Europe Books

I read this book the first time when I checked it out of the public library. I loved it so much that I had to have my own copy. It is a fascinating account of how the nouvo riche in the U.S. basically bought acceptance to high society for their daughters. You can just pick it up and read sections - it's not necessary to start at the beginning and work through. Not a summer goes by that I don't pick it up!

Every time I read this book it becomes more and more interesting. Meticulously researched, with great little anecdotes and etiquette tips.
This book is a lot of fun! I especially liked the many photographs of the designer gowns (most by Worth, if you please!) that are liberally scattered throughout.
If you're ananglophile you'll want to get this one!

Those few of us who have wondered why in the world a comfortable, cosseted American girl would want to marry an Englishman and live in a cold climate in an even colder stone castle will find answers here, even if the answers aren't satisfactory to the modern ear.

Think of it: wealthy American society girls, products of generations of men and women who gave lives and fortunes to escape a Royalist society, thought it a worthy investment of their lives, loves and wealth to buy an English title in the form of a husband. It's understandable that men who have no money and are saddled with huge estates and titles with no way to support themselves "in the manner to which they have become accustomed" would search out these women. It's another matter to understand the women, especially if they were bright and energetic (like the fabled Jenny Jerome).

Of course the first women to get involved in this weird method of social climbing didn't realize what was involved. (Though why American society decided that an English title was important in the United States, especially if it could be bought with money, still escapes me.) The problems included loveless husbands who paid little attention to their wives and carried on affairs; cold and drafty castles into which Papa sank tons of money to no avail as far as comfort was concerned; families who refused to accept them in spite (or because) of the fact that they provided the money to keep the lifestyle intact; servants who often were sulky and rebellious ("but we've ALWAYS done it that way"); children they handed over to nannies. The first brides must have kept the hardships and loneliness from the succeeding generation, for the rage for English titles prevailed from the mid-19th century almost through the mid-20th century.

TO MARRY AN ENGLISH LORD is a fascinating and complete look at these women and the lives they led. Illustrations showing the homes and households of the times and how they operated, fashions, maps, photographs of the women and their friends, families and husbands all combine to present the core of that particular section of society in that particular age.

The book is meticulously researched and includes a bibliography, a register of American heiresses, a suggested walking tour of the women's London and a very handy index. It's built around the stories of these women and the men who wooed and won them. Who they were, what they did and what the consequences were -- all adds up to an intriguing and fascinating read.

As the other reviewers have noted, this is a great romp through a part of American history you don't learn about in school. I read it through once and then re-read it just to savor all the little bits and pieces the authors have so generously loaded it with. If you ever wondered about all those Vanderbilts and all those Whitneys, here is your chance (from an American point of view!)to find out just how and why these ladies ended up in the postions they did- all for the love of Edward VII. I wish there were more reader-friendly books like this that make history so entertaining.

Who says that history is boring and stuffy? This well-researched book is chock full of anecdotes, pictures, and facts to make the period and the subject come to life.

This book discusses the phenomenon of the "dollar princesses": American hieresses who married into titles abroad, particularly England. Amongst them were Winston Churchill's mother; a woman who was the second-highest ranking woman in the British empire (after only the queen); and maybe the most famous of all: Consuelo Vanderbuilt, who begrudgingly became the Duchess of Marlborough in a marriage aranged by her social-climbing mother.

Written informally, with lots of pictures, this might be a great book to buy a teenager who is just transitioning into "grown-up" non-fiction, but finds most of it dry and uninteresting. It is also a must-read for anyone who plans on traveling to country-houses in England, as it gives a more accurate view of what it was like to actually have to live in one of those monstrosities! Anyone who is interested in the history of class in America, or of the British Aristocracy, would also be interested.

I have not been able to find any single travel book that covers as much useful information as this! I will be traveling the Trans-Siberian rail this summer, and this book has been a constant companion through my planning process. Detailed information on all of the towns and cities along the way along with maps to avoid getting lost while wandering. Definitely a bonus for the all of the information on smaller towns- it's very difficult to find a travel-worthy guide book that covers more than just St. Petersburg and Moscow, not to mention UB!

Can't recommend this book higher to anyone considering journeying the Trans-Siberian Railway!

I bought it as part of a package deal, and it never arrived.

Because I plan to trip on the Trans-Siberian Railway next year I bought this book hoping to read some advice and tips on how to travel the whole trip, where to stay, how much it costs, where to stay etc.

But his book absolutely surpassed all my expectations!! There are not only those tips on trans-siberian rail, but also "travel guides" for cities like Moscow, Irkutsk and even tips on how to get to Mongolia, where to stay in Ulan-Bator and so forth.

I have no idea how I would plan my trip without this book! It's really amazing how much information (and even with tips from other "ordinary" travellers!!) is in that, for instance bus-numbers from Moscow airport heading to the center of the city ...

The book absolutely worth the money.

My friend and I did part of the trip last summer, and the guide was simply invaluable. We were in the major cities decribed in the book, and we took the train Irkutsk--Ulaan Baator. The book was very helpful both when we were planning the trip (has train schedules) and on the spot, directing us to places of interest. Overall, gives you a good idea what to expect. Start reading the guide at least half a year before the planned trip. You'll need good 4 to 5 months to arrange everything.

For passengers on traveling on all or most of the Trans-Siberian Railway and visiting the cities along it, there are only two English-language travel guides. The Lonely Planet guide appeared in 2003 with a second edition in 2006, while Bryn Thomas updates his guide almost yearly and in 2007 it reached its seventh edition. I'm a two-time veteran of the Trans-Siberian, using the 1st edition of the Lonely Planet on the eastbound Trans-Manchurian route, and the 2nd edition on the eastbound Trans-Mongolian. When I recently discovered Bryn Thomas' guide in the local library, however, it struck me as the guide that I wish I had had on the trip.

