Ireland Books

It was hard to put this book down once I started it. Although the women portrayed faced a living hell all around them, the authors elicit the courage and determination each women had to continue the daily existence in the camps. And that is what is so powerful; the daily horrors which become the backdrop for extermination are also part of the reason that each was able to define for herself a path through death.

This book is novel in its approach and subject matter. Women in the Holocaust, and their triumphs, courage, and resourcefullness has been ignored before now. The stories are personal and engaging. I would put it in the top-ten must reads of Holocaust literature.

This book was a difficult endeavor, as one never wants to face the potential raw ugliness of mankind. However, the voices of these women are invaluable in helping the world to remember a time which must never be forgotten.

As a young woman (34 years old) and a mother of three (which qualifies me as a caregiver, I guess), my heart went out to these brave women, struggling to impart some small measure of kindness or at least relief of suffering to their fellow prisoners. Women and children are seemingly the most vulnerable when society engages in chaos, but the women caregivers chronicled in this book were apparently among the most intrepid of all. I believe they gathered strength from the acts of focusing on giving aid to others in the most desperate of circumstances. Anyone who is interested in what the human spirit can endure, and indeed, overcome, should read this book.

Kudos to Dr. Diane Plotkin for her thorough research into the lives of the women featured in this book. Her attention to detail helps transport us to the various camps where we experience dehumanization and deprivation. Through it all, however, it is interesting to see the various ways these women nurtured and tried to protect one another. This is a "must-read" book because it clearly illustrates the general differences in the ways men and women coped with, and adapted to, life in the concentration camps.

Aine O'Malley is the only daughter in an Irish family with four boys, and is neglected, insulted, lonely and highly imaginative. The story opens when she is 10 during a summer in their Victorian castellated house built above the rocky mainland shore. The Dunbeg castle, a crumbling old wreck built nearly 150 years earlier by her great-great-grandfather O'Malley, has its share of family ghosts and legends. Aine's cousin from America, Rupert - her father's brother's son, visits them for the summer, and she finds a rare ally in him even though he's several years older than her. While her brothers ignore her or taunt her and her parents virtually ignore her, Rupert finds time to talk and explore with her, and achieves a real rapport with Aine. They continue to correspond when he returns to Virginia.

The women in this novel are all deeply troubled and unfulfilled. Aine's mother is distant and troubled by her lack of power in her typical Irish marriage where the man rules the roost. Rupert's mother has a similar marriage, but it's further complicated by the fact that her husband is a pedophile and philanderer. Both seem trapped and helpless in their marriages, which creates negative examples of female vulnerability and dysfunctional relationships for Aine.

Aine is haunted by unexplained nightmares, shadows and visions, and is constantly criticized and ostracized by her family for her imaginings; but only Rupert seems to understand her. They don't see each other again for years, when she is 13 and he is leaving for college. An awkward and uncomfortable event causes a rift between them, and they lose communication for several years while he is away at college. They meet again when she is an adult and attending drama school in London, but he is engaged and she is angry and disappointed in him. She agrees to marry Nigel soon after meeting him in London, mainly as a negative reaction to Rupert's engagement.

Aine's intense feelings for Rupert are eventually resolved in a surprising manner, and she eventually faces her demons and ghosts and learns how to deal with them.

The themes of oppression and haunting are mirrored in the splendid, vivid descriptions of the Dunbeg castle and rocky seashore and of the humid, sultry surroundings in Virginia. The author allows us to empathize with Aine and be fully engaged with her environs. We feel we know her before the end of the novel, and want her to find healing and peace of mind in a world that so far has been hostile and insensitive.

A falling down Irish castle, a fey little girl with a host of brothers and an unfilled mother and traditionally clueless father. A rebellious aunt and American cousin come to visit and nothing will ever be the same. Aunt Isabelle warns the tiny and already dramatic ten year old Aine that "Men ... eat feelings. They have none of their own and live off other people's." As Aine approaches womanhood, ancient childhood fears haunt her, as does the prospect of life. Her unconventional and unfulfilled mother equates marriage with "mortgaging your life," and then makes a very dramatic exit. As Aine's very difficult life unfolds, the constancy and concern of cousin Rupert Bear for Tigerlily is an inspired touch, but (as in life) happily ever after is more than a bit of a fantasy. This is a pretty yet dark and multi-layered poetic tale that keeps hopefulness on the horizon, and has a lot to say about families and coming of age. The author is extremely talented, and the reader will feel pulled into this living, breathing family and the various landscapes.

By the time Aine turns ten in 1986, she is a loner in spite of two brothers. She enjoys and hates the summer visits to Dunberg, the haunting family castle in Ireland. However, this year, things are different as her aunt and cousin arrive from Virginia for a visit. Her cousin Rupert is four years older than Aine, but the two hit it off immediately. When Rupert rescues Aine from a nasty situation, he becomes her knight in shining armor.

Over the years, Aine recognizes how dysfunctional her family truly is. Even more so, she realizes she deeply loves her first cousin. However, he is engaged to someone else, any sensual relationship with him is taboo, and someone wants to simply destroy Aine, leaving her choices very limited. Of course, there is Nigel to consider.

THE SONG OF THE TIDE is a modern day Gothic drama that captures the essence of the genre. The story line works because the plot adheres to its roots of an atmospheric location, ancestral curses, insane people, and brooding individuals whose forbidden love divides their family even as society condemns them for it. Mary Ryan paints a powerful portrait of an angst-laden woman that will bring her a stateside audience who will want more of her works published here.

Harriet Klausner

Evocative and engrossing, Mary Ryan's The Song of the Tide creates a story with complex layers, emotions, and settings, describing them with skill and sympathy. The heart and soul of Ryan's heroine, Aine O'Malley, reveal a flair for the dramatic, a vivid imagination, and a keen perception or prescience that become a burden as she grows older. The lessons Aine learns about women's roles in society and the source of their satisfaction or power -- whether it is derived from domestic dominance or the ability to escape such ties -- runs in tandem with Aine's own struggle to escape her obsessions and ghosts. Aine's folly results from her belief that her power to control situations or people's opinions is derived by what she leaves unsaid, and more often her reticence or lies create further turmoil and obstacles for her.

