Wang Books

Antigone is simply a masterpiece. I read and study the book in highschool (in France) and I really loved it. The English translation is good enough. This is a French classic, extremely powerful, and yet, written in simple words.

I have read many times Antigone in its original version, and found it to be one of the most beautiful modern theater plays. The words are simple but so true, it's like you can hear the little voice of Antigone fighting against the rest of the world, fighting for her version of the truth, fighting for and against her love at the same time. Absolutely beautiful...

hey people if you wanna read a good book this is robably the worst choice!! i would reccomend other books to you by the same author.

I was first introduced to Jean Anouilh during a script analysis class, where I was required to do a scene design. My professor recommended Jean Anouilh's "Antigone" to me and I took his advice. Much to my surprise, "Antigone," set in France after the Nazi invasion, quickly became my favorite play ever. "Romeo and Jeanette" takes place in a poor family's house in France and is highly amusing. Set in the middle of a French train station with a defunct acting troupe and the poor family who runs the cafe there, "Eurydice" is quite entertaining. Anouilh definately puts a different spin on the typical love story. I highly recommend this book to anybody who's looking for something different to read, or maybe looking for a spin on the classics.

Did a study of various versions of Sophocles' *Antigone* for a highschool project last year, and used this version of Anouilh's play. I know some French and find it to be a fairly faithful translation into very persuasive English, and a wonderful read both as a version of Sophocles' original and as a political adaptation, used to speak about France under a Nazi regime. After finishing Antigone, I read the other four plays in the book for the fun of it, and thouroughly enjoyed Eurydice and Romeo and Jeannette. Anouilh seems to obsess over young love, loss of innocence, and the ideals of static perfection in a changing world; these themes seem to hold the five plays together. In my opinion, his work is worthy of a broad audience and broad acclaim, and this edition of the plays is a very decent set of translations.

I'm a beginner at putting music and pictures together to create a CD, but this book makes the program that I have much easier to understand.

I look forward to a long dog-eared relationship with it :-)

This was an excellent transaction. I'll return for more.

Don't waste your money on this book! If you want to know how to use Nero, view the tutorials on their web site. Once you view a tutorial you have a whole new set of hurdles - that of trying to get Nero to work. Good Luck.

Book arrived in wonderful condition, sooner than I had expected and is a great help to me.

A diverse portfolio of capabilities centred around writing and reading CDs and DVDs. Most operating systems for desktops now let you write a CD or DVD. But typically this is for any type of data. You certainly want this ability.

But there are special types of data, described by Wang, that are very important to many users. When the data consists of audio or video, in various standard encodings. Nero 6 is devoted to the easy handling of these types. For example, it has a simple Wave Editor, to edit sound files. With specialised abilities like a 6 band equaliser and being able to speed up or slow down an audio recording. Wisely, Wang skips the underlying theory, which is heavy on fast Fourier transforms and extended manipulations in frequency space. He shows how you can straightforwardly use techniques described at a musician's level of decision making.

Wang also talks about how Nero can play DVD movies on your computer. Granted this is an impressive ability. But personally, I'd pass on this. If I watch a DVD, I'd prefer it on a real TV screen, and so should you. But undoubtedly, some readers will thrill to watching DVDs on their computers.

This book is a must for those who have read Night and Dawn. Night and Dawn were both extremely powerful, but Day truly was the highlight of Wiesel's wonderful trilogy. A must for everyone of all faiths.

The books Dawn(Second book in trilogy of Night) and Day(Third book in trilogy of Night) are written by Elie Wiesel and they are both about life after the holocaust which was the worst thing that could ever happen in my opinion.

Dawn is the second book in the trilogy Night by Elie Wiesel. Elisha is the main character in this book and he is actually living as a terrorist in British-controlled Palistine. The scary part is that he is ordered to kill an English officer. He can't choose between horrors of the past and dilemmas is the present. You have to read to find out what he does because I don't want to give it away.

The book Day is the last book about the Holocaust by Elie Wiesel and it is a very strong ending to the three books I think. One of the main questions that Elie asks himself throughout the book is "Is it ever possible for Holocaust survivors to create new lives for themselves without remembering their old ones?" and I personaly think that it is a great question to ask yourself because it might be possible to but it is probably really hard to do that if you want to forget your past but remember people in it.

All three of the books should give you an idea of how lucky you are to live in this time period and give you a strong idea of what life used to be like and what life is like for Holocaust survivors now.

Day is superior to both Night and Dawn, the first two books in Elie Wiesel's Night trilogy. However, six aspects of Day really bug me:

First, Day's plot lacks cohesion and is out of chronological order, unlike Night and Dawn. The heart of a novel should either consist of either solid storytelling and an advancing plot or delicately crafted interwoven stories. In Day, it is instead largely a jumble of disparate memories - typically of women in steamy situations. This is not conducive to seamless communication.

Second, Wiesel originally wrote The Accident separately from Dawn and Night. As such, it is the least connected to the other two books. He decided at some point to change the title to Day, tack it on to his first two books, and call the resulting mumbo-jumbo a "trilogy." This is sloppy, self-centered, and ultimately irritating because now students at my school are required to read all three volumes.

