Wagner Books

this book ponders a philosophical practice of classical interactions relating the widespread patterns of spatial relativity with yet another example of the hidden depths of urban rhizomatic syncretist devotion. its adulation of exercises for idiosyncratic sidesplitting as both lawful and unorthodox places it among the most tantalizingly rigorous of contemporary christian methodologies. surely it is a large step from the so called objective (or 'outside') temptation of organic being, to the retrospective journey of a working life.

This is an excellent book, it really teaches you to pray. It's very informative and interesting and cool! I'm very glad I read this book, it has helped me a lot.

For the two years and over that I've owned this book, it has become a great resource as a clear, understandable explanation of Christian prayer and as a practical guide for taking prayerful action. In my service as the prayer leader at my church, I use it as the textbook for a beginning class on prayer, and extra copies of it don't last long in our "bookstore." My thanks to Richard Wagner for this handy guide!

It was wonderful. It covered all aspects of prayer, including, many I wasn't even aware of. The book was written in clear, concise language. I recommend it for anyone interested in prayer.

The best book I have ever read on Christian prayer. The book is very informative, very accurate, and very thorougly Bible-based. It enriched deeply my prayers as well as my relationship to God. The book covers all topics related with prayer from praying with your spouse and children to keeping a diary with your prayers.

A beautiful and moving book I would absolutely recommand for every sincere Christian.

As a complete newbie to web pages, this book was a tremendous help in understanding the processes involved in creating, publishing and maintaining a website. I'm a Mac user and found the info very helpful. Many books don't adequately deal with Mac systems. This one did.

This is a pretty good book for beginners trying to learn how to create a web page, but it's a little confusing and the CD included with the book does not include any part of either Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web. From the cover,one is led to believe that abbreviated versions of these are included on the CD. Instead, the CD has Nvu and links to other useful places.

Great overview of the processes and techniques for creating Web sites. Well written and clear.

I am new to the whole web site building, so this book was for me. It gave me a basic understanding of web publishing, free tools available to create my web pages and how to add links, blogs and graphics to my web site.
This book though, does not go into great detail about web design so if that's what you are looking for, this is not for you.
This is for the beginner who wants to get a feel for the process and work it takes to get a web site up and running.
I found it very helpful in getting me started on the road to creating a great web site.

Like most of the "dummies" books this one doesn't go into great detail about certain aspects of web design, but it is a great starting point for anyone with zero web design experience.

It walked me through the interface of Dreamweaver easily and within a few hours I had a page up and ready complete with links and flash buttons.

Again not good for the pro but great for the beginner.

I enjoyed the nostalgia the book provides very much and appreciate the author's endeavors, but was a little dissapointed with the recipes themselves. I was hoping to find a book full of dirt-cheap recipes (under $4 per recipe) I can cook for my family. I found 6 recipes for veal, one for pork loin, and several for large cuts of meat (which amounts to expensive). Several recipes called for more than one type of meat which raises the cost of the recipe and there were several entertaining yet not-so-practical recipes for such meats as squirrel, racoon, rabbit, and one for pork neck. This was a wonderful trip down memory lane, but not the practical guide I am looking for.

I love the old recipes and the stories and ideas that are in it were even useful right now!!! Very quick delivery!

As a child of the depression, it was a way of remembering what the women of that era had to do to feed families often larger than those of the 21st Century -- families of farmers fared much better that those in the industries (which often became defunct) and for white-collar workers when there was no money to pay their wages. We "murdered through", we thrived, we learned serious lessons to do more with less, and to substitute. Would not want to repeat the depression era, but feel very fortunate recipes were concocted to get us through it with a smile on our face.

Anyone who is into History will like this cookbook. Many of the recipes don't look appealing but it contains a lot of interesting facts about lifestyles in the 30's.

Quite frankly, I found this a little disappointing. Flipping through the pages, there is nothing to indicate that these are recipes from a time of such hardship, apart from the few little snippets at the bottom of some of the pages, giving some fact about the 1930s. A recipe for Banana Cream Pie surprised me. Glad to know that bananas were easily and cheaply obtainable - as I suppose they must have been, as this is apparently a depression era recipe. The book could have been so much better with just a few embellishments - such as the occasional picture, or interesting and useful facts about life during the Depression, such as average wage, cost of eggs or milk or basic staples. There were no substitute dishes - along the lines of "mock - whatever" True, the recipes are simple, without enormous lists of ingredients, but the book lacks flavour. The "Farmer's Wife Cookbook" has a lot of the elements that could have improved this book.