Aine's family owns a crumbling castle called Dunbeg, where the story begins with the arrival of Aine's American-born cousin, Rupert and fraternal aunt, Isabelle. Even to 10-year-old Aine's perception, it soon becomes apparent that Aunt Isabelle is on the lam, running away from her husband. Aine immediately forms an alliance and deep attachment to Rupert, her gentlemanly cousin from Virginia who is the first male that didn't pick on her (Aine comes from a family full of brothers). In their explorations of the land surrounding the castle, Aine and Rupert fall afoul of a local resident tramp named Aeneas Shaw, a silly childhood misadventure with surprisingly far-reaching consequences. Aine, already a martyr to nightmares and insomnia, privately adds her new Nemesis Shaw to her list of fears, but recants her initial reporting of Shaw's attack on her to the police because she feels sorry for him and does not want to be the cause of his confinement to a mental home or to prison. In this one act, Aine establishes a pattern that will follow her throughout her adolescence and young adult years, in which she subverts her own fears about her safety, or allows others to convince her she's crazy or has an overly-vivid imagination, to the detriment of her well-being.

When she is 10 years old, Aine suddenly faces down the taunts of her brothers, screaming "From now on, I want some respect!", but it is not until a decade later that she realizes the power to gain freedom from such bad treatment is actually in her own hands, not in the hands of her tormenters both real and imagined. Aine's role models, after all, are her aunt, who after fleeing her abusive, lecherous, alcoholic husband, returns and submits to his will, and her mother, whose attempts at an intellectually-satisfying life are thwarted by her husband's need for clean shirts and who ultimately turns to an unsatisfying and unsuccessful adulterous liaison as a means of escape. Aine's Aunt Isabelle advises her thusly, after her outburst demanding respect:

"'You must never, ever let them see it . . . Aine, darling,' she whispered. 'You must never show them!' My mouth opened. 'Show them what?' 'You must never show men what you really feel,' she repeated. 'Men . . . eat feelings! They have none of their own and they live off other people's.'"

Aine seems to take this advice to heart and begins a lifelong habit of leaving things unsaid, lying to hide the truth, and being evasive with everyone, including herself. The one constant in Aine's life is Rupert's friendship, and her one goal as she travels through puberty into womanhood, is to win his love. What she finally realizes about herself as a woman and as an individual in her quest for his love makes for fascinating, dramatic reading.

The Song of the Tide is a lushly descriptive, hauntingly beautiful tale set in Ireland, England, and America, and each scene has an all-encompassing quality that surrounds the reader in a tangible atmosphere. The reader is a witness, not only to the beautifully-described exteriors, such as the eerie castle Dunbeg and the sultry state of Virginia, but is also privy to the interiors of Aine's mind and even her dreams. The story succeeds on all levels to draw in the reader to a well-constructed plot, a complicated conflict, and a satisfying denouement.

This was a magical book that brought St. Petersburg to vivid life.

But a statements made on pages 258-259 literally made my eyes grow wide.

The first statementa concerns Marius Petipa's ballet "Don Quixote". Petipa was teh renowned Premier Maître de Ballet of the St. Petersburg Imperial Theatres, who is perhaps the most influential Balletmaster that has ever lived.

Volkov explains that the critic Gaevsky considered the so-called "Dream Scene" from Petipa's "Don Quixote" to be a "veiled portrait of the Russian Capital". If Volkov researched just a little further, he would know that the "Dream Scene" as it is danced today in Russia is actually the work of Alexander Gorsky, who revised "Don Quixote" extensively in Moscow in 1900 and later staged his version for the Imperial Ballet in 1902.

In the book Volkov discusses Petipa final ballet, "The Magic Mirror", which failed miserably upon its 1903 premiere. Volkov discusses an accident at the general rehearsal of the ballet, which the aged Balletmaster viewed as a bad omen. He then goes onto quote a passage from Petipa's diaries, written a short time prior to the incident, in which the Balletmaster discusses his wishes for his funeral. Volkov then writes, quote:

"The sense of change characteristic of fin-de-siècle St. Petersburg and the hovering expectation of doom did not leave Petipa. This was undoubtedly one of the reasons for his love for Tcahikovsky, who worked, we could say, on the same psychological wavelength. Petipa could have easily remained with the music of Cesare Pugni, Ludwig Minkus, or Riccardo Drigo-after all, some of his biggest successes were collaboration with those minor composers."

The view that Petipa preferred to collaborate with Tchaikovsky is FAR from the truth. It is a common misconception that Petipa was on some mission to "improve" the quality of ballet music. Although he did hold Tchaikovsky in high regard, Petipa's preferred collaborator during the late 19th century was no doubt Riccardo Drigo, and the light, melodious ballet music of the specialist was what Petipa really preferred. There is, however, no direct statement made by Petipa to support this, but one needs only to review the way Petipa handled the scores provided him by the composers of the post-Minkus era to see what his tates truely were. It was the director of the Imperial Theatres, Vsevolozhsky, who abolished Ludwig Minkus's post of "Official Ballet Composer" in 1886, and subsequently the director brought several "symphonic" composers to the table to collaborate with Petipa. Tchaikovsky came in 1889, composing the magnificent "Sleeping Beauty" that premiered in 1890, followed by "Nutcracker" in 1892. It is significant to note that in 1891, between "Sleeping Beauty" and "Nutcracker", Petipa requested that Minkus supply the music for his ballet "Kalkabrino". Afterward Vsevolozhsky commissioned several "symphonic" composers to collaborate with Petipa, but the Balletmaster nevertheless often supplemented much of their scores with the additional music by Drigo (i.e. additional variations, dances, etc.)

At every opportunity, Petipa worked with Drigo. By the time Petipa retired in 1904, nearly every ballet in the Imperial Theatre's repertory contained additional music by Drigo.

To say that Tchaikovsky worked on the same psychological wavelength as Petipa is not a bad statement, but Volkov's passage quoted above basically states that the composers Pugni, Minkus, or Drigo did not.

Not only is the author obviously erudite about his subject matter, he is in love with it, making this book more than just an outsider's account of a city's cultural history. Exploring the 'mythos' of St. Petersburg through the work and lives of many of the creative spirits who either lived here or reflected the city in their works -- Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoyevski, Akhmatova among the better-known -- Volkov brings to life the very streets, houses, and canals of a great city on the border of Russia and Europe. But even more, his reader has the great pleasure of being accompanies on this journey by the very Russian-intellectual thoughtfulness and erudition, 'intelligentnost', of the author. Warmly recommended indeed.

Solomon Volkov is a sorcerer. He will have you chuckling out loud one minute & weeping the next! In the pages of this book, you will come to know the people of St. Petersburg; their glory, their sorrow, their passion, their genius. Volkov has brought this immortal city across the ocean and planted it firmly in my heart. It has instilled in me a deep appreciation for the talents of those who, in some cases, forfeited theirs lives for the sake of creative freedom.