Third, my same old complaint about Wiesel's writing holds true in Day: too much crying! I find it absurd how many times people cry in the Night trilogy - readers of Night and Dawn (as many of you readers this review are) can attest to this. Rather than making his readers more sympathetic to the feelings of his characters, Wiesel conditions them to indifference with this blatant overuse of sadness.

Fourth, Wiesel's comparisons in Day are too often uncreative at best, stale at worst. Too often he compares one woman to another, typically his mother or grandmother. Comparing one woman to another does nothing. These comparisons would be acceptable once or twice, but, one's patience wears thin after reading paragraph after paragraph of them. Wiesel should keep in mind that he is writing to other people who did not grow up with these women. Much more interesting and effective would be to compare the women to romantic inanimate objects such as the sun, the moon, or a budding rose.

Fifth, Wiesel shies away from many chances to show us a lurking literary prowess throughout Day. These opportunities crop up whenever somebody "talked for hours." It's hard to imagine that these terse, two-dimensional characters are really capable of speaking for hours without seeing the monologue on paper. Why does Wiesel hold these soliloquies back from us?

Sixth, and last, Wiesel doesn't vary his sentence structure enough, in Day or either of the other books in his Night trilogy. This is a run-of-the-mill high school error, and I'm surprised that neither he, nor Oprah, nor the legions of devoted oprah&wiesel fans pick up on this. His short, choppy sentences should be reserved those rare pulse-pounding moments, but Wiesel uses them everywhere.

I will quote from the text to illustrate my points:

Kathleen's face was twisted with pain. She looked like a sorceress who has lost her true face from having put on too many masks. A great fire burned around her. Suddenly she cried out and began to sob. My mother, I had never seen my mother cry. (p.74)

Kathleen. Tears were coming to her eyes. My mother didn't cry. At least not when other people were there. She only offered her tears to God.
Kathleen looked a little like my mother; she had her high forehead, and her chin had the same pure lines. But Kathleen wasn't dead. And she was crying. (p.89)

These selections are the concluding paragraphs of two back-to-back chapters. And yet they say the same thing. That's not any kind of plot advancement that I've ever heard of. I hung my head upon reading the following, though I agree with it:

Nothing is more sacred than life, or healthier, or greater, or more noble. To refuse life is a sin; it's stupid and mad. You have to accept life, cherish it, love it, fight for it as if it were a treasure, a woman, a secret happiness. (p.67)

This "profound" realization flies in the face of what the narrator previously thought - that life wasn't worth fighting for. However, I knew that "life is all we have" before I even knew who Wiesel was. I know we humans must simultaneously struggle for our lives while still finding time to cherish them. I don't need an emotionally-estranged Holocaust-survivor narrator to take me by the hand and lead me through the way he discovered that truth, which is essentially the only task that Day accomplishes for society. Day certainly doesn't make one happier, unless one derives pleasure from knowing one can write better than a Nobel Peace Prize winner. I cannot speak for how this book affects other readers, however. Perhaps this book will save someone from suicide someday?

I will make you suffer though one more irresistible passage before I quit:

In the beginning she didn't cry. We were on the same level. We dealt with each other like equals. We were free. Each one free from himself and free from the other. When I didn't feel like keeping a date, I didn't. She did the same. And neither of us was angry or even hurt. When I didn't talk for a whole night, she didn't try to make me explain. The familiar question asked by lovers, "What are you thinking about?" didn't enter our conversations. Hardness had become our religion. Nothing was said that wasn't essential. We tried to convince each other that we could live, hope, and despair, alone. Each kiss could have been the last. At any moment the temple could have collapsed. The future didn't exist since it was useless. At night we made love silently, almost like our own witnesses. A stranger watching us in the street could easily have taken us for enemies. Rightly so, perhaps. True enemies aren't always the ones who hate each other. (p.90)

I prefer that my novels not read like Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Gyula arrives near the end of the book, providing the comic relief and fog-cutting outsider's insight that the rest of Wiesel's Night trilogy needed so desperately to keep from being the bore that it was. In Gyula's laughing light and portrait-mirror, the narrator sees himself for who he truly has become and discovers that he needs to change his outlook. Day was a more satisfying novel than either Night or Dawn in part due to this resolution and promised change in attitude.

I have concluded my reading of the Night trilogy, and of Wiesel, for good. I can't wait to discuss this trilogy in English class - fur will fly, for sure, as most readers of Wiesel whom I've met become insta-fans. I will conclude by saying this - if you enjoyed Night and Dawn, then Day will be right up your alley.

I disagree with the other comments. Of course, this may not be for everyone. It was full of self and ramblings. I, however, felt very much connected to this story. Especially with all its confusion. I think that was the point. He wrote this story so beautifully, I couldn't put it down.

There is not much to this novel but it's effective when you finish it. When I was done the book i thought what really happend what was the point of the book and I came to a cunclusion it's about life and to see how a memory will haunt you the rest of your life and it show us if we can forgive god and to see if we belive in god. Not much ahppend through out the book I enjoyed the holicost flashback. Overall it's not as good as night and I havent read dawn yet so ic an not say but it's enjoyable.