The Lonely Planet guide and Thomas' have much in common. Both include a history of Russia in the Trans-Siberian era and general information about culture. They both give sightseeing guidance and lodging listings for the cities along the way. The LP sticks to the three traditional routes between Moscow and Beijing or Vladivostok, but Thomas has now added Yakutsk, soon to be accessible by rail) and other possible rail terminus cities like Prague and Hong Kong.

What makes Thomas' guide real special is his enthusiasm for the train journey itself. Unlike the LP guide, he gives timetables for the route, truly equipping the reader to prepare for the trip without having to look for too much information outside the book. Thomas discusses in detail the layout of carriages, specifics of what the carriage attendant can do for those under her charge, and things to look out for at kilometre markers along the way. The LP guide has little about the journey itself, and what little interesting information it did have in the first edition disappeared in the second.

Thomas' tone is also much more pleasant to read than in the common guidebooks for independent travelers. He doesn't try to sell you places you have already decided to visit with an overuse of words like "vibrant" and "spectacular". I also admire that he succeeds in writing for a general audience. While some of the accomodation listings are pricey, it doesn't feel like he is dismissing backpackers like certain sell-out guidebook lines.

I don't think I will ever travel the Trans-Siberian all the way again. While still fairly low considering the distance, fares are rising and I usually have the three free weeks needed to hitchhike from Europe to Ulan-Ude or Vladivostok. Nonetheless, I'd certainly recommend this to travelers planning a trip that is well-worth doing at least once.

A pleasure to read and to smile at some of the most British ways of seeing life and smelling the weather!

I've only just begun reading, but so far, it's been quite enjoyable. The author writes with humor. I've some British online friends. I've been able to use tidbits from the book when joking around with them.

I had read Barzini's well known works on the Europeans and thoroughly enjoyed this book on the English.

The approach is academic yet palatable, laden with insightful observations and well deserves consideration as a work of anthropological interest. The author maintains an objective distance and professional methodology which impart a delicious irony; we are conditioned to primitive cultures as the provenance of these studies, she turns the focus upon what some may argue as the bastion of civilization.

As a guidebook to a cultural understanding of the English this work is invaluable. The expose on class is penetrating and amuses as there are unexpected twists; such as decorating your home or garden with a modicum of lower class objects, the inside joke apparent only to the cognoscienti.

Written by an English anthropologist about her own nation's behaviour. There're some interesting explanation on why British ppl are so uneasy socializing, talking about money and may sometimes talking in the opp way (hypocrisy). While many of the explanations suggested by the author are convincing, I found those behaviour not unique to the British, they can be observed in our Chi society as well! So it's useful in understdg ppl's behaviour.

Kate Fox, a social anthropologist and Co-Director of the Social Issues Research Centre in Oxford, who has lived in England, America, Ireland and France, takes a revealing look at the quirks and habits of the English people. Being very English herself, she holds a mirror up to the English national character and reveals the most famous traits as well as the most bizarre reflex reactions. She attempts to discover the curious, hidden rules of behaviour that all English people seem to follow, but few are aware even exist. In a separate section consisting of 14 pages she focuses on defining Englishness and attempts to define Englishness in contrast to being British.

Writing with gentle humour and astute perception she portrays the foibles in the English and in herself as well. Kate Fox is immensely perceptive about all kinds of English cultural values, behaviours and oddities. Watching the English falls into two main parts: part one - Conversation codes; part two - Behaviour codes. The first part covers everything from the obsession with the weather through English humour to how people use mobile phones. The second part deals with how the English behave inside their own homes or when visiting other people's homes, life in the workplace, food, drink, eating-habits, sex... and many more topics.

Though the smallish print might irritate some, it's an easy read with good flow and the reader will get much material to provoke lively discussion with anyone interested in the English.

Anthropologist Kate Fox, has forced herself to engage in many humiliating field tests-- like bumping into people on purpose and seeing how many people say `sorry'-- in order to test the common theories about English behaviour. Watching the English is the result of her research. Fox's book displays most of the traits that she points out as representing the English: being sensitive to the tiny signifiers of class status (e.g. the `M&S test', which identifies your class by your shopping choices at that particular department store), it purposely avoids taking itself too seriously and is continuously self-deprecating (of course, this is the `popular anthropology', not the real scientific one). Admitting to being neither, Watching the English is positioned between satire and science.

Warmly recommended for anyone from another culture, who tries to survive living in Britain, or live among the English abroad. People working in international teams with English members or bosses would have many aha-insights through this book.

A marvelous book. The author is to be commended for his ability to recall these events from the vantage of so young an age at the time of occurrence. This story is little known, sometimes actively forgotten, almost always disregarded in the record of 20th century crimes against humanity. I had the privilege recently of speaking, literally for only a few minutes, at the funeral of an older man (born 1922) from Rowne--only a few miles from Adamczyk's hometown, Luck. A decade older, he tried to get to Hungary in October, 1939, failed, and was therefore a criminal for having made the attempt. His story, then, was of direct prisons rather than of being dumped by the side of the tracks. Each situation had its advantages and disadvantages. The man from Rowne was "amnestied" from Norilsk, above the Arctic Circle, in late 1941, and his story paralleled that of Adamczyk until arrival in Persia, emaciated--at 86 pounds at age 20 and suffering recurring malaria. There are a million of these stories; more should be published.

I am sitting here struggling to find the words to begin to express my love for this book. I have just spent the past twenty-six hours not putting this book down. Now, I don't know if it is the fact that my family had delt with these similar circumstances and moved to the same area of Chicago, but i have never felt so connected/transported to individuals in a book as I did with this one.

The ugliness of reality balanced with hope, faith, and love render this reader, at least, speechless. I can only thank Mr. Adamczyk for a glimpse of what my family had found to difficult, with good reason, to talk about. This book has left me with a greater understanding of World War II, the atrocities of a Communist rule, and a deeper appreciation of my Polish faith and heritage.

This book reflects the resilience of the human spirit even in the most devistating of circumstances and stands as an inspiration to reflect on the freedom we too often take for granted.