I have used this translation together with those by William Mann (Friends of Covent Garden) and Lionel Salter and my opinion is that the latter two more accurately translate the German.I do no undersatnd Mr Sabor's reference to 'accuracy' in his translation:at times questions in German become statements in English,tenses are confused and straight-forward words appear to be incorrectly translated.I am very disappointed in the translation and would point people to either Mann or Salter.Where the books are of value are the annotations of the 'leimotive' by the approrpiate lines.There are in addition so other sundry notes,though at times these did seem to me to be fatuous.I would suggest the introductions need to be re-written so that an unsuspecting user would not accept Mr Sabor's translation by cross-corrolating each word.To me it appears strange that Mr Sabor states 'a new translation is demanded' of 'The Ring' - in my opinion,as a German speaker,his is not the translation that I would demand.

Wagner's Der Ring de Nibelungen is one of the most complex and significant artisitic creations in the world of opera. For those eager to approach the Ring and learn about this masterpiece this is the RIGHT book. One of the keys to understanding the Ring is based on its system of leitmotifs - recurring moments used to represent carachters, objects, events or emotions. These dramatic agents are very well explained (there's a sequence of other 4 books of Mr Sabor where you'll find the libretto translations and references to the leitmotifs as they appear throughout the work). A biography of Wagner precedes a chapter regarding the sources of the Ring. These are fascinating topics about the composer and his masterpiece. There is also a great chapter telling about the Ring story and its carachters. The Bayreuth story and a full bibliography, videography and a list of all the leitmotifs complements this excellent book. After reading this book the Ring will become an even more pleasing and understandable experience.

Listening to the Ring with Sabor's translations and comments is very pleasant. His English is beautiful and leitmotifs are all pointed out when they occur in the libretto. (of course the German is there to see as well.) Helpful comments about orchestration and interpretion enhance the experience. Summaries of plot and explanations of leitmotifs are presented at the beginning of each act as well as expanded within the text. A great way to get to know the Ring.

Mr. Sabor's historical commentary, list of leitmotiven and their appearances in the operas, and side comments cannot be equaled. This elegant set of books -- one for historical analysis, overview and performance practice of the entire cycle and one for each opera in the cycle -- is especially useful for Wagner beginners as well as seasoned musicologists. The translation of the libretti is beautifully poetic -- retaining much of Wagner's original alliteration and meter -- although it is not the most literal. (It could be used for singing if one was so inclined, and is a good deal better than most translations done for this purpose). I have used this set of books for a good deal of research on The Ring and usually need no others, although I do like to compare any translations with a more literal version, like the type usually found along with a recording. The discography/videography of the Ring is useful if not the most insightful. The substance, though, is most satisfactory, and at a reasonable price, too.

This book really made me understand the complex and wonderfull work of Richard Wagner. He really knew how to compose a great masterpiece. I always admired his music and now that I read the Book Der Ring des Nibelungen (03 times ! ) I am sure that he is the best composer ever. For the people who loves classical music this is the best book to start understanding its environment. I read Sergio Perazo's reviews, and I totally agreed with him. He (sergio) gave the exactly idea how good this book is. I am starting reading this book for the forth time.

My wife and I are in the midst of two remodeling projects, and were desperately seeking some practical information on being as "green" as possible. This book is a homerun. It's chock full of tips for energy-efficiency (very important for us), plus useful information on choosing greener products. We've done lots of research on green building and green remodeling, and kept running into conflicting definitions and standards. After reading this book, we now understand that going green isn't rocket science. The author does a great job of explaining what makes one product greener than another. A must-read for anyone striving to make their home as eco-friendly as possible.

This is a terrific, easy to understand book for homeowners who want helpful, real-world examples of how they can improve the energy-efficiency, indoor air quality, and green qualities of their home. The author provides numerous suggestions and examples of choices that make good sense when remodeling. Users can take "small steps" to green-up their home, or embark on large-scale projects that incorporate the newest green materials and techniques.
Very useful book, especially for homeowners who want to improve their homes and be mindful of our environment, but aren't sure where to start.

