Ireland Books

A variety of celtic alphabets from the incredibly ornate to the classic simple calligraphy makes this a worthwhile resource for anyone working with celtic design. I can think of dozens of potential uses for mine...

This book contains, as the title implies, seven complete Celtic alphabets, one of which is a reproduction of a lettering style used in the book of Kells, another a plain Celtic style calligraphy, and five other sets, decorated with spirals, birds, hounds and a variety of Celtic knots. Many letters are printed in double or triplicate, only on one side, so they can be cutout for stenciling etc. without fear of ruining the letter, or other letters.

This book by Michael Urban and the Yabloko State Duma Deputies Viacheslav Igrunov and Sergei Mitrokhin is a comprehensive study of the origins and course of emergence of post-communist politics in Russia. It is, in at least three ways, a valuable contribution to the slim body of literature on the political groupings and organizations which brought about Russia's peaceful revolution.
First and foremost, it constitutes a fairly detailed and--with very rare exceptions--reliable handbook on the particulars of (1) the Soviet/Russian liberal and social-democratic dissident scene from the 1940s through the 1980s, (2) the "informals" (neformal'nye) movement in major Russian cities of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and (3) the altogether disappointing party-building process in Russia between 1988 and 1996. The three authors list numerous new details, participant observations, and insights especially on the dissident scene and "informals" which will, even for the native Russian specialist, represent precious additions to the factual knowledge accumulated so far.
Second, the book presents an original application to the Russian case of a particular, decidedly non-elitist, pluralist concept of politics. Politics is here understood as a decision-making process characterized by a constant communication and interaction between the state, on the one side, and independent political society, and civil society, on the other. And, thirdly, the book represents a comprehensive interpretation of the major factors causing perestroika and the eventual systemic change between 1985 and 1991, and of the principal ills and missed opportunities in post-Soviet Russian politics between 1991 and 1996.
The study is fixed on Russia's anti-Soviet uprising "from below" and focuses on actors outside the Soviet state structures until 1991. This makes it a very useful supplement to other large analyses of this period which show similar ambition, but (1) are instead centred on the activities of the top-elite in their peculiar institutional setting, such as the in-depth investigation of the Gorbachev factor by Archie Brown, or (2) explore the interaction between structural-institutional factors and political elite configurations, such as the comprehensive survey of the Soviet system's demise between 1985 and 1991 by Jerry Hough.
Urban, Igrunov and Mitrokhin offer here a missing link with regard to these analyses. Concerning Brown's "Gorbachev-centric" approach, it becomes clear from their study that Gorbachev's and his assistants' gradual liberalization and democratization would have been much less consequential without the existence of some relevant--if dormant--extra-systemic political ideas and forces ready to fill quickly, and to expand further, the space initially opened up by intra-systemic reformers. With regard to Hough's explanatory scheme the authors provide proof that the substantial structural changes in Russian society which made a middle-class-revolution likely had first to be translated into a nascent civil and political society in order to leave its own imprint on the reform process, and to eventually transform the initial palace revolution and attempted social engineering from above into a true, deep and societally based socio-economic, cultural and political revolution.
By the authors' own admission, their "utopian or ideal" conception of politics (p. 310) as involving the people and independent social groups as active participants, and their approach to the Russian transformation emerging from this concept constitutes both the major strength and weakness of their survey. The approach is, as indicated, certainly helpful in switching our focus from merely Kremlinological or exclusively sociological explanations to the issue of how exactly societal potentials and contradictions were transformed into political inputs and conflicts.