Bruce Levine's book, Half Slave and Half Free, is written about the divisions in America from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War. The slave based economy of the South and the free labor economy of the North and their differences that ultimately lead America to war. In the revised edition of Mr. Levine's book he has written a new preface and afterward and bibliography. He has added information based on new information made available since the book was initially published in 1992. Levine does not use footnotes, but does explain all of his references by chapter in a new bibliography essay.

In the first five chapters Levine discusses the history of slavery and how the southern slave owners felt about their property. The evolution of crops grown in America, especially the South and how slaves were used to farm them is discussed at length. Levine also speaks of the population statistics of the South and says that only one quarter of the white population of the South are slave holders. The typical slave owner of the period, owned five or six slaves and land valued at approximately $3,000. (pp. 21)

Also in the first five chapters Levine discusses the North and the social and economy setting there before the Civil War. He speaks on how the average household and farm is managed with the families providing most of the labor. Levine also explains the fact that many of the poorer white laborers in the North were put or put their selves in bondage as "Bondsmen" to pay their passage. Typically seven years of labor were required then they were set free and established farms or businesses for themselves.

In chapter six Levine describes the beginning of the antislavery movement. The slaves stated that they had to lie to live. The resistance that the slaves used was very covert, deliberate clumsiness and stupidity, making the overseers explains the simplest task over and over. The women would even feign a pregnancy to get out of the fields for a while. The Planters stated they could never get the truth out of their slaves. (pp. 145)

From the antislavery movement Levine speaks about the various issues of allowing slavery into the new states and territories. Southern leaders in Congress such as John C. Calhoun leading other Carolinians against the federal government. Tariffs on imported manufactures were the main issue. Calhoun stated that the South was left with only three choices: (1) assert the power in the reserved rights of the states - that is, "nullify the federal tariffs; (2) submit to have their domestick (sic) institutions exhausted; or (3) in the end be forced to rebel. (pp.162) South Carolina was the most sensitive to any issues against slavery for it had in its borders some of the largest plantations in the South.

The first half of this book explains the point of view of both the South and the North about slavery. Mr. Levine drew upon many sources for his information and in this edition has updated much of his information. The book explains the history and social history behind both sides of the slavery argument. The second half of the book is dedicated to explaining the steps that were taken to dissolve the union. Half Slave and Half Free arguments and facts seem to make the disunion more predestined than it really was. The afterward that is included in the revised edition analyzes some of the reasons for the war. It also presents Lincoln's and Davis views on the war.

Mr. Levine's book is a very worthwhile read for history students, primarily in college, both undergraduate and graduate students. It is well organized and presents the facts and analysis of the events that took place and led America to Civil war.

Rarely, do I get excited about classroom readings however, Bruce Levine's Half Slave and Half Free is an insightful look at a pivtoal time in the history of the United States.
Levine's argument in the text is that the deep regional divide which came to inspire the Civil War, was not founded on the principle of slavery but rather the contrast in the socioeconomic structures.
An excellent look at the post revolutionary and pre Civil War United States.

This is a wonderful book that is great in the classroom. It is readable with terrific statistics to show the divergences between the North and the South before the Civil War. I have used it in class and my students got a lot out of it.

levine does a good job on this book.
his research is pretty well. he documents
that the civil war was just about an
economic cycle, a cycle of money for the
white southern man, the rich man to be precise.
i like this book, because there is an inner world
that usually never gets talked about, but levine
proves that the cycle of racism and hatred by the
white man toward the black female and male were
intense.
literature is highly recommended.

This is a compact, yet thorough, consideration of U. S. history from the American Revolution to the Civil War. In the acknowledgements Levine states plainly that his book is a "synthesis." The chapters themselves are organized around themes, and are carefully arranged throughout the book serving as building blocks for Levine's argument.

Levine's principal argument is that the essential conflict at the heart of antebellum America is between a free-labor system and a slave-labor system. And it is these systems that subsequently organize and order virtually every aspect of each section-economic, social, cultural, political. In both North and South ideas, beliefs, and mentalities are bundled together and serve to link various, and varied, groups within each section. Consequently, by the outbreak of the Civil War there is widespread support in both the Union and the Confederacy. This book is sometimes densely written, but Levine succeeds in fusing labor history and social history. His bibliography indicates he has drawn on a vast array of sources, tapping into many schools of thought. The argument exists principally in the first half of the book. Subsequently the second half becomes something of a "prelude to disunion" narrative.

