Eastern University Books

Living Icons brings to life the work, theology, commitment ment to Christian unity and holiness of ten of Orthodox Christianity's persons of faith. Maria Skobtsova, Gregory Krug, and Alexander Men are three of the profiled persons in this remarkable work. All are representatives of Russian Orthodoxy forced to emigrate from their homelands and develop their faith in a western environment. This transplanting resulted in a group of people who challenged the lethargy of their own church and opened the road of dialogue with their sister churches in the west.
Through the witnesses of these living saints of the twentieth century you can see the seeds of hope for a reunited church of all believers endowed with their diversity but united as one in Christ. I found the book fascinating as it discussed the challenges and struggles that these individuals faced. Many were rediculed for their views within Orthodoxy and declared heretical while others were murdered for their witness.
This work is a great primer for introducing you to some of the significant persons in Orthodoxy who have impacted the church in both Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox circles through their theology, iconography, academics, pastoral care and lay witness. Although not an exhaustive work, Living Icons, makes you hungry to know more about Orthodoxy as well as its profiled living witnesses. This is a "must" have book for all Christians who desire to know more about the gifts and graces of the Orthodox church as embodied in these individuals.

Living Icons: Persons Of Faith In The Eastern Church by ordained Orthodox priest Michael Plekon (Professor, Department of Sociology/Anthropology, religion and culture, Baruch College, City University of New York) is a close look at the lives of ten Eastern Orthodox Christian faithful, each of whom lived in the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. Fascinating, uplifting, and evenhanded in its study of characters, foibles, and faith, as well as highly recommended for students of Orthodox Christian History, Living Icons is a profound testimony to the path set by just a few among many amidst constantly changing and conflicting headwaters of religious belief worldwide.

Plekon has done a very good job in making available to american readers the lives and thoughts of several 20th century Eastern Orthodox theologians and "lovers of mankind". Each essay examines the main currents of thought for each person and their influnece upon the world in this century. Included are essays about St. Seraphim of Sarov, Sergius Bulgakov, MAria Skobtsova, Fr. Lev Gillet, Paul Evdokimov, Fr. Gregory Krug, Nicholas Afanasiev, Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Fr. Jean Meyendorff, and Fr. Alexander Men. With many first-hand accounts of their lives, the author gives keen insights into their personalities, the context of their actions and writings, and their continuing relevance for the 21st century.

I would also recommend "Light From The East" by Aidan Nichols for an intro to some other Orthodox thinkers. It is out of print, but available from time to time. Enjoy!

I say this is the most powerful poetry I have read in my life. I cannot read it for more than a few minutes. The poetic images are so intense, the emotions are so powerful. I love this book.

This is the best book on Arabic poetry in the United States.

This book touched my soul so much that I shared it with all my friends and family. They cried with me at the intense emotion expressed by the great poet Bayati and his masterful translator, Bassam Frangieh. Frangieh succeeds in doing so much more than translating: he unveils the meaning of the text and presents it faithfully and smoothly in English verse. This book is the essence of loneliness, love and homeland. No one has ever translated Bayati into English before. Frangieh's work is unique and immensely valuable.