...Wow!

Simply stated, this book reiterates everything my grandpa told me about the Russians' way of life and their mentality brought on by the deceitful communist system full of oppression and anti-western propaganda. Read and you will begin to fathom the injustice inflicted upon the peoples, both Polish and Russian. It will take generations to undo the damage.

Anyone with half a brain might wonder why the Nazis are still minced to pieces in all media 60 years after the war's end, while the Soviets, with 70 years of blood on their hands, have passed quietly out of their Communist terrorism without any great international trials or severe criticisms by the Western media. Is it because the leftists still believe that "true Communism" has yet to be attempted? Well, perhaps, there are such fringe lunatics still around (in the Frisco and NYC areas).

No, the real answer lies in the deadly dealings of the Allies in WWII, in cooperating with Stalin in the Lend-lease supply of materiel, and in not condemning the murders, exile, and starvation of the Poles before Germany attacked Russia. In our all-out effort to defeat the Nazis, the USA and England cooperated in suppressing the knowledge of the 5,000 Polish officers and Polish civilians shot and buried by the Soviets in 1939, when they invaded and took over Eastern Poland. This famous massacre in the Katyn Forest was for years blamed on Hitler, when the Germans had not yet been in that side of Poland. Only when Gorbachev came to power was the murder order signed by Stalin made public - but Roosevelt knew, as did Churchill.

This remarkable book takes us into the frightening world Wiesiu Adamczck, a seven-year-old boy when his father, then 47, was taken away and killed in Katyn Forest, unbeknownst to his family - Wiesiu's mother, older sister and brother. They are all packed up on trains and sent to Kazakistan, as members of a bourgeois oppresser class, they must be punished according to Soviet logic.

The writer, now a man in his 70's, is an excellent wordsmith, who doesn't stint in telling what Russian and Polish expressions mean. He dwells on his own family, his own people and the terrible consequences of the Communist regime for the people of the USSR, for the Poles, and for all nations which fell to its avarice and terror after WWII. His incredible adventures, if you want to call them that, in surviving such a deportation through the Eastern republics of the chaotic war years, into Persia and finally to England, then the USA, is a ten-year journey of incredible hardship, hunger, cold and homelessness. His mother dies, and the truth about the father is known at the end of years of hoping against hope.

What Hollywood or the BBC could do with this material! The story of the Soviet empire and all its disgusting inhumanity should be aired out thoroughly, even more so than the Nazis' philosophy. If it should take root again, woe betide the planet and the millions to be starved in the future.

This book should be mandatory reading in the US high schools, as many students will never know that non-Jewish-descended EUropeans also suffered dreadful consequences during the war.

A skewered history is often a false one, and that is slowly happening throughout the US media, in omitting the Communist side of the horrendous torture and killing from 1917-onwards.

Well, this book will make it clear: FDR knew it, as he knew that Pearl Harbor was to be bombed.

The teaching of history is often distorted by selective presentation of past events. Virtually everyone has heard of the 5-6 million Jews killed by the Germans. Few outside Polish circles have a clue about the fact that 2-3 million gentile Poles were also murdered by the Germans, and a few hundred thousand by the Soviets--first as Poland's sworn enemy and then as an "ally". While Churchill and Roosevelt were dilly-dallying with "Uncle Joe" Stalin, he was still murdering Poles and executing his plans to deprive "liberated" Poland from her rightful independence, freedom, and sovereignity. The western powers shamelessly disregarded the Atlantic Charter and betrayed the Poles--who all along had been fighting on their side on just about every front, and who had played a significant, if not decisive, role in preventing the Luftwaffe from achieving air supremacy over the English skies as a prelude to the planned German invasion (Operation Sea Lion).

This work provides an absorbing personal account of the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Poles by the Soviet Union following the German-Soviet conquest of Poland in 1939. Wes Adamczyk, then a boy of 7, was to lose his father in the infamous Katyn Massacre, and his entire family was uprooted and sent to a living death in Kazakhstan. He was one of the lucky few to be released and to eventually find his way to a new life in the United States. Decades later, he fulfilled his wish to visit the site of his father's murder near Smolensk, Russia.

The reader is exposed to the brutality of the Soviet police as they ransack the Adamczyk home, destroy objects related to Polish patriotism, and herd the family ("enemies of the people") into overcrowded trains for the fateful trip east. Every day becomes a battle for survival. They are near starvation. However, individual Kazakhs and Russians show friendship towards the Poles. The young Adamczyk befriends Mr. Petrovitch on a fishing boat. The moving account tells how the elderly Russian teaches the boy the truth about Communism. It is lies on top of lies on top of lies. In fact, the continued spying by the Soviet police on the captive Poles does not stem from the fact that they suspect that the Poles may escape or revolt. The spying comes from the fear that the locals may learn the truth about the outside world from the Poles--that the non-
Communist world is not rotten, and that the Soviet Union is no workers' paradise.

Nazi Germany turns against its erstwhile Soviet ally, creating a chance for the Poles, consigned to eventual death from starvation, overwork, and disease, to escape the Gulag. Negotiations "succeed" in securing the release of captive Poles. But the Soviets drag their feet, and only a fraction of still-living captive Poles end up being released. The Adamczyk family has to stage a near-escape adventure to reach Iran. The squalor of the just-freed Poles is indescribable. Thousands die right there, including Wes Adamczyk's mother--ironically just a short time after having finally left the clutches of the Soviet hell.

Tens of thousands of previously-captured Polish officers are found to be conspicuously and unexpectedly missing, and the Soviets say, "They all escaped to Manchuria". As time drags on, the Adamczyks realize the fate of their father and the remainder of the POWs. The Soviets don't admit responsibility for the Katyn Massacre until 1990. The long cover-up by western governments is little better than the decades-long Soviet one. The west needed a second coverup to cover its first coverup of the conspiracy of silence about this heinous Soviet crime.

