names are put to faces in photographs and the stories of individuals are told. With the publication of this work Eli Wiesel said, "This book must be read and reread. It will be painful to you, but you must read it anyway. To know? No. To understand? No, not that either. But simply to remember all those whom the world, once upon a time, tried to forget."
JANA

Here Chomsky compares and contrasts the responses of western governments (specifically, those of Clinton's USA and Blair's Britain) to two instances of "ethnic cleansing", both of which received extensive media attention at the end of the millennium. In Kosovo, there was NATO intervention, a 78-day bombing campaign, and a much-publicised war crimes tribunal; in East Timor, at the very most, a few regretful shakes of the head and perhaps the suspicion that we are not, as yet, quite living up to our high ideals of truth, justice and liberty. Chomsky collates some of the facts underlying this apparent irony and shows that, as usual, the paradox has a rather simple solution. For example: (1) The indictment against Milosevic confines itself largely to crimes committed after the bombing began; it seems logical to assume that (a) "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo was not a major motivation for the bombing, and (b) any crimes committed before the bombing are not a major concern of our new generation of moral crusaders. Nevertheless, on the grounds that they sanctioned and participated in "ethnic cleansing", Milosevic and his cronies have been routinely portrayed as the worst enemies of human life and moral decency since Adolf Hitler. (2) The 1999 massacre in East Timor (much advertised in advance as the inevitable consequence if a referendum concerning independence from Indonesia should go the wrong way) was the latest episode in an extremely well-documented record of slaughter dating from the Indonesian invasion of 1975. All the atrocities, including the accession to power of the Indonesian leader Suharto in 1965, with its attendant third of a million casualties, were carried out with western backing and with US armament and training. The solution to that paradox, then, is obvious: the west has, as is traditional, no problem with genocide just so long as it's done by the right people. Chomsky is adept at drawing out the salient points (e.g. the timing of the Serbian war crimes indictment noted above) from voluminous and often skewed information; and, as befits a scientist, his sources of evidence are painstakingly documented. The focus on two contrasted sets of events throws the Standards of the West into sharp and unpleasant perspective.

Chomsky uses the NATO bombing of Milosevic as a framework for analyzing the direction of Western foreign policy, specifically in East Timor. While NATO (remember, not UN) forces were destroying non-military targets and infrastructure in the name of a "just cause", US sponsored paramilitaries were rampaging through E Timor slaughtering thousands. It is the awareness of this hypocrisy (as well as the well documented FACT that NATO bombing would worsen the humanitarian crisis it was designed to alleviate) that forms the framework for his analysis. With recent events in the world (easy to predict for those of us who actually know our own foreign policy, our history, and the history of the regions and people in question) Chomsky is one of the few, non PC, intellectuals who are willing to actually hold their own nation to the standards that we hold other nations to. Not surprisingly, CNN, Fox, and the other worthless entertainment disseminators masquerading as flag-waving "news" outlets refuse to cover the obvious issues raised by Chomsky (or Zinn, Fisk, Pilger, Nader, Roy, Herman, Said; the list is much to long to list). Oh well, its just the bodies and misery of the "evildoers" (read: Bush Daddy's old friends who no longer know their place) that are piling up in the name of corporate US hegemony. Also, beware of negative reviews like the one above (nothing wrong with negative reviews, but it woiuld be nice if they would at least attempt to deal with and refute Chomsky's thesis) that quote passages completely out of context.

This is scholar and public servant Noam Chomsky at his analytic best. The focus is "new internationalism where the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will no longer be tolerated," as thunderingly stated by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Never content with rhetoric, Chomsky examines the record of new internationalism for actual results, paticularly in test cases like East Timor, Kosovo, and NATO member Turkey with its repressed Kurdish population. The tone is sober, the style searching, the results depressing for a new millenium, demonstrating that more of the same old bloody double-standard wine is being served, this time in new rhetorical bottles. There's no need to editorialize on the professor's findings. They speak eloquently for themselves. Instead a salute is due him: his tireless ongoing pursuit of truth, pleasant or not, his refusal to bow down before the gods of government and media, his steady deep regard for the powerless and voiceless - all in modest, accessible fashion - recommend him as the conscience of the nation and the hope of a better America.