The main purpose of this volume is "to explore the nature and construction of the Slavic ethnic identity in the light of the current anthropological research on ethnicity". The author proposes an innovative vision about the archaeological evidence, considering that the ethnic boundaries were marked by items of material culture (features of an "emblemic style" used by an ethnic group in order to be different). The `ethnie' results from the interaction of groups with different emblemic styles. Significant changes in the material culture can thus show what Curta calls "the making of the Slavs": the emergence of a new ethnie. This approach is completely new from all what was written before about the Slavic ethnogenesis.
The sources about the early Slavs are classified in three categories according to the position of their authors: eyewitness, possible contact and second-hand information. The interest of the Byzantine writers was focused on the Slavs only in some periods when they were a real danger. The sources are showing that the inroads occurred when the Danubian limes was weak because the Byzantine army was involved in other wars. A major change took place in the Slavic society around 550-560: the anarchy recorded by Procopius was replaced by war operations commanded by several chiefs whose names were preserved in the further sources. The Byzantine answer to the Slavic threat was the building of three defence lines inside the eastern Balkan provinces. The migration of the Slavs south of the Danube can be dated only since the first years of Heraclius. Only after their settlement, the Byzantine sources recorded several real tribal names, replacing the Byzantine ethnic label that was the generic name Sclavenoi.
Curta examines the Byzantine Balkan region, in order to explain how the classical urbanized society turned into a ruralized one in the period of the Slavic invasions. After a detailed archaeological overview of the main cities in the Balkan provinces, the author concludes that the economic decline occurred because they were not supplied with food from the hinterland. The fortified network established by Justinian fell because the state was not able to support the permanent garrisons of the limes with the central distribution of grain; in the same time, the few number of peasants made impossible a defence based on their service. The withdraw of the Balkan troops in the early years of Heraclius was the natural result of the interruption of the annona taken from Egypt. Therefore, the economic decline and the withdraw of the army from the Danube were not caused by the Slavic invasions; both had internal reasons, remarkably emphasized by Curta.
Objects like amber beads, bow fibulae or pots with stamped decoration are items of two well-defined `emblemic styles' developed by the Gepids and the Lombards. The ethnic identity was constructed on the basis of different types of imported objects with symbolic value bore by elite people (especially by women). The spreading of these objects in different areas matches with the territories inhabited by the Gepids and the Lombards. Aristocratic women, with their garnment, played the main role in the establishment and the transmission of the emblemic style and, as a consequence, of the ethnic identity (they were "symbolic vehicles for the construction of social identities"). The need to emphasize the emblemic style increased in periods of instability and competition between neighboring groups. In this way, Curta finally comes to the making of the early Slavic emblemic style. Like the Gepids or Lombards, the Slavs used specific types of pottery and bow fibulae to construct an emblemic style. This does not means that such objects were genuine Slavic products. Curta argues that the earliest specimens of the so-called "bow fibulae" were found in Mazuria and in Crimea. Their diffusion does not show migrations, but another kind of mobility: "gifts or women married to distant groups in forging alliances" and their function was to express a kind of heraldry displayed on the female dressing. The bow fibulae became a part of the Slavic emblemic style shortly before 600, in the same time with a wider change in the material culture which took place during the climax of the raiding activity of the Slavic rulers.
The individual houses were settled according to a pattern that implied specialized sectors for production or for ceremonies involving food consumption. Food was prepared in ceramic pots, whose shape was determined only by practical reasons. Curta points that the pottery shapes "should be interpreted in relation to food preparation, not to emblemic style". Hundreds of hand-made and wheel-made ceramic vessels belong to the same set of shapes. The pots from the sites ascribed to the Slavs have similar shapes with pieces from Gepidic cemeteries and from Danubian early Byzantine fortresses. If so, the `Prague type', which was defined as the genuine Slavic pottery, is an artificial construct of the archaeologists.
The Lower Danubian settlements are earlier than those from the Zhitomir area (the chronology was established with the aid of the metallic objects, including coins). This contradicts the usual theory of the Slavic migration. In this way, Curta comes to one of his main conclusions: "it appears that instead of a `Slavic culture' originating in a homeland and then spreading to surrounding areas, we should envisage a much broader area of common economic and cultural traditions". This means that large migrations should be replaced with short-distance movements caused by the itinerant agriculture. The population from this wide area became Slavic because acquired an identity during the second half of the 6th century. This identity was expressed through a specific emblemic style defined by bow-fibulae and pottery decorated with finger impressions.
The final chapter deals with the political organization of the early Slavs. Curta applies the anthropological theories on chiefdom, distinguishing between great-men (warriors), big-men (rich men with authority inside their community), and chiefs (rulers of organized polities with control over a group of subjects). The Slavs evolved during the 6th century from a "segmentary society" (lack of hierarchy) to a society ruled by chiefs who fought between them. The emergence of the political organization was the result of the contacts with the Byzantine state. By this military elite the Slavs came into being as a new ethnicity.
The book written by Florin Curta will be a turning point both for the Byzantine and the Slavic studies.

Since both reviewers before me made a detailed review, I would like to interpret the content of this scientificaly very well supported scholar work in a larger context. First of all, I would like to inform/remind future readers that the concept of "Slavic migrations" is a residue of the 19-th century scholarship whose conclusions were "firmly based" on the scarcity of the archaeological material and the "prima facie" interpretation of the mediveal Byzantine texts. Curta uses: much more material artefacts, his common sense and analytical approach to the written material. Consequently, it is no surprise that he comes to the conclusion that there was no "arrival of the Slavs" and there were no "massive Slavic migrations" on the Balkans in the early middle ages. The reader will find it difficult to draw a different conclusion on the basis of the presented evidence in the book.