The Adamczyks, like all surviving Poles, get a cruel blow when they learn that Roosevelt and Churchill have betrayed their faithful ally Poland by giving away eastern Poland to the Russians, and allowed a Communist puppet state to be forced on the rest of "liberated" Poland. In a sense, all of the Polish sufferings and sacrifices turn out to have been in vain. The Adamczyks, and millions of other Poles, have no home to return to. The only "happy ending" is a new life in America.

Wow, a real surprise. This is a VERY good book. I am really enjoying it.

Very good book. Provided enough in the way of historical facts, maps etc to be informative but not dull. I cared about the main character and was always wondering what was going to happen next. I thought I was generally aware of the horrors of WWII but this was an education of how the victimizing and victimazation was dealt and endured back and forth by many different people of many different nationalities and how scary it is that under certain circumstance all human beings are capable of the very best and very worst treatment of one another. Makes me think twice about when I think I'm having a "bad day."

This is a captivating story about WWII told by an adult as she lived through it as a nine year old child in East Prussia, Germany. The author gives vivid pictures of the horrors of war on the innocent. It also gives a history of how countries get involved with demonstrating inhumane behavior. You will become totally enthralled and have a hard time putting the book down.

I bought this book having no idea how engaging it would be. I received the book yesterday afternoon, and today, the next day, I have finished it! I could not put this book down. This is an interesting book on a relatively unknown subject for most people. This is a part of history that many don't want to believe and have tried to sweep under the carpet. I would highly recommend this to anyone!

Abandoned and Forgotten is an amazing tale of survival during the last years of WWII in East Prussia. Told through a child's eyes, the author Evelyn Tannehill takes us on a journey showing us the horrors of war and the absolute cruelty that humans are capable of doing to fellow human beings, yet the compassion that we're capable of, as well. This book totally gripped me and broke my heart to read what this poor girl went through and survived. I met the author at a book signing and found her to be a lovely, gracious woman, so open to sharing her experiences.......no self-pity here. This book is a gift to us all and I highly recommend it

I bought this book in the Louvre Museum in Paris, where we were able to see some of the originals. They're compelling and just draw you in! This book allowed me to bring the paintings home, and study them. It's easy to read, and goes into detail explaining not only about Bouguereau, but also explains a lot of the detail and symbolism that he used in his paintings. So now I can enjoy them on a whole new level. I'm not a big art buff, but I know I'm drawn to his paintings, this was just a perfect book to cut my teeth on, and help to develop a better understanding of some very famous paintings. Buy the book. You won't regret it!

Adolphe-William Bouguereau (1825-1905) is in many ways the French equivalent of the British Victorian class of figurative painters - Lawrence Alma Tadema, Lord Leighton, JW Waterhouse - and had he lived in England rather than in the Impressionist laden France, he would be much better known today. Not that Bouguereau is unfamiliar to collectors and museums: in his time his portraits and luxurious paintings of shepherdesses and mythological creatures in a world of eternal beauty were popular and were added to important collections. It is only now with the new respect for the figure in painting that his name is becoming more recognizable.

Fronia E. Wissman has written a concise and illuminating text for this monograph and her style of exposition matches her subject. The book is filled with magnificent illustrations of Bouguereau's paintings with details and full-scale works allowed the prestige of excellent color reproductions. This is a fine monograph and one that belongs in the libraries of collectors and art historians who remain fascinated with the fin de siècle schools of painting. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, September 05

Wissman did a great job providing a fair and balanced view of French painter Bouguereau's career. And it's a good thing too! Everything else related to the artist is either out of print or a flimsy postcard book. How could this be? Well, the unfortunate stereotype of Bougeureau buffs is that they "don't know much about art but know what they like." It may be that many editors assume that if you like Bougeureau's paintings, you aren't the type to read a serious art book. I like to believe this is wrong. I enjoy Bougureau's art very much and am glad that someone published a reasonable paperback history and criticism of the artist. I hope that one day, others write similarly good books about other "forgotten" 19th century artists.

The art of Bouguereau is stunning. It stirs a beauty from deep within us that blooms in recognition of a beauty made visible by the stroke of his brush. So full and intoxicated with passion, his work seems an extension of gratitude for life itself. Through the canvas of this fine French Academic Artist, we witness how love is truly more persistent than time.

I am so taken by the art; I have yet to read what Wissman has written about his life. I think his art speaks with such clarity; he must have been a man with a great capacity to fully embrace the nature of the life he was given.

Yes the reproductions are great and deserve full stars yet there is much fault with Wissman's ignorant statement that Bouguereau did not use (paint from) photographs. This comment potentially questions the creadability of what otherwise would have seemed to be a very good analysis. For alternative comments, see "W.B" - Montreal Museum's '84 publication for a traveling show. It offers more "behind scenes" info. about the production of his work and their authors more credibly state, he "actively collected photographs" but "he almost never worked from photos" which is still an understatement. Included are photos of him in his studio painting and with another photo of Mich's. Pieta in background. I found a used copy here on Amazon, ISBN 2-89192-047-3 Mr. B. was a transitional figure in art history, caught between early 19th C. "tail end" classical art and late 19th C. art when photorealism began rearing its evil head, destroying classical art and bringing this "ism" to a point of extreme today. It is impossible to determine what extent he used them, yet it is clearly evident to a more trained eye, that he used photos, particularly with some of the complex children/cherubs he incorporated. This occasionally created a quality which, no doubt, helped to inspire criticism (noted in Wissman's bk)regarding the overly polished, sometimes cut-out and outlined aspects of some of his figures. He was able to get away with it for the most part because he had a more proper training as a student prior to exposure to photos. (I myself am a painter/sculptor studying classical art - I admire B. greatly yet to say he was a purest would be false since he clearly had an opportunist streak about him as many others did, and to a certain extent I can't blame him. But he helped to start a terrible trend which has turned classical painting and sculpture into a virtually lost art).

