Czech Republic Books

Sam... I was very close to turning my life over to the N.... Turning over my money because he made me feel stupid He spent all his money on me in the beginning... And that's is why he says its all gone... all on me?...I felt obligated to stay and help him I talked about this with Anna Nicole, But as Nicole says neither she nor I put guns to their head...
They enjoyed the attention being with beautiful women. She is dead because she wanted to give attention to her children and not him... Believe what you want... I know what happened...She would still be alive had she read your book...

You are a narcissist which is freakin amazing....Life saving strategic plans... I love you for this...
It's like a cheat sheet for us....
Oscar De La Hoya's son does not like getting hit in the face but he has a killer tennis backhand. He takes public debate speaking classes and YOU my friend... will have front row seats at the US open when he slaughters his challenger


Back to your book, OD accidental or not was just there just to get the madness to stop...
Psych hospital al ready to check myself in (FOUND OUT HE WAS PARKING MY CAR IN DIFFERENT PLACES SO I WOULD COME OUT OF STORE LOST.... LOOKING FOR MY CAR GIRLS CALLING ME STUIP BIMBO CANT REMEMER WHERE YOU PARKED) thank god nanny caught him doing it I never told him she saw it...
A fight and I would have been in prison...

Can you image that headline "Mother of Oscar De La Hoya's son arrested on murder charges"... She claims man with narcissistic personality disorder made her do it... Oh yea...
Hardly... But hey that's true and I am all for bringing light to this subject for myself and for my friend Anna Nicole Smith... More people need to get involved in diagnosing these people Not like you can put condom on your heart. ... People do sometimes get away with murder and they can pass lie detectors without even a move in emotional lines--------------------------straight across more work and more people need to understand... read your book and get involved!
Sam You saved my life and you brought peace in my heart for my friend, Thanks.
She was the most beautiful giving and funny as hell ... But trustworthy... His day will come someday someway.
Angelicque

This book has been liberating by helping me explore the mind of a narcissist. The confusion and whirlwind my life had become within my relationship with this man overwhelmed my entire life. Reading this book has helped me immensely to correlate his actions and behaviors to this mental problem. I have tried everything and realize the hard wiring is not going to be changed in him, I need to change me and stop trying to change others. I am sadden by the truth however liberated to have such a better understanding of what I have just experienced.

If you are reading this review about Malignant Self Love, then you finally suspect that you are dealing with a Narcissist. To suspect is common, but to deny can be fatal. You are probably confused, worn out and defeated. You are probably tying to resurrect yourself out of the ashes of deception, despair and distress. You probably feel like you have been lead around the Mulberry Bush in endless loops. If this sounds familiar, then you MUST have capable assistance. You need an individual that can imagine, plot, examine, relate and SOLVE your nightmare. You need an insider... Dr. Sam Vaknin. He is a Narcissist. Sam has examined his reflection and magnified it for his readers in Malignant Self Love. Sam has plugged all the loopholes, exposed all the plots, and introduced a new language to confront the Narcissist. Vaknin has composed OVER 100 Frequently Asked Questions, Essays and more, contained in a volume of 600 pages! Sam has designed Malignant Self Love as a `hands-on' tool that can immediately bring relief. If you want to breathe again, if you are at your wits end, if everything has been tried and failed, if you NEED a change, then Malignant Self Love can give you your life back. This book is a lifesaver!

Kathi Stringer
Kathi's Mental Health Review

This book is the equivelent to earning a doctorate in Narcissim.
Vakin is brilliant, and the book is written in such a way, you learn the concepts, I mean really know them. Very few people can teach, Vakin is in that select minority. He just states the facts, and mindset of the Narcissis in every conceavable presentation. By the middle of the book, you get the answer N's live to make you hurt, and miserable, they think it's funny when you are in pain. Noone could read this book without a life changing epiphany. Thankfully by the end you know your N has pulled your dress over your head, in private and public, he is sadistically gleeful and you can no longer live in the illussion that a relationship could work. Bravo

I have used Vaknins website and book to give me some ideas, and hope, for the situation I am in. I am setting firm boundaries and consequences. I hope through the book I can learn to get more of my life back. All I can say to others is, "If you can get out, run as fast as you can, cause if you don't get out they will destroy you". I know a couple other women in town who have been in long term marriages to guys like this. One seems to have survived quite well, but she is 'very shut down - emotionless'. The other became a total recluse, and is dying of cancer. I also knew one other, but she died in her 40's from cancer. She was glad to die. Her spirit died long before her. I don't want that for myself. I want to let go of the feelings that my abuser has (poisoned) me with, and I want to, once again, find joy in however long I have left to live.

I researched a lot of books on Narcissism before I chose Vatkins. Compared to Vatkins all the others seemed like "just skimming the surface". There is no two ways about it; his is an excellant book.

One thing to keep in mind when reading this book, or his website; is that Vatkin is a narcissist, and I felt his gloating was evil when he remarked about women coming to him for help, even knowing what he is. There are some things he says that makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Also, when reading the book, sometimes I questioned what he had to say because as a narcissist he seems to direct his advice, of course, from a narcissistic viewpoint, so his advice seems to favor the narcissist at times. Also, the advice he gives sometimes in one part of the book is very different in another part of the book - almost opposite. So, though he has a lot of good to say, weigh his advice before applying it to your own life.

This book is a must for teachers, parents, and children 10 years old and up. It should read with children and an adult together and should have some Holocaust background explained first. If we want future generations to know what happened, we must tell them

This is a really good book. It was a great tool for teaching my daughter about the Holocaust. The best thing about the book is that you are seeing pictures and poetry that was created by the children of one of the most terrible tragedies in history.