Attractive, well-organized, clearly written, authoritative -- this book, written by a veteran author and green-building expert, is the green remodeling guide to have, whether you've making decisions about remodeling or doing it yourself. Unlike some books on the subject, it is not only well-designed and attractive but full of hands-on guidance in the form of how-to and how's-it-work illustrations and photos.

In short, this is solid, authoritative information presented in lucid, plain prose and well-conceived and executed art. At under $15 -- the price of a hammer -- it's a no-brainer, whether you're doing it yourself or just need to know your stuff to contract the job out.

Green Remodeling: Your Start Toward an Eco-Friendly Home. I read a lot of green remodeling books and magazines. The best feature of this book is the large number of photographs with captions. I believe that showing something to the reader is usually more useful than writing something. It is easier to get the point across when you SEE it. I enjoy all the Creative Homeowner books for this reason.

This book is green in that it beats around the "green" bush and seems intended for "green" do-it-yourselfers. I was looking for new ways to remodel which could add to the energy efficiency of my home, and really, all I got was a surprisingly discouraging primer on how to waste my money on do-it-yourself projects and maybe get a slighly higher R-value. Though only one chapter is entitled "building basics", most of the other chapters are painfully basic and downright misanthropic.

The section entitled "Siding Choices" starts out "Siding problems can usually be fixed by making spot repairs...." Er, who said I had a siding problem? As to the "siding choices", presented only after the instructions on buidling two different kinds of scaffold, all are presented equally with no discussion on which is environmentally more friendly.

The only value I see in this book is that a few of the slick pictures and elementary diagrams manage to answer a question or two, such as 'What does polyurethane foam insulation look like?' On the other hand, an illustration whose caption refers to an interior as well-designed shows the writer should go back to design school.

Maybe the book is just misleadingly titled and should have been called "A primer on do-it-yourself remodeling including all the problems and one or two embedded references on doing it eco-friendly like." (Er, a little long, I know.)

This book is a wonderful representation of two old Scottish sword manuals. The information is abundant and clear. These works deal primarily with the small sword, the most commonly carried sword at that time; however, many of the Scottish weapons are represented.

Well written with good illustrations, I highly recomend this book.

To help counterbalance the misleading review from October, 2005, this is a terrific book on swordsmanship. The costuming might not be completely accurate, but that's hardly the point of the book.

One would be hard-pressed to argue against the text of the manuals themselves, as they were written in period, at least one of them by a man (Donald MacBane) who had to rely repeatedly for his very life upon the skills set forth in the manual. The interpretations of the authors seem spot on with the text. Overall, I would say that this is an excellent introduction to the ways in which the basket-hilted broad- and backswords were actually used in mortal combat.

I hardly think the editors were unaware that a "Highlander" was a "Scottish Gael." The simple fact is that the manuals contained in this book were written by lowland scots, and the "Highland" in the title is used for marketing. If you own or are thinking of getting a baskethilt, chances are you've either already purchased or are planning to purchase the kilt to go with it; simply put, "Highlanders" sell nowadays (if you need help deciding what sort of kilt would be most appropriate, the review I've mentioned lists several good sources for info). "Lowland Swordsmanship" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

The fact that these were lowland scots also explains the quotes in scots sprinkled throughout the book. That these passages are in scots and not gaelic is hardly an "omission;" they're as gaelic as the authors of the period texts they're printed with. Which is to say, not at all.

To fault this book because it doesen't contain little snippets in the language most common to the geography of the title, or because the reenactors wear the wrong clothing, is as absurd as faulting a cookbook filled with good recipes because the china patterns in the pictures aren't right. Is it an accurate observation? Sure. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the purpose of the book. It's a book on swordsmanship, not linguistics or costuming, and as a book on swordsmanship, it's quite good.

"Highland Swordsmanship" is well worth both purchasing and studying, as is the sequel, "Highland Broadsword," and I hope there are more volumes by these folks in the works. I'd give it six stars if I could.

Mark Rector has put together an interesting volume that serves both as a historical reference to old Scottish swordplay, and a guide to those individuals interested in the recreation of old styles of sword combat. Happily, it is also easy to read, and nicely illustrated. As the author of "THE ART AND SCIENCE OF FENCING," "THE INNER GAME OF FENCING," and "THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE SWORD," and the editor/publisher of "FENCERS QUARTERLY MAGAZINE," I recommend this book.

I have two problems with this book however meritorious the descriptions of swordsmanship.