This is another excellent book from Brewers' Publications. Non-brewers will find herein an engagingly written history of Belgian brewing both within and outside the monastary walls. You'll become acquaintaed with the brewers of Orval, Westveletren, Duvel, and others, their history, their personalities, and most importantly, their beers.
For those who are brewers, the book offers even more. Ingredients and specifications (gravity, IBU) are given for commercially available beers whenever possible (and the author has done a *lot* of homework to get his hands on this information). Additionally, full recipes are provided for various Belgian style and Belgian-inspired beers. Even better, the authors of these recipes explain *why* they formulated their recipes as they did, and the author supplements this advice with his own, with advice from professional brewers, and from BJCP judges. This enables the brewer to not just mimic the recipes he finds in the book (though believe me, they are definitely worth mimicing!), but to thoughtfully exercise his own creativity within the rich history and style of the Belgian tradition.
Beginning brewers will find a lot of technical information regarding krausening, PH adjustment, etc. that goes over their heads. But this shouldn't scare anyone off. The technical information is easy to skip over and there's enough in this book for readers of all levels.
This book represents the state of the art in knowledge regarding Belgian brewers and brewing. No matter how long you've been brewing, you will come away from this book entertained, sometimes surprised, and better informed.

Inspiring view into the brewing techniques of the Belgium beer. Outstanding historical look along with what is going on today. A must read if you are into the Belgians.

I highly recommend to this anyone who wants to learn more about Trappist and Trappist inspired ales. Very accessible and thorough.

If you've ever wondered how people brewed beer in centuries gone by this book's for you! There are few, if any, modern conveniences in use in the Abbey breweries around the world and yet the Monks continue to produce some of the best brews available anywhere. A great read for those dreaming of making good beer with minimal equipment! It's also a great read for those interested in life in a monastery as there is a lot of information given concerning the living conditions, activities, expectations, etc., of the Monks who inhabit those facilities. It's a sad thing, but the very folks who brew those liquid treats are themselves prohibited from consuming more than just a sampling of their work. On the other hand, that is good news for the rest of us. We can sample lots of their handiwork!!! If you like beer (you do, or you wouldn't be interested in this book!) and if you are even remotely interested in its production, then, by all means, buy this volume. You won't be sorry!

Very informative book on the belgian styles in question. The best in the series.

I am a Korean War veteran and somewhat of a history buff, especially during the period leading up to and including the aftermath of World War II. I cannot praise this book enough. Andrei Cherney has written the absolutely best description I have read of the events and people that resulted in the Berlin Airlift and how close we came to World War III at that time. Of special interest to me is the way he describes our great military leaders of that time, especially Generals Clay, Bedell Smith, Curtis LeMay, Marshall, Tunner and Omar Bradley, along with Secretary Forrestal, Thomas Dewey, John Foster Dulles and President Truman. With the exception of President Truman I have formed through Mr. Cherney's eyes a completely different opinion of these great men, somewhat less stellar giants than I previously supposed them to be.

This book is an extaordinary effort on the part of the author and may very well be the most interesting book I have ever read.

I began reading this book because my husband (Lt. Ben Knight) flew one of the first missions over the corridor into Berlin in 1948, probably before the official airlift began. I hoped to learn more about his activity during this time. What I learned was how close we came to losing Berlin and so much more, but for the efforts of a caring pilot.
It was a pleasure to meet the author and to hear that Hal Halvorsen is still a great hero to the German people.
It was a hard book to put down and I shall read it again.

In June 1948 the Soviets blockaded Berlin by cutting all rail and road links to the parts of occupied Germany held by the three Western powers. Food, fuel and all other necessities for the city came then only from the Soviet occupied eastern regions and were available only to the eastern portion of Berlin, the sector of the city controlled by the Soviets. Berlin was an island in the middle of the Soviet occupation zone and was utterly dependent on the outside for all of its needs. Not that many of these needs were being met. Berlin remained largely in a state of ruin, its populace wretched and impoverished, unemployed, living in the ruins (sometimes open to the weather), underfed and subject to a stench from wartime dead still lying beneath the rubble or buried in shallow graves. Only a few weeks worth of food, fuel and other needs were stockpiled in the city and western Berlin faced the prospect of starvation and economic annihilation. This state of affairs resulted in part from the attitude of the occupying powers, all of whom had entered the occupation of Germany to punish the "evil" Germans. None were concerned that the Germans were suffering dire hardships.

The Western Allies accordingly saw the blockade as simply a diplomatic and policy problem at first, a furtherance of the campaign of subversion of free governments that the USSR was perceived as undertaking in Europe. Because Berlin could be neither militarily defended nor supplied without resort to atomic weapons (the Red Army was vastly superior in numbers and otherwise to any conventional military forces available in Europe), the alternatives seemed to be to risk atomic war or abandon Berlin. Because both of these alternativs seemed unacceptable, there arose a need to buy further time for decision. From this in turn came the idea for a temporary airlift, a desperate and ad hoc measure to slightly bolster existing stockpiles in Berlin and thus buy time for the policy debates.

This book tells the story of how a stopgap airlift became The Airlift a legendary operation that ran like a clock and supplied all of Berlin's needs until the Soviets caved in May 1949. In fact it did not supply all of the needs and some starved in Berlin that winter. But the Airlift, by dint of heroic and highly organized efforts, did supply enough to stave off total collapse and to provide hope for Berliners. The efforts of the original "candy bomber," Gail S. "Hal" Halvorsen, in dropping candy to children caused the US and others to see the human issues at stake and to appreciate the heroism of the Berliners in resisting the blandishments and threats of the Soviets. The Berliners were won over by acts of human kindness such as those of Halvorsen and by the Herculean efforts of the Airlift. It also helped to get the Marshall plan enacted and was a major factor in the rearmament of America (including the first peacetime draft in our history) and it helped create the imperial presidency that we still have today.The Berlin Crisis and the Airlift, the author believes, were also the determinative factors in deciding the 1948 presidential election for Truman.