Elliott Gorn has written an excellent biography of Mary Harris Jones, better known as Mother Jones. Gorn has applied critical analysis to his meticulous and quite impressive research--this was not an easy woman to pin down, and Gorn has managed with limited materials to convey the essence of her life. In doing so, he tells three simultaneous stories, all significant for a broad view of American history. First is the story of Mary Jones herself. Her life was both tragic and triumphant, and Gorn treats it with sensitivity and a light touch, conjecturing at times to what she must have felt, but never presuming to be inside her head or heart. The second story is the story of the American labor movement, particularly that of the United Mine Workers, and their struggle against BIG CAPITAL. Gorn does not overemphasize the uneven nature of this struggle, nor does he dwell on the massive injustices against the mine workers by mine owners, coal interests, and even the Federal Government. He gives it to us straight. The facts speak for themselves. But Gorn presents the facts in the context of Jones's life and her struggle, and never preaches. He lets the history--a history too seldom told--be revealed through the contours of Jones's life. Which leads to the third story: the story of American self-invention. Mary Jones invented herself, and went to great lengths to sustain an identity that would allow her, as a woman and a mother, to become one of the toughest and most feared labor organizers in American history--not a normal or accepted role for women, generally during her lifetime. Throughout these three stories, Gorn engages the notion of gender in late Victorian and early twentieth century US history. This, too, he does with a subtle hand and a light touch, totally without jargon. The book is thoroughly enjoyable, accessible to all readers, and interesting in its own right. Plus it sheds light on important processes in American history. I highly recommend it.

This biography recalls early American radicalism and the efforts of one Mary Jones, a force in the early labor movement. She traveled throughout the country lobbying for civil rights, labor laws and basic worker's rights: her career, life, and long-ranging effects on American labor are recounted in a lively coverage.

Elliott J. Gorn has written a well-researched biography of one of Labor's greatest spokesperson. Gorn writes a complete book on Mother Jones, Mary Jones, and even Mary Harris -- the person AND the persona. His objectivity allows him to correct Mother Jones' revisionist history of her own life and her achievements, even as he praises her deep committment and her probable rationale for exaggerating her achievements. One slight criticism is that Gorn on occasion follows one aspect of the Labor movement (or Mother's) struggle, then goes back in time to pick up another thread. In his great favor, though, Gorn details the incorrect details and unfair attacks of other authors, both of her day and later. If you read only one book on Mother Jones, this should be it.

A lot of good detail is presented in this biography, a lot of moral force worth bringing to our attention.

Many of us are curently such spoiled and cowardly workers that we need historians like Ellliott J. Gorn to give us a dose of a truth that most of our employers, politicians and media don't want us to be exposed to. Is "American Idol" on? I suppose we do need someone else to shake up.

From the historical record, it may not have been possible to uncover more of what made Mary Jones into Mother Jones: what it seems, as a historian and not a psychologist, Gorn has wisely done is to show how the conditions of Mary Jone's times presented her with challenges which she responded to bravely. You or I may have dodged the same challenges but not Mother Jones. It is well worth Mary Jones and Gorn showing us what is possible.

Mother Jones eschewed religion, socialist parties, and the IWW. If without an answer, she demanded answers of those who we might have thought could help us. She knew what common folk were capable of but she also insisted on leaders being leaders and not servants of the rich.

Hard times are upon us. Globalization and war machinery of unprecended strength and concentrations of wealth threaten all working people, whether in the United States, Mexico, India, China, Uganda, Peru, or Antarctica. Mother Jones did not cater to national or religious boundaries. I hope I can rouse myself from my reading of this book as I suggest you do. We have hope if we don't delay.

Mother Jones was a character of mythic proportions, created by the all-too-human Mary Harris Jones. The author takes the position that while many of the details of her life - as portrayed in Mother's speeches, writings and autobiography - are impossible to verify or demonstrably false, they stood for a larger truth.

Gorn obviously has sympathy for Jones and does a good job of putting her life in its context, but this book is no easy read. It is written in the dry verbiage and cadences of academia.

An unequivocally positive addition to the library of labor history, but don't try to read it at night before bed unless your aim is to hasten sleep.

My New Mac: 52 Simple Projects to Get You Started
IS PRETTY GOOD FOR INFO
BUT THERE IS STILL 40% SHORT ON INFO
BUT IT IS MORE TECH INFO THAT IS NEEDED
ESP. CONNECTION PROBLEMS AND EMAILING

I'm a Macintosh tech. Just perusing the excerpt of this book available on Amazon, I found a couple errors. First, he says that pressing the power button will bring up the Shut Down dialog. This is only true of laptops and certain very old Macs which had the power button on the keyboard. All current non-laptops will by default just go to sleep if you press the power button.

He then recommends the keystroke combination "CTRL-OPTION-ESC" as a way to shut down your Mac if it is frozen. This too is incorrect. To begin with, that keystroke does nothing whatsoever. The keystroke he is looking for is "COMMAND-OPTION-ESC"... and even that keystroke doesn't shut down your Mac. Instead it brings up a list of programs you can force to quit.

Since it seems this book is targeted at beginners, every small error like these will cause considerable confusion and frustration. Whether the rest of the book is like this, I do not know, but felt a review might be helpful to someone. Best of luck!