This collection of works is mostly by children who were imprisoned in the Terezin ghetto during the Holocaust. Their writing is hauntingly and painfully honest, devastating, and heartbreaking. Yet, with death all around them, these children dared to hope and dream of a day they would leave the ghetto and return to their normal lives. The adults who taught them hoped the same things. It makes it all the more difficult to take in when one reads the appendix where details are given of the outcomes for these children, the vast majority of whom perished at Auschwitz and other death camps. It makes their hope that much more poignant and breathtaking. Of the 15,000 children to dwell within its barbed wire fences, only 100 children walked out. I highly encourage anyone to read this account of the Holocaust, this true and touching monument to these children and their teachers.

Only three of the poets and authors whose work is represented in this volume survived the Nazi Holocaust.

These works, however, are no more dead than the wings of butterflies mounted in a natural history museum.

They fly: They give the children voices for all time---not just the authors and poets' voices, but the voices of all 14,900 children who perished in Terezin from the arrival of the first transport in November 1941 to the ghetto's liberation in April 1945. Indeed, voices for all 141,000 Jewish people transported here from Germany, Holland, Poland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere, including the relative handful---16,832---who survived.

The works here are a testament to the human spirit.

As a school teacher, I found a wonderful use for this book in my classroom. My 6th grade history class studies the Holocaust and was participating in the Houston Holocaust Museum's Butterfly Project. This book helped my students understand some of the feelings and problems faced by children housed at Terezin Concentration Camp during WWII.

This is a well-written, quick read. Heda's 27 years of suffering - first at the hands of the Nazis & then under the communist regime in Czechoslovakia - is heart rending. It's a book that should be part of high school curriculums to raise awareness of what too many people had to endure in the middle of the last century. It would be much more effective than relying on a history textbook that deals only with the 'facts.'

I would recommend this book to anyone. Even if you think you don't like reading about history, you'll like this book. In fact, it is books like these that are the reason I love history so much, and why I'm majoring in it. It isn't about the politics or the wars or whatever else (although those are certainly important), it is the story of a woman trying to survive through a hell most of us cannot even imagine has existed on this earth, especially not in the last 50 years. Peoples' lives are what connect us to the past, and what make it relevant to the future. It gives a little meaning and heart behind all the dates and events that you have to memorize in class...make them more personal. And furthermore, you will be inspired by this woman. Her strength and character is admirable, to say the very least. Actually, I don't think even a fictional writer could invent a heroine more honorable than this one.

So please, read it. stories like these deserve to be shared.

it is a great book use in my world civ class, and highly recommmand by my professor and TAs.

Clive James, in "Cultural Amnsia' - his magesterial review of literature and totalitarianism - said: "Given thirty seconds to recommend a single book that might start a serious young student on the hard road to understanding of the political tragedies of the twentieth century, I would choose this one". It tells a remarkable personal tale of a Jewish girl in Prague caught up by the Nazis and going to Auschwitz, then her escape and return to her beloved Prague, and subsequent worse sufferings under the communist government in the 1950s and 1960s. Her husband was a high ranking government official but later was put on a show trial and killed.

"Under a Cruel Star" (also called "Prague Farewell" in some editions) is not as bleak as the story sounds. It is a slim volume of hope and understanding, written elegantly by a woman who later in life worked as a translator from English and finished her working life in the Harvard Law School library.

I read this about 6 years ago when it was assigned in one of my undergrad classes. There are enough online reviews for you to read about the plot and like. Rather I want to tell you how her voice has stuck with me. I think of her ability to see the slivering when everything is just gray, and her amazing capacity to keep going. Whenever I think I can't go on, this death/or lost/ or series of unfortunate events as shattered the very last of my will I remember her words. I highly recommend it. I regally give this as a gift, I know I'm not just giving someone a powerful story, but really I'm giving someone a packet of extra strength for when they need it most in life.

This book which tells the stories of ten survivors of Terezin, a "showcase" Nazi concentration camp established to host visits by the International Red Cross, lends a unique perspective to the Holocaust literature.

Twenty-year old Franta supervised young boys, aged 12 to 14, in Room 7 and the lessons he taught them under the most adverse circumstances were incredible. They were educated in secret by him and other prisoners about their Jewish religion, history, culture and secular subjects. Education has always been of prime importance to Jews, but the fact that they were able to instill children with so much information under the most adverse circumstances was a miracle.

As you continue reading you have to feel that Franta was a gift from God to help the children get through this horrendous ordeal, despite the suffering and inhumanity happening all around them. Somehow he provided them with a stability that allowed them to eventually marry, raise families and lead productive lives. How wise, far beyond his years, he had to be.

Despite the unspeakable horrors the young boys witnessed, their perseverance, resilience, humanity and friendship won out. This should be required reading for all Confirmation classes.

This book touched my heart with amazing stories of courage, life long bonds of friendship, and the triumph of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable horrors. It's a must read!

An extraordinary book in whih a twenty-year old, named Franta, during the most terrifying of times, inspires forty ten and twelve years olds who were torn from their families, with a faith in their own humanity, with a will to live, and "a respect for our parents and the past, and to be ready for life when this [the Holocaust] ends." The stories of ten of the survivors and how they managed to survive extends to after the war and emphasizes the bonds that continue to exist in adulthood between them. "Nesarim" is an inspiration for young and old.
Sam D. Starobin

This is the war-time story of the boys in Room 7 at the infamous Nazi concentration camp, Terezin, in Czechoslovakia. Thelma Gruenbaum's book, "Nesarim," is a heart-stopping tale of courage and survival.
Almost 50 years after the boys walked out of Terezin, Gruenbaum embarked on her mission to find the survivors. Her determination to tell their story was inspired by her husband,Michael, one of the boys in Room 7.
Travelling the world, the Gruenbaums interviewed ten who survived with Michael [Misa]. Many of the boys had never spoken of their experiences at Terezin but in 1990, as men of 60, and encouraged by Thelma Gruenbaum, they opened their souls to share those tales.
The meaning of the word "Nesarim" is Eagles, a name the boys of Room 7 gave themselves. Their stories give truth and meaning to the name as we witness their indomitable spirit.
An inspiring story that reminds us that courage and humanity can be stronger than the forces of destruction. Thelma Gruenbaum has told an important story and done so beautifully.