However, the conclusions of Dr. Curta concerning the Slavic ethnogenesis are supported by at least two more independent streams of scholar work.

The first one comes in a form of recent breakthroughs in the field of genetics. The analyses of genetic founder linages on the populations in the Balkans (and eastern Europe) showed that only 10% of the extant mt DNA genetic pool (maternal ancestry)is of recent date (recent = starting from Metal ages onwards). The rest (90%)of the lineages are from Paleo-Mezo-Neolithic migrations that ceased some 5000 -6000 years before present. Similar results were found for the Y-chromosome lineages (paternal ancestry).

The second stream of scholar work that discards the idea of massive Slavic migrations in the early middle ages is the Theory of continuity of professor Mario Alinei. This theory (which is strongly corroborated by the above mentioned genetic findings)claims that the populations and languages in Europe are more or less geographically autohtonous. On several places in his two volume study ( Il Mulino editions 1996 & 2000) he points out that the idea of recent Slavic migrations is inconsistent and unsupported either by archaeological or linguistic evidence.
(I hope that this extremly important and up to date study will be published in English soon).

Those strong correlations between Curta's and Alinei's evidence and conclusions, on the one side, and the genetic evidence on the other, make a really strong case against the concept of Slavic migrations and offers a much more supported model of the prehistory and history of Balkans.

Seen in this larger context, the content of Dr. Curta's book represents a basic component of the new paradigm that emerges in the scholar work.

We cordially hope that time has come to make significant changes in the elementary school and high school history textbooks which are still based on the interpretations of the 19-th century scholar work.

This is a superb work of scholarship, putting to shame most histories of the Balkans which deal with this time period (e.g., Fine's). Curta smashes modern notions of the Slavic migrations derived mostly through (Byzantine) Roman sources, most of which are purely second hand accounts.

Curta begins with a history of the current thought on the Slavic migrations, influenced primarily by 19th century prejudices and Soviet Union "scholarship" emphasising the reigning hegemony there. He then goes on to offer a critical reading of texts, first those contemporaneous to the period under review, then the centuries immediately following. What's so important is that these readings are truly critical, as opposed to accepting or dismisive: how do these people know what they are writing? All of these texts have value, the argument goes, but they all have different value. What do these texts tell us about their authors?

Curta then reviews the archaeological evidence for the Byzantine-Roman fortifications built along the Danube. He finds Procopius' reports of these forts to be very accurate, but notes a significant absense of evidence that many were destroyed by violence; most were abandonded (and wait until you read his arguments about the coin hordes, a nerd's delight!).

Then Curta reveals the evidence for an actual Slavic culture north of the Danube. What he finds, using distributions of sites and artifacts, correspondence analyses, and cluster analyses, is a complex, well-organized and far-ranging system for the distribution of goods. His tentative conclusion is that this notion of Slav is one, while perhaps taken from a tribe somewhere along the northern border, that is projected onto a heterogeneous group of individuals that have long-ranging relationships from just east of Bavaria to east of Crimea to the Baltic seas! In short, there was no migration as such, they were always there, but had not yet formed this group identity they were given. (He does not deny raids into Byzantine-Roman territory, but who didn't raid their territory?)

What I didn't like: Curta has quite a beef with linguists and tars the entire field in his introduction. Linguists, he claims, have used spurious analyses of the Slavic lexicon to invent a purely fictional Slavic Urheimat (roughly, homeland/place of origin). While this might be true, this sort of folk etymology has little place in modern linguistics. Worse, Curta implies that he doesn't believe that Slavic languages are part of the Indo-European family! Anyone who knows a little of a Slavic language will recognize this as fantasy... Curta doesn't bother to justify his claim. It's hard to know how he would answer for this, particularly given that he doesn't seem especially up to date in linguistics.

But that's not the thrust of the book. The evidence is placed in the archaeology and a truly critical reading of the contemporaneous texts. This is a well substantiated iconoclasm that should be read by every student of European history.