The major alternative to PCs with the Windows OS is the Macintosh. "My New Mac" is a complete and comprehensive guide for anyone who wants to do everything they did on a Windows machine and more, using the popular alternative. With countless tips on organization, internet browsing, media creation and archiving, security and more, "My New Mac" is the ideal starter's manual, and even has a few tips veterans will find handy. Highly recommended for community library computer collections.

http://weblog.infoworld.com/geeks/archives/2008/06/my_new_mac.html
I wrote a review on this book for InfoWorld...let me say that this is a great book and was a great help in my migration from a PC to my new Mac. Mr. Wang has done a great job digging down deep and exposing some truly useful tips instead of bubble gum like too many newbie books.

/brian chee

This book came just in time...for my daughter, that is. She's a Graphic Arts major at a university in the Northwest and for some time, I've been trying to convince her to try working on a Mac. Please keep in mind, I'm not a Mac person. I do very well on my Ubuntu PCs, both at home and on the job, but I know that Macs are more or less the standard platform for the graphic design world. Fortunately for Jamie (my daughter), one of her uncles was willing to be generous and "donate" his MacBook to the cause (he was upgrading).

Jamie's MacBook and Wang's book arrived almost at the same time. Good thing too, because the first thing she wanted to do after firing it up, was to connect to our little WLAN and hit the Internet. If it was a Windows or Linux PC, I'd have said, "no problem", but where are things located on a Mac anyway?

That's where Wallace Wang's book comes in...to show me how. In the true tradition of that battle cry, "RTFM", I opened the pages and dove in. Ok, now what? Do I look for "wireless" or "network"? Finding things in the book was just like finding things on the Mac. Most people don't start with Chapter 1, page 1, and struggle to locate the power switch. Most people identify an area of personal interest and start from there. Jamie could figure out where the power switch was, so powering up the MacBook wasn't the issue. If it was, Project 1 (the book is divided into 52 "projects", rather than chapters) would have been great.

Actually, I solved the problem by playing with the various menus on the MacBook until I found what I needed. The only wireless information I could find in Wang's book was on Bluetooth, which is fine, but I don't use Bluetooth. Fortunately, my problem solving skills work just as well on a Mac as they do on Windows and Linux computers.

Next, Jamie wanted to be able to connect to her Yahoo mail account using the MacBook's onboard email utility, rather than just going through webmail. Fortunately, there is an abundant amount of information about this topic in Project 41, so all we really needed to know was what Yahoo calls their mail servers. Jamie can read as well as I can, so as she subsequently arrived at the various tasks she wanted to perform, accessing the MacBook and Wang's book and used the combination to get what she needed done.

I took the absence of her calling out "Dad!" as a positive sign that she was getting the hang of her new acquisition. I promised she could have the book permanently after I wrote the review, so the book on my desk is about to be transferred from me to her. The book has "magically" disappeared and reappeared in the last week or so, probably indicating that Jamie has been doing a bit of consulting.

My take on the book (not being the actual "driver" of the Mac), is that it has more than what the average person would need to know to become familiar with their Mac acquisition. I felt somewhat better trying to tackle some of Jamie's questions, knowing I had something concrete to consult. While the GUI isn't incredibly difficult, once you get used to it (it vaguely reminded me of KDE), it's not easy when you don't know how. Wang is a person who "knows how", so I was reassured on those occasions when I need a bit of help figuring something out.

I was a little torqued that basic networking wasn't easily located in the book. I consider that task to be one of the top five things any user will want to know how to do the first hour they have their Mac in their possession. Whatever you may think of the merits of Bluetooth, it still isn't as common in the world as WLANs, yet, the words "network" and "WLAN" appear not at all in the Index. I found myself wondering how David Pogue's Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual would have compared (no, I've never reviewed it).

Don't get me wrong. Wang's book is a fine text, written with knowledge and wit. It's an easy read and for the most part, presents information in a very organized and linear fashion. The subtitle "52 Simple Projects to Get You Started" are 52 (more or less) common tasks the new Mac user will likely want to know how to do. That said, the writer of such a book isn't likely to be a new Mac user or a person who'll clearly remember what it was like to be a new user. As the clueless father of a new Mac user, I'd have liked it if the information I wanted was easier to find. Of course, with jillions and jillions of potential readers, how do you anticipate what each one will consider important first steps? I sympathize. As an author, I have to try to put myself into the shoes of my readers, just like any other writer. After all, the reader ultimately defines what they need out of a book, not the author or publisher.

[...]

Print Shop is fun and easy to use, but this book gives you some neat info (typical of Dummies books) that you probably won't learn just by trial and error. We use it a lot!

This book's copyright date is 2000!

There have been a number of new versions since then that Broderbund declares have new features etc.

That this book is so outdated should have been made clear in the advertisement.

This is a good book. I hate the name Dummies. No one is a dummy. Good directions easy to follow. Good all around book.

A great book. Explains everything so I can understand it. Very helpful in getting my new web site published. Expert help. The author was no
DUMMIE. Thanks for a wonderful book.

I was very pleased with this book. All the Dummie books that I've had are pretty easy to understand.

For the serious reader, very little time can be spent dealing with Daniels' literary diatribe. The title alone is explicit enough reason to doubt the seriousness with which the author attempts (again) to elucidate on the subject. Yet within these few pages, Daniels makes a valiant stand to proclaim injustices, to vindicate the victims, to show the world the innocence of a people. This is most surprising, considering Daniels' love of history.