I was Born in Prague 1933. My family knew the Gruenbaum family well. I was fortunate to leave the country in 1941. After reading NESARIM I now know exactly and vividly what my fate might have been; would have been!
The book is well written and the descriptions of people places and events come to life along with their innermost feelings.

A suitcase belonging to a Hana Brady gets to the children's Holocaust education centre in Tokyo in the year 2000. It immediately propels students and teachers alike to find out more about this mysterious girl. Thanks to their invaluable work, they are able to retrace Hana's story. This book is the result of their search for the truth.

A clear, simple narrative delivers a vivid picture of what happened. It was touching to see the dedication and interest of the children and of Ms. Ishioka to find out as much information as possible with just a name to start with. Well done.

I believe that this book is also suitable to readers aged 12+.

THANK YOU FOR THE PROMPT DELIVERY OF THE BOOK: HANA'S SUITCASE. IT WAS IN EXCELLENT CONDITION. THE BOOK ITSELF WAS WONDERFUL, AND THE PICTURES ADDED SO VERY MUCH TO THE BOOK. I SHALL NEVER FORGET READING THIS LITTLE BOOK. I SENT IT ON TO MY GRANDCHILDREN. THANK YOU.

This was a wonderful book. Hana's Suitcase allowed children to connect the events of the Holocaust with the experiences of a person about their own age who actually was affected by these events. Although sad by definition, the tale ends on a high note, as Hana's older brother travels to Japan to meet with young visitors at a Holocaust Museum. He is able to tell of his young sister who actually carried the suitcase in one of the museum's exibits and who later died while imprisoned by the Nazis.

I have read this book to my fourth grade class for the past two years. They are instantly drawn to Hana, Fumiko, and the story of the Holocaust. The minute they see the picture of Hana's Suitcase, they begin to ask all the questions that the children in Japan asked of Fumiko. They always want me to continue reading and they are so eager to find out about her story. This book has inspired so many deep and thoughtful discussions with my students. They really connect to Hana and her story and the book helps them understand what happened with the Jewish people in WW2 and why it got so out of control. The chapters switch between Hana's story and the story of the children in Japan who are learning about Hana, so it kind of breaks up some of the more difficult parts of the story with the more happier, hopeful parts. I highly recommend this book for anyone- kids and adults.

This is a very different account of the holocaust than I have ever read before. It is a living account of the holocaust and how it still affects our lives today. This book brings the holocaust into the present by telling the story of a Japanese woman searching for a girl who was lost nearly 60 years ago. I loved this story and wonder how many more stories of survival, hope and faith we can find if we just dig a little deeper to unbury a past that is not always pleasant but that we can always learn from.

Beautifully written, WHERE SHE CAME FROM is also the product of very serious and exhaustive research. It is a magical and haunting book. It brings alive a period of Jewish women's history that is only now being written about in English. Travelling through pre-Holocaust Central Europe with Epstein is an amazing experience: the reader follows both the process of investigation of family history and the emotions this opens up for the writer.

I taught the book several times both in the US and Mexico in classes on Memory and Autobiography. My students loved the book. Many of them bought several copies to give to relatives and friends as gifts. My graduate students (in History and Literature) were impressed by the rigor of Epstein's research, and the skill with which she weaves historical information into her prose.

This is a fascinating chronicle of three generations of the author's female ancestors. It is probably the only book in English that tells the story of Jewish women in Prague in the the first half of the twentieth century. Helen Epstein has a special talent for recreating social history and bringing it alive.

This book was a beautiful personal tribute to the author's ancestors.

I was engrossed in this book from the first page...although it was a slow read for me, because I wanted to grasp the intensity of the generational saga, and grasp the historical facts, correctly. Epstein has more than proved herself in this dramatic memoir of family generations, identity, and history, weaving us through time, each piece of family fabric a part of the final tapestry. The reader is given remnants and squares of fabric in a familial tapestry, of sorts, through history and time, through the horrors of war, and how it affects all the generations, from past to present. From assimilating into society and racial and religous identity, to how one views themselves and what they identify with, Epstein manages to stitch a tapestry of her family, each stitch in time adding to the fabric of her own identity. Bravo for a wonderful read!

In WHERE SHE CAME FROM, Cambridge, Massachusetts-based award-winning author Helen Epstein has penned a meticulously-researched memoir to the four generations of Czech and former Czechoslovak women in her extensive family, from her mother's side of the brood.

While today she associates her public persona to the proud and extensive line of former Czechoslovak Epsteins (see Ms. Epstein's fabulous Amazon Short available off of this site, SWIMMING AGAINST STEREOTYPE: The Story of a Twentieth Century Jewish Athlete), the writer stakes her claim to a noble and illustrious family line which once proudly sported famous Viennese and Prague-based surnames such as Rabinek, Solar, Weigert, Sachsel, Furcht, and Frucht.