I ended up reading the book, Manchurian Legacy, in one sitting even though I had a lot of other things to do. That is rare for me. The story mesmerized me as I felt like I was learning something about my roots, my mother.

My Japanese mother, to get away from the merciless firebombing of her city, at the age of 19 volunteered as a member of a repatriation team assigned to travel to Manchuria and to help in the repatriation of Japanese colonials there. After training for about a month, she flew to a city in the center of Manchuria on what happened to be the same day that the Russians invaded. She had quite an adventure hiding, being captured, incarcerated, starving, transported by rail in box cars and then force marched thru Korea, to be saved ironically by the enemy American soldiers that she was trying to escape. I am amazed at what she had to go through to get back to Japan.

Not only did this book gave me an insight to what life was like in Manchuria for the Japanese during the end of World War II, it also gave me a glimpse of post-war Japan where both my father and father-in-law were stationed as part of the occupation forces. The stories about the period during the Russian invasion and how they and the local Chinese treated the Japanese colonials was very revealing. Even though Mrs. Kuramoto's experience was not so harrowing as my mother's adventure, the description of the area and the everyday life of the colonials helped me to understand this period of history in this part of the world.

Even though the second part of the book about post-war Japan did not relate to my mother since she had a support system in place when she returned to Japan, the description of Mrs. Kuramoto's experiences with members of the American occupation force helped me to understand the situation that my father lived through during his term of duty in Japan.

Enough of how the book impacted me. Here is a synopsis of the book: The Manchurian Legacy is a story about the life of a young woman born in Manchuria to Japanese parents living there during World War II. Her father is a minor Japanese government official which gave the family trappings of luxury which were not enjoyed by the local occupied Chinese residents. Kazuko was a patriotic 17 year old and to her parent's dismay, volunteered to join the Red Cross to aid in the war effort against the corrupt capitalists and communists. When Japan surrendered, the Russians invaded and the Chinese revolted, sending the Japanese colonialists into hiding. How the colonialists fared over the next year is a testament to their entrepreneurship and tenacious desire to survive in a culture hostile to their former oppressors. The post-war portion of the book focused on how Kazuko coped in Japan after being shipped there on U.S. transport ship and after being rejected by other relatives. This is also a story of her relationship with soldiers and contractors with the American occupation forces, and her struggles in a country not so accepting of the returning colonialists.

A great read and highly recommended.

Recently I was given this book to read by a friend who is preparing to teach a university course on Japanese culture and women's narrative. I am voraciously reading the books that she is considering for her course and giving her feedback. I couldn't put this book down and cried at the end. What more can one say? I sit here now as a foreigner living in Japan and find this book offers me a window into Japanese history, culture and the voice of women that is not normally acknowledged. Everyone should read this book.

Manchurian Legacy is the book,I wished that I could have read when I was in the sixth grade.Readers of that age group could easily identify with the character of Kazuko as a young woman. It is rare to find a book that can appeal to both young and old readers. The author, Kazuko Kuramoto apologizes for her writing, as English is her third language. I believe, this is what makes the book so readable. She does not bog the reader down with flowery language. What Kazuko does give the reader is a feeling of what it was like to have lived in Manchuria as a colonialist before and doing WW II.The real charm of the book is that it does not assume the reader has any knowledge of the historical events that shaped the narrative.A brief explanation that doesn't bog down the story gives you a context to understand and enjoy her memoir. The immense popularity of a book, "Angela's Ashes" shows that readers have a desire for personal stories of the ordinary man. Kazuko's story deserves to be read by as wide a audience as "Angela's Ashes"

This book blew me away. Fearless poetry.....that's all I can say. These poems are utterly proud, audacious, textured, & profound. If you are a lover of poetry, you will not be disappointed.

Some of the poetry in this volume are works that western readers would never have the privelege of reading and would have been otherwise deprived of the beauty of this work. A sensitive translation that involved each poet. Discover the voices of arab poets in this volume.

According to Jayyusi view, the cultural bias favoring the group over the individual remains constant, with the poet seen as "a worker producing for the group" with the poetic "product" limited by what the group can accept and utilize. Jayyusi believes poetry is thus driven by a social functionalism expressed in two main directions "one ideological of religious origin and the other musical, in the form of singing and tarab."

