Bruno Books

Tom Bianchi (IN THE STUDIO) does it again and does it better every time. His collection of handsome men embracing each other in the nude set in, on and around the couch provide a luscious coffee table photography book. It is passionate as it is beautifully executed. A must for serious photography collectors of the beauty of the male form. Since this review is based on the book (see book review), you should get this 2003 calendar which displays photographs taken from Bianchi's latest erotic work.

It is a truly wondeful and inspiring thing to check one's calendar every day and be greeted by the images of such magnificent men. My calendar provides me with my daily agenda, and perhaps equally important, a visual jolt to remind me why men are so magnificent.

An excellent book for introduction to advanced level on phase diagrams with very good insights on regular and associated models and their applications to real phase diagrams.

Here is THE book that is a MUST read for the person faced with post polio syndrome, their families and certainly every doctor attempting to properly treat a PPS person. If you had polio as a child and don't think you have any problems now 40 yrs. later, you may be very surprised what you read & learn about yourself. Some lights may go on and connections relate to medical issues you have been dealing with but never dreamed it could be connected to having polio as a child. This is THE problem, doctors have little to no information about PPS and therefore misdiagnose or certainly don't recognize the true cause & correct treatment. Persons live for years with unanswered questions and truly suffer with no help in sight. First inform yourself if you had polio, then alert the doctors that have or are treating you. This is not just a note on your medical records that you had polio as a child, to be ignored as a past issue. If you need to find specialists, be your own advocate, because most everything the medical community says is misinformed about PPS. The general attitude is that polio was eradicated but there are still people getting polio from the vaccine. No one ever imagined that residual effects 40 yrs. later could put you in a wheelchair and live with chronic debilitating pain. You may be surprised to find out how PPS has affected your brain, & what comes with that now. Do this for yourself, read this book if you relate to any of this review.

These great little books bring together some of the greatest works by Benno Thoma- Bel Ami- Howard Roffman and Clifford Baker. Keep them and frame them or send them to your friends.

In his preface, Oscar E. Swan describes prewar Polish Jewry without the usual anti-Polish bias: "In the United States, with its tradition of rapid cultural assimilation, it may be difficult for the reader to imagine the tremendous gulf separating Polish and Jewish society in Poland in the 1920s and 1930s...there were the `Litvak" Jews, recently arrived from the east and speaking little or no Polish, and the Orthodox Jews, who had kept their own dress, language, customs, religion, and schools, resisting even a modicum of accommodation to the prevailing culture. Despite the inevitable sharp social tensions created by such a situation in this fiercely Catholic country during the economic hard times of the 1930s, and despite anti-Jewish sentiment, demonstrations, and clashes at the universities, in labor unions, and in other areas of public life--often enough fomented by the Nationalist element among Polish politicians--most urban Jews in Poland before the war lived in peace and relative prosperity." (pp. xxi-xxii).

In the Foreword, British historian Norman Davies adds: "In the era of Nationalism, there were Poles of the National Democratic persuasion who treated all Poland's ethnic minorities, including the Jews, with undisguised hostility, just as there were growing numbers of Jews of the Zionist persuasion who treated Poland as a country fit only to turn their backs on...it would also be inaccurate to suggest that Poland ever experienced the same level of pathological racism which has reigned at various times in neighboring Germany or Russia." (p. viii).

Shatyn describes the prewar Litvaks, some of whom had migrated westward to his native Krakow (Cracow), as follows: "...for the most part they were wholesalers, supplying goods either to local stores or to shops in the many small towns in the countryside. They engaged trained bookkeepers to keep their books for tax purposes, but in addition they all carried in their pockets little notebooks in which their actual accounts were kept, accounts different from those found in the bookkeepers' neat ledgers. The information in those little books was entered in a Hebrew script, legible only to them. They were excellent tradesmen, and, universal opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, they never cheated or swindled, though they drove a hard bargain." (pp. 101-102). The reader can understand how the Poles, even if not openly exploited, naturally resented being the generation-after-generation recipients of these hard bargains. BTW, isn't tax evasion a form of swindle, and isn't defrauding the Polish government also a defrauding of the Polish nation?

Bruno Shatyn (Szatyn, Schatten) was an atypical Polish Jew who, speaking fluent Polish and lacking Semitic features, survived the Nazi occupation in the open. His entire work is remarkably free of Polonophobia, and at no time does he become so Judeocentric as to ignore Polish martyrdom. For instance, he gives an eyewitness account of the slaughter of defenseless Polish civilian refugees by strafing German planes in 1939 (p. 116).