Nevertheless, late Soviet and even to some degree post-Soviet Russian politics remained--at least until December 1993--to a large degree a secluded intra-elite process with the top decision-makers unusually insulated from inputs of an underdeveloped political and civil society. As far as these top-heavy political conflicts do not seem to fit the authors' understanding of what "politics" is about, they ignore them to a large extent. Thus the book needs to be read in conjunction with more elite-centered studies, such as those by Brown and Hough, in order to get a full picture of the period mostly of concern here (i.e. 1985-1991). Urban's, Igrunov's and Mitrokhin's valuable, extensive and naturally sympathetic treatment of the various brands of liberally oriented segments of the suppressed civil society in the Soviet Union, leads them also to assert that "[p]erhaps the principal source of ideas contributing to perestroika's intellectual thrust was the Soviet dissident movement" (p. 61).
In my opinion, this is--in contrast to what one might say about the importance of dissidents to the demise of communism in Poland and Czechoslovakia--a clear overestimation of the Soviet dissidents' impact on pre-1985 society, and an altogether misleading indication of the causal chain leading to the collapse of the Soviet/Russian Empire. Although personalities like Andrei Sakharov, Valeriia Novodvorskaia, Boris Kagarlitskii and Sergei Kovalev all played in their ways important roles in the formation of post-Soviet Russian political discourse, they became able to do so only by the late 1980s. The only case where a prominent representative of the Soviet dissident movement managed to reach out to the Soviet mass public before Gorbachev, occurred when "Novyi mir" was given permission to publish Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" in the early 1960s. And even then the partly nationalist and traditionalist political views later expressed by Solzhenitsyn would seem to put him outside the camp of those dissidents who have, according to Urban, Igrunov and Mitrokhin, provided perestroika's "intellectual thrust."
Among the principal ideological sources of Gorbachev and his team's reforms one would have to mention instead pre- and post-Stalinist Bolshevik thought (Lenin, Bukharin, Khrushchev); imaginative--if still Marxist--analyses of Soviet society by Soviet academics; exposure of the Soviet political and academic elite to Western media and social science (including sovietological) literature; and the top elite's confrontation with various brands of non- or anti-Soviet Marxism, such as the ideas of the Prague Spring, Eurocommunism and West European social democracy. To be sure, some writings by Soviet dissidents, such as Andrei Sakharov, were circulated more widely among the Soviet intelligentsia than others. Nevertheless, it was institutions such as the editorial boards of Moscow's "Novyi mir" or Prague's "World Marxist Review," the Central Economic-Mathematical Institute, a number of further institutes of the Academy of Sciences, the law and economics departments of Moscow's and Leningrad's research universities, and even some CPSU Central Committee Departments which provided the central ideas and blueprints for perestroika and, later, for more radical reform attempts. If the output of these institutions was indeed been significantly influenced by Soviet dissident writing, Urban, Igrunov and Mitrokhin do not provide evidence or even hypotheses for how this may have happened.
Concerning "moral" impetus of perestroika and the later reforms, the impact of the abortive Soviet dissident movement was probably more significant. Yet this influence would still have to be seen within a wider picture of large-scale criticism of the Soviet system from an ethical point of view by a considerable number of outspoken representatives of the official Soviet cultural scene including many famous artists, writers, film-directors, publicists, and so forth after 1985. This qualification is not meant to diminish in any way the sorrow and deprivation endured, and indeed the heroism shown, by the Soviet dissidents. Rather it aims to draw light on a peculiar feature of the second Russian social revolution-- namely that it had its origins and drew its main actors from within the Soviet ancien regime. Given the pre-1985 Soviet state's effectiveness in suppressing political dissent, there was little possibility that a comprehensive systemic change could have happened differently in a peaceful way.