In other words, poetry must serve a cause, and ideology in the first case, while in the second, and in fact the more keenly felt and popularly enjoyed function, the purpose is sheer pleasure and jubilation. Ideally, the two functions concur--this is the goal of such a poetry.

Jayyusi emphasizes that "tarab," i.e. singing, remains fundamental, indeed intrinsic to Arabic poetry past and present. Poetic verse is always subject to this standard. "Don't we notice that the Holy Koran today, for example, is a matter of audition or tarab for most Muslims more than a matter of reading, and comprehension and contemplation," Adonis writes.

Jayyusi points out that the two elements, "song" and "function (the serving of a cause)" are so fundamental that any poetic expression not embracing them is culturally relegated to the status of "philosophy," something deemed complex and remote from the people. Thus, unrhymed, non-musical poetry, poetry based on "contemplation and examination of inner worlds" lies so outside Arabic poetic taste as to be utterly marginalized, removed from any but a tiny, refined audience.

Jayyusi sees a conflict between this cultural reality and his own conviction that poetry must challenge boundaries and establish new aesthetics. This poetic effort means embracing rather than spurning the difficulty and ambiguity of meaning. "The problem in this context, lies in the refusal of Arabic poetic taste to place poetry at par with the great cognitive and discovery intuitions."

As Jayyusi points out, poetry continues to be judged by the causes and concerns it champions, and by the author's affiliations and ideologies. "Original readings concern themselves not with the essence of poetry but with its 'soil' and the 'climate' in which it is produced."

This phenomenon, according to Adonis, will only be reinforced by society's increasing domination by the non-literate media, TV in particular. Thus, modern communications technology only serves the religious and social traditions already so profoundly established. This leads Adonis to an equally profound pessimism regarding the present and future chances of Arabic poetry to escape its traditional limitations.

I received this book today ... and I'm stunned ... don't hesitate, just order it ... put together by 2 individuals, each enlightened in his own unique way ... a king in exile, a monk, a man ... the other, an image maker, who sees with his soul, and lives for his craft ... about a land on top of the world, with history and culture as old and deep as the Himalayas are high ... the results are magical ... the photography and text flow from page to page ...

My husband bought this book to use the images of buddhist monks for a tattoo. He was going to leave it with the tattoo artist as a gift but decided to bring it home instead. I am so very glad he did!!!! I have become very interested in Tibetan Buddhism as well as the nature of the Tibetan land and people. Of all the information I have come across, this book is by far the most beautiful! The photography is stunning and the Dalai Lama's text is very moving. I highly recommend this to anyone who has an interest in Tibet or Buddhism. It is simply awe inspiring!

The photographs in this book are simply breathtaking. The daily life of the everyday Tibetan come across vividly. The commentary by the Dalai Lama gives insight to the photos. I don't know if I would want to ever move to Tibet, but this book made me realize that it's a beautiful country.

Out of the dozen or so different versions, translations, and interpretations of Rumi I've gone through, Arberry is still my favorite. Some say it's a bit stale with the literal translation, but that is far better than someone else's limited interpretation (like Barks or Harvey), especially when today's popular interpreters are unable to dive deep enough into Rumi and simply call him a mystic or a writer of Love poetry.

Arberry also includes some notes (though a full addendum is really required to begin to grasp the layers of Rumi), which are helpful.

If you do like the modern interpretations, at least read Arberry first. Then you can make up your own interpretations before reading someone elses.

It is unfortunate that most readers are introduced to Rumi through the "interpretations" of Coleman Barks (you'll notice I didn't say translations). A. J. Arberry's tranlslations are where readers should start; as a matter of fact Barks himself said that he uses Arberry's translations, which should speak volumes in itself. Arberry stays very close to the literal readings and the notes he provides are invaluable when reading these poems. There are a few places where the notes prove very helpful because Rumi plays on words a lot and the double meanings would have went over my head otherwise. And because Rumi's original works haven't survived there are several versions of what might be called his "original" poetry. The differences, when they arise, are included in the notes and there are a few instances where the alternate reading makes more sense than the one given. If you are an avid reader of Rumi or looking for an introduction, this book and its companion volume are a must have.

This 2 volume set of translations by Arberry and the translations by Nicholson are the best readily available. Numerous "renderings" by popular writers littering the bookstores fail to even touch the depth and layers of meaning to be found in Rumi. These are works of spiritual power brought to life for the english reader by a scholar in the language and history of the Sufi traditions. If you want the real thing, this is it.

