Camps Books

The Heart Mountain Concentration camp is just north of my home in Cody, WY so I am very familiar with it. I work at the local library and this is one of our most checked out items and one we recommend when patrons are looking for something on this item of local history.

If you are into the nuts and bolts of "How did they do it back then?" then "Hints to Hunters" is an excellent source. It is especially useful due to its relatively early original publication date (1874) and its many illustrations, many more than are usually in similar books of the time. Levenson is indeed opinionated on subjects such as equipment and methods but find me an outdoorsman past or present who isn't. It was also interesting to see how the lads across the Great Pond were doing things in Africa and India while we Yanks were on the Great Plains. This book will show you the similarities and differences. My only real complaint was that at $45 it was a tad pricey. Fortunately, I had an Amazon Certificate.

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A wonderful account of the " common foot soldier" in their own words. A poignant description of the infamous Andersonville prison.

In mid-1943 Nazi Germany faced a shortage of manpower in its factories, and sent slave laborers to work manufacturing weapons. The Dora subcamp was one of the most notorious, putting prisoners to work building V-2 rockets. Sellier himself is a former prisoner at Dora but also a historian and tells the story of the underground work sites. Source documents trace the horror of everyday life and the conflicts of prisoners forced to work against their potential liberators.

Oleg Khlevniuk's Russian archive work on researching the true extent of the destruction of humans under Stalin is by far the best work in the field. By painstakingly analyzing secret reports, top secret letters between Commissars, censuses, official data, the Chrushchov era KGB research, etc. he is capable of giving an authoritative and absolutely fair analysis of exactly what went on in the GULAG system in particular and Stalinism as a whole, how many people were affected and how, and what this means for the accuracy of the 'popular view' of Stalin's crimes.

Contrary to Conquest, Malia, Montefiore etc. etc. he presents the facts and the documents as they are and lets them speak for themselves, instead of going on and on about the moral/sentimental issues without any thorough factual backing, as almost all such popular writers on the USSR do. Certainly no fan of Stalin either, he manages to present the simple facts in such a clear and well-evidenced way that he does justice to all involved. An impressive achievement considering the political meaning of the subject.

For those who need to know about the daily drugery of the the city Hitler gave to the Jews; this is it. Grorge Brekley lays out the horrors and difficulties of this "paradise" for the more renouned Jews of occupied countries. Starvation, forced labor, beatings and ultimate death were the prices paid for this better life

This Holocaust survivor account is unlike any other in that it chronicles the fate of the Greek Jews in detail. Daniel's narrative is orderly and factual, bringing forth important items of history I have not seen in other studies. The description of the deadly cattle car ride to Auschwitz is broken out in great detail, to the degree that Daniel and the author place the reader in the midst of the un-imaginable dehumanizing experiences told there. The day-to-day tasks of the Sonderkommando are told in a slightly different light than one would read in Filip Mueller's "Eyewitness-Auschwitz", yet they are instructional from Daniel's point of view. His life was saved in some of the deadliest circumstances in what I believe was Divine intervention. One part of the book I especially enjoyed from a historical aspect was the fate of the ss officer Otto Moll, who I read of in other Holocaust literature (several survivors write extensively on this person-no morbid fascination with him, however). There is one account in the book that is a black cloud over an otherwise fine work, and that is the treatment the Greek Sephardic Jews were given by the European Ashkenazic Jews---the Greek Jewish people were looked down upon and reviled as "whores" and "cholera" by their fellow inmates. I highly recommend this work to any serious student of history, and I wish that I could meet Daniel Bennahmias someday. God bless you, sir!

As a horse crazy youngster, summer riding camp was one of my favourite things. A whole glorious week, away from the city. Nothing but trees, as far as the eye can see.

But what to do in the middle of a snowy Canadian winter, when camp seemed a million miles away? Well, I did the next best thing to camp, I pulled out my book about camp!

Virginia Vail's "Horseback Summer" was one of my favourites. I only owned the first and the fourth of the Horse Crazy series, to this day, I don't know how the story ends.

I made good use of that book though, I read it over, and over and over...I could probably quote the whole thing right now! It's a wonderful story, about Emily Jordan's summer at Webster's Country Horse Camp.

Emily was supposed to be going with her best friend, Judy, but Judy fell out of a tree while trying to rescue her cat and broke her leg. Emily felt lost with out Judy, they had been friends since they were three and had done everything together, even get chicken pox's!!

Emily feels better after arriving at camp, and talking to Marie, one of the owners of the camp. Marie tells her about the first time she went to camp without her twin sister. It doesn't take Emily long to adjust to camp, who couldn't with all those beautiful horses around?

But camp isn't all fun, Caroline Lescaux is used to getting all she wants, And what she wants is Emily's horse!! Emily is not a fighter, but she will do anything to keep Joker!

Find out what happens to Emily In this exciting book, Horseback Summer by Virginia Vail. It will bring those wonderful memories of summer camp rushing back to you.

One of the several and too few "Z" books set on the planet of Krishna, the Hostage of Zir introduces Fergus Reith, the "hero" as such of several subsequent Krishnan books, a stand-in Tour Guide for the Magic Carpet Travel Agency wrastled into leading a simple tour guide on the planet. The first tour group. Easy enough.

By the end of the book Reith is torn between completing the task and boiling the members of the group in hot oil, and that illustrates the travails these mild, ordinary people put him through with their zany and constant antics. From such simple feats as insulting locals and risking a lynch mob to such exotic fare as getting kidnapped in a power ploy, they provide non-stop hair pulling entertainment.

Not the least bit the local natives are slightly green skinned and have feathery tufts from their eyebrows. And prove to be quiet "human" despite those differences!

This books really tells it like no other guide book. I would recommend it above Let's Go and others. It thoroughly reviews the ups and downs of hostelling in these countries. Obviously, the main attractions are the cities of Brussels and Amsterdam, and it covers the hostels there superbly, but if you want to explore the real local towns of these countries and you want to do it on a budget, this book describes the lesser known areas of these countries which you can see by staying at hostels. No other guide book lists every hostel available to the independent traveler. It's loaded with social criticism as well. And it's funny!

Forget Rick Steves, his books are for older folks. If you're young and hip, you'll enjoy these far more!