Michael Urban, The Rebirth of Politics in Russia Cambridge University Press, New York, 1997 + 429 pages. Notes and references. Select bibliography. Index.

Reviewed by Johanna Granville, Clemson University, Clemson, SC

Michael Urban's book, The Rebirth of Politics in Russia contains such a wealth of important ideas that a reviewer is challenged to summarize them adequately in a mere 750 words. This excellent book deals with contemporary Russian politics from 1989 to the present, seeking in particular "to explain the rebirth of politics amid the collapse of the USSR." It lends great insight into the question of why the "democratic experiment" in Russia has not been more successful thus far. The book starts with a model of "politics," in which the authors attempt to "articulate the concept across three spheres (state, political society, and civil society) and along two dimensions (organization and communication)." In this reviewer's opinion, this first chapter is rather dry and abstruse. The remaining chapters, however, are more concrete and interesting. Chapter two turns to the so-called "pre-political period," i.e. the period before the appearance of the Gorbachev-era "informals" and the formation (in 1990) of bona fide political parties. It describes the various strategies employed by the dissident movement---launched in about 1965 with the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel--to gain political influence, These included stressing legality and using the Soviet Constitution as a weapon against the communist authorities; organizing demonstrations; appealing to the West regarding human rights violations; and documenting such abuses in publications such as the Chronicle of Current Events. The authors claim that the dissidents of the 1960s and 1970s had two major weaknesses. The first was their failure to address the Russian people directly, instead focusing primarily on the communist authorities. This hindered their ability to build grassroots support. The second shortcoming--which continues to inhibit the pro-reform political parties in Russia today--was the dissidents' "abstemious attitude" toward politics and unwillingness to cooperate with the party-state. These dissident intellectuals preferred to philosophize than to compromise their ideals in the nitty-gritty organizational work. Chapters three, four, and five examine Gorbachev's programs of perestroika and glasnost and the resulting mushrooming of informal organizations (neformaly). Here the authors point to an interesting paradox. Very few dissidents from the pre-political period participated in the informals, despite the fact that many of Gorbachev's ideas emerged from dissident "samizdat" publications or even official but liberal publications from the 1960s (like Novy Mir). This can be explained in part by the dissidents' traditional "abstemious attitude" toward politics mentioned above. In addition, as the authors note perceptively, after decades of basing their identity in opposition to the party-state system, the older dissidents either refused or hesitated to work within that system, in the officially sanctioned informals. Chapter six discusses the positive and negative aspects of the 1989 elections to the Congress of People's Deputies. Candidates fielded by the informal groups faced tremendous difficulties, from finding a public hall in which to hold the nominating sessions, making themselves heard above the jeers of communist hecklers, and even defending themselves from physical attacks. Moreover, no organizations independent of communist tutelage had the legal right to nominate candidates.(119) Urban and his colleagues also point out that the Congress of People's Deputies (CPD) could not be considered a real legislative body because it had no budgeting ("power of the purse") or lawmaking powers; all power resided in the CPSU and its executive agencies. Without a free market in the USSR there could be no genuine legislature. Moreover, given the barriers confronting the informals, most of the deputies elected to the CPD in 1989 were party apparatchiks. Ultimately the deputies owed their appointments to the Communist party, not to any constitutents in their home districts. On the positive side, however, the 1989 elections and the CPD sessions--televised live--played a vital role in mass politicization. Chapters seven, eight, and nine deal with the elections of 1990 and the formation of political parties at the close of the Soviet period. These elections, more meaningful than those the previous year, transformed the organizational dimension of Russian politics, remaking the internal constitution of the three principal forces then present on the political field (the CPSU, nationalists and neo-Stalinists, and democrats.) These political forces grew even stronger after the constitutional ban on political parties was lifted (March 1990), and the Law on the Press was passed, abolishing censorship (June 1990). Unfortunately, since the authorities had not removed the prohibition on parties until after the 1990 elections, "all the new parties were latecomers, arriving on the scene only after the ball had ended." (p. 201) With neither identifiable constituencies to represent nor upcoming elections to prepare for, the development of Russia's political parties was ingrown. The final chapters discuss the growth of "restoration" forces, which were determined to protect the CPSU against Russian nationalists, the "war of laws," and the failed coup d'etat of August 1991. Urban and his colleagues also observe Yeltsin's autocratic behavior after the failed coup and his missed opportunities which greatly hindered his economic reform program and impeded the growth of strong democratic parties. The October 1993 skirmish between the executive and legislative branches resulted from Yeltsin's failure to call for new elections immediately after the coup. In addition, the fractiousness of the democratic parties and groups in Russia today stem from Yeltsin's reluctance to support them. In 1990 Yeltsin suspended his membership in DemRossiya (a large amorphous bloc of democratic groups), following his election to the post of chairperson of Russia's Supreme Soviet. To make matters worse, in April, 1991--when DemRossiya was mounting protests and political strikes nationwide in hope of bringing down the communist order there and then--Yeltsin "pulled the rug from under DemRossiya by cutting a deal with Gorbachev" that commenced negotiations with eight other republics (the nine-plus-one process) to rescue the federal union and restore civil peace. (p.242) Thus Yeltsin has exhibited a tendency to detach himself from his supporters as soon as his immediate objectives had been reached. Urban and his colleague claim that Yeltsin's avoidance of responsibility to his base, along with the latter's reluctance to demand it, can be counted as a major missed opportunity to provide structure to Russian political society. It directly contributed to DemRossiya's disintegration, to the power struggle between the executive and legislature in communism's aftermath, and to the fall of the first Russian republic. In short this is an excellent book for anyone who wishes to understand the growth of Russian political society in the 1989-1997 period.