I will focus on only one excerpt, on page 46, which exemplifies succinctly where the author stands:

"On February 19, 1942, a 'day of infamy' as far as the Constitution is concerned, Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which was the instrument by which just over 120,000 persons, two-thirds of them American citizens, were confined in concentration camps on American soil, in some cases for nearly four years... who were guilty of nothing other than being ethnically Japanese... surrounded by barbed wire and by troops whose guns were pointed at the inmates."

The Constitution is what Daniels seeks to uphold, but in doing so, he fails to see how that great document actually protected the people whom he feels were so discriminated against. The Constitution never was in danger of being trampled under the feet of those entrusted with its care. Indeed, the Constitution came out unscathed. Not a single case was brought by a person of Japanese ancestry (Nikkei) against the US Government that overturned its decrees. Convictions may have been set aside, but constitutionality was not. Liberty did not become a victim.

Daniels next turns to topple the authority of President Roosevelt, who was not only the longest serving, but one of the greatest Presidents the United States has ever had. It is at Roosevelt's feet he lays the charge that the President was to blame for the "incarceration" of so many innocent people -- unbelievably, shockingly, equating the President's action with the sudden and deliberate attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese Imperial forces.

Herein Daniels once again must acquiesce defeat. Not a single Japanese national nor American-born child of a Japanese national asked that Roosevelt be impeached for signing Executive Order 9066, for any sort of dereliction in his executive duties. It was just the opposite, for great was their sorrow when he died.

Next, Daniels fails in assessing the correct numbers. 120,000 Nikkei did not spend four years in relocation centers -- tens of thousands were gone within a year. Furthermore, close to 20,000 resident Nikkei were never in centers as they lived elsewhere in the country and were not affected by the evacuation order.

Daniels, then, fails in assessing the freedoms the Nikkei had at the centers by saying they were confined. They were never confined, but had the opportunity to leave the centers -- tens of thousands did, some spending only a few months there in their temporary quarters. Daniels dishonors those who were always free as Americans of Japanese descent.

Daniels favorite theme -- concentration camps (e.g. his book, "Concentration Camps USA") -- is his saddest tirade, relishing in showing how unjust, how barbaric American society was to the Nikkei by forcing them to live behind barbed wire, and threatening them daily with guns aimed at them.

Such haranguing has certainly had its effect on common sense, and historical correctness. There is no proof at all the assembly and relocation centers were incarceration centers of torture, starvation and psychological intimidation, and places of oppression from which not a single prisoner could escape. The authors insistence on using such terminology, no doubt, reveals just how bitter he himself is at America's history. He cannot admit that these centers were really places of refuge for its inhabitants.

Once again the author fails, most miserably, to prove his theory that these people were prisoners, incarcerated in concentration camps. Nothing was able to convince the Japanese Imperialists in Tokyo via the Spanish consular visits to the centers that they were camps of injustice. The centers were just the opposite, with plenty of nourishing food, suitable housing, medical care, education, and many other benefits. The records, and over 100,000 residents, attest to this fact. No resident ever attempted to escape; many happily and freely chose to remain at the centers, even going so far as to demand they not close.

The final point I touch upon is Daniels' use of the hackneyed phrase, "guilty of nothing other than being ethnically Japanese." A dangerous precedent is set here -- that non-US-citizen Japanese were on an equal basis with US-citizen Japanese. The author should know better. Immigration law will not bear his socialist idea of equality. The state of war with Japan did not bear this at all.

To give the Issei (non-US-citizen Japanese) equal status as an American citizen is to confound the very principles of citizenship. Were Daniels to promote his views with political backing, our country's polity would dissolve quickly. So then why does the author want to place the Issei and Nisei on the same level, entirely avoiding the truth that the Issei were enemy aliens, that we were at war with their homeland? There are ulterior motives lurking that only he can explain.

In conclusion, this short book is just another addition to Daniels' works on Japanese Americans which show his disgust with America's past, specifically what he perceives as its latent racism and abuse of civil rights. He purposely avoids any reference to intelligence documents which completely undermine his tenets, and instead relies on highly subjective sources and biased and flawed studies (e.g. "Personal Justice Denied" -- naturally, of course, as Daniels was historical consultant to this report).

In short, the material that Daniels presents adds nothing new. It is a rehash of the old re-interpretations and revisions of the wartime history about the Nikkei in the US during WWII -- those who suddenly became enemies of our United States and her leaders. It is also a vain attempt, in the name of civil rights, to exonerate the Nikkei and vilify US leadership.

Hopefully Daniels will come to his historically-correct senses and produce an untainted account of the people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast during WWII.

Roger Daniels presents us with a book that speaks not only to those of Japanese American ancestry, but to all Americans. It brings into question our civil liberties and freeedoms. The Japanese American relocation during WWI serves as the first time that the American government has violated the rights of an ethnic group (the 2nd and 3rd generation Japanese Americans) to which its Constitution had given citizenship. The Japanese American incarceration was an example of the Anglo American propensity to react against non-whites. Not only did it violate the spirit of the Constitution, but it ironically took place within a nation which was simultaneously fighting for the release of another ethnic minority, the Jews from concentration camps across Europe.