Solomon Volkov has prepared for Western readers a breathtaking history of St. Petersburg's cultural treasures. Anyone who has seen "The Nutcracker Ballet" should read this book. Volkov brings forth the great ballet artists, classical music composers, painters, and writers who were centered in St. Petersburg, Russia's "window on Europe". Most of these great artists are as familiar to western readers as Tchaikovsky. But we are also introduced to equally great artists, poets, and writers we didn't know before. The introduction is invaluable. Underlying the "stars" of center stage, and running throughout the 300 years of cultural history is a constant reference to the "mythos of St. Petersburg" which Russian emigres worldwide will recognize with longing and affection. It is important to learn of the deeply-felt magical aura this city imposed on the artists and writers who lived there, including on Solomon Volkov himself.

Anna Funder gives a sharply cut and moving (in)human face to the now defunct German Democratic Republic by interviewing former Stasi members (the top, foreign spies, informants, organizers) and their direct or indirect victims.
In `a world where there was nothing to buy, nowhere to go, and where anyone who wanted to do anything other than serve the Party, risked persecution or worse', the Stasi's aim was to know everything about everybody with all means, even radiation. As the author poetically states: everybody had `a mirror Nemesis' in a Stasi department. The result was that everyone suspected everyone else and turned into an `internal emigration' for the sheltering of their secret inner lives.
In fact, the Stasi was a formidable organization (one informant for every 6,5 citizens) created in order to defend the government against its own people.
Anna Funder exposes the real Stasi mentality: `The most important thing you have is power" (Chief E. Mielke). Its colossal archives were partly shredded after the fall of the Berlin Wall (15000 sacks) and are being puzzled together. A truly Herculean task.
The author paints a society built on ideological fiction (human nature was a work-in-progress which could be improved by Communism) and on blatant lies (a multi-party democracy, no former Nazis, not responsible for the Holocaust).
But what is left after the collapse? A `Wall in the Head'. The victims are still heavily marked (psychological damage by the terrifying effect of total surveillance) and some Stasi men still hope that the Wall will be built again.

Anna Funder wrote a formidable evocation of life in a communist one party state protected by a wall.
A must read.

Stasiland is the former East Germany, a country where the Stasi, the secret police, spied on every inhabitant, kept files on everybody, and seemed all-powerful. Anna Funder has written about the Stasi in a way that sometimes seems like fiction, other times like memoir, and ultimately like an exceptionally readable history.

The Berlin of Funder's book is post-Wall Berlin, but it is as gray and paranoid as the Berlin of John le Carre's spy novels. Funder seems depressed throughout, and it is no wonder. She spends all her time interviewing former "Ossis," East Germans who were victims of the Stasi or who were former Stasi themselves. Even her irrepresible rock musician friend reveals that his band was declared "non-existent" by the Stasi. The secret police were so thorough that he cannot find any evidence that his group, which recorded several albums and was quite popular in the East, ever existed.

Through Funder, we hear from Miriam, who nearly made it over the Wall at age sixteen, but was caught, jailed, and blacklisted. Shortly after she married, her husband was arrested, then the Stasi showed up at Miriam's door to tell her that her husband had killed himself. She refused to believe the obvious lie and the subsequent funeral was a bizarre farce. Decades later, Miriam is still trying to make sense of it all, still searching for clues to explain what really happened.

Frau Paul tells of her newborn son whose East German doctors risked their careers by smuggling the infant to the West because it was his only chance to survive a life-threatening condition. Frau Paul was denied permission to visit her baby unless she agreed to help the Stasi trap an acquaintance of hers. She desperately wanted to see her son, whose condition kept him in hospital for years, but knew that if she agreed to help the Stasi just once, she would be theirs for life. The child was well-cared for, but was growing up with only the hospital staff as his family. When he left the hospital at age six and returned to his family in the East, he was polite but distant with the parents who were strangers to him. Forty years later, Frau Paul still considers herself the traitor to her country and failure as a parent that the Stasi told her she was.

Not all of the stories are tragic. Funder learns of a woman the Stasi tried to recruit to spy on her co-workers. The woman agreed, then went to work and cheerfully told everyone that the Stasi had recruited her to be a spy. Since her cover had been blown, she was no longer useful to the Stasi. They never bothered her again.

Funder visits the office of the "puzzle people," workers who put shredded documents from Stasi files back together. The papers reveal who the Stasi was watching, what they discovered, and who the informers were. Ossis may now request to see their files, but many of the files have yet to be put back together. The director tells Funder that at the rate of an average of ten reconstructed documents a day per employee, it will take forty puzzle people 375 years to reconstruct all the shredded documents. And, he explains, "as you see, we have only thirty-one employees."

Little by little, Funder allows us to realize that the Stasi does not exist as a curious and irrelevant moment in history. The torture devices in the Stasi museum and the thousands of bags of shredded documents that recall the abuses of power are evidence of a government that still haunts the lives of millions of former Ossis. It had seemed so powerful, but when the end came for the Stasi, it was without violence in a peaceful revolution of people who were just fed up.

When author George Orwell wrote Animal Farm and 1984 he wrote of the contemporary and future 'proletarian' dictatorships. The German Democratic Republic, more than any other state before or since, came the nearest to a state of perfected and complete absolute control over its citizens' lives. The author of Stasiland, Anna Funder, has done a suberb job of revivifying this state in her readers' minds through the personal stories of the GDR's inhabitants. I got this book for Christmas and had it read in three days, so good I never wanted to put it down.

The book's chapters trace the lives of various GDR citizens, both those being oppressed and the Stasi personnel charged with terrifying the GDR's people into abject submission. In Soviet Russia there was one KGB agent for every 5830 people, in Nazi Germany one Gestapo agent for every 2000 people, but in the GDR there was one Stasi - or full-time informer - FOR EVERY 63 PERSONS (see p. 57)!

Funder hears shocking tales of personal tragedy, bizarre - but true - stories of GDR logic, and personal justifications from ex-Stasi men themselves. One 15-year-old girl singlehandedly, without any prior planning(!), almost manages to escape over the Berlin Wall, getting within a couple meters of freedom. Another family is permanently separated from their seriously ill son for his first five years of life. And one woman's personal and career life is ruined when she refuses to submit to ideological control.

The author also interviews some famous GDR personalities, such as musician Klaus Renft, the evil-spirited Karl Von Schnitzler, and Hagen Koch (who literally wrote the plan for the wall). She also interviews the puzzle people trying to piece back together the shredded Stasi files. And she also meets with Stasi agents, who for one reason or another, decided to join the 'dark side'.

As I was reading the book, I couldn't help but become absolutely convinced that, despite the very publicized efforts of the German gov't to piece back together the Stasi files, in fact, German (and all other Eastern European) CURRENT LEADERS WANT TO COMPLETELY OBLITERATE EVIDENCE OF THEIR OWN CRIMES DURING THE COMMUNIST REGIMES. The fact of the matter is that many of the former communist elite are still in power now and are using all their gov't influence to ensure they are never, EVER going to be outed! So, in reality, many of them have gotten away with murder and look set to lead comfortable lives into retirement. Many times throughout the book I sensed a continuing cover-up and obfuscation by former Stasi men.