The book tells all of this with both power and eloquence. It ranges from high policy and political scheming to the experiences of ordinary people. There are incicsive portraits of men such as Truman, LeMay, the tragic Forrestal, Bill Tanner and others. It tells a story that many Americans today do not know, when the US achieved the moral high ground worldwide, in a way it has never been able to duplicate since.

The book has some flaws. It is told almost entirely from the American viewpoint, and it is the Americans who are the good guys and the Soviets who are bad. There is almost nothing about what was going on in Russian thinking. Indeed, the book appears to be based almost exclusively on published sources and all of them listed in the bibliography are in English. Only a handful of contemporaneous documents and private paper collections appear to have been consulted. Nonetheless this is popular history at its best.

This book was way more than a recounting of the "candy bombings"-the dropping of chocolates to the children of Berlin. It was a fascinating history of the events surrounding the Berlin airlift, and the dicey relations with the Stalin -led Soviets, so recently our allies, but fast proving to b a stubborn, committed adversary. I learned so much about this incredible time in our history, and realized for the first time how close we were to WW III but for a chain of events, great leaders, and plain ole luck, and perhaps the grace of God. As a student of history, this was a great read.

First, I must agree with Mr. Fishman's guibble about the aptness of the title "The Candy Bombers," which tends to capitalize on an aspect of the event for, perhaps, commercial impact. The sub-title more usefully describes the content of the book, if not particularly catchy.

Having said that, I found the book to be an immensely useful examination of this crucial development in post-WWII geopolitics. The time spent on the contemporary American political environment including the 1948 election was very useful and does more to explain why Harry Truman was elected President than anything else I can remember reading. The inter-personal dynamics between members of the US military command structure comes through clear and believable.

What eliminates this book, in my view, from the top ranks of history books are some of the blind spots that I would not expect from a more complete study of the subject. For instance, I would like to know what was going through the minds of the Russians. Why didn't Stalin just charge through all of this and takeover Berlin with the power he obviously had available to him? With all of Europe as the prize, why was he not willing to suffer a few American A-bombs? Most un-Stalin like. And further down the ranks there were some interesting characters on the Russian side, too, that probably deserve some spotlight time. Were they conflicted or not to be in the their tenuous positions?

Also, what effect did the Berlin Airlift have on the global strategic positioning of the Truman Administration? While it was going on, developments in China and other parts of Asia seem to have been ignored in relative terms. When the disasterous Korean War boiled up a year after the Airlift, the Truman Administration was caught with its pants down. To what extent was that made possible by the single-minded fucus on the Berlin Airlift and Europe?

Still, an excellent book as far as it goes.

In this short book, the supremely intelligent Rene Guenon manages to crystallize some of the most fundamental ailments of modern society. He is neither afraid to examine from a traditionalist viewpoint all recent intellectual "developments" in science along with the callow, bigoted perceptions of modern philosophy, nor does he shy away from criticizing democracy and the notions of socio-political "progress," or the diluted and comical nature of modern religion. Consistency and holistic understanding are Guenon's hallmarks, and he demonstrates it well with this succinct volume.

This work is genuine treasure for all those capable of fully comprehending reality and naturally find themselves alone and at odds with contemporary civilization. Serves as a good introduction to the general orientations of authentic traditionalist thought. Guenon expands on this work significantly in its companion volume, The Reign of Quantity.

In perhaps his most important work, _The Crisis of the Modern World_, traditionalist thinker Rene Guenon outlines his philosophy and shows how the traditional outlook is opposed by modern developments. Guenon begins by noting that the modern world has brought about a crisis, conceived by many in terms of apocalypse and the "end times" (the coming dark age of the Kali Yuga in terms of Hindu cyclical cosmology), which can only be resolved by a return of the West to the traditional outlook. Taking off from what he had written earlier in a book entitled _East and West_, Guenon notes that the worldviews of West and East are profoundly different from each other, the East maintaining its traditions, while the West creeps towards degeneracy in the form of modernism and materialism. Much of this book is spent contrasting East and West, attempting to demonstrate exactly where the West has gone astray (both in its attempts to colonize the East and in its rampant materialism and modernism). In the East, three great traditions remain corresponding to the Near, Middle, and Far East respectively. These are the traditions of Islam, the traditions of India (especially Hinduism), and the traditions of the Chinese civilization. Guenon believes that only one possible source for traditional renewal remains in the West, and that is the Catholic (meaning "universal") Church, which he opposes to Protestant Christianity or modern day "rationalism", for example. Tranditionalism places an emphasis on both "primordialism" and universality, in line with its Vedantist roots. Guenon also notes several contrasting distinctions between the traditional viewpoint and that of the modern day (the Western materialist/"rationalist" outlook). Part of this involves the contrast between sacred and profane science. Modernists emphasize profane science, attempting to desacralize nature, and place their priority in both pragmatism and the material world. Such a view has come even to relegate metaphysical notions of truth to the realm of the purely pragmatic and utilitarian. Guenon also notes how the modern day world is dominated by a mass democratic levelling brought about by what he terms "individualism". It is this form of "individualism" which has led to materialism and an emphasis on pure pragmatics (quantity as opposed to quality), although he contrasts this to the more genuine view of the traditional man which remains opposed to the encroaching influences of force, through the state for example. Guenon sees much to criticize in the democratic development of the West, seeing in democracy a form of mass levelling. Opposing these developments within the modern world, Guenon calls for a new intellectual elite, who will serve to revive tradition where it is to be found. This revival also centers around the schism between East and West. In this sense, those among the "intellectual elite" must either opt to integrate the traditions of the East (which remain viable) into the West or attempt to restore genuine Western tradition (such as that which exists in a form of decline within the Catholic Church). Guenon remains a champion of the East and notes the Western bias and attempt to dominate the traditional East, citing several sources of this problematic, where he means by the West the modern materialist-driven West and not the traditional West. This book serves as an important introduction to the thinking of Rene Guenon, who is the father of the traditionalist school which also includes Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon, Julius Evola, and Mircea Eliade, among others. It serves to highlight many of the contrasts which exist between the modern world (undergoing crisis) and the traditional outlook. Guenon notes that while there is a tendency for those among the traditional camp to despair, given the bleak outlook presented by the modern world (which may be destroyed in catastrophe given its false foundations), that this tendency should be overcome, particularly by those among his chosen elite. Guenon quotes several important passages from the Gospel accounts to illustrate his point. Truly the modern world represents the traditional Kali Yuga of the Hindu cycle, a dark age of rampant materialism, and a decline from the once golden age of spiritual tradition.