With "Prisoners Without Trial", Roger Daniels provides an excellent starting point for anyone interested in the internment of Japanese American's during World War II. This well regarged historian has crafted a splendid little book that is a compilation of years of work, yet extremely clear and concise. The chapters are chronologically ordered to make this book easy to read for those who are not thoroughly versed in historical texts. There is an abundance of cleanly presented primary evidence along with interesting analytical viewpoints. This book was a quick, informative and interesting read, and I would highly recommend it.

-Molly

With "Prisoners Without Trial", Roger Daniels provides an excellent starting point for anyone interested in the internment of Japanese American's during World War II. This well regarged historian has crafted a splendid little book that is a compilation of years of work, yet extremely clear and concise. The chapters are chronologically ordered to make this book easy to read for those who are not thoroughly versed in historical texts. There is an abundance of cleanly presented primary evidence along with interesting analytical viewpoints. This book was a quick, informative and interesting read, and I would highly recommend it.

-Molly

In 114 pages on actual text and several pages of pictures Dr. Roger Daniels shows the reader the plight of Japanese Americans through the war years and after. Dr. Daniels, who has written several books on the Japanese Concentration camps, shows us how discrimination against the Chinese led to later discrimination against the Japanese. He shows us how America reacated to Japanse-Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He shows us How the American Government can imprison its own citizends because of their racial heritage. This is a really good little book that will give the reader a good outline of how racial tensions with Japanese immigrants began, dealings with Japanese-Americans after the bombings, life in the Concentration Camps, and the redress movement. A book to be read by those who want to know the underbelly of American History

I bought this book for my son. When I received this book, I was disappointed. The price is too expensive for the quality. For this price, at least self-adhesive stickers for the colored markers should be provided instead of cutting out from the book and tape it on the piano keyboard.
My son also showed little interest in the book.

This rainbow piano technique is amazing! After one year of piano lessons, my 5 years old son still can't play nor can he sit in front of the piano for more than 10 minutes. But after I bought this book, he love to match the color and play the songs. He is so proud that he can play songs for us. I was very impressed that this book really open his door to music. He can play all the songs from this book within a month. I am looking forward to purchase the second book from this Rainbow series. Thanks for opening my son's music talent!

I gave the book a try as an adult learner with very little musical experience. It was very easy to start playing simple songs with the colored keys, but I was quite surprised how quickly I could start reading sheet music without the colors. Although the book and song selections are definitely oriented towards children, I think adults with little piano or sheet music reading ability can also benefit from the book, and perhaps even learn together with their children.

We love using Rainbow Piano Technique. More importantly, our daughter, 3, loves it. She had an immediate response, picking up a full measure of music within minutes. She started playing songs in it, left hand and right hand, within three weeks. The color tabs let her read the music without stress. The music is familiar children's songs, and Annie Wang seems to have done a good job in making them sound fresh. We are truly delighted with the book. We wanted to give our daughter the gift of music, and this turns out to be an excellent start to that dream.

The rainbow piano technique is one of the most educational and pedagogical piano methods that I have seen so far in the market. I play music for more than 20 years and I can say that this is a method that I recommend for kids . Actually the method is so simple and pedagogical that I would recommend it even to adults and parents who have no idea about music and they would like to have a nice and smooth introduction to it.
I wish methods like the rainbow piano method were available when I was kid during my first introductory steps into music.

Melvyn Leffler's "The Specter of Communism" is a superb, short, and nuanced history of the origins of the Cold War. It should be assigned reading in any college course on 20th century American foreign policy.

In Leffler's telling, Stalin felt vulnerable after World War II and wanted to preserve good relations with the U.S. The Soviet dictator insisted, however, on moving his borders westward, installing a puppet regime in Poland, and playing a leading role in the occupation of Germany and Japan. These goals didn't necessarily clash with core U.S. interests and might not have resulted in a Cold War if Europe and East Asia hadn't been on the verge of collapse after 1945. Since World War I, Washington had been haunted by the fear that the resources of Europe and Asia might fall under the control of one hostile power -- either Germany or Russia -- that could then threaten the security and political economy of the U.S. Washington policymakers didn't think that Stalin planned to start a new war, but they panicked when communist parties surged in France, Italy and elsewhere. Assuming that communist governments would link their economies to the USSR's, Washington responded by moving to rebuild the German economy and integrating Germany into a U.S.-led European bloc. Stalin, fearing a revival of German power, clamped down on Eastern Europe and blockaded Berlin. The Cold War was soon going at full steam.

One of the high points of Leffler's book is the discussion of the domestic politics of anti-communism. American conservatives didn't give a hoot about Europe or foreign policy; however, they did want to exploit anti-Red feeling in order to discredit New Dealers and crack down on labor unions and civil rights groups. But having stirred up a lot of paranoia, conservatives were outflanked when the Truman Administration tapped these same sentiments to win support for expensive plans to rearm the U.S. and rebuild Europe! Thus the Great Bipartisan Compromise of the 1950s and '60s was born: an anti-Soviet foreign policy was married to crude Red Baiting at home.