The German government's extremely feeble, half-hearted attempt to reassemble the Stasi files with a staff of 30 or so persons is an absolute farce! Funder calculates it will take them over 300 years to reassemble the files at this rate. With a budget in the billions of euros, it becomes patently obvious the German government's objective is to NOT reassemble the incriminating files. A person might even believe that the Stasi File Authority is headed by a person, Herr Raillard, who is secretly charged by gov't leaders with eliminating any damning evidence that is actually found. This isn't a surprise, as it is the same across the entire former Communist bloc.

This is a great book with a wonderfully direct, realistic writing style. I hope Ms. Funder writes a sequel to the book. I would have liked to have seen some photos too, though. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in life in Eastern Europe.

Anna Funder is an Australian writter who found herself in Berlin several years after the Berlin wall and Communism in former GDR (German Democratic Republic; or DDR in the German language) collapsed.

Through personal stories of former East Germans, Anna tries to put together a mental pictures of what life in former GDR was like. And this mental picture is a stark, dark, oppressive, and paranoid collage of people's lives' stories.

One will learn that East Germany was 'the most perfected surveillance state of all time,' where there was one Stasi officer or informant for every 63 people. The book covers the national formation of the GDR regime and also discuss the cultural background of why Germans were willingly subjecting themselves to authority. The best torture method devised by the Stasi was sleep deprivation. With all this and more, the author makes the point that the regime would not have survived without the Soviet military muscle and presence.

The book also presents some light and funny trivia: the quasi-scientific method of 'smell sampling' used by the 'Firm' (Stasi), the East German silly dance style called 'Lipsi' and the corny or mind-numbing propaganda TV shows.

Interviewing people who lost loved ones in the evil regime's prisons, persons who taught counterintelligence classes for the Stasi, who worked as informants or undercover policeman, students who tried to escape across the Berlin Wall, and persons who are still believers in the 'proletarian' revolution and are nostalgic about the values of the former Socialist republic.

By reading this ecclectic biography collage you will learn about German cultural values, GDR political and idiological history, the Stasi (one of the most feared secret police organizations). Stasiland also shows how much the Stasi archives ruined many lives in former East Germany.

A recommended counter-balance to the gloomy and depressing theme of this non-fiction is the romance/drama/comedy movie "Good Bye Lenin (2003)."

"Long live our holy Germany" were the last words of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg on the night of July 20, 1944. Peter Hoffmann's magnificient book is a salute to the Stauffenberg brothers and most importantly Claus von Stauffenberg. Stauffenberg was the real thing, a man of deep Christian principles and extradionary courage who knew that the future of Germany was more important than his life and the life of his fellow conspirators. He made the ultimate sacrifice so that others could live in freedom. Stauffenberg is not only a hero of Germany, but of anyone on earth who loves freedom and respects the laws of God and humanity. Stauffenberg was Germany's guardian angel, who attempted to save his nation and slay the man he deemed "the antichrist." Doctor Hoffmann paints a wonderful picture of Stauffenberg's early life and military career. He then moves into minute detail of the plot to kill Hitler and the man whom fate had chosen to lead it. Simply a great scholastic achievement.

Peter Hoffmann's biography of Stauffenberg is the best anyone is likely to write on the subject. The book comprehensively assesses all primary sources hitherto used by Stauffenberg's previous biographers, plus many additional sources which the author himself found. Hoffmann's previous books, among them 'THE HISTORY OF THE GERMAN RESISTANCE, 1933-1945', and 'HITLER'S PERSONAL SECURITY' serve as a foundation to this work which, all told, spans 30 years of scholarly research. As the depth and breadth of this study eclipses any other attempt to date, its conclusions are unassailably judicious. Thus, Hoffmann's 'STAUFFENBERG' has made perhaps the most definitive contribution to the historical field of resistance to the Third Reich.

Aside from being the single man in history to make several (and one very famous) attempts on the life of Adolf Hitler, Claus Von Stauffenberg was a unique guy.

Born in 1907 to Prussian aristocracy, Stauffenberg was playing the cello, reciting Shakespeare, and taking an interest in Catholic theology
by the age of exactly 12. Had he made a career out of any of these three, his fate would have been less cruel. Claus Von Stauffenberg, though, was a born soldier.

Ultimately becoming a General Staff officer in the German Abwehr, Stauffenberg and his brothers Berthold and Alexander still made considerable time for poet Stefan George, and were part of his "Secret Germany", a quasi-mystical poetic cult of sorts which worshipped George as "Master, and the three brothers were were prophesied by the poet manque as the future leaders of the Fatherland. Goethe, Holderlin, Rilke and Nietzsche were heralded as the predecessors of the movement. The problem with the entire affair was that George was not very talented and his literary salon was composed mostly of teenage boys.

Despite George, the slow but sure rise of the Third Reich (which, like most Germans, Stauffenberg initially welcomed and his inevitable participation in nearly all of Germany's military campaigns, Claus Von Stauffenberg always retained an odd detachment from his surroundings and a sense of self which was very strong.

The sheer wealth and richness of not only Stauffenberg's life, but the life of his wealthy and somewhat sheltered family--his career as a decorated soldier in the Wehrmacht, his prestige as a model, and as head of the General Staff office--makes his brutal death in front of the Bendleerstrasse in Germany a surreal and bizarre turn of events.

Stauffenberg was aware of Germany's imminent defeat, yet as early as 1942 he was making some quit imprudent remarks about the Fuhrer: "In August 1942 Stauffenberg told Major Joachim Kuhn, a close friend, that the treatment of the Jews and other civilians was monstrous, *that Hitler had lied about the cause of the war*, and that he had to be removed. He then shouted: "They are shooting Jews in the masses. These crimes must not be allowed to continue!"

Then in in another outbrust which later got him arrested, news of more atrocities sparked Stauffenberg to scream in front of SS and general staff alike:"Does not one German soldier have the courage to shoot that pig?"

Attempt after attempt failed; Stauffenberg was regularly seen carrying a "remarkably plump briefcase" (as Albert Speer put it) to three different meetings in Hitler's "Wolf's Lair" in Prussia. Once Hitler did not show up: the second time Stauffenberg's incompetent superiors instructed him to not to set the fuse, and the third time the bomb exploded and by sheer chance did not kill Hitler.

Even in the face of the Gestapo's considerable wrath, Stauffenberg did his best to get the coup de'etat to to succeed. In a most fortunate turn of events for Stauffenberg, probably, a General Staff officer involved in the plot turned on the other plotters and had a handful of them, Claus included, shot on the night of July 20, 1944.