Rene Guenon makes an excellent case when he presents the ontologically corrupt nature of our time in his _Crisis of the Modern World_. Guenon's prose, as noted by other readers, translates horribly into English from the original French. Never before have I read "paragraph long" sentences and Guenon is probably one of the few authors who uses semicolons and colons more frequently than periods in his ultra-dense prose. His train of thought is difficult to follow but once concentrated upon closely it is apparent how insightful Guenon is explaining his subject. He was an early twentieth century advocate of the "perennialist" philosophy: all of the world's genuine religious faiths share a common root and esoteric teachings that have been obscured by the process of time. The modern world, whose historical origins lay during the Renaissance period, is the spiritual nadir of this time "cycle" according to Guenon's understanding of ancient Hindu mythology. It is marked by a decline in the role of spiritual élites, both exoteric and esoteric religious devotion, and by the subsequent rise in the study of material, empirical sciences, and the ascendancy of secular humanist philosophy and the replacement of objective, transcendent religion with sentimental moralism. Guenon's perspective is interesting because he defends the Catholic Church as Europe's sole remaining traditional body, despite dropping out of the Catholic fold. Guenon instead affiliated himself with Freemasonry and the study of Hindu texts, and who later in life moved to Egypt and converted to Islam in order to live in a more traditional (i.e. non-Western) society. Guenon decries the fact that the West has lost touch with its religious roots and is in the meantime corrupting the traditional eastern societies. He also notes how the current, anti-traditional Western advocates of democracy and thus majority rule "by the people" are in fact in the minority if the East and its views are taken into consideration. All mental activity and emphasis in the West have become geared to the external and purely rational, not toward the "intellectual" in the classic sense of the term. Consider the apocalyptic nature of the pro-sports phenomenon:

"There is no longer any place for intelligence, or anything else that is purely inward, for these are things that can neither be seen nor touched, that can neither be counted nor weighed; there is only place for outward action in all its forms, even those that are the most completely meaningless. For this reason it should not be a matter of surprise that the Anglo-Saxon mania for sport gains ground day by day: the ideal of the modern world is the 'human animal' who has developed his muscular strength to the highest pitch; its heroes are athletes, even though they be mere brutes; it is they who awaken popular enthusiasm, and it is their exploits that command the passionate interest of the crowd. A world in which such things are seen has indeed sunk low and seems near its end" (92).

The only hope for the West, Guenon notes, is for a spiritual elite, an initiated aristocracy of sorts, to guide society into the next "Golden Age." However, the forces of the modern world prevent such a naturally dispersed and alienated group from organizing and turning back the clock. Nevertheless, the modern world, built as it is on materialistic presuppositions, will experience a catastrophe (_Crisis_ was written in the 1920s before the first nuclear weapons were constructed) that will usher in the next "cycle," the "new heaven and new earth" according to the Gospel. With the proliferation of nuclear technology and the continuing Mideast conflict, Guenon remains to be proven wrong. I disagree with Guenon's rejection of Catholicism for shady esotericism, Hinduism and Islam, but overall he reveals the modern world for the false, temporal sham that it really is.

The scholarly world is never too short of what is in vogue as `critiques of modernity' that another addition to this stock would have been redundant. Guénon's The Crisis of the Modern World however, is not simply `another' of this but is distinguished by its profound wisdom, transcending conventional approaches that either diagnosed the symptoms and not the real disease or carried from an exclusively `philosophical' viewpoint, oblivious to the fact that `philosophy' itself is among modernity's offspring. Guénon's theme is sophia perennis, or primordial Wisdom, which seeks to resurrect the sacred metaphysics that lies at the root of the world's major religions.

Guénon begins with the premise that the modern world as we know it corresponds exactly to the period of Kali Yuga (or Dark Age) in Hindu cosmology, similar to the Iron Age in Western traditional doctrine, a time when the forces of matter reign supreme and spirituality has been thoroughly eclipsed. In fact, history itself is a gradual process of declining spirituality and "progressive materialization", so that at the last phase of the human cycle (or the darkest of the Dark Age), mankind shall witness the abundance of material prosperity as has never been witnessed before, while simultaneously impoverished spiritually and utterly divorced from true intellectuality and hence truth itself.

Intellectually, this decline is especially evident in science and philosophy. Philosophy - `love' of wisdom - became wisdom unto itself; `physics' - the science of `nature' in its totality - became a science that deals with only a portion of nature; astrology degraded into astronomy; alchemy degenerated into chemistry; and all that was once meaningful and bound to truth transcending the domain of matter and the world of sensible experience is reduced to bare facts bereft of truth, meaning and purpose. It is no wonder that the modern man today feels alienated from the world, from each other and from himself. The ancient sciences were invariably bound to metaphysical principles found in the world's great religions, made possible by the eminently religious and theocentric character of the earlier people. Truth for them is one, just as God is One. The different orders and aspects of Reality are but reflections of this same, single and universal truth. Whichever angle the truth is approached, contradictions only appear at the surface so that `specialization' would eventually lead to the convergence of the various disciplines, which explains why the ancients were so adept at mastering several different branches of knowledge at the same time, insofar as mastery of certain basic laws underlying all of reality permits their application to many different domains.