This is Chomsky at his continued best. His insight into and knowledge on American's involvement in Kosovo and East Timor is once again unparalled by other intellectuals. Chomsky is one of the most important assets to truth and knowledge ever to exist.

(...). I had always towed the party line about the evil Serbs and their misdeeds, but have changed my tune after reading this enlightening, if disturbing book. Some may accuse Chomsky of being an apologist for Serb atrocities, but it is clear after reading this text that all sides, most notably NATO, were engaged in quite troublesome behavior that cost many thousands of lives. I heard Bill O' Reilly dismiss Chomsky as a "revisionist," and it is sadly interesting that most critics of this and similar works simply stick a "communist", "liberal", or "revisionist" label on the author without ever addressing the points made within the work. If you are looking for a wealth of facts on deceitful and imperialist American policy in Serbia/Yugoslavia and Indonesia/East Timor, I doubt if a better source could be found.

This book shows the inhumanity of the Soviet system under Stalin, and also the complicity of the Truman administration and the Brittish in turning over to Stalin those long-suffering refugees from Communism to be murdered or imprisoned in the gulags. It is to our everlasting shame that our troops rounded up those who had escaped to freedom from the U.S.S.R. and sent them back to their doom. The story rings true, and Nina Markovna was a woman who suffered greatly during the war, but who, by the grace of God, was lucky enough to run into some decent people who helped her escape the clutches of Stalin.

I have never felt such emotion and drama while reading an autobiography . Nina's Journey should be read by every Amercan high school student as part of History class. I know that I am not the same person I was before I read this book. Never before has a story touched me so deeply and stayed with me like this one has.

Markovna's "Nina's Journey" is refreshingly rare in not having allowed the slightest pressure of prevailing political correctness to influence the author's transparent honesty while describing her life in the Soviet Union leading up to WWII, or her life in Germany as an "Ost arbeiter" (worker from the East), or becoming at the war's end a fugitive from the Western Allies forced repatriation of the newly freed "Ost" to Stalin's deadly gulags.
Nina Markovna knew from years spent inside her native land that to Stalin and members of the Communist Party WWII was not as much a National War to save Russia from the Nazi invaders as most of us in the West understood it, but a Revolutionary War to try to preserve the Party's iron-fisted rule over their people. Ironically, during that crucial time when Hitler's Germany, by breaking the existing Soviet-German Friendship Pact, overnight became Stalin's external enemy, the Soviet population, with the exception of Party members, openly became Stalin's internal enemy, an even greater threat. Markovna makes us understand why.
It is a narrative that could be told only by one who lived it. Those who write history as a profession make an interesting distinction on this point: Markovna is seen as a "primary" historian - she lived it. Those who write of events at a later time, on a broader canvas, are considered "secondary" historians, often subconsciously perhaps influenced to a degree by the prevailing political correctness of their time. Not so the author of "Nina's Journey".
I have read this fiercely courageous account of Markovna"s journey through her youth - a Slavic Christian girl, on the run from both her native despotic rulers and later from Stalin's Western Allies - and I was prompted to read it again after seeing Mr. Visser's review on this web site in which he states that "...Markovna's account is honest from her personal point of view... but she totally neglects the terrible, murderous and downright criminal behavior of the German occupiers elswhere in the Soviet Union during 1941-45". I strongly object to Mr. Visser's use of the word "totally", reminding him of Nina Markovna's heartrending pages which recount the tragic fate of her young Jewish friend, Maya.
As for the rest of his critique, it actually works in Markovna's favor, making her account historically valid precisely because she does not presume to describe the fortunes and misfortunes of those in other parts of the Soviet Union, letting the recording historians who came later to do it, instead. She also, Visser admits, subconsciously perhaps recognizing the innate bravery of the author, chose to take "the loser's side". Nina Markovna openly acknowledges that while in theory the Germans were her bitter enemies, be it the high-ranking officer who helped her family to escape the concentration in Ohrdruf, or the ballet master who provided her with the necessary papers that helped her to avoid forced repatriation, or the farmer's wife, stuffing a bag with food for her starving family, their humane spirit lifted them above the constraints such theories put upon them.
To read such a remarkably balanced account of the recent past, that is often presented slanted and one-sided, is as if a puzzle in disarray was reassembled into one coherent whole. The reader understands clearly why Nina doesn't run away from the German invaders; why the Cold War followed WWII, when our children were instructed to hide under their school desks during "drills". It was all because the leaders of the Free World had accepted Josef Stalin as their ally - this tyrant without conscience, whose diabolical nature Nina Markovna had experienced from her early youth. A reader of "Nina's Journey" cannot help but experience it as well.