Why? Why was such a priviliged and wealthy figure in the German army who would certainly never have been charged with war crimes choose to sacrifice his life, the life of his family and friends, in an attempt so tenuous and fraught with uncertainty?

The answer, I think, lies in Stauffenberg's unbelievable bravery, sense of common decency, and Christian background. Without these things he may indeed have been a terrifying force for the Third Reich. He could no longer stomach what was going on around him. Peter Hoffmann here gives the definitive biography of this heroic man who embodies perhaps the most inspiring example of "what might have been" in history. A must read.

Of the ten or so serious biographies on Stauffenberg, this will stand as the text to refer to for comprehensiveness and objectivity. The prose is clear, the questions of enduring interest are all answered, and the reader meets the man. Unreservedly recommended.

Ms. Mumm provides important insights to the lives and motives of women in Victorian England who chose to enter the uncharted territory of active religious life in a world which not only frowned upon the notion of an independant woman but also one where it was illegal in the church for a woman to express herself thus. It was amusing to discover the ruses which some Mothers Superior devised to circumvent attempts at episcopal and clerical control. Given the difficulty in procuring access to documentation where it survives her work is an important step to futher understand an often unknown aspect of the not too distant past as seen through the eyes of women. It is all too often assumed that women both Anglican and Roman Catholic chose the cloister simply for pious reasons alone when the true picture was far more complex. This is a book that needed to be written.

I found Susan Mumm's an inspiring overview of early female Anglican orders. I was amazed at their flexibility in membership and was really surprised at the idea you did not have to be a member of the C of E or even a Christian. In addition they demonstrated such open mindedness in not dismissing anyone from their ranks for illegitimate birth. This was unique for a time when appearance and propriety were everything. These women seemed have inherently understood the true goal of life's journey.... the individual's realization of her own salvation in this case, in a community of like minded women.

What I found significant was S. Mumm's inability to get information after, if I am correct, 1915. It appears that these creative women were followed by those less inspired and perhaps more inhibited. I found it tragic.

As a young teen I was inspired by the writings of Mother Kate SSM and her efforts in the slums of London. The early efforts of these women lead to changes in education and nursing and inspired women to achieve outside the confines of the Victorian household. However, that dream appears to have been clouded and eventually lost. Few if any of the orginal Anglican women's orders kept that first creative life and inspiration. That is unfortunate.. but perhaps not.. perhaps they have finished their work or need to hear the sound of the trumpets again.

Often, scholars presume that we "know" x about a particular subject, only to discover that our knowledge is based on half-truths or, worse, mere prejudice. Susan Mumm's project in this book is to rectify our remarkably scrambled understanding of Anglican sisterhoods. Notwithstanding the work of sociologists and historians like John Shelton Reed, Geoffrey Rowell, and Nigel Yates, Victorian Anglo-Catholicism has not been an intellectual growth industry. Mumm's book is both a useful contribution to a not-overcrowded field, and an excellent introduction to a promising area of research.

As she herself admits, Mumm skimps on the theology behind Anglican sisterhoods, dwelling instead on their missions, internal politics, and conflicted relationships with the Protestant mainstream. Contrary to what may be the expectations of some, Mumm finds that "first-wave" Anglican sisters did not necessarily join religious communities out of deep piety; instead, they saw the communities as the best route to careers in fields like administration, teaching, nursing, and social work. Thus, at least in the beginning, the impulse behind such communities could well be dubbed quasi-feminist. By contrast, "second-wave" sisters were far more likely to join out of strictly religious considerations, something that put them into conflict with older members of the community. Not surprisingly, this rise in purely religious vocations coincided with the spread of secular career opportunities for women. Mumm also finds that these sisterhoods were far more successful than their male counterparts, in terms of dedication and pure longevity, and that their missions to the poor have been seriously undervalued by previous scholars of Anglo-Catholic history. Finally, Mumm does a good job laying out the basic Protestant objections to the sisterhoods, which range from the sexist (women were "unfitted" for such independence) to the sexual (sisterhoods were anti-family and anti-marriage).

The only problem with the book is one that was beyond Mumm's power to rectify: many sisterhoods either left no records or refused to allow her access to them. Readers may therefore wonder about the extent to which her sample was actually representative. Nevertheless, this is a minor quibble about an important piece of scholarship.

Religious Life, Victorian-era convents of nuns -- most peoplewould likely jump to the conclusion that this book is about totallyregressive (not to mention repessive) institutions.

Instead, Susan Mumm sets out to examine the phenomenon of a movement situated in an age and time of few opportunities for women, a movement run and directed by women, which offered them more than ample scope to found and direct important institutions, to live independent of the control of men and of families, to decide upon their own lifestyle and establish a corporate life which fostered individuality, education and creativity. Susan Mumm describes surprisingly enlightened practices among Anglican Religious -- members ecouraged to keep up with their reading and their own interests, communities which invested on behalf of each entrant in case she should ever decide to leave, so that an annuity might be provided... Anyone acquainted with a religious order knows how unique each individual in that community is, contrary to common stereotypes: this book is utterly fascinating in that it sketches out how enlightened the administration of Anglican Religious life in the nineteenth century really was. Quite an education! And extremely readable.

In 1945, 19 year-old Robert Hilliard and 25 year-old Edward Herman, two GIs stationed on an army base in Germany after WW II, were so distressed by the conditions they observed at the nearby St. Ottilien DP Camp they started a massive letter writing campaign to the American people. Ultimately, the contents of the letter came to the attention of President Truman and played a key role in reversing US policy towards the Jews. An excerpt from their lengthy letter reads:

At the hospital of St. Ottilien there are today 750 people including a staff of doctors...attempting to preserve the life they find it hard to believe they still have. Four months ago this same hospital was being used to care for German soldiers. At the same time there were thousands of Jews roaming Germany, sick, tortured, wounded, without food, clothing or help of any kind. One particular group was led by Dr. Zalman Grinberg. For months he has tried to obtain aid for these people. The Germans refused him. The local governments refused him...For these people the Red Cross, UNRRA, the various Hebrew organizations were, although present, nonexistent. If they are to survive the coming winter they need shoes...they need sheets and blankets...medical supplies...the necessities of life and they are depending on you to get it for them. The intolerable situation of the Jews having to beg the Germans for food exists...We are writing to you for you are the only ones that can help...These surviving Jews of Europe want to live. The fact that five children have already been born at St. Ottilien is proof enough."

Like a pebble thrown into the water that creates ripples far beyond what the eye can see, these two young GIs poured out their hearts in a letter to the American people that continues to make waves decades later. Surviving The Americans: The Continued Struggle of the Jews After Liberation is the miraculous story of the role Bob and Ed played in saving the lives of the Jews of St. Ottilien and changing and improving U.S. policy toward all the DP camps.