Well written and easy to follow. I especially love the way the book is set up. Two authors who lean towards slightly different directions (hawk/dove) in regards to how America should engage with North Korea, present their argument while also responding to the other's arguments in alternating chapters.

Professors Cha and Kang come at the current and historic crisis in North Korea from different angles: Cha from a more "realist" view of international relations, Kang from a more "liberal" view. The book is a series of several chapters written alternately by Cha and Kang with each pair of chapters focusing on one aspect of the Korean problem. Both view North Korea as being entirely "rational," and make a point to discredit 30-second sound byte types of analyses of North Korea's decisionmaking process. Cha finds that it is perfectly rational for North Korea to attack or go nuclear even if the end result has a high probability of resulting in total destruction, because the status quo is so unbearable that the North is willing to bear the risk. Kang suggests that increased economic development, integration into the world economy, and the introduction of market forces will alter North Korea's cost-benefit analysis and push it away from violent military action or the active pursuit of a nuclear weapons program. In the end, both agree that the default strategy for the United States is engagement.

Cha and Kang do a good job of bringing intellectual depth to a debate that is often over-simplified. It makes a good read for the average reader while remaining a strong academic work of its own. This is not a history book--it is a book examining academic questions with real-world implications.

After the first Gulf War, several second/third world countries made the observation that the technical and other advantages possesed by the U. S. make it imperative that any country concerned about an attack from the United States have nuclear weapons. I note that I don't see President Bush talking much about attacking North Korea. General Gary Luck offered a quick sound bite on the costs of a war in N. Korea: "one million casualties, one trillion dollars in industrial damage and lost business."

In this excellent book the authors attempt to bring some sense to the scare headlines so loved by the news media -- Newsweek called the North Korean leader, "Dr. Evil." The book is written by two professors, one a bit more hawkish, one a bit more dovish. They present their views, they discuss the others viewpoint, they then try to come up with an overall plan that makes sense.

A million casualties -- somebody better come up with a plan that's better than TV's talking heads.

With this book I also highly recommend "North Korea at a Crossroads" by Suk Hi Kim.

There is very little to add to M. Pitcavage's review above other than to recommend that this should be among the very first books read by anyone interested in Vietnam. While Professor Bartholomew-Feis' initial chapters appear to treat Ho Chi Minh as a "nationalist", she presents enough evidence from those who met him that they may judge for themselves. Particularly valuable are the evaluations from Chinese, American, and French sources noting Ho's exceptional charisma, and his unfailing ability to detect what his listeners wanted to hear, and tell them exactly that. And while she does appear to buy into the "French colonialism as unspeakable suffering" school of thought, I would have liked to see at least some statistics to paint a more accurate picture of what it was the French did or failed to do in developing Indochina up until 1940. Likewise, she repeatedly refers to "100 years of colonialism", when in fact it dated from 1864 in Cochinchina, 1884 in Annam (as a protectorate) and from 1884 (protectorate) 1886 (protectorate in highlands, colony in Red River Delta)in Tonkin.

A well-written account of the early years of US involvement with Ho Chi Minh in the second world war. It is a sad commentary on what might have been. Had the US not abandoned their ally to cruel colonialism, the US and Vietnam may never have suffered the long costly and unnecessary war they did. It seems an all too common tale of strange cold war bed-fellows and betrayel.

This book goes far to provide the background to the recent history of Vietnam and the United States. Ho Chi Minh is not portrayed as a saint but neither is French colonialism. In the portrayal, the nationalist rather than communist undercurrents of the Vietnam war are expounded and explained. A worthy addition to the history of twentieth century Vietnam-US relations.

The OSS and Ho Chi Minh, by Dixee Bartholomew-Feis, was an unexpected pleasure. Books written on the OSS or the British equivalent in World War II, SOE, so frequently fall headfirst into a muddy miasma of internal politics, blame and counter-blame, and a fixation on minutiae that they often obscure more than they illuminate. Thankfully, Bartholomew-Feis gives a well-written and lucid account of the OSS in Viet Nam on the cusp between war and peace in 1945. She steps neither into the "Ho was a nationalist and if only they had listened to the OSS then the Vietnam war never would have happened" camp nor into the "Those naive fools helped Ho get to power and brought communism to Southeast Asia" camp, for which every reader should be grateful.