This book is without a doubt the most breathtaking, exciting, epic, harrowing, (fill in the blank!) autobiography (or biography) I have ever read. I have loaned this out to at least five other people who have had the same reaction. Nina and her family had perhaps 30 adventures (within one great adventure) any of which would top the most memorable event in the average life today. Nina evades starvation, instant death, rape, murder, treachery, and more in the course of her late teenage years just before and during World War II. Her style of writing and convictions make you know that whatever she is writing about, no matter how unbelievable today, is completely true. Gone With The Wind is a trifle compared to her adventures.

Epic Scenes: Wandering through the river of Russian prisoners captured by the Germans and actually finding her father. Her successful plan to avoid rape by the Russian Army. Her mother's desperate trek to get to work on time in the ice storm or risk imprisonment. Her family's voulunteering for slave labor in Germany to raise their standard of living. The happy ending at the American air base. Scores more.

If this story were made into a movie, it would be the epic to end all epics. Since it tells what actually happened to her, it relates the good relations between the Russian people and the German Army relatively free of the SS influence in southern Russia. Compared to their life under Stalin, the German occupation of Odessa was a golden moment for the average Russian living there at that time--something that the populace paid for with their lives when the Red Army swept in again. By the time Nina loses her Jewish friends to the second, SS-led German invasion, genocide merges with the on-going sorrow of daily life of the Russian people as just something else to endure and survive.

Nina's Journey is filled with details little understood by Americans today, but what remains is an epic struggle by on Russian girl to survive the upheaval and strife of the late 30's and early 40's. I couldn't put it down.

Having never truly suffered, most Americans born in the post war years as I was can not really grasp the supreme tenacity of the human spirit. Nina's Journey opened my eyes to just how much suffering brings out the absolute best in some people, the demonic worst in others. Nina Markovna lived in the Soviet Union under Stalin, when "comrade-citizens" living in constant fear of nighttime purges commonly kept bundles of winter clothes ready year round in the event of imprisonment at short notice. Rampaging gangs of gulag orphans terrorize the towns, their status as children of enemies of the state condemning them to short brutal lives of homelessness and starvation. Nina records the arrival of the German Wehrmacht to Crimea in the early 1940's--instead of fighting them, the beleaguered citizens welcome them as liberators from their own cruel regime. When the Red Army gains the upper hand, Nina's family escapes to Germany as "guest workers" where at war's end, they must avoid repatriation to the Soviet Union at all costs. This book is filled with heart rending scenes of life lived at the ugly edges of endurance, where often the only thing between life and death is the intervention of a single good soul, whose refusal to give in to the hate of war is testimony to the power of love. This book gives witness to the fact that though one person might not be able to do everything, he can do something. And those small somethings saved not only lives, but souls.

This book is great as a reference and as a source of important information concerning no frill airlines. The author's writing style is relaxed and lively. Whether you are just trying to kill some time by reading, or, you are a frequent flier, this is a great book for you. I learned a lot of useful information that I am planning on using whenever I travel again.

The past, present and future prospects of no-frills travel. The pioneers, the airlines, the successes, the failures.

The book takes you behind the scenes, where the decisions that affect the way we travel are made. It gives a comprehensive and detailed account of why and how low-cost carriers appeared on the aviation scene, of the people who visualized them and spent years in courts battling the sclerotic establishments set on crushing competition and fending off change, of the reasons why low-cost carriers have traditionally thrived in environments where conventional airlines have suffered, of why they have prospered and are going from strength to strength.

At times hilarious, "No-Frills" is a fabulous book, so packed with information that after reading it you'll be lulled into thinking you have acquired enough knowledge and experience to start your own airline and make money out of it too! The 2006 edition is fully updated to include the latest developments in an industry that's as volatile and prone to change as no other.