Like an experienced batsman for a World Series-winning major-league baseball team, Epstein managed to hang in that old batter's box, waiting for just the right pitch to slug out of the ballpark. In the book world, the analogue was when all the right moments fortuitously transpired to assist Ms. Epstein in securing many essential clues of research which she utilized handily in crafting this excellent book's narrative. Even she'll tell you, the process was far from easy.

Thanks to a dedicated coterie of like-minded collaborators based in points all around the globe as you'll soon read (the former Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, Israel, South America, and the United States), Ms. Epstein succeeded in cobbling together one of the most comprehensive Czech geneological histories on the public record.

The work is not only emotionally remunerative for Ms. Epstein, to the extent that those missing links in her family chain were finally sewn together, but it's additionally a fine account of several strong women, renowned in their various fields of endeavour, who persevered during the best of times and the absolute horrorific worst of the 20th century.

Starting with Helen's great-grandmother Therese Sachsel, nee Frucht (Furcht), who lived during the reign of Franz-Josef in the last of the Habsburg-ian thrones, passing through her grandmother Pepi's life story during the turbulent First World War and the First Czechoslovak Republic, and finally overlapping the history of her own mother Frances Epstein, Helen pored over hundreds (if not thousands) of archival sources in constructing this cogent tale.

Collectively, these three noble upstanding women belonging to the author's colourful past outlived the worst of the 20th century's ravages, passing fads, and tragic downfalls.

We swoon with Therese Sachsel during the euphoria of Tomas Garrigue Masaryk's (TGM) storied first Czechoslovak Republic (1918-1938), when all seemed possible for the Central European remant of the former Austria-Hungarian powerhouses of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Slovakia. Our hopes and dreams are temporarily crushed alongside her grandmother Pepi Rabinek as we witness the invasion and subsequent occupation of Prague by Nazi hordes, who sweep unchallenged through the former Czechoslovakia's borders after the West's perfidy of Munich. We agonize alongside Pepi's daughter, Frances Solar/Rabinek/Epstein, the paragon of the family and Helen's stalwart mother, as she is dispatched to the Teresienstadt (in modern-day Terezin, Czech Republic) concentration camp, or in the colloquial Czech, the "koncentrak." We also rejoice when Frances is extricated from the hellhole of Auschwitz, and tranported the West in wartime Germany as part of a labour brigade, towards the oncoming Allies from the West, liberated in Bergen-Belsen by British forces at the end of WWII. Finally, we are shocked to discover the insensitivity, sheer apathy, and in many instances -- outright hostility -- that Praguers demonstrated towards the surviving returnees from the Nazi camps, to which Frances and her future husband, famous former Czechoslovak Olympian swimmer, Kurt Epstein, counted themselves.

Helen Epstein's lines draw us inexorably into this story, and once you start you'll have a difficult time finding excuses to stop.

What staggered me as I made my way through this read was Ms. Epstein's formidable discipline. The sheer single-mindedness with which she approached the colossal task of the near-vertical climb to reach the bottom of her family's history. I read with awe how solace was found towards the end.

WHERE SHE CAME FROM will stand as one of the foremost examples of the self-researched memoir. If you need any reason at all to read this book, then let it be thanks to the iron-willed determination which the answers gracing its pages were unearthed by Ms. Epstein.

A book like this needs to be savoured for its significance, appreciated for its illumination, and respected for its purity. There isn't a single letter which graces these pages that wasn't typed, written, or transcribed in the absence of a labour which can only be termed love.

I sit back and wish we all had the staying power of Ms. Epstein. The book is laudatory in the extreme.

As if Ms. Epstein's family history were not enough, there are other benefits to this book too. For those with a keen interest in the past two centuries of life in Prague and the experiences of Bohemia's and Moravia's Jews and its Czech peasantry, WHERE SHE CAME FROM is chock-a-block with painstaking factoids and historical tidbits that'll nudge you gently towards further reading. It will also supply its readers with a glimpse towards the increasingly-distant Czechoslovak past, which, with the passing of the years and the keener integration of this country with the rest of the EU, slips further and further away from the grip of Czech youth.

This book is more than just a reminder, it's a testament to a time which no longer exists. In that respect, it is now part of the permanent historical record.

WHERE SHE CAME FROM is written in a language at once accessible and magnetic. For all ages, for all backgrounds. I can't do anything less than award this superb work of history my highest rating of 5-stars.

I know you will too.

-- ADM in Prague

Although this book has a slow start with a lot of historical information, once you get to the Holocaust section, you will not be able to put this book down. I read it while in Vienna and after I visited Prague. I felt so connected to my surroundings and the author that I literally felt like I was in the book. Makes the enormity of the Holocaust personal and understandable. A MUST READ FOR EVERYONE!

I read Holocaust memoirs because of my need to learn more of what my people went through during this time of hell on earth. How hard it must be to write down and re-live this part of one's life. After reading many such memoirs, Ruth Elias's story was extremely powerful to me, in that she is a woman (like me), married (like me) and a mother (like me). She survived through the most horrific and unspeakable horror that can befall a human being. How many of us could survive under these conditions, and yet continue to live, really live, and experience more of the good in other people and in life? She was capable of literally starting over and telling others about her experience. What a wonderful, strong and intelligent woman she is! Don't miss this one. I'm going to make it a permanent part of my book collection.

This memoir goes to show that, despite what some people might say, it really is true that no two Shoah memoirs and experiences are exactly alike. Rutinko Huppner (now Ruth Elias) grew up in a rather wealthy family in the former Czechoslovakia, and after her young mother divorced her father when she was 6 years old, Rutinko and her older sister Edith were raised by a single father, with help from their uncle Hugo (their father's brother) and his wife Irma, along with a whole slew of grandparents and other aunts and uncles. Later on their father remarried, though Ruth and her sister, teenagers by then, really resented their stepmother and tried everything they could to make her life miserable. Being wealthy, Rutinko and Edith had access to things that their friends, neighbors, and classmates could only dream about, such as sausage for school lunch, a car, being driven to and from school, vacations in the mountains, musical instruments and music lessons, and a lot of other great stuff. They even had the money and connections to get permission and papers to leave Czechoslovakia for England after the Nazi takeover in 1939, though she and her sister decided not to go through with it due to their father's ill health and wanting the family to stay together through this difficult time.