At first, her book gives one pause. She starts off with dual mini-biographies of Ho Chi Minh and F.D.R. and one wonders where on earth she will go with those. However, once she actually gets from contextual background to Vietnam itself, and begins to display the depth of her research and understanding, the book is on much firmer footing. The OSS encountered the Viet Minh in an intelligence-gathering context, so she focuses first on the intelligence networks in Vietnam and how the Allies used them (introducing the reader to a fascinating "free-lance" intelligence network that gave intel to the British, US and Chinese), then shows how the OSS gradually was introduced into this intelligence context. In the process, she illuminates the tensions between the French in Vietnam and the Vietnamese Communists, between north and south Vietnam, and between the Japanese occupiers and both the French and Vietnamese.

Bartholomew-Feis does a good job describing the various OSS missions into Vietnam at the end of the war and the personalities behind them. What is perhaps most striking is how few, how young, and how junior most of these American personnel were, yet the great responsibilities they had in representing their country in matters relating from intelligence to strategy to policy and diplomacy. Almost as fascinating is how, virtually without exception, all of the Americans (conservative and liberal alike) were impressed with Ho Chi Minh, who must positively have oozed charisma. It is quite interesting to compare the personal relationships between the American OSS representatives and Ho and his close collaborators on one hand with the much more bitter, taxing, and dysfunction relations between the British and Tito (see Dedjier's diaries on his views of the British, for example) or the British and the Albanian communists or the British and the Greek communists. Perhaps the only real comparison is with Mao Zedong who managed to win over a bevy of Westerners from left-wing reporters like Edgar Snow and Agnes Smedley to Marine officers like Evans Carlson. In any case, it is quite interesting to see how genuinely friendly the Vietnamese were towards the Americans, more so than almost all of the other communist movements with which the OSS worked.

Bartholomew-Feis does write, rather often, of how the Vietnamese "manipulated" the Americans, yet some of the incidents of which she writes sound not so much as a deliberate underhanded manipulation so much as they seem a genuine (if perhaps temporary) convergence of interests. She is on firmer footing when she describes how the Vietminh used their rather tenuous official contacts with the United States as a way to gain status and legitimacy. The Vietminh were quite clever in that regard.

Overall, Bartholomew-Feis does an excellent job in covering a difficult and--given the fact that any book on this is heavily burdened with foreshadowing to begin with--sensitive subject. It would have been nice to have seen more use of Vietnamese sources but overall the book is well-researched and Bartholomew-Feis demonstrates a considerable grasp of her subject.

I have read scores of books on the OSS and SOE dealing with various resistance movements in World War II and I think this is definitely one of the better ones. Scholars and general readers interested in intelligence gathering during World War II, the origins of the Indochina War, Vietnamese nationalism, and the end of the Second World War will all be interested in this well-written study. I recommend it.

I bought this book because I wanted to have a look at old Cairo, this part of the city that has been unspoiled by time and, unfortunately, neglected by men. I think the Egyptian Government should do something to restore and exploit these buildings for the sake of Cairo's beauty. The pictures are nice and the texts are mainly for those who have an architectural interest for Cairo's past. I am not an architect, though, and I enjoyed the book - perhaps because I love this city very much.

The beautiful photographs of the belle epoque buildings of Cairo fairly jump off the pages at you. This lovely, understated book should be a guide for architecture and restoration students and buffs. This is a great gift book for the right people.

From the Egyptian Press: "[Myntti's] photographs...overflow with her love of Cairo, so the photos have become more beautiful than professional photos, because it was the heart that recorded not the fixed lens that cannot feel the pulse." (Hussam Abd Rabbu, Akhir Saat.) "The French architecture of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries makes up one of the most charming of Cairo's harlequin faces.... This era has left a strikingly beautiful imprint on the citscape. Myntti's zoom lens offers a graceful catalogue." (Francis Bickmore, Egypt's Insight.) "In its global significance and cosmopolitan sophistication, Cairo was not merely a copy of Paris, it was more than Paris. The book inivtes one to 'promenade' and also to protect these neglected treasures." (Bruno Ronfard, Al-Ahram Hebdo.)