The enactors are frequently pictured wearing a 'little kilt' (fèileadh beag) with knife-edge pleats to portray Highland dress of the mid-eighteenth century. During the period of the 1745 rebellion, the 'big kilt' (fèileadh-mòr) was essentially a large blanket rolled about the body and belted in the middle. There was no flat apron in the front and the kilt didn't necessarily open on right side. The standardization of the modern kilt is due to regulations of Highland regiments in the 19th/20th centuries.

I suggest anyone interested in the topic read:
Hugh Cheape's 'Tartan',
J.Telfer Dunbar's 'History of Highland Dress,
Christian Hesketh's 'Tartans', or
McClintock' & Dunbar's 'Old Irish and Highland Dress'.

The editor seems to be unaware that 'Highlander' is synonymous with
'Scottish Gael'; that is, the first language of Highlanders is Gaelic, not Scots English.

The book would have been enriched with quotes from J.L. Campbell's 'Highland Songs of the Forty-Five', contemporary Jacobite songs in the original Gaelic with English translations, or Ronald Black's 'An Lasair', also bilingual.

This books is a wonderful resource for writers or reinactors. It pays ode to the romanticising of Scottish fighters such as Rob Roy, Wallace, The Bruce and Bonnie Prince Charlie, but goes past these legendary images to show you the reasons for certain practices. It covers the basics of offence and defence,especially in the fencing techniques of the 17th through 19th centuries. I do wish I would have covered the medieval aspects of Highland swordsmanship: The Claymore. The movements for using the longest two handed sword is wonderful to see in action, so I had hoped this book would cover that.

Lots of diagrams and photos so the non fencer can follow precisely what they are demonstrating.

Very detailed in who did what in duels, the protocol and history.

All in all a very good work.

THIS BOOK IS AN INTEGRAL TOOL TO USE IN ANY STUDY OF THE ISLAMIC RELIGION AND CULTURE.

This Ph.D. does an excellent job of revealing the ultimate goals of Islam in the west. The author includes a country by country appendix of Islam presence and growth. As he was a Christian missionary to Islamic countries and an educated intellectual, he is uniquely equipped to reveal how radical Islam uses moral relativism to accomplish their political goals in the US.

I am a Evangelical Christian who has lived for almost 10 years in the Muslim world and was often disapointed with Dr Wagner's analysis. Although he was often right in the big picture, many times he was either uninformed or disengenious in the way he presented the details.

His book is a perfect example of one of the Muslims main criticisms of Western Christian leaders, that we twist things to our advantage and whenever there was any doubt present the people of Muhammad in the worst light possible.

I would not recommend this book to people who do not already have a solid grasp of Islam and its peoples, or one will come away with a distorted view.

Every American should read this book. Perhaps this book should be shared with both Christians and Muslims in order to enlighten all of us.

The text is well written and very educational. I found it revealing and shocking. I was amazed by Mr. Wagner's written play-by-play of world events that were actually happening as I turned each page. Everyone needs to understand the depths of the Muslim religion and the details of this relegion's "megastrategy".

It is most troubling that we in the West, particularly Americans, are so naive.

In a culture that seems to be embracing the press release, sanitized, version of Islam, this book reveals the truth with balance and truth and without hate.

Read entire review at AUTHOR'S CHOICE REVIEWS http://come.to/bookreviews

As a historical costumer by trade, I had borrowed this book from a local library so often that buying my own copy just made sense. It covers all classes of dress from peasant to noble in Medieval Europe,focused primarily on the area around Prague. This book has also been used by family as a resource for research papers due to its detailed historical data. Our medieval re-enactment society has used its armor & weapons data to base some of our armor & weapons upon to use in battle re-enactments.
To anyone seeking detailed, documented data regarding Medieval European dress, armor & weapons, I highly recommend this book.

I especially like this book because it's almost the only one that gives information about Bohemian clothing and weapons. I'm a costumer, so the costume section is much more interesting to me than the weapon section, but I think this book gives quite a lot of information about weapons, there is quite a number of paintings and sources they came from. As for the costume section text, it all guides you through the fashion change in the half of the 14th century to the 15th century and gives several examples and proofs. Nevertheless, there are some facts that seem to be a bit confusing, like stating that there were "detachable sleeves" without giving any proofs etc.

Heaps of pictures, particularly good for people interested in 14th and 15th century eastern european stuff.