I admit this book truly astounded me. If what you know about the end of the war is the Marshall Plan, that the U.S. rebuilt Europe, you have much to learn!

After V-E Day, the end of the war in Europe, the American "Zone" became a destination for many who hoped that from the Americans, help and kinder treatment would be found. Could that be far from the truth?

Dr. Hilliard, now Professor of Communications at Emerson College in Boston, was there. What we don't know, and now must face, is that very little was done for many months after the war for D.P.s (Displaced Persons), Jews, survivors of the Concentration Camps (Jews, political prisoners, intellectuals). In fact, there was no "official" hospital to take care of those who required such medical assistance, and it took some ingenuity and subterfuge to create one. And, in September, after an article appeared in the New York Times (then a true paper of record), President Truman had to order Dwight Eisenhower to provide more assistance in the U.S. Military Zone to the survivors of the Holocaust and the Third Reich, officially....Eisenhower comfortably situated in Paris.

After V-E Day, during what GIs called "National Lorelei Month", many American soldiers were killed by unrepentant Nazis and Germans if they dared venture (armed or unarmed) from the safety of U.S. installations. Meanwhile, Germans played the black market with crafty soldiers interested in making money, bartering for sex with women (many of whom undoubtedly had lost their husbands and boyfriends to the Reich), and occasionally, supplying an unauthorized hospital which is the focus of this book.

Some 7,000 U.S. personnel lost their lives after V-E Day to the "Werewolves" recruited by Himmler and his disciples in the S.S. (Schutzstaffel), but THIS story is even more obscure and less known. It should be read by anyone interested in peace and the problems of the aftermath of war, as we find almost perpetually somewhere across the globe at any time--not only in the Middle East.

It is a sad story, but a hopeful one, because there are always some who will risk all to help others, and THESE are the meritorious whom we should really honor. These men (some of whom, unfortunately, Dr. Hilliard could not name) also belong in Yad Vashem, for they are the righteous.

"Surviving the Americans" is a shocking and powerful book that recounts the mistreatment of Holocaust survivors by American occupying forces in Europe after World War II. The author, Robert L. Hilliard, was an American soldier stationed in Germany in 1945. This book is Hilliard's account of what he saw and the steps that he and others took to improve the conditions in the DP camps.

After World War II ended, the survivors had no place to go. They could not return to Poland, Germany, or wherever they came from, to resume the lives that they had before the war. Very few survivors were allowed to emigrate to America. Some wanted to enter Palestine, but that was not a realistic hope, since the British had set up a blockade to keep the Jews out.

In Germany, the United States Military Government (USMG) organized DP camps for the survivors. Life in these camps differed from concentration camp life in one key way. The inmates were not sent to gas chambers. However, they were deprived of basic necessities, such as food, medical supplies, and clothing. The Americans surrounded the camps with barbed wire, and some people who tried to leave the camps were shot. Ironically, many survivors of the concentration camps died from malnutrition and disease in the DP camps because of the neglect that they suffered at the hands of their American "saviors." Ironically, known Nazis received plenty of food, decent housing, and jobs, while displaced persons lived in subhuman conditions.

Hilliard focuses on a hospital, St. Ottilien, located in northern Bavaria, in which hundreds of survivors struggled to live from day to day with little food and inadequate medical treatment. Hilliard was conscience-stricken by the conditions in St. Ottilien. Soon, he and his buddies were doing everything that they could to smuggle food to the residents of this hospital. Eventually, Hilliard and a fellow G. I. named Edward Herman sent a famous letter, describing the conditions in the DP camps, that found its way to President Harry Truman. Truman was outraged; he ordered Eisenhower to end the American soldiers' abuse of the Jews in Europe.

"Surviving the Americans" is an informative, provocative, and very unsettling history lesson. It is the compelling and unforgettable story of a few men of conscience who were willing to break U. S. military laws to do what they believed was morally right. As Hilliard says, the world must never forget what happened here, and we must do whatever we can to protect our fellow human beings from those who would destroy them.

This is an extremely important work, one that should be read by everyone who has any interest whatsoever in World War II in general, in the Holocaust and its aftermath, or in how the liberating American forces dealt with the 'problem' of what to do with the Jewish survivors of Hitler's death camps. It will make the reader reassess the accepted historical view of Americans as the saviors of Europe after World War II. Author Robert Hilliard was a young enlisted man stationed in Germany at the end of the war. Hilliard takes up the cause of helping the freed concentration camp survivors after attending a 'liberation concert' staged by Jews and hearing the speech of a Jewish doctor who has set up a hospital to care for the freed Jews. He learns that though the Jews are free, in most cases they have nowhere to go, no food, no medical care,and no clothing. Many are still wearing their concentration camp clothes months after the war ends, and some are even wearing the clothes of the hated SS guards because they have nothing else. In addition, Jews are dying with startling regularity at the hospital due to lack of food and medical supplies. To make matters worse, they must watch the 'former' Nazis who ran the country under Hitler resume their old lives, despite the evils they have perpetrated. Hilliard finds that American policy in Germany is little better than that of the Germans. Many Jews are kept in barbed wire installations, under MP guard, and have to try to live on 700 calories a day. They watch the former Nazis ingratiate themselves with the US brass through bribery, lies, and sexual favors. Hilliard and his friend Ed Herman decide to do what they can for the hospital, and this book chronicles their efforts. By the end of the book, they take their plea all the way to the top, and are instrumental in changing US occupation policy towards the freed Jews in Germany. Because of the actions of these two enlisted men, President Truman in effect reprimanded Gen. Eisenhower for his laissez-faire attitude in dealing with former Nazis and treatment of freed concentration camp survivors. The book is well-written, and could easily have run hundreds of pages. Hilliard has crafted a lean and powerful book. I hope that it will be read by many students of history, and I recommend it to any person who is not content to accept the sanitized, for-the-masses packaging of complicated historical periods.

I felt that Osprey's treatment of this subject was quite good. The plates, as usual for an Osprey title, are very good. The story of the rise of the Swiss armies is an interesting one and worthy of greater depth that Osprey obviously cannot provide.

Coverage of weapons and tactics is good. Coverage of the history of the formation of the Swiss confederation that became modern Switzerland is brief, but covers the pertinent facts.

One must have a certain amount of admiration for the men of little valleys and villages, as well as large towns, who band together to fight thoroughly professional, noble armies. Like most great revolutions from below, they are men who make their own laws, govern their own land, and fight their own wars - on foot, with long spears in formation with others like themselves, and on their own ground. At a time when armored, noble cavalry dominated, these men defeated them.