The growth of low cost airlines in Europe, the USA and elsewhere in the last few years has been astounding to many observers. The carriers have profoundly changed the nature of the airline industry in the largest aviation markets in Europe and the USA. The book "No Frills" by Simon Calder is therefore very timely and informative to all the stakeholders of the aviation industry ranging from airlines, governments, the travelling public, airline management, employees, regulators, distributors of airline services and suppliers of aircraft, spares and other related services.

Millions of people are enjoying the benefits of low cost services. Large numbers of passengers are defecting from the traditional legacy carriers to these low cost airlines, not just those who traditionally travel economy class but also those who normally fly business class. This excellent book traces the low cost carriers from the early success story of South West Airlines in the USA to the highly profitable and dynamic airlines such as Ryannair, easyJet and others.

Those wishing to learn about this latest phenomenon in the airline industry are recommended to read this book. Readers will be able to understand why some of the largest legacy carriers are having it rough and why some have gone under. Those wishing to establish their own low cost airlines will benefit immensely from the experiences of the successful low cost airlines.

The No Frills sector of airlines is revolutionizing the way airlines do business. Simon Calder does an excellent job of exploring this trend in both Europe and the United States. If you are not somewhat familiar with European airlines and the difference between No Frills, flag carriers, and majors than you may want to read some other books before coming to this one. If you are somewhat knowledgeable though this is a great book to start with. Very well written and covers things in exhausting detail. The analysis is top notch and this book is essential for anyone studying the airline industry.

"No Frills: The Truth Behind the Low Cost Revolution in the Skies" is a guide to understand how this kind of airline works.
It's perfect to understand the structure and the way they manage to get the profits, Simon Calder has made a perfect book.

I highly recommend this book for those people who want to know how a low fare airline works.

A good read for those who love history, it is an excellent companion for travel to Rome

George Sullivan's "Not Built in a Day" is a unique and wonderful combination of scholarly knowledge, art, passion, and wit. The author recently gave a series of slide lectures at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. based upon the material in the book, which I attended. His lectures were exceptional -- insightful and enjoyable, a college-level crash course on the history of European architecture that was set entirely in Rome! He really made the buildings come alive through his enthusiasm and humor; I especially liked that he not only had definite opinions on buildings, but also explained clearly what architectural qualities those opinions were based on. This same in-depth but accessible approach can be found in the book, which is unlike any other guide to Rome that I have seen. I would enthusiastically recommend it if you are going to Rome, and if the lectures show up at a museum near you in the future, I would enthusiastically recommend them as well.

This remarkable book is a must read if you are planning your own itinerary in Rome. The author's love of Rome and its Architecture are apparent from the first page. He organizes the overwhelming amount of information into compact and readable units. Pick a time period or Architectural style of interest and follow the detailed path laid out by the author. The added information of the art to see inside each structure makes this the only "guide" book to Art & Architecture that you will need on your visit to Rome.

Not Build in a Day blends astute architectural observation with basic guidebook practicality. The descriptions combine detail and relevant explanation to make the most lay-person feel expert as they dissect the infinite elements in a church, piazza, or palazzo. For anyone who's been to Rome, the inexorable shuttling between sites makes you numb to the city's splendor, but Not Built in a Day constantly re-orients and reminds the reader that every site contains an element of architectural, historical, or civic wonder that makes the non-stop walking completely worthwhile.

The book's walking tours can be strictly followed (I completed tours 1,2, and 7 without any diversions), but once I had a better feel for the city, I picked specific places that I wanted to see and then read the appropriate entry.

Every guidebook should aspire to be Not Built in a Day

This is a well written and well organized guide to Rome. I found Mr.Sullivan's book to be both educational and extremely enjoyable. This book contributed to four fascinating days in Rome last September, and I would not consider going back to Rome without it. There were so many times that the text helped me to notice things that I would have otherwise overlooked. I hlghly recommend this guide.

I have been honored to say I have witnessed this process from the first draft to it's published work. The story has grown from its infancy on the computer in my basement to an inspiring story that opens one's heart to understanding.

Savo's story is a "so absorbed that I forgot to eat dinner" read. He describes the pleasures of a simple life that we can all empathize with. In this globalized world, we realize our commonality within this human experience. Yet, shows us how quickly humanity can devolve into a torrent of violence.