This book contains an enormous amount of drawings, most from the bible of King Wenceslas and a variety of others. The book covers many items of medieval life from 1350 to 1450, like the title promises and then some. The drawings are not so great, but most are provided with backgound information, dates, who the person was and from which source it may have been taken. This book has been hard to find and I can recommend it to anybody who is interested in recreating the middle ages.

I've seen some of the originals these images are taken from and they are quite well done. As the drawings are from art works they are not as detailed as some costume books so be carefull if using them as references for garment making. A great idea to have a wide range of weapons, clothing and armour in one book.

This new edition of Peter Viereck's classic is very gratifying in that it has stood the test of time. Prophetic when it was published before the war, wise and insightful when I first read it in the sixties. Even more interesting forty years later. This is one of the few intellectual historians whose autobiography I would loved to read.

This book has a sweeping scope that can initially seem impressive. Until you fact-check Viereck's claims, especially his citations. This was no genuine exploration of the origins of Nazi ideas, "the roots of the Nazi mind". This was a polemicist with an extremely conservative cultural, religious and political agenda, smearing with a proto-Nazi tag those aesthetic and cultural movements that he happens to dislike.

Viereck's main target was the romantic movement of the 19th century, especially but not only Richard Wagner. Although Viereck wrote in the manner of a moralist condemning the romantics from on high, his agenda led him into certain failings of his own. His portrayal of "Father Jahn" and other figures bear false witness, and he commits academic sins like altering texts, inventing fictitious works, misleading quotation, and the like.

Basically Viereck's story was that the National Socialist flame was lit by Friedrich Jahn, who supposedly influenced the early German romantics, Fichte, Herder and so on, who then passed the torch to Wagner, who synthesised their evil ideas into a fully-fledged Nazi philosophy with all pieces complete, from Führer-principle to Holocaust, which Hitler then picked up and applied.

This is nonsense. First, the historical Friedrich Jahn was neither a proto-Nazi nor an especially important figure. Viereck truthfully called Jahn a German nationalist, which sounds sinister because of 20th century history, but glossed over the fact that Jahn's nationalism came at a time when the German states were occupied, ruled and plundered by foreign armies under Napoleon. To be a nationalist under those circumstances was to resist tyranny, not promote it.

Viereck elides the fact that Jahn was an outspoken democrat who insisted that French rule should be replaced by a democratic, independent and unified Germany. I feel no defensiveness towards Jahn; though no proto-Nazi he was an antisemite with insufficient other merits to balance that fact. But misrepresentation is irritating.

Viereck greatly exaggerates Jahn's importance. Jahn founded his Turnverein (gymnastics organisation) movement in 1811 and lost control of it with his imprisonment in 1819, and though he remained generally respected until his death in 1852, he exercised precious little influence. I've looked for references to Jahn in the work of the German romantics, and found only a satirical _attack_ on Jahn in an 1823 play by the romantic playwright Joseph von Eichendorff.

Viereck's portrait of the early German romantics defames admirable people, brotherhood-of-man democrats and liberals like Herder. Fichte is less admirable, but is also utterly misrepresented. Even those German Romantics who did lose their liberalism in old age didn't turn to any form of radical rightwingery that could be called proto-Nazi. They reverted to conservative Catholicism and monarchism.

Viereck's attack on Wagner illustrates his method. For example Viereck's first, 1941, edition of this book was the first text to frame Wagner by quoting the concluding words of "Judaism in Music" while - without alerting the reader - omitting Wagner's key words, "for then we shall be one and indivisible", in order to hide the fact that Wagner was calling for assimilation. This deception has been much imitated since.

(Viereck also brings in additional words from another Wagner essay. Several of Viereck's supposed Wagner quotes are actually mosaics assembled by Viereck from fragments of Wagner text. Wagner was undoubtedly a disgusting antisemite; Viereck's damning quotes from Cosima's _Diaries_ are real enough. Though selective; he does not cite passages where Wagner defends Jews from antisemitic attacks, or says he would no longer write against the Jews. And Wagner called for assimilation, unlike some of his contemporaries who really were proto-Nazis.)

Viereck claimed that Wagner's call for the founding of a people's army, in his "The Revolution" essay, was "a dream akin to what Röhm in 1934 envisaged for his Storm Troopers." But Wagner's text called for the army to be under the control of a democratically elected government. Did Viereck really not know the difference between Storm Troopers in a Nazi state, and an army accountable to an elected government?