This Osprey title is definitely worth the money. Kudos to Douglas Miller, Gerry Embleton, and Osprey for one of the few English-language titles illuminating the tough Swiss halbardier and pikeman.

After the defeat of the Macedonians at Pydina by Rome's legions, one might have thought the days of the pike were over. True, some armies after Pydina used spear formations to stop cavalry such as the Scots at Bannockburn, but it ironically fell to the tough people of what is now Switzerland to really start a pike revolution in Europe. Originally famous for their Halberds and the ambush warfare that led to victory at Mortgarten, the Swiss realized their tactics needed improvement so they adopted the pike. Soon they would become feared by forces all over central and western Europe. The crowning achievment of the Swiss was likely their rout of the proud and powerful Burgundian army at Morat. Decades later, the Swiss were still respected and feared though on the fields of Italy, their time in the spotlight was running out. Overall an interesting and consice book on the rise of Swiss warfare.

We get to read in high school and undergraduate History courses all about the great Monarchies and Empires of Olde Europe (TM) but we never see anything like this. Who outside of Europe ever knew that the greatest and most feared army of Europe in the Renaissance was that of a small Confederacy of city-states and forest cantons in Switzerland, the Helvetic Confederacy or the so called Old Swiss Confederacy (even while the most powerful Navy at the same time was that of the Republic of Venice).

These people who invented modern warfare, also took democracy to another level and even ELECTED their military leaders on the very eve of crucial battles. Based on the contempt people have for Democracy today you would assume that this would be a recipe for disaster, but the Swiss met the best Armies of Europe, including that of the mighty Austrian Hapsburgs and Charles the Bold (along with his contingent of the allegedly undefeatable British Longbowmen), and annihilated them time and time again. With each sub-unit retaining it's independence and operating under multiple elected (and unelectable) leaders, one might expect the Swiss armies to be disorganized and parylized with indecision, but the Swiss showed how democratic organization can work when people want to work togehter; the Swiss Reislauffer were characterized by their fearless courage, tight battlefield discipline, and hair trigger boldness in battle.

Tables in this Osprey book show ranks of pikemen and halberdiers made up of a bakers guild, a butchers guild, a cobblers guild and the like. The history of all of the battles, from the first victory by three tenuously unified Cantons over an invading Hapsburg army to the defeats of Charles the Bold two Centuries later. Reading this book will make you want to learn more about the Old Swiss Confederacy, and about the History of Europe in general.

Emperor Maximillion of the Holy Roman Empire invented the Landsknechts in a conscious attempt to mimic the success of the Swiss. The Osprey book Landknecht Warrior contains yet more detailed information about the Swiss at War.

I think Switzerland is an example for everybody who wants to be free!

I'm a novelist and screenwriter, and find this book gloriously helpful to me personally as a writer. I've also had the opportunity to be in Laurel Yourke's classrooms, both as a student and fellow teacher at the university, and can attest to the effectiveness of her techniques for a wide spectrum of writers, beginners through advanced pro's. This "creative writing course," as the cover calls it, gives you the full meal plus the fun of dessert. The secret of this book? Shhh. It's not just about character. This is a refreshing, authoritative plotting book. I love its checklists and stretching exercises, and the right-on examples that show clearly how to apply the techniques. You'll appreciate the extensive discussion on how to get plot from character, how to deepen tension and so on. This book goes beyond the usual character trait discussions. It also gives much attention to dialogue, which is a rare topic in many writing texts for some reason. Although we call this a "text," worthy of any academic classroom, it's written in a conversational style that draws you in. Laurel Yourke's classroom teaching style is laced with humor while she nudges you to dig deeper and make discoveries. That style is reflected here. You'll like following along with fictional writer Georgina and her challenges, too. Although you can dip back into any chapter anytime, each chapter also relates its elements to the others coming before and after it, so you have this satisfying feeling of sitting in a favorite rocking chair while you soak up Laurel Yourke's wisdom gleaned from years of teaching writing. But don't be misled by my mention of the rocking chair. You'll find each chapter so encouraging that you'll be eager to write. As one of her subheads says, you'll learn how to wed perspiration with magic.

This is a book you'll want there with you, open, whenever you write. This must-read, must-have, book for fiction writers comes out of Laurel Yourke's thirty years of experience working with all kinds of writers. Writers love to read books about writing. You probably have a few (or more) books about writing on your own bookshelf already, but this one belongs in your hand, not on the shelf. This is a multi-layered book, though as is obvious from the title, the central focus is on character. It is fun, funny, and very serious about getting to good writing. It has chapters on plot, point of view, texture, dialogue, and setting, and, a clearly written glossary. In its own way, each chapter leads back to character, and insists on the integration of all fictional elements. The chapters are structured around several elements consistently seen throughout the book. The first is Yourke's scenes with her character, Georgina, who readers get to know as a writer struggling with her characters, and readers follow along. Yourke also illustrates her points in the presentation of short pieces by other writers and in discussions of what makes the pieces work. Quotes by established writers about the chapters' topics are illuminating, interesting, and expand the reader's understanding. Then there is the body of the chapter, which is the exploration of the particular aspect of fiction, often enriched by being turned around so we can see it from all sides, like a three-dimensional object. We see the facets of dialogue, for example, by examining conflict, subtext, pacing, and dialect. Chapters are accompanied by exercises and by checklists to guide writers in looking at their own writing. I read several of the chapters a number of times and found something new and important among these layers each time I did. But, here's the best compliment I can offer -- and I had this experience every time I read in this book -- I was itching to write and felt confident that I had new skills to do it with.

Here is a unique and compelling "how-to write" book. "Take Your Characters to Dinner", by Laurel Yourke, takes a character intensive approach to the essential elements of craft including point of view and viewpoint, plot, dialogue, scene, conflict and setting. However, unlike most other texts which present the elements of craft chapter-by-chapter, in virtual isolation, Yourke unifies the subject matter via emphasis on characterization. As implied by the title, Yourke encourages the writer to gain an intimate familiarity with his characters and allow the characters to thrive, growing in depth and vitality, becoming, to the writer, real people. Such vitality, Yourke demonstrates, drives plot and story. Vitality and resonance are central themes of the text, suggesting that the characters of your story, known intimately, will "tell the story". This premise is tempered by chapters on "details", "texture", "connections", and "voice", which reinforce the writer's guiding role and responsibility in crafting fiction. Woven through the book is the narrative of "Georgina", Dr. Yourke's fictional struggling writer. Readers, male and female alike, will readily identify with the travails of Georgina as she "takes her characters to dinner", discovering personality trait and quirk, and aspects of character heretofore unimagined. The reader sees Georgina's writing mature as the text progresses, paralleling the readers own progress. Of notable significance is Yourke's use of prose examples, both good writing and bad, throughout the text. The book is well organized, concise and clearly written. The author speaks easily and with the conviction of one dedicated to the craft, evoking in the reader her enthusiasm and effervescent spirit. Writer's will appreciate the fresh and exciting approach of this new book. I highly recommend "Take Your Characters to Dinner" as the next step in your journey as a writer..