This story will imprint its mark of hope, generosity, and goodwill beyond the grasps of blind hatred. I am thankful this story will be shared.

I was anxious to read this book, because like Savo, I was also a child trapped in the same town in war-torn Bosnia. His account of the war experience in Gorazde is fair and captures the pain, as well as hope, that were the reality in those days. I recommed this book to anyone who would like to have a better understanding of human experience in times of war.

This remarkable book will satisfy several different groups of readers. For those who are interested in the history of the late 20th century, Savo Heleta provides an insider's view of Gorazde during the frightening years of siege. Readers of autobiographies will be especially interested in this story of generations of one family who turn to each other for emotional comfort and physical survival. But everyone will find fascinating Heleta's journey from the cycle of anger and revenge to that of understanding and forgiveness. His admirable and very human story of self-discovery set against the international political backdrop of duplicity intensifies decisions that all global citizens face.

This is a must read for everyone who desires to understand struggles of the individual heart when torn by family and political loyalties. Would that we all could be certain that our moral choices would be similar to that of the remarkable Heleta who faced the disintegration of his world at the time when he was not yet a man but was forced to experience the extremes of human capabilities.

This book is wonderful. I read it in one sitting and I could not put the book down. It is adventure, history, philosophy, lessons for a troubled world, and much more. The descriptions of life in war-torn Bosnia are heart wrenching. His journey from hatred and revenge to recocilliation is a must read for anyone concerned about world-wide conflicts.

Not My Turn to Die is a must read for everyone. The truth and ugliness about war and hatred are illustrated through the eyes of young Savo Heleta whose family was made to suffer for two years at the hands of people they once considered friends. Page after page takes you back to the early 1990s and into the heart of the conflict in Bosnia that most of us observed from afar in the safe havens of our own homes, thinking the situation unfortunate but never knowing exactly how horrific it truly was. Through his book, Savo provides a much needed human face to the pain and oppression that takes place during a war, in a time when such a reminder is needed. The world is a much better place because he has shared his story that highlights despair, but more importantly, hope, kindness and forgiveness. It is quite the page-turner and it will evoke every possible emotion within you. You will not look at life in the same way by the time you've read the last word.

"The Nuremberg Raid" is another of Martin Middlebrook's excellent, objective, and dispassionate documentaries on the airwar over Europe. Again, Middlebrook has spared no effort in identifying places, dates, and times, linking documents and personal accounts together in his mastery way. No glorification, no condemnation, just pure facts, given a personal face by eyewitness accounts. This, as well as great writing, are the key to Middlebrook's success.

Together with "The Battle of Hamburg," "The Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission," "The Berlin Raids," and "The Peenemuende Mission" (some of which are out-of-print but worth every penny if you can get them), this book becomes another must in any serious library on the aerial bombing campaigns of World War II.

The Nuremberg Raid by Martin Middlebrook is an outstanding description of a British bombing raid against the city of Nuremberg. In telling this story, there are two major sections, the lead-up to the raid and the raid itself.

The section leading up to the raid tells the general history of British bombing in WWII, what drove the British to bombing at night, their track record bombing at night, and there recent targets. In addition, Mr. Middlebrook gives us a description of Bomber Command, it's men and their aircraft along with a similar description of the German forces.

The heart of the book deals with the actual raid itself. In these chapters, Mr. Middlebrook goes thru painstaking details about the bomber-stream and the events that occur to the bomber-streamer. In here, we learn about how this is the deepest penetration by the British, how the German night fighters responded to the raid, and how the raid was not compromised before hand. Mr. Middlebrook gives excellent details on the shoot down of most of the 96 bombers lost. Of particular interest was how British bomber pilots thought that the German had a gun that fired scarecrow shells (they exploded so as to look like a bomber being hit, in actuality, it was British bombers being hit by Schrage Musik). Also of interest was the British use of Serrate Mosquitoes to intercept the Germans.

This is an outstanding book. Once more, Mr. Middlebrook has hit a homerun. I'll give this one 5 out of 5!