The family were able to go into hiding in a few different cities, where they enjoyed a relatively secure and happy life. Ruth and Edith even found the time to have romances and to be active in a secret Jewish youth group. However, there was eventually a raid on the area, and Ruth, Edith, their father and stepmother, and their aunt Irma were taken away to Theresienstadt (Terezin). Their uncle Hugo wasn't taken because he was very sick in the hospital and dying of cancer. Once in the large ghetto, they found themselves separated from their father, since men and women were quartered separately. However, shortly before they arrived, Ruth's boyfriend Koni and his own family had been deported, and this relationship ended up saving her life, since if Koni hadn't married her while she was sick in the hospital, she would have been deported along with the rest of her family when they were. From this point on out Ruth was along but for the friends she made, and she and Koni weren't even able to properly live together as husband and wife for some time. However, even in the ghetto love blossomed, and eventually Ruth discovered she was pregnant. After doing absolutely everything to try to find a doctor who would give her an abortion, she ended up being deported when she was two months pregnant, and was one of the few women who survived in that condition instead of being murdered on arrival. A lot of circumstances came together to save her life and to keep her alive even in spite of her condition, many of them decisions she had only a split second to make if she wanted to live. Eventually she had to make the most difficult and heartrending decision of all when her baby was born, so that the infamous "Dr." Mengele wouldn't kill them both.

Once she was no longer pregnant, Ruth was viewed as a healthy fit young worker, and was transferred, along with her friend Berta, who had also been pregnant, to Taucha, a subcamp of Buchenwald. In this camp, they were put into a special privileged work detail, which accounted for their eventual survival. After being liberated, their group of Czechs made their way home and found that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, their loved ones just were not coming home and that they'd had to start over again from scratch. I was surprised to learn that many young people like Ruth and her boyfriend Kurt just lived together after the war instead of getting married, since they had to wait two years before their missing spouses could legally be considered dead, even though everyone knew what had most likely befallen them. Ruth also had to make the difficult decision to divorce her husband, who had survived as well, because they'd just grown apart and she felt he hadn't acted very appropriately towards her when they were in the Family Camp at Auschwitz. A few relatives came back, but no one from her immediate family. It was with this new family of two that she left Czechoslovakia for Israel shortly after independence was declared, and just in the nick of time, before the Czech borders became closed.

Mrs. Elias went through some of the worst things imaginable (a number of times she even writes about how hard it was to just almost matter-of-factly type such heavy words like "None survived" or "They were probably all gassed"), and yet she came through everything alive and determined to start again, to make a new life for herself in her own homeland, to make sure that no one ever looked down on her or abused her ever again. It just goes to show that the human spirit is an amazing thing.

This book never lags and never loses your interest. It is very well written. It is an inspiring and insightful account of a woman's courage and determination to survive the Holocaust. I only wish the book continued because I wanted more. Very highly recommended.

I finished reading Triumph of Hope this morning, after starting it two days ago. I simply couldn't put it down. The author, Ruth Elias, is nothing less than extraordinary. The way that she expresses her memories, through her style of writing and description, helps us to get one step closer to understanding an experience, which we can never really comprehend, because we were not there. Mrs Elias's life is remarkable, and through reading her book I thoroughly believe that she is a genuinely lovely, kind and warm person. It is such a tragedy that the Jewish people of her generation went through turmoil and absolute hell. But through this book, Ruth's aims - to spread the message that the discrimination and racism they experienced should never be repeated - are being achieved when a single person reads her book. Her message is being spread over the world, and I am glad that i was able to read Triumph of Hope. I intend to share this book with my family and friends, so that they can read of such an incredible woman, and a generation of people who refused to give in. I sincerely recomend this book to anyone who is thinking of buying this, for themselves or for others.

I have read dozens of Holocaust memoirs, and although they are always touching and intense, none have caused me to feel such grief for the author as this one. I literally had to stop reading and bawl my eyes out for a good 10 minutes. This woman endured so much, and with such grace, that you cannot help but be invested in her story. Highly recommended.

After having read the first volume of this expected series of 7 volumes I was triggered by the thesis of these authors that ancient Greek and Roman history did in fact take place in the Middle Ages. So I started studying medieval history of the Middle East - also known as Islamic history - to find out if the opponents of the ancient Greeks and Romans - the Acheamenid Persians, Sassanids, Scythians, Egyptians, etc. - also have their duplicates in medieval history. My search was disappointing: none of the many medieval Islamic dynasties seemed to correspond to the ancient middle eastern rulers.

However, I did find a close correspondence between Herodotus' Persian kings and medieval events:

- the defeat and capture of an Anatolian king - the Lydian Croesus - by the Persian conqueror Cyrus is identical to the defeat and capture of another Anatolian king - sultan Bayezid - by the Asian/Mongol conqueror Tamerlane;
- the Persian conquest of Egypt by the cruel tyrant Cambyses reds almost exactly as the Ottoman conquest of Egypt by Selim the Grim (note the nickname!);
- Darius the Lawgiver of the Persian Empire looks very much alike to Sulayman the Magnificent, the Lawgiver in Islamic history;
- Xerxes, whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by the Greeks at the naval battle of Salamis, looks like Selim II (the Sot) whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by a Spanish-Italian alliance at the naval battle of Lepanto.