Leffler writes clearly, understands the policy environment of Washington, and doesn't accept the prevailing (and idiotic) myth that U.S. foreign policy is generally well-informed or motivated by moral considerations. On the contrary, the U.S. policymakers of the late 1940s were more-or-less amoral and sometimes poorly informed about foreign countries. (American foreign policy can be Machiavellian and inept at the same time.) "The Specter of Communism" is history at its best.

I was assigned to read this short book for a course on United States foreign policy in the 20th century. Unlike a great many texts on the subject, I found it absolutely enjoyable to read. Things to watch in particular are how Leffler handles the shift of how the United States officially and popularly felt about Communism and the Soviet Union before and after World War II, the formulation of the doctrine of containment, and most especially the interplay between the leadership not only in the United States, but the Soviet Union and Europe as well. This final point, the exploration of the nature of particular leaders and national psyches, is the greatest strength of Leffler's account. FDR, Truman, and Stalin especially come alive in the narrative. Through the course of the narrative, the reader is given a very interesting and now unconventional thesis that to some extent, the Cold War was indeed inevitable in the post-war world as a result of the positions of the United States, the Soviet Union, and the ruin of Europe. Especially pivotal to the coalescence of the Cold War was the United States' declaration of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe. Leffler says: "The American intent was not to threaten the Soviets or divide Europe, but this was the price the Truman administration was willing to pay in order to revitalize Western Europe and harness the resources of western Germany" (pg 67).

Overall, this is an intelligent and accessible account of the origins of the Cold War that anybody interested in the World Wars, the Soviet Union, Communism, and/or contemporary foreign policy would do well to read.

This book is basically an apology for Russian communism. One that proclaims the message: "communism isn't all that bad". "Stalin was a prudent, cautious and reasonable man and the Americans were the knee-jerk irrational reactionists" The book also seems to convey the message that "America made it seem worse than it was and hyped it up".

I mean, why should any country have reservations about the spread of communism? Communism, a form of government that is the privileged few, the Nomenclatura, who rule with absolute power over the lower party members and the general population, the proletariat. Let's not forget, commumism produced leaders such as Lenin, Stalin and Pol Pot. Sure, it's intentions may be good.....but human nature won't let it work. Power is its end.....not its mean, though that's what the original bolshevik revolutionaries proclaimed.

Basically, it's a 'blame america first' type of book. I for one am not going to be swayed just because of this author's talented writing skills, his commumist-friendly opinions and artful ways of persuasion using history. Nope. I blame communism and Stalin ( who murdered millions of his own......MILLIONs )

The 'amoral' U.S.A........never murdered millions of its citizens on the whim of their President. It never negated the existence of people on a list. A list who was cavalierly reviewed by the president, Stalin, and checkmarked with a pen as he decided whose life to end and existence from the records of history to erase. Many others were sent to Gulags never to be heard from again. It was the communist bastion of the USSR and ITS President, Stalin who did this.

Considering these above mentioned historically documented facts regarding the terrors inflicted upon the population by the ruling Red party, not only in the old USSR but other communist regimes (cambodia, Cuba, Vietnam and China for that matter), is it possible that the United States' "fears" or "overreactions" to the spread of communism after WWII were, perhaps, a bit justified? If these communist countries, in the decades following, WWII had turned out to be benevolent, non-tyranical, beneficial to their general populations or 'good' in any sense of the word, then the USA's reactions and maneauverings after the war would have been, as the author puts it, 'an overreaction'. But, because history proved that communism was indeed a monstrous terror upon the peoples of those particular countries, does it not justify our government's sentiments toward communism's spread post WWII? Indeed it does. Thank God for the actions that our government took to jealously protect our way of life.....which, incidentally, is the best way of life on the earth ( why does everyone seek to get into America if it's not the best?)

I side with America and I side AGAINST communism. This goes for any period of history.....from the 1940s until present. Like the WHO songs says......" Won't be fooled again"

This book is good for what it tried to accomplish. Its a introductory survey of the origins of an American mindset against communism. Leffler points out that communism wasn't a concern of the USA population or politicians until after WWII- when the communist began to rival democratic capitalism. Leffler uses historical documents to support the assertion that the sum of world-wide communism never really came close to rivialing the US in terms of economic or military power. However, the fear that maybe communism could gain equal status one day in the future led the US to undertake decisive actions toward securing Hegemony.

Leffler writes a balanced account of the events leading up to and into the the Cold War. He discusses the impact of geopolictics with regard to the First and Second World Wars and how communism impacted American public policy. He points out that it was not so much fear of the physical power of the Soviet Union but fear of the ideologies of communism within our borders that led the anit-communist anti-Soviet movements in our nation. He follows the growth of Russia into a world power and explains how it eventually became a military threat and a nuclear power. The book is engrossing and well structured. Leffler presents the information in a clear way without unnecessary deviations. It is an excellent look at Cold War origins.