These two novellas, Red Star (RS) and Engineer Menni (EM), capture a fascinating time and frame of mind. The time was 1908 (1913 for EM), when the Bolsheviks were gaining strength but before their 1917 revolution against the Tsarists.

RS describes a Socialist Utopia on Mars, documented by a visitor from Earth. He is chosen among all earthmen for his properly revolutionary spirit, and whisked away to Mars as their earthly envoy. This Socialist paradise presents an odd paradox of individual vs. collective. Individual achievement is nominally scorned, because of the historical inevitability of a discovery, or because honoring the great inventor would implicitly dishonor the farmer or laborer. Still, the story focuses on the magnificent achievements of exceptional scientists, silently mocking the brotherly equality supposedly being celebrated. EM is a similar tribute of hero-worhip for a fictional engineer of RS's pre-Socialist past, with similarly hollow regard for the common proletarian.

Actual descriptions of the Martian Utopia sometimes sink under the weight of revolutionary rhetoric, but I consider that to be part of this book's value. The narrator's socialist zeal, bordering on ranting, seems to capture an actual mind-set of the time, or perhaps a fictional mind-set that Bolshevik propagandists wanted people to believe in. Every fact in the story had to be intepreted in a properly socialist way, down to details of physics and children's squabbles over toys.

This monomania, whether Bogdanov genuinely felt it or not, explains much of Soviet history up to the recent fall of communism in Eastern Europe. It appears in the narrator's fawning respect for a machine tool operator, one so devoted to his task that his supervisors were concerned that his zeal for work might endanger his health. It explains why the art museum has two sections, one where the inevitability of their contemporary art is traced in historical examples, the other where tools and consumer goods are displayed as the society's highest esthetic achievements.

An odd tone pervades both stories, though, an underlying melancholy that drives even the strongest of Bogdanov's characters to nervous collapse or to suicide. I don't know Russian literature very well. Perhaps that "memento mori" is part of their writing, perhaps there was thought to be something noble in ending one's own life before the weakness of age stripped one of his powers. A modern reader can only wonder why this profound sadness seemed to follow from the success of socialism.

Bogdanov's larger-than-life engineers and scientists remind me of Ayn Rand's characters in Atlas Shrugged, Anthem, and The Fountainhead. She was a Russian emigre, so she must have been exposed to the literary tradition and the kinds of heroes that Bogdanov portrayed. Her treatment of those very similar characters is very different, though. Where Bogdanov tried to diffuse their achievements across the socialist whole, Rand ennobled the individual. RS gives me a much better understanding of the trends and values that Rand answered in her own writing.

Although bland in themselves, RS and EM are informative. They show the ideals, whether heartfelt or imagined, that led to the revolution of 1917. They also show the core values that led to the revolution's eventual failure, so many years later.