Viereck also claimed that Wagner invented the Führer-principle. You'll find no such idea in Wagner, since Wagner was a young anarchist who eventually drifted as far right as supporting constitutional monarchy. So Viereck claimed that when Wagner used "a number of other terms, especially 'hero', 'folk-king' and 'Barbarossa'", he really meant "Führer". Viereck pioneered the technique of claiming that if Wagner's words don't support your conspiracy theory, then the words must be in a secret code. Thus anything can be said to mean any old thing, making "proving" a case much easier.

Viereck also invented a Wagner essay called "Heroism", which apparently called for racial purity under a dictatorship. There is no such Wagner essay, nor any Wagner essay that ever called for either racial purity or dictatorship. Wagner's clearest late statement on political systems, "State and Religion", advocated constitutional monarchy, the monarch exercising a symbolic function above politics, while political parties of "men of equal rights" contended for office.

Wagner did write, in an essay called "Heroism and Christianity", that there was no such thing as a German race and that Europeans should get used to racial intermingling, explicitly advocating racial equality "under a universal moral concord, such as only Christianity can bring about."

Is "Heroism and Christianity" related to Viereck's fictitious "Heroism" essay? Hard to say. Still, Viereck, who writes from a rightwing Christian worldview, needed to insist that the late Wagner was anti-Christian, though the essays and _Diaries_ show this is quite untrue. This can have comic results, as when Viereck used an anti-Christian remark by the young Wagner to prove that _Parsifal_, written decades later, must be anti-Christian. It may be that Viereck, with his own agenda, was embarrassed by the words "and Christianity" from Wagner's "Heroism and Christianity" title, so he "disappeared" them, along with the actual content of that essay.

Summary: This book has been tremendously influential, especially in its earlier editions. But it is a sustained piece of academic misrepresentation, and its influence has been pernicious and regrettable.


Laon

_Metapolitics: From Wagner and the German Romantics to Hitler by Peter Viereck was one of the earliest books written during the World War to show the influence of Wagner on the thinking of Hitler. Previously it had been believed that Nietzsche's amoralistic thinking had played a larger role in the development of Hitler's Third Reich. However, as Viereck shows in this book, it was indeed Wagner who was the antisemite (and one of the most virulent antisemites even prior to the coming of Hitler).

This edition put out by Transaction publishers of _Metapolitics_ is expanded not only to cover the influence of German Romanticism on Hitler (which preceded Wagner himself), but also to include a new introduction and several appendices on Albert Speer (Hitler's architect of the Third Reich), Count Claus von Stauffenberg (the aristocrat who tried to assassinate Hitler), the poet George Heym, and the poet Stefan George and his circle.

In the letters of Richard Wagner is included a letter from an admirer and ardent nationalist which states: "To be genuinely German, politics must soar to metapolitics. The latter is to commonplace pedestrian politics as metaphysics is to physics." Metapolitics as defined by Viereck is the type of political thought serving as inspiration for Hitler and his Third Reich regime.

The book begins with a discussion of German Romanticism and its influence on Hitler. For Viereck, the Third Reich may be perceived in some sense as German Romanticism writ large. The book also discusses the influence of "Father" Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, a German nationalist in the 1800's, on the storm troopers and on Volkish nationalism in general. The book next moves on to discussing the case of Wagner. Many of Wagner's operatic pieces can be seen as allegories for different components of his metapolitical thinking. For example, it has been suggested that certain characters (the dwarves and the dragon) represent capitalists or Jews within his operas. The book subsequently discusses Houston Stewart Chamberlain whose racialist tracts served as inspiration for Hitler. Also, the book includes several chapters on Alfred Rosenberg, the official Nazi philosopher. Rosenberg was also influenced by German Romanticism and his understanding of history proved particularly virulent. Viereck opposed Christian morality to Rosenberg's neo-paganism.

In sum, this book presents an interesting discussion of some of the precursors of the Third Reich. Both German Romanticism and Richard Wagner played a large part in the development of the thinking of Hitler, and also in many of his primary proponents and Nazi fellow travelers.