On the night of March 30/31, 1944, Bomber Command sent every available bomber to Nuremberg in an effort to destroy it once and for all. So determined was Arthur "Butch" Harris to have one less target to worry about, that he sent his bombers out in less than ideal conditions. The night sky was largely devoid of clouds--that is, until the target was reached--and the moon was bright. The conditions were therefore very much to the German's advantage, and the defending night fighters took a grievous toll on the bomber force. In the end, the raid was a complete failure: Nuremberg was hardly touched and Bomber Command ended up losing over one hundred bombers. As Middlebrook points out, the choice of Nuremberg has been somewhat controversial, so much so, that some have contended that the raid was conducted with the Germans having known full well what the night's target was. I have little hesitation in saying that the Nuremberg Raid is a superb book. Meticulously researched and loaded with detail, it draws upon numerous sources, including many personal narratives, to construct aa complete an account of one of Bomber Command's raids as one can expect.

Mr Middlebrook has done more with this book than chronicle what was arguably the costliest raid the RAF staged during WW2. More importantly, it's a look at the daily operations of RAF and German aircrews late in the war. The RAF had standardized their tactics, and the Luftwaffe switched from a rigid to a fluid system of control for its nightfighters. Excellent first-person accounts illustrate the points the author makes throughout the work.

The original edition was published in the early '80s with a short update concerning rumors that Ultra revealed the raid was compromised; to protect this intelligence source the raid was allowed to proceed. This "conspiracy theory" is as untrue as the persistent myth that Coventry was destroyed for the same reason. In actuality there are a myriad of reasons why a mission might be cancelled; it's extremely unlikely that the Germans would have connected a cancellation of the Nuremberg Raid with intelligence concerning their defenses.

The only area where the book is wanting is the chapter(s) concerning "Butcher" Harris. Research since the book was written has shown that he was obsessively committed to bombing cities-to the point of insubordination on several occasions. Anyone else would have, and should have, been fired. The book doesn't address any of these issues. Contrary to what other reviewers have said, the Bombing Offensive was not "propaganda driven". Bomber advocates such as Harris, as an extreme example, felt that the sacrifice their crews were making would definitely shorten the war-maybe even end it without the need of invasion. Sadly, they held to these views even when events were showing that the offensive was not causing the damage expected, and a re-think of the entire bombing strategy was in order. Highly Recommended.

This is probably Martin Middlebrook's best-written account of an RAF Bomber Command Operation in the Second World War. Middlebrook wants the reader to believe that Air Marshal Harris, the commander of Bomber Command, was correcting in pursuing his night-time area bombing philosophy instead of trying to hit military or industrial targets with precision daylight strikes. Throughout, Middlebrook's sympathies and admiration for the brave RAF bomber crewmen that he knew from his youth are clear. Yet this book pushes a point of view that borders on religious or zealous faith, rather than a level-headed assessment of the facts. What pushes Middlebrook over the edge of reason here is the nature of his subject. While Middlebrook's other bomber books on Hamburg, Berlin and Peenemunde covered costly but successful operations (more or less), the raid on Nuremberg in March 1944 was an unmitigated disaster. RAF bomber command suffered its heaviest losses in one night of the war and inflicted negligible damage on the enemy.

Middlebrook begins with several very informative chapters that detail the bombing campaigns in Germany during 1939-1943, the composition of the bomber units that would take part in the raid and the German defenses. As usual, Middlebrook is very thorough and the order of battle is very detailed. However, shows a very profound bias toward area bombing throughout and it starts in assessing the three major raids just prior to the Nuremberg raid. Middlebrook makes a very important point when he states that, "even in non-cloud conditions the bombing results on Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Berlin had been poor ...bombing photographs indicated that not one aircraft released its load within the city's limits!" The point is that RAF Bomber Command did not have the capability to destroy cities because they couldn't hit them and that Air Marshal Harris knew this but continued on with an area bombing campaign that had degenerated into random killing. Wars are won by killing the right people at the right moment, not by killing randomly.

The pre-mission briefs to are covered in great detail and it appears that the intent was to deceive the crews about the nature of the mission, the strength of the enemy defenses and even the weather. The night chosen for the attack was poorly suited for infiltrating a 700+ stream of bombers across Germany due to the illumination from the moon and lack of cloud cover, but Harris ignored these facts and the crews were filled with overly-optimistic estimates. It is also significant that Harris chose an aim point in Nuremberg well away from the MAN tank plant (Middlebrook fails to mention that it was producing 100 Panther tanks per month at that time) and the SS barracks in the city and instead placed it in a residential area that he expected would burn well. The crews were told that the target was the tank plant and SS barracks.