//wiredweird

As the subtitle of this book points out, Alexander's Bogdanov's "Red Star" was "The First Bolshevik Utopia." Bogdanov was a major prophet of the Bolshevik movement and while the red star of his title is the planet Mars, he is clearly envisioning the kind of society that could emerge on Earth after the victory of not only the scientific-technical revolution, a belief that can be traced in utopian literature back to Francis Bacon's "The New Atlantis," but also the social revolution dictated by Marxism. The future of "Red Star" is the radiant future of socialism that Bogdanov believed would eventually triumphant everyone on earth. At one point in the novel the hero, a Bolsehvik activist named Leonid, declares: "Blood is being shed for the sake of a better future. But in order to wage the struggle we must KNOW that future." Of course, Bogdanov believes that he does indeed know the future, thanks to the writings of Marx and Engels.

From a historical perspective the key thing to keep in mind is that Bogdanov is writing well over a decade before the Russian Revolution. In fact, he is writing in reaction to the 1905 revolution that compelled Tsar Nicholas II to issue a constitution and create a parliament. This came after the 1903 split of the Russian Marxists into the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Like the hero of "Red Star," Bogdanov went with the former and Lenin, and was one of the original "twenty-two" who met in Switzerland to form a group dedicated to disciplined revolutionary action. As part of this effort, Bogdanov wrote "Red Star."

What is most interesting is that the "tectology" that Bogdanov envisions in constructing his utopia on Mars does not ignore the dangers of collectivisim and high technology (which were at the heart of many of the anti-utopian fantasies of the late tsarist period). He even has a sense of humor: the vegetation on Mars is red, and Leonid calls it "socialist vegetation." On Bogdanov's Mars you will find clothes made out of synthetic material, three-dimension movies, and a death ray, but no political state. Citizens engage in both voluntary labor as well as leisure and culture. The conflict in the story comes when someone tries to change the Martian utopia. Ultimately, you can make the claim that "Red Star" is more science fiction than propaganda, since Bogdanov creates a perfect world where the "labor question" has been made moot by the industrialization of farming. There is no peasant class on Mars for Russian readers to relate too, provided, of course, they were inclined to reading a science fiction utopian novel.

"Red Star" was extremely popular during and after the Russian Revolution and is a fascinating example of utopian literature in that it deals with the problems faced by industrial nations, whether socialist or capitalist, such as atomic energy, the environment, biomedical ethics, and shortages of food and natural resources. The illustrations for "Red Star" are taken from the 1923 Moscow edition. This volume includes Charles Rougle's translations of the complete texts of not only "Red Star," but also Bogdanov's 1913 novel "Engineer Menni" and a 1927 poem "A Martian Stranded on Earth." These latter two works appear in English for the first time in this collection. "Engineer Menni" takes the then current beliefs about the natural history of Mars and uses it to tell a story about the construction of the canals as a parable of class struggle. The heroes of the story, as the title indicates, are the engineers, who would indeed do great work in transforming the Soviet Union in the 20th century. "Red Star" is an important example of utopian literature that should be back in print.

This is a tragic memoir of a son whose father was murdered by the Communist regime. The author sets the stage beautifully by giving the history of the Czech nation, the plight of its Jewish population, and the suffering at the hands of the Nazis and Communists. He weaves the story of his family into this history with great skill. As a native Czech who had some similar experiences to those of Ivan Margolius, I particularly appreciated his attention to detail, his accurate and beautiful descriptions of Prague and the Czech countryside, and his use of poetry throughout the book. The reader cannot help but weep for a son who has such deep feelings and who carries with him such deep sorrow for a father whom he knew for only a few very short years. A wonderful book!

"Never fall down!"

Roughly translated from the Czech refrain that author Ivan Margolius' resilient mother, Heda Margolius Kovaly, would often exclaim when life in the former Czechoslovakia threw their Margolius clan one too many rotten tomatoes.

Ivan and Heda, of course, are son and wife to the late Rudolf Margolius, a one-time deputy minister in the former Czechoslovakia's Ministry of Trade.

