Netherlands Books

Many trendy, interesting and cool places listed in this book! I go to Athens every summer and still found this very useful!

This book was a total waste of money. There was not one thing in it which was useful on our trip to Greece.

Little remembered today, the story of Hans Pfaall first appeared as an article in the Southern Literary Messenger in June, 1835. It claims to tell the story of a Dutch mender of bellows who decided to escape his overwhelming debt by building a balloon and flying to the Moon. Told in the form of a news article explaining how the story of Hans Pfaall was brought back to Earth by a dwarfish inhabitant of the Moon, it covers Pfaall's story up to his extraterrestrial arrival.

In fact, this story was a not-very successful hoax perpetrated by Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49)! The story is somewhat longwinded, and the use of such names as Underduk and Rubadub makes it easy to understand why this story disappeared without a trace, even at the time. In fact, as a book, the greatest weakness of the story is the simple fact that it is an uncompleted work!

But, that said, I must say that I did enjoy the story. It gave an interesting look into the state of scientific knowledge in 1835. So, if you are interested in reading a Jules Verne-esque story from 1835, then get The Adventures of Hans Pfaall - science fiction has come a long way in 170 years!

When you first unfold it, instead of maps there's a cheesy collage of generic Amsterdam icons. Further unfold and it expands to a close-in view of the area with tram routes depicted by thin lines almost the same color as the background. On the other side is a slightly more close up detail of the city center.
But the size is perfect and there is some useful information on the undersides of the map. Enough that if you only plan to walk around the city centre to see the major sights, this could be all you need.

This book studies evidence and convictions based on Dutch riminal trials producing some useful insights applicable to American cases. The authors' thesis is that triers of fact reach their decisions based on two judgments: (1) an assessment of the plausibility of the prosecutor's account of the events and motives and (2) whether this narrative can be anchored by evidence to common-sense beliefs generally accepted as true most of the time.
The authors first discuss their theories of judicial and jury reasoning, focusing on how evidence is anchored to beliefs. They then turn to a discussion of police investigations, noting a
distinction between offense-driven and suspect-driven searches - in the former the police begin with a crime scene and are search for the culprit; in the latter, the police attempt to link a suspect to an unsolved offense. In the former, the investigators collect evidence until it logically excludes everyone but the culprit. In the latter, the authors note that one needs only enough information to make the suspect look guilty. The problem with the latter is tunnel vision, confirmation bias, and officers willing to fabricate evidence against a suspect they are certain is guilty. The authors also discuss the difference between verification vs. falsification in the context of confessions, alibis, and other evidence.
Later chapters discuss confession evidence and the problem of forced or false confessions; identification procedures; eyewitness testimony (contrasting mistaken witnesses with lying witnesses); and expert testimony. The authors suggest defense tactics to combat the assumptions and heuristics (reasoning shortcuts) often used by judges and juries and finally suggest ten universal evidentiary rules and procedures to improve the information available for fact-finders.
The text has internal citations instead of footnotes or endnotes. All of the referenced works are listed in five pages at the end. As a resource, the book may provide the reader with a number of good ideas for approaching legal analysis. Readers should be aware that the text is over ten years old - there has been a great deal of research, particularly in the fields of false confession and eyewitness identification in the intervening time.

Not too bad, interesting history not very detailed of the actual battle, very little personal input from the characters themselves. a few rare photos.

This book offers good textual information about what one can see along a particular route. But the directions are not sufficient in themselves. Each route recommends the map that should be purchased in order to navigate the route. Not recommended if you are looking for a single book to show you your way around Holland.

My husband and I used this book on our week's vacation in Belgium. We were going to be staying at a small Bed & Breakfast in West Flanders, taking day trips to some of the larger cities in the country, so we chose the Baedeker's guide for its separate driving map.

The driving map served us well on the highways between cities. However, once we got off the major roads and tried to find the smaller attractions shown as dots and crosses on the map, we began to realize that the smaller roads necessary to get from the highways to the attractions were frequently unlabeled. This caused some major confusion as we also hit a road detour and ended up driving along a one-lane road that seemed to go right through the field of a private farm.

The maps of the cities listed in the guidebook itself were also found to be lacking, unless one had already figured out how to get to central Brussels, and only wanted to visit the museums around the Place des Palais. For more details, Baedeker's recommends purchasing their guides to the specific cities that you wish to visit.

The guide primarily came in handy for narrowing down which cities we wanted to visit, and for its listing of the major attractions for each city (even though the attractions aren't always marked on the maps).

Other handy features of the guide include a language section that lists common words one may need to know, with both the French and Dutch/Flemish translation. The translations are extremely useful for those who would actually like to know what food they are ordering before the waiter or waitress sets it in front of them (esp. if you do not like eel).

There are sections on Belgian art history, castles and monasteries, markets (flea, antique, and flower), and military cemeteries (of which Belgium has quite a lot). All of these make Baedeker's Belgium very useful as a first and general guide to the country. However, I recommend getting guides for specific cities you plan to visit, or finding a guide to Belgium with more thorough city maps. For, while it is a small country, it appears Belgium is too large for Baedeker's to tackle in just one guidebook.

A decent guide book, now a bit dated. Not as interesting as the D-K Eyewitness series, but the site descriptions are useful. The city maps are weak, showing only a few street names. May be better if you already know the Netherlands, but not enough for the first-time visitor.

I ended up needing an equivalent map for part of Norway while I was in Europe, (I miss the good old days when gasoline stations gave away road maps for free.
I bought the Norway map in a Norwegian bookstore for twice the price I paid at Amazon. I wish I had ordered a Norway map from Amazon also.

Good details about the Jewish Holocaust, told in a first hand manner.
Some parts unclear. Earnest.