This transaction reprint from 1941 is a classic chestnut and still reads well as one of the first analyses of the sources of fascist ideology. The case against the Romantics, and such as Fichte, is always important, although it is open to challenge. We can find the earlier sources, but no simple causal sequence--and yet...
As Nietzsche well knew Wagner's spiritual odyssey was a strange one and we see the attempt at high tragedy itself turning into a tragedy, irony indeed.
One of those books... Significant and lively reading with a 'genealogy' on the mark.

Tom Lehrer a few decades back satirically warned us about the march of 'the Folk Song Army'. He was lampooning the social radicals of America in the early 1960s. Maybe his warning came too late for Germany which had it's own folk song army to deal with.

Recently deceased Peter Viereck is something of an interesting character. His father, George Sylvester Viereck, possibly the Kaiser's illegitimate grandson, argued the pro-German case in America during Woodrow Wilson's run up to war. By all accounts his Great War oppositionism was both principled and loyal to America. After Versailles however GSV became more radical in his pro-Germanism and was eventually imprisoned as a German agent during World War Two. He also broke with his two sons around this time, both of whom served in the US Army with one dying in the Anzio landings, and the other, Peter, working for the Army Psychological Warfare Division.

Peter Viereck sees Germany as uniquely torn between two souls, in short, a western looking, european and Christian civilisation soul and a northern looking Volkish Kultur soul. Goethe versus Wagner. Considering his family history perhaps the conflict struck home.

Peter Viereck wrote "Metapolitics" whilst a Harvard undergraduate. Not bad work for a twenty four year old! He went on to an academic career and earned the 1949 Pullitzer Prize for poetry. A life long political conservative he was an ardent critic of McCarthyism in the 1950s.

The term 'metapolitics' is derived from Wagner, similar to 'geopolitics', it refers to the German nationalists' metaphysical vision as it approached cultural and spiritual issues, where 'geopolitics' looked at the intersection of geography and politics. The book was one of the first in English to explore the Wagnerian roots of Nazism. Wagner was not only a great composer but something of a radical political pamphleteer. Despite having jewish promoters and agents Wagner blamed a jewish conspiracy for is works not being as popular as he imagined. Viereck explores not only the cultural roots of nazism but the appeal of nazism to what he calls Germany's "Greenwich Village Warriors", alienated bohemians in exile in their own hometown. And then there is the unusual number of 'failed' artists drawn to the nazi movement.

Viereck's analysis starts with Ludwig Jahn, who Viereck recognises as a pioneer German "Volkish" nationalist, a forerunner of nazism but perhaps one who would be appalled by the later developments of his thought. It proceeds via Wagner, the Wagnerians and moves on to Hitler's "official philosopher" Rosenberg.

He speculates Wagner may also be appalled at how his ideas were used but in Wagner's case, he was truly a proto-nazi, there is a stronger chain of responsibility than in Jahn's case, despite some minor retreat from full bore Volkism towards the end of his career. In any case , the first generation of 'Wagnerites', including family members (for example, the in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain) were not just proto-nazis but the real thing, indeed taking Hitler into their circle as "Uncle Wolf" to the children.

Viereck explores the development of Volkish German romanticism, and he doesn't condemn all threads of romanticism, in laying a popular and intellectual foundation for the later growth of nazism. He also explores the role if Rosenberg and the "Realpolitlik" pioneers, Fichte, Hegel and Treitschke in the development of nazi ideas. Viereck notes the attempts by the Nazis to appropriate Nietzche, something some of the philosopher's family promoted, but highlights Nietzche's prescient warnings against the rise of antisemitic German nationalism.

Viereck's analysis helps get us beyond the simplistic and misleading Verailles / inflation / depression analyses of the origins of nazism. Much of Rosenberg's "Myth of the Twentieth Cenury" was written before Versailles and the worst of the Great Depression did not hit Germany until after the Nazis had already emerged as Germany's biggest political party. Viereck provides some unfortunately brief debunking of economic determinist explanations of Nazism, focusing mainly on the how Hitler double crossed and ultimately expropriated his former sponsor, the industrialist Thysen. To his credit he does recognise that the allies were not guiltless in feeding the bear, besides the well known condemnations of Chamberlainian appeasement, there was the British Hunger blockade in World War 1 and the French occupation of the Rhineland, all of which undermined the liberal west's claim to moral leadership, at least in the eyes of the German public, when dealing with Hitler.