History reveals that on December 3, 1952, Rudolf and ten other falsely-accused -- mostly Jewish -- members of the former Communist government's inner circle were hanged in what has since become known as the "Slansky Affair" or "Slansky Plot." Slansky was a trumped-up list of charges that first Czechoslovak Communist President Klement Gottwald orchestrated against forteen prominent members of his administration.

The Slansky Plot was the culmination of a major part of Gottwald's Stalinist-inspired campaign of terror against the citizens of Czechoslovakia. His aim was to smash them into socialist submission, with Czechoslovakia at the time being the most "Western" of all the newly-established "Bloc" countries.

"Never fall down" became Ivan Margolius' mantra as he returned more than forty years later to the now-democratic Czech Republic to retrace his father's once-shining career's steps. Ivan's search lead him straight into the former Czechoslovak archives. From there it was where the author was successful in clarifying heaps of missing details that had eluded Ivan Margolius for most of his adult life about the life of his famous father.

Until the age of sixteen, Ivan hadn't precisely known the circumstances surrounding his father's passing. Heda, like most of her fellow citizens living under the socialist yoke, dreaded divulging any information about Rudolf Margolius to her lone son, fearful how it might affect his future work and life prospects inside the Communist system.

Featuring prominently in this book are letters. For instance, one is an ambiguously-crafted note Rudolf had penned to his young boy, which reveals shades of the inner-agony that Rudolf and his fourteen co-accused must have felt while awaiting their execution under the libels. It had been kept from author by Heda until well into Ivan's teens.

Since then, Ivan Margolius' life filled with a burning curiosity to truly know of the circumstances surrounding his father's tragic demise. By then, Ivan was already comfortably settled, living in exile in the British capital, London. It built up until he demanded to know just what had really happened to the man he once called 'Tato', Daddy?

Why had Rudolf Margolius been [...] as a "subversive spy" who "had endangered the health of Czechoslovakia's children?"

Were the charges laid against Rudolf Margolius even true?

Heda knew them to be falsehoods, all, yet Ivan just had to know for himself.

What emerged from the author's research was that Rudolf Margolius hardly even knew Rudolf Slansky, one of the Group of Fourteen rounded up in his eponymously-named trial. Rudolf Margolius hardly had a bad bone in his body, with Ivan remembering their times cavorting around the Czech countryside fondly. Rudolf Margolius was a dedicated father, husband, and moreover, as Ivan unearthed, had served the interests of the then-new Czechoslovak "people's republic" with all his heart.

Rudolf Margolius sincerely believed in the bold promises of Lenin-style Marxism. He renounced all claim to his capitalist past from before the War, and after Rudolf's return to Prague from the Dachau concentration camp, he instructed his wife Heda to liquidate all of their parents' former possessions and assets, dedicating the sale's profits to the State; such was the fervour of his dedication to the socialist cause.

Ivan Margolius needed answers to questions he could find only by returning to the sordid past. To the place where his life changed forever, Prague. The book tells that story...

--


REFLECTIONS OF PRAGUE is a stunning walk down memory lane. Within a neatly-contained 300pp. of well-structured, sometimes whistful, but mostly evocatively-written narrative, Ivan Margolius finally discovers for himself just who the man once known as his father really was.

Margolius still awaits an official public apology from the present Czech authorities. As inheritors of the government which destroyed the life of his father, it is they who are responsible for issuing a Formal Sorry.

REFLECTIONS, however, is about that and more. It reflects, as its name states, on things such as:

** What Prague was like during its inter-war years.
** What life was like in the capital under Nazi occupation in the Protectorate.
** What became of Bohemia and Moravia's 88,000 Jews, more than 47,000 from Prague alone.
** Why Communism was such an "attractive" option for Czechs following WWII.
** How influential the Soviets were in Czechoslovak affairs, and how they had contributed to the state of terror in early '50s Czechoslovakia.