Modernity by contrast, is built upon the spirit of opposition to religion (think of the Renaissance, Reformation and the Enlightenment) and therefore hostility to metaphysics and truth. Once the ultimate Truth is denied, the ground is cleared for the manufacture of many different "truths", tending naturally towards relativism and nihilism that are so prevalent in today's world. Indeed, relativism is the logical outcome of rationalism, this in turn being the result of humanism and individualism, which of course, is the "determining cause of the present decline of the West." Descartes' rationalism, instead of raising man to transcend himself towards truth, seeks to drag truth down to the "purely relative and human faculty" of rational thought. The mental outlook that made this possible is materialism, "a conception according to which nothing else exists but matter and its derivatives." Now this is significant even symbolically, for matter is essentially multiplicity and division, hence the source of strife and conflict.

This decadence even manifests itself in the social order - from the separation of religion from the state, the triumph of mediocrity over the wise (democracy), the spread of `mass education' (which compromises the uniqueness of each individual) to the rise of the cult of `originality' in the intellectual domain, for whom it is better to create a new error than repeat an old truth. All this are but manifestations of the same catastrophe - neglect of spirituality, hence the loss of unity.

Materialism is also tied to Western domination. The East has been traditionally religious, but in the face of (material) challenge and encroachment by the modern West, is now compelled to adopt the materialistic worldview to compete in this profane realm and in this regard, its religious past is certainly no guide. Where else would they seek guidance and `light', if not from the very civilization in which materialism organically springed forth? This is in fact how the present age fits neatly into that last phase of Kali Yuga as Guénon understands it, namely that the darkness of materialism will ultimately bring the whole world into its dominion (long before `globalization' and `end of history' became common lingo), marking finally the end of an era, i.e. the end of a human cycle, or Manvantara, where `the wheel stops turning.' This is when chaos, conflict and strife will erupt as never before, a time known in Christianity as the reign of the Antichrist and in Islam as the era of Dajjal.

There is a way out - for the establishment of a spiritual elite to lead the masses out of this darkness. This elite necessarily has to operate covertly, like a secret puppeteer when others could not see the strings, for the masses have become deeply entrenched in their materialism, which continuously creates in them more artificial needs for materiality than it can satisfy. In the West, the only institution capable of bringing about this change is the Catholic Church, which alone is in possession of the sacred traditional doctrine of Christianity. Yet even then, Guenon remains skeptical and calls for the Western world to summon aid from what modicum of true spirituality is left in the East, unadulterated by the `modernized' outlook that is fast making headways throughout the Orient.

This book show us the roots of our modern world. This book is for those that, unsatisfied with the course os the modern world and it?s oppressive materialism, are looking for convincing explanations, out of the common political and economical vision. The author examines the deep factors that conducted our world to it?s present unbalance, demonstrating that, since the Middle Age, the Occident went further and further away, with increasing velocity, from the principles that ruled all the humanity until that momment. Principles that presume an hierarchy of values, from the highest (spiritual) ones to the basic (material) ones; principles that are within the essence of the traditional civilizations, that harmonize man and nature. We find examples of traditional civilizations with the north-american native tribes (as the Hopi and Sioux, among others); the Tibet, before the chinese invasion; the medieval Japan... Ren? Gu?non (1886-1951), with this book that is at once masterly and accessible, don?t give us illusions about the future of our civilization. Instead he provides us with new and wide horizons, with tools that enables us to evaluate and stand up to the great challenges of the modern world crisis. It's the best way to make a first contact with Ren? Gu?non and the traditional view.

Luiz Pontual (irget@reneguenon.net), director of Ren? Gu?non's Institute, April 9, 1999. See our site irget@reneguenon.net and buy our book at Amazon.com

I purchased this book for a history class. Great price and a good read. Good source of first-hand experiences at concentration camps. Differs a bit from the usual horrid details in other books, but explains some of the lighter sides, if I may, concerning the relationships between captives and captors.

"The Dentist of Auschwitz" is a spellbinding novel about a man that lived through the holocaust of World War II. The trials and tribulations of Benjamin Jacobs as he survives through labor and concentration camps will move you. Had it not been for the author's dental instruments that he brought with him, he would most likely not be alive today. Be thankful that he is alive and can tell accounts of his intriguing survival because this book is a very interesting and trivial tale. It is a very well written novel that I could not put down. I would recommend this novel to anyone and everyone.

I couldn't put this book down. Benjamin's story needs to be made into a movie: are you listening S. Spielberg? This is a remarkable book of unbelievable odds of survival. Ben escaped death so many times, but, the ending of this book is the most tragic episode of his story. I highly recommend this book to anyone who needs a perspective and gratitude adjustment; when you read about the suffering of Jews and the fortitude of the survivors, you come to realize how petty and spoiled people can be in their own minds. Each time I read about a survivor, I feel a renewed sense of the gratitude I have for my life. My mother is also a survivor of Auschwitz, but each survivor's story is unique. Read and realize gratitude.

I found out about this book after reading another book that the author co-wrote. It is called The 100-Year Secret and it deals with a portion of the material that is contained in The Dentist of Auschwitz. The author spent almost five years in various camps, riding in closed railroad cars in summer, open railroad cars in winter, on death marches in the dead of winter, and on "hell ships," that were mistakingly attacked by the RAF and he, along with his brother still outlived the Nazi monsters that created this world for them. How Jacobs managed to survive his voyage through "man's inhumanity to man" is at the heart of this amazing story of survival. I promise you will not be able to put this book down.

I started reading this book and could not hardly put it down. I think I read it in 3 days. Benjamin Jacobs was sent to a concentration camp along with the rest of his family. Benjamin and his father ended up at Auschwitz. Had it not been for Benjamin's dental training and given a little bit of preference over the other inmates, the pure hell he was put through would have surely ended in death. The love story between him and Zosia is touching. Unbelievable how anyone could survive just a nightmare. This is truly the part of history most of us would like to rewrite. Great book.