Viereck devotes about a chapter or so to another idea that needs more exposure. He says we tend to overestimate the otherwise rootless Weimar Republic. It's very foundation may have been something of a strategem by Germany's military leaders to avoid popular responsibility for defeat, obtain a softer peace and pave the way for a militarist renewal down the track. Certainly the artifice of circumventing Versailles armament restrictions was well practiced before Hitler assumed power. And his assumption of power was aided by old school militarists who retained pivotal positions in the army and bureaucracy throughout the Weimar period where they behaved like a government-in-exile at home.

Still the core of Viereck's book is in analysing the 'spiritual' dimension of nazism. This can be easily forgotten, for example, nazi racism, although it did attract a corps of racial scientists, their role, however repulsive, was more opportunist and parasitic to the whole enterprise. Nazi racialism, as expounded by Rosenberg was not even a corrupted version of darwinism, it was essentially a romantic attachment to 'blood'.

Readers should check the various editions of Metapolitics available. I have the 1941 edition which comes with excellent appendices that include correspondence with Wagner scholar Thomas Mann as well as some reviews from the period. I understand the later editions include more supplementary material. Also readers should hunt online for Peter Viereck's 2004 essay entitled "Metapolitcs Revisited" which provides some additional insights and further developments that I am sure readers of the original volume would appreciate.

The subject of this book is probably one of the most written about in software industry.

The first three chapters is authors' view on just about every thing in software development including a brief rundown of programming languages (with healthy dose of authors' anecdote), and (somewhat biased) a view of development methodologies including Agile.

The rests are introduction to FSM, discussions about Moore and Mealy machines, design considerations and case studies. Finally in Chap 10 is about the StateWorks, the software they're selling (By purchasing this book you're entitled to a copy of their light version of StateWorks software. I didn't evaluate the software)

The book takes pragmatic approach to design and analysis of state machine. There are a lot of practical advises, considerations that could only have come from many years of experience applying the principle in practice. On the other hand, I don't think the first three chapters serve any purpose to the entirety of the book. Thus I'm giving a four star.

I completely agree with the review by John Nash, these authors are experts in state machines and they have some very good info and shared experience regarding modeling problems using FSM. However, the authors are extremely opinionated and biased, they frequently trash any method that doesn't 100% comply with their own thinking even if the method is almost exactly the same as theirs save a few small details.

The first few chapters of the book are an overview of the programming landscape in general, and it is clear that the authors know a great deal about some subjects and have good insight to share. On other subjects however it is very obvious that they have not really delved into what they are talking about yet they make broad generalizations, often negative unless it is a technology employed by their product, StateWorks.
Also, they present StateWorks as a panacea for all software ails, not just embedded development or control systems, while it is plainly obvious that this is not the case.

This book has 17 chapters, only 3 of them (7-9) and a few of the appendices are worth reading for the general reader. If you are intending to use StateWorks then a few more of the chapters would be useful.

This book is excellent for making the reader understand how a complete software application can be easily controlled using state machines, simplifying the architecture. The writing can be hard to follow sometimes and the authors make claims about areas they are not expert in that are clearly false but when it comes to state machines and developing applications using them, they clearly know what they are talking about. Just skip the non-state machine parts of the book.

After 20 years designing embedded systems (with no OS), I faced several thoughts in how to implement a serious and flexible way to deal with small, medium and big size softwares.I'm sure the one of most important disconery I got is the use of FSM/FSA.It makes your sw clear and visible, without tricks wich only the author can undesrstand them.This book covers this subject with very simple and direct approaching, making clear that there are not a MAGIC and COLLORED way to develop a safe and robust software, unless you focus and udesrstand the behavior of you are controlling, wich is tottaly feasible and confortable if you apply FSM to accomplish it.The desmystification of ilusions based on new ideas wich are not new ideas, leads the programmer to see software as it is: a not easy task wich must be done by programmers and not hobbyists.Of course', I'm not talking about to control bips and leds. Very good book...very good and experienced writers...excelent for "embedded guys", like me...wich develop Ethernet TCPIP stack , GPRS TCPIP stacks, applications tasks based systems, only using the good and powerfull C language

I am not a computer scientist by profession but have worked in the systems and networking area for some years now and always had an interest in software engineering. The book opens up a whole new perspective for a hobbyist programmer who is self taught. I will never look at software the same and have changed my way of thinking when it comes to developing programs. This will be a reference book on my bookshelf for a long time.