I treasure Laurel Yourke's book, Take Your Characters to Dinner. Don't tell, show are red inked words writing students tire of seeing. Showing is the beauty of Laurel Yourke's book. Dr. Yourke believes that an author should know his characters as one might know a friend through---a faithful listening and response, tough scrutiny and with love. Dr. Yourke creates a delightful character, Georgina, to lead us through a writing course. The reader leans back to listen not only to Dr. Laurel Yourke but also Georgina. With clear cogent chapters on aspects of writing, concrete checklists, and marvelous escapades with Georgina, the reader comes to a new perception or understanding of the task at hand. Buy this book. It will help you to find your true voice: "But no matter how well you know your characters, you cannot shame or command your voice out of hiding. The flamboyant colors of autumn leaves that delight us each year don't appear magically. Instead, the chlorophyll disappears, so nothing disguises the brilliance that always existed underneath. Voice isn't a matter of splashing dazzling color onto the surface but revealing your true colors."

Stuart Clark explains the thinking that produced the panic about witches in the seventeenth century and why the panic occurred when it did. He argues that witches should be understood as an expression of demonology, that is, thinking about demons. Traditional thinking divided the world between God and the devil, an opposition that explained everything in science, history, religion, and politics. These four categories organize the book. In each of them, Clark discusses how oppositional thinking accounted for how things worked, how things happened, how things really were, and how political relationships functioned. The book is exhaustively researched, citing authorities in all the major early modern European languages and cultures, and at the same time responding to recent scholarship about witches and language. The latter is important because of the binary thinking that Clark identifies at the heart of demonology. Few historians are as familiar both with traditional sources and with postmodern thinking about historical thinking. This is a fascinating and rewarding book. I read it straight through.

When discussing the impact of women in European society, witchcraft inevitably enters the forefront of study. Many authors have discussed the crimes and punishments of witches, but Stuart Clark's Thinking With Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe breaks away from the traditional format. Rather than focus on witchcraft itself, Clark writes about the idea of witchcraft; he concludes that the concept of witchcraft was an integral component in the general intellectual life of early modern Europe, woven into the scholarly debates about the key issues of the era. According to Clark, the emphasis was on demonology, which was a "composite subject consisting of discussions about the workings of nature, the processes of history, the maintenance of religious purity and the nature of political authority" (viii). To encompass this broad nature of demonology, Clark divides the book into five separate yet overlapping sections - Language, Science, History, Religion and Politics - each of which expresses a relatively simple argument. In `Language,' Clark discusses the antithetical nature of rhetoric and discussion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; this permitted the discussion of witchcraft as the natural malevolent balance to proper behavior. The section titled `Science' argues that demonology was part of the advancement on science, rather than an obstacle or adversary to it. Magic, both good and evil, was assumed to be part of the natural world, and subject to the scientific investigations of the time. `History' details how the people were easily convinced of the activities of the devil and his minions through the increasing emphasis on the apocalyptic vision that the world was in the Last Days. `Religion,' which focused mainly on the writings of the clergy, essentially demonstrated that the religious powers of Europe believed that witchcraft was a sin against the Lord, and involved illicit dealings with the devil. Finally, `Politics' presents that view that the power of the king was based upon his inability to engage in witchcraft. Essentially, since a monarch was conferred power through divine right - meaning the ruler was empowered by the Lord - he was inviolable and therefore immune to the effects of witchcraft.
Thinking with Demons continues with the examination of women and their relationship to criminal behavior, as was introduced in The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany by Ulinka Rublack. The most fascinating aspects of this book dealt with the importance of duality in early modern Europe, particularly in regards to the masquerade. Such dualism, and the perception that it was natural and important to society, is a fascinating concept to consider. Such a system of duality, in which everything is "distributed between a column of positive (or superior) terms and categories and a column of their negative (or inferior) opposites" (38) would seem to be an important tool in explaining the gender-based hierarchies that evolved in society.

With "Thinking . . . ," Clark has produced one of the most important history books of the 20th century. Clark voices ground breaking views of a vastly misunderstood phenomenon - the evolution and prosecution of witchcraft in the early modern period. This book is meticulously researched and well written.

When discussing the impact of women in European society, witchcraft inevitably enters the forefront of study. Many authors have discussed the crimes and punishments of witches, but Stuart Clark's Thinking With Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe breaks away from the traditional format. Rather than focus on witchcraft itself, Clark writes about the idea of witchcraft; he concludes that the concept of witchcraft was an integral component in the general intellectual life of early modern Europe, woven into the scholarly debates about the key issues of the era. According to Clark, the emphasis was on demonology, which was a "composite subject consisting of discussions about the workings of nature, the processes of history, the maintenance of religious purity and the nature of political authority" (viii). To encompass this broad nature of demonology, Clark divides the book into five separate yet overlapping sections - Language, Science, History, Religion and Politics - each of which expresses a relatively simple argument. In `Language,' Clark discusses the antithetical nature of rhetoric and discussion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; this permitted the discussion of witchcraft as the natural malevolent balance to proper behavior. The section titled `Science' argues that demonology was part of the advancement on science, rather than an obstacle or adversary to it. Magic, both good and evil, was assumed to be part of the natural world, and subject to the scientific investigations of the time. `History' details how the people were easily convinced of the activities of the devil and his minions through the increasing emphasis on the apocalyptic vision that the world was in the Last Days. `Religion,' which focused mainly on the writings of the clergy, essentially demonstrated that the religious powers of Europe believed that witchcraft was a sin against the Lord, and involved illicit dealings with the devil. Finally, `Politics' presents that view that the power of the king was based upon his inability to engage in witchcraft. Essentially, since a monarch was conferred power through divine right - meaning the ruler was empowered by the Lord - he was inviolable and therefore immune to the effects of witchcraft.
Thinking with Demons continues the examination of women and their relationship to criminal behavior that was introduced in Ulinka Rublack's The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany. The most fascinating aspects of this book dealt with the importance of duality in early modern Europe, particularly in regards to the masquerade. Such dualism, and the perception that it was natural and important to society, is a fascinating concept to consider. Such a system of duality, in which everything is "distributed between a column of positive (or superior) terms and categories and a column of their negative (or inferior) opposites" (38) would seem to be an important tool in explaining the gender-based hierarchies that evolved in society.