I should have expected Fomenko et al. to arrive at similar conclusions, however, they claim that the Persian kings are the alter egos of the Angevin kings of Sicily whose biographies do not contain the exploits of the Persian kings.

The similiarities I indicate lead to the conclusion that Herodotus must have written his Histories at the close of the 16th century. But this is extremely late, given that Herodotus is "the Father of History", so therefore all other "ancient" histories must have been fabricated even later. Yet, the founders of modern chronology - Scaliger and Petavius - laid their foundations also at the close of the 16th century and had the full corpus of ancient histories already at their disposal.

It seems to me that Fomenko has to address these inconsistencies, maybe in the forthcoming 5 volumes?

Another critique of their book is that the correspondencies between different rulers are often based on a superficial comparison of the biographies; upon a more thorough comparison many details appear that do not correspond at all.

Finally, the authors rely heavily on the works of Gregorovius (1821-1891!!) - his medieval histories of Rome and Athens - as the source of medieval history; these works are - at least in the West - hoplessly outdated and have been superceded by more up-to-date works (for instance, Julius Norwich's trilogy on Byzantine history is not even cited).

I don't care what other people say of this book. Those affirmig it's fake, they hadn't ever read it. Or have some special reasons to do so. "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see..." This book won't make you feel comfortable. It'll make you feel free. It'll make you feel you're "not the only one" to feel you'd been lied to for centuries.

We can so far divide the New Chronology into the following three parts:

a) The verifiable theory that proves consensual chronology wrong with the aid of astronomy, statistics and mathematics;

b) The new chronology hypothesis based on a new understanding of known historical facts and the most likely logical explanation of the most obvious inconsistencies inherent in the official version of history;

c) The history conjectures, that is experimental historical reconstructions based on assumptions that the authors believe to make sense in the light of their research and linguistic parallels - void of ironclad factual support to date.

Fomenko's theory complies with the most rigid scientific standards as a whole:

It gives a coherent explanation of what we already know.

- It is consistent: independent lines of inquiry all lead to the same conclusion.

- The predictions it makes are confirmed empirically.

Fomenko goes by the following axioms:

- Chronology is the basis of history;

- Human evolution has always been linear, gradual and irreversible;

- The "cyclic" nature of human civilization is a myth, likewise all the gaps, duplicates, "dark ages" and "renaissances" that we know from consensual history;

- The accumulation of geographical knowledge as reflected in cartography is a gradual and irreversible process;

- The chronological distance between a given manuscript and the events described therein is proportional to the amount of distortions it contains;

- There is no "useless" information in authentic ancient sources.

Why the mainstream historians do not shower mathematician Academician Dr.Prof Fomenko with thanks and laurels?

The Russians:

Because Fomenko asserts that there was no such thing as the Tartar and Mongol invasion followed by three centuries of slavery, providing a formidable body of documental evidence to prove his assertion. The so-called "Tartars and Mongols" were the actual ancestors of the modern Russians, living in a bilingual state with Arabic spoken as freely as Russian. The ancient Russian state was governed by a double structure of civil and military authorities. The hordes were actually professional armies with a tradition of lifelong conscription (the recruitment being the so-called "blood tax"). Their "invasions" were punitive operations against the regions that attempted tax evasion. Fomenko proves that Russian history as we know it today is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scientists brought to Russia by the usurper dynasty of the Romanovs, whose ascension to the throne was the result of coup d'état, charged with the mission of making their reign look legitimate. Fomenko proves Ivan the Terrible to be a collation of four rulers, no less. They represented the two rival dynasties - the legitimate rulers and the ambitious upstarts. The winner took it all! Over some 30 years of controversy, Russian historians have made a most remarkable transition - they were initially accusing the young mathematician Fomenko of anticommunist dissident activity and attempts to deface the historical legacy of Soviet Russia; nowadays the middle-aged mathematician is accused of adhering to "pro-communist Russian nationalism" and defacing the proud historical legacy of Great Russia.

The Westerners:

Because Fomenko blows consensual Russian history to smithereens, successfully removing a crucial cornerstone from underneath the otherwise impeccable edifice of World History. Fomenko adds insult to injury, wiping out one by one the Ancient Rome (the foundation of Rome in Italy is dated to the XIV century A. D.), the Ancient Greece and its numerous poleis, which he identifies as the mediaeval crusader settlements on the territory of Greece, and the Ancient Egypt (the pyramids of Giza become dated to the XI-XV century A. D. and identified as the royal cemetery of the Global "Mongolian" Empire, no less). The civilization of the Ancient Egypt is irrefutably dated to the XII-XV century A. D. with the aid of the ancient Egyptian horoscopes cut in stone. He was the first one to decipher and date all such horoscopes, coming up with mediaeval dates in every case. English historians rage at the suggestion that the history of Ancient England was de facto a Byzantine import transplanted to the English soil by the fugitive Byzantine nobility. To reward the English historians who consider themselves the true scribes of World History, the cover of the present book portrays Tintoretto's Jesus Christ crucified on the Big Ben.

The Chinese:

Because Fomenko wipes out the Ancient History of China outright. No such thing. Full point. The compilation of the so-called Ancient Chinese History is reliably datable to the XVII-XVIII century only. It is perfectly recognizable as the Ancient European history, reworked and transcribed in hieroglyphs as yet another historical transplantation, this time performed on the Chinese soil by the loving Jesuit hands. The Chinese are the next in line to go berserk. Chinese history is inevitably bound to get both more ancient and more eventful, proportionally to the growing involvement of China in the world affairs. Chinese historians will keep on finding valid proof of prehistoric Chinese spaceflights until the Politburo orders them to shut up.