Middlebrook follows the take-off of the massive bomber stream, all the supporting operations designed to help the raid and the massive German interception in great detail. Although the front of the stream made it past the German defenses, the Germans had perfected the "Tame Boar" method of intercepting streams before they reached their target and ripped apart the center of the stream. Visibility was excellent and the bombers were leaving contrails due to unusual conditions. About eighty British bombers were lost in a ninety minute period. The Germans had a very good night; Middlebrook notes that over thirty bombers were shot down by just eight night fighter crews. Two German lieutenants shot down seven and six bombers in one sortie! The flak gunners also had a good night - one battery shot down three bombers in five minutes with only twenty shells. All the while, the British crews watched in horror in the moonlight as bomber after bomber went down in flames. Nor were the British aware of the German "schrage musik" attacks from underneath with specially-modified cannon that fired into the bellies of the British bombers. It was one of the great aerial slaughters of all time. Nevertheless, the bravery of the British crews to press on to target in the mistaken belief that their actions would contribute to victory is sobering.

Compounding the heavy losses, the raid itself was a total failure. Nuremberg was heavily cloud-covered and most of the bombs fell well outside the city; only 60 German civilians were killed in the city, including 24 women and 8 children. Even worse however, was that 107 bombers missed the target by 55 miles and bombed Schweinfurt by mistake (and only succeeded in killing one woman and one child). A total of 110 German civilians and 19 Luftwaffe personnel were killed in the raid and about ten fighters were lost. Contrast this with British losses of 108 aircraft (96 bombers were shot down, the rest were crashed or damaged beyond repair) and of the aircrew, 545 of these brave men were killed and 152 captured. Middlebrook notes these cold-blooded facts but then concludes that the raid succeeded because it carried the war to the German people and "it was the German civilians who cowered for their lives in cellars and shelters while the English slept safely in their beds". Aside from this being an asinine "aim for the RAF", it ignores the German V-weapons campaign that was pounding England in 1944 without risking aircrews.

Finally, after all the excellent post-mortem analysis Middlebrook brings the reader to an emotionally biased watershed. Instead of realizing that the Nuremberg Raid clearly demonstrated that night area-bombing was not a cost-effective way to win a war, he launches into an impassioned defense of Harris' beloved area bombing. Middlebrook writes, "The morale of the German people never broke...but this does not mean that the theory was wrong: only that it had not been proved. What might have happened if Harris had been given the 4,000 heavy bombers [that he wanted]?" This completely ignores the fact that RAF Bomber Command could barely find major cities in the dark, except for the few targets in the Ruhr within range of OBOE. How would more bombers have changed this fact? More bombers missing the target still does not add up to victory. Even when RAF bombs hit cities, they tended to kill women, children and the elderly, not people likely to contribute much to Hitler's war effort. Middlebrook's assertion that the bomber raids caused the Germans to allocate thousands of anti-aircraft guns, searchlights and flak crews to home defense is also specious. First, anti-aircraft guns and searchlight cost a lot less to manufacture than four-engine bombers, and few of them were destroyed in battle unlike the 8,325 bombers the RAF lost. Second, the flak crews were often teenagers, women and Russian volunteers, all of whom required far less training than RAF bomber crews. Thirdly, Middlebrook ignores the huge investment that Britain had made into air defense of the UK and the fact that Britain did not have a free ride in this area even in 1944. Actually, it is apparent that RAF Bomber Command diverted far more resources from Britain's war effort than it did from Germany's.

This is a well-written and detailed account of one of the fiercer air battles of the Second World War. It should be on the bookshelf of anyone seriously interested in the air war in 1939-1945. However, the emotional bias of the author colors his assessment of the raid and serves to offer up a false conclusion. It is no disservice to the brave RAF crewmen who died on the raid, they did their best and they were heroes, but the raid was idiotic in intent and execution. Commanders like Air Marshall Harris would send brave men to their deaths for no reasonable purpose should not be excused for "having a bad day" or making a mistake. Unfortunately, the author cannot bring himself to this condemnation and it is up to the reader to make a less biased conclusion.