Shatyn points out that most Polish Jews scoffed at the notion that the conquering Germans would exterminate them (p. 133, 163). This further undermines the fear-of-Nazi-extermination justification for the extensive 1939 Jewish-Soviet collaboration. Furthermore, the Jewish pro-German mental inertia persisted well after the beginning of the mass extermination of Jews: "Who could believe that these proper, upright, hard-working people would commit mass murder? Even now, when we know that it is true, we still can't get used to the idea." (p. 194).

For security reasons, Shatyn tried to avoid those who knew him. Realizing that his Polish friends wouldn't betray him, he feared that they may divulge his Jewishness through some indiscretion or under Gestapo torture (p. 186). As for the szmalcowniki (blackmailers), he recognized the fact that these extortionists were marginal members of Polish society and that their acts were criminal rather than anti-Semitic in nature: "...the scum of society, the sort of person who, discovering that someone was a Jew, blackmailed the victim to his last penny and then, when he was penniless, denounced the unfortunate to the police, in full confidence that he would be eliminated and, with him, all evidence of the informer's crime." (p. 186). Shatyn also feared the Gestapo-serving Jewish informers, who made the rounds looking for fugitive Jews (pp. 186-187, 195).

On two different occasions, when the Germans were parading and/or humiliating the Jews before killing them, Shatyn wrote: "The Poles lined the sidewalks, looking on in absolute silence, as though frozen in place." (p. 42). Also: "Poles gathered on the sidewalks, incredulous, some crossing themselves at this monstrous sight." (p. 121). These accounts further contradict the selectively-chosen ones, by Jan Tomasz Gross, of Poles rejoicing at Jewish suffering. And, unlike Gross, Shatyn recognized the efficacy of the German-imposed death penalty in the deterrence of Polish aid to Jews (p. 48, 178, 186).

Shatyn provides intriguing details about his monitoring of German trains and skillfully deductions of their cargo and its implications (p. 223). Some rather imaginative Polonophobes have maliciously asserted that the Nazis built their extermination camps on Polish soil because the Poles would tolerate, if not welcome, them. That the German herrenvolk would consult the defeated Polish untermenschen is preposterous on its face! As a further irony, the Germans attempted to keep the camps secret from Poles. Shatyn reports that Polish conductors were removed from the death trains as they neared the camps, to be replaced by the SS and their Ukrainian and Baltic collaborators (p. 21). During their journeys, the train windows were barred, and no one was permitted near them (p. 224), though the weak moans of the victims could be heard in the fields.

Finally, Jews weren't the only scapegoats. The Germans also adopted a blame-the-victim mentality against Poles for Germany's misfortunes, notably after Stalingrad: "They claimed that everything was the fault of the verfluchte Polen--had it not been for their resistance to the German invasion in September 1939, this war which was now threatening to destroy the Reich would never have started." (p. 227).

The HP-OVUA is a worldwide network of universities and research organizations sharing their insights on best practices
of operating and managing computers and complex applications of Information Technology (IT). In their annual workshop
leading institutes present their latest research. The 2005 proceedings provide a comprehensive overview of
the current initiatives and activities. There are 21 full papers and 23 short presentations as well as 3 demonstration scenarios
described. This is very useful in particular for CTOs and researchers who need to keep abreast of leading practices
to manage today's complex IT environments.

Frank J Bruno's book Psychological Symptoms is a must read for all those feeling any phobia from alcoholism through to workaholism as well as those who have friends or family members who my be suffering from an irrational fear ( phobia ). Basically understanding your not going crazy or and that your not alone is half way to achieving a normal fulfilling life. The other half is up to you and you can acheive this through this book. Much like a psychological bible to those it has helped. Highly recommened.

This cartoon type book is all about young gay men looking for sex and their daily lives. Pictures of guys performing man on man sex, kissing, in their underwear, and fully nude are all erotic and fun to read and look at. I have a small gay comic collection and this book was a nice asset.

I bought this book last year...thinking a grandchild might like it...Then I looked at it and was not terribly inspired...BUT..my 7 and 3/4 year old granddaughter visited this last 3 weeks and she latched on to it immediately and read almost the entire Bible by herself...It certainly struck the right note with her.She was more interested in reading it to herself than with me. I think she liked the easy visibility of the reading page, with the paragraphs in different colors..