The Arabs:

Too bad. Islam with all its key figures is datable to XV-XVI century A. D. Arabic historians may find consolation in the crucial historical role of the Ottoman Empire in the XVI-XVII century. The trouble is that this empire was initially a Christian state, with Hagia Sophia identifiable as Temple of Solomon, according to Fomenko! We can only guess if the acquisition of Alexander the Great (a Macedonian and a Christian) as the founder of the Muslim World Empire will make Fomenko's theories more acceptable to the Arabic mainstream. He certainly does not spare any holy cows at all, claiming The Stone of Qa'Aba in Mecca to contain the lost Arch of the Covenant.

The Divinity:

Despite of reiterated statement that his theory is all about chronology and not Religion, Fomenko stirs up a whole condominium of wasp nests. His collection of anathemas, fatwa, and other condemnations from all parties concerned is already considerable. Little wonder, considering that the history of religions à la Fomenko looks as follows: the pre-Christian period (before the XI century and JC), Bacchic Christianity (XI-XII century, before and after JC), JC Christianity (XII-XVI century) and its subsequent mutations into Orthodox Christianity, the Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on.

According to Fomenko we know strictly NOTHING about the events that predate the X century A. D.

St Augustin was prescient when he spoke unto us: "be wary of mathematicians, particularly when they speak the truth."

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3A80YKC8W7UEE New Chronology is a theory validated by astronomical research and statistical analysis of ancient manuscripts that asserts: that Antiquity and Dark Ages are phantoms invented in the 16th 18th centuries. Human civilization is barely 1000 years old!

New Chronology complies with the most rigid scientific standards:

- It gives a coherent explanation of what we already know;
- It is consistent: independent lines of inquiry all lead to the same conclusion;
- The predictions it makes are confirmed empirically;

New Chronology goes by the following basic axioms:
- Chronology is the basis of history;
- Human evolution has always been linear, gradual and irreversible;
- The "cyclic" nature of human civilization is a myth, likewise all the gaps, duplicates, "dark ages" and "renaissances" that we know from consensual history are fantasy and hoax;
- The accumulation of geographical knowledge as reflected in cartography is a gradual and irreversible process;
- The closer in time is a given manuscript to the events described the less distortions it contains;
- There is no "useless" information in authentic ancient sources.

Fomenko asserts: There was no such thing as the Tartar and Mongol invasion followed by over two centuries of yoke and slavery, providing a formidable body of documental evidence to prove his assertion. The so-called "Tartars and Mongols" were the actual ancestors of the modern Russians, living in a trilingual state with Arabic and Turkic spoken as freely as Russian. The ancient Russian state was governed by a double structure of civil and military authorities. The hordes were actually professional armies with a tradition of lifelong conscription (the recruitment being the so-called "blood tax"). Their "invasions" were punitive operations against the regions that attempted tax evasion. Fomenko proves that official Russian history is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scholars brought to Russia by the usurper dynasty of the Romanovs. Their ascension to the throne was the result of conspiracy, so they charged these imported historians with the mission of making Romanov's reign look legitimate.

Fomenko proves Ivan the Terrible to be a collation of four rulers, no less. They represented the two rival dynasties - the legitimate Godunov rulers and the ambitious Romanov upstarts.

As Fomenko blows consensual Russian history to smithereens, he successfully removes a crucial cornerstone from underneath the otherwise impeccable edifice of World History. Fomenko adds insult to injury, wiping out one by one: the Ancient Rome: the foundation of Rome in Italy is dated to the 14th century A. D., the Ancient Greece and its numerous poleis, which he identifies as the mediaeval crusader settlements on the territory of Greece.

The Ancient Egypt: the pyramids of Giza become dated to the 11th to 14th century A. D. and identified as the royal cemetery of the Global "Mongolian" Empire, no less. The civilization of the Ancient Egypt is irrefutably dated to the 11th to 15th century A. D. with the aid of the ancient Egyptian horoscopes cut in stone, like enormous Dendera horoscope that hangs in main entrance to the Louvre museum in Paris.

He was the first one to decipher and date unambiguously all such horoscopes, coming up with mediaeval dates in every case.

English historians rage at the suggestion that the history of Ancient England was de facto a Byzantine import transplanted to the English soil by the fugitive Byzantine nobility. To reward the English historians who consider themselves the true scribes of World History, the cover of the book "History: Fiction or Science?" portrays Tintoretto's Jesus Christ crucified on the Big Ben.

Fomenko wipes out the Ancient History of China outright. No such ancient history. Period. The compilation of the so-called Ancient Chinese History is reliably datable to the 17th 18th century only. It is perfectly recognizable as the Ancient European history, reworked and transcribed in hieroglyphs as yet another historical transplantation, this time performed on the Chinese soil by the loving Jesuit hands. The Chinese are the next in line to go berserk. Chinese history is inevitably bound to get both more ancient and more eventful, proportionally to the growing involvement of China in the world affairs. Chinese historians will keep on finding valid proof of prehistoric Chinese spaceflights until the Politburo orders them otherwise.

Islam with all its key figures appears as late as 15th-16th century A. D. as a branch of proto-Christianity. This is amply illustrated by imagery of Prophet Mahomet, archangel Gabriel, Heaven and Hell of this period. In today's Islam all imagery of the things living is taboo.

Arabic historians may find consolation in the crucial historical role of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th 17th century. The trouble is that this empire was initially a proto Christian state, with Hagia Sophia identifiable as Temple of Solomon, according to Fomenko! We can only guess if the acquisition of Alexander the Great (a Macedonian and a Christian!) as the founder of the Muslim World Empire will make Fomenko's theories more acceptable to the Arabic mainstream. He certainly does not spare any holy cows at all, claiming The Stone of Qa'Aba in Mecca to contain the lost Arch of the Covenant.


The history of religions according to Fomenko looks as follows: the pre-Christian period (before the 11th century and Jesus Christ ), Bacchic Christianity (11th to 12th century, before and after Jesus Christ), Jesus Christ Christianity (12th to 14th century) and its subsequent mutations (15th to 17th) into Orthodox Christianity, the Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on..

Saint Augustine was quite prescient when he said: "be wary of mathematicians,.. particularly when they speak the truth."

Henry Ford once said: "History is more or less bunk!"

Prominent mathematician Anatoly Fomenko not only proved it for a fact, but as true scientist tried to upgrade it into a rocket science.

This book will change your perception of History forever!
What if Ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt were invented during Renaissance?
What if The Old Testament was a rendition of events of the Middle Ages?
What if Jesus Christ was born in 1053 and crucified in 1086 AD?
Sounds Unbelievable?
Not after you've read "History: Fiction or Science?" by Anatoly Fomenko, the genius mathematician.
Armed with astronomy and computers Anatoly Fomenko turns History into a rocket science.

Here is a serie of books which turns "the whole world" upside down. I learned a lot of it and I hope that a new book from A.T. Fomenko will follow very quick. A absolute must for everybody who is interested in history or even a little bit from it.

This guide book tells you everything you want or need to know in a unique and very enjoyable style. Best I've ever read.

Get this book if only for the walking tours. The tours are humorous and fun, the directions and anecdotal info are great. Totally unlike walking tours in other guide books, which I generally find full of facts lifted from dusty encyclopedias. Besides the tours, I found the restaurant recommends right on target. And then there are the graphics, which, although a little too hip at times, are a welcome change from other colorless guidebooks. My only criticism is not with the book, but the website which purports to update the book. I checked out the website before I visited Prague and it didn't say that the ex-pat cafe on the outskirts of town had shut down. I ended up making my way there hoping to meet other Americans only to find that it was closed -- and looked like it had been closed for a while.

I split my time between Los Angeles and Prague and picked this book up mostly to use as a handy reference when I wanted to find a restaurant's telephone number or a museum's opening hours. From the first few pages it's clear this guy knows Prague better than any of the other travel guide writers, I find myself nodding so often in agreement with his descriptions of places I frequent that I'm getting whiplash. As someone who pays the rent with the written word, I also rock with his use of the language. The book is sometimes downright funny. Definitely not your father's guidebook.

This book is fabulous. As a 'single' traveler, I especially enjoyed the section on restaurants to feel comfortable in alone! I used this book to find interesting sights, great restaurants (not the tourist traps), and the best nightlife in the city. I was also impressed with the explanation of the hotels.

I arrived in prague without a hotel reservation, and I looked at several of the hotels on the list, looking for a room. I found Avant Guide to be right on the money regarding price, atmosphere, and room quality.

I would recommend this book to anyone who prefers not to follow the stream of tourists from one trap to another. Bravo!!!

I spent ten days in Prague in May 1998 doing research for a novel I was writing and found this book to be the perfect companion to a more general travel guide to the city (specifically, Lonely Planet's -- also recommended highly). I needed to see and learn a lot about both the more popular tourist parts of town, as well as the not-in-Frommer's-guide parts. Avant Guide served me well.

I'm awaiting the London edition anxiously.

This is a very powerful book which I think everyone should read. I could not put this book down. Usually I do not feel strong enough about books to write a review, but this book is different. Since this is a true story, the readers can really see what life was like for the main characters. This is the most amazing love story ever!!!

Blanka meets Mirek in Dachau after managing to survive Auscwitz. When she arrives in Dachau, she is only thinking about surviving the present and doesn't feel much of anything. Mirek befriends her and she begins to feel again-- love, hate, fear, everything.

This story of courtship that began during a time in a concentration camp is compelling and strange. This is more than just a WWII concentration camp story; it is timeless because it shows how hope might be killed due to human depravity and despair, but it can also be restored through love, family, and feelings. There is so much more I could say about this book that just can't be expressed in a review-- so I'll just say READ IT!

This book is wonderful. It is so honest in such a dishonest time of history. You find yourself rooting for the main characters with all of your passion. You get to feel like you know Mirek (Karel) and Blanka like they were family. This book is such a pleasure. I will read it again and again until my copy if so worn, that I will have to buy it again.

My mother, a Holocaust survivor, never talked to me about her experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. This novel gave me a vivid picture of what it was like to survive such an ordeal and the deep scars that such an event can imprint on peoples lives. I am grateful to Blanka and Mirek Friedman for making public such a personal account of their love story and more importantly to Petru Popescu for using his obvious literary talent to bring such a story to life. The novel evokes life in a concentration camp with such force that by the end of the novel I got the feeling that I have experienced life in camp Muldorf.
Many years ago I read some of Petru Popescu's Romanian novels. His English writing is as powerful as it was in Romanian. Great book, I strongly recommend it.

Not only is this a compelling novel made even more amazing by the fact that it is a true story, but the writing and the way the author captured the story - and his characters - leaves me in awe. The author did a wonderful job of portraying a camp from the inside and included enough historical facts to educate his readers, yet not weigh it down (which would be incredibly easy and sometimes happens in novels of this genre). I've read many books about this time in history - from historical documents to autobiographies and this one is among the best in its blend of fact and "personal story". You never for a second aren't aware that these people are real and lived through this amazing challenge. It will touch you forever and you will think about this amazing couple and incredible love story for a long time to come.