These broad strokes of Central European history are on full display as Ivan relives his mother and father's pasts.

REFLECTIONS contains anecdotal evidence Ivan had heard from Heda over the years, and makes available his painstaking research into the former Communist state's archives. In his attempt to recreate the atmosphere extant at the time his father death, Margolius succeeds masterfully.

I consider REFLECTIONS to be an essential primer for anyone with more than a passing interest in Czech history.

If you're looking for an easy-to-read book on Prague written by a son of one of its most illustrious families, the Margoliuses, then stop searching. You've found it.

Five stars.

A wonderful story. Most Shakesphere books read like school text books but this book is novel like, completely holding my interest from cover to cover. Jeffrey Kahan makes you feel like you were there, as if you were part of these amazing events. I highly recommend this book to everyone who loves history and Shakesphere. I just couldn't put it down!

I'm fortunate enough to be a friend of Jeffrey Kahan, and bought the book originally for that reason. I have greatly enjoyed reading it, and was also privileged to hear him read portions of it at a local bookstore on Jan. 16, 1999. That said, the book stands on its own merits.

Jeffrey writes just as he speaks; his faintly ironic sense of humor comes through quite clearly in print. In addition, the story he tells includes such elements of good fiction as crime, blackmail, and sexual scandal. While these elements would make for good fiction, the story is true; William-Henry Ireland really did attempt to pass off his own play as one written by Shakespeare. The historical documentation and research stand up to the most critical of scrutiny.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys true history authors such as Alison Weir, mystery fiction, or historical fiction.

This book has a dictionary-like format, with regions listed alphabetically, and a standardized sequence of topics for each region. It is full of facts and the kind of fascinating detail that gets passed over in general works about Spain. The author treats the history, geography, literature, music, art, even a recipe for each region. Lots of fun to browse or to prepare for a trip! However, not a sit-down-and-read-cover-to-cover type of book.

I found the book to be an excellent source for the history, geography, culture, literature, art, sites, and even dress, cuisine, and dance characteristic of each of Spain's 50 provinces. However, there are several errors in the statistical data given (POPULATION, AREA,ECONOMY), --for example, confusing Huesca and Huelva. I also would have wished to have better maps, more photos and possibly some color in the illustrations. The author also groups the regions and provinces alphabetically which might have been better if done by population or geographically. Overall, however, excellent and a wonderful reference for anyone interested in Spain. I only wish other nations had such a concise yet complete guide by region and political unit as has been done by the author for Spain.

Ron Ramdin is the leading historian in the history of Black and Asian British. He left Trinidad and came to England in the 1960s. Since then he has devoted his life to study in the British Musuem and British Library. Several of his books are now used as course texts in universities. Reimaging Britain is the pinnacle of his achievement. It evaluates where Black and Asian Britons have come from - and points the way ahead.

Ron Ramdin is the leading historian in the history of Black and Asian British. He left Trinidad and came to England in the 1960s. Since then he has devoted his life to study in the British Musuem and British Library. Several of his books are now used as course texts in universities. Reimaging Britain is the pinnacle of his achievement. It evaluates where Black and Asian Britons have come from - and points the way ahead.

The "Three R's", as we students used to call it, was the standard text on this period of German history throughout the world during the '50s and '70s. I know of no other book that has replaced it.

My only complaint is that it's light on military matters.

I did not think I would like this book - but it turned out to be surprisingly excellent. It is an excellent history of the politics and social movements for the period. Anyone one who considers them self to be a student of Prussian or German history should read this book. It is a scholarly work - not a popular history. If you take the time to read it you will learn some things.

As a student of history I have had to read many books about the the rise of the Nazi party, and I must say that this one by far is the best! It is well researched and quite honestly a real page turner. I highly recomend it for anyone interested in Nazi politics.

Benjamin Lapp's magnum opus, "Revolution from the Right" is a fantastic source for scholars looking in the Weimar period of German History. Lapp's style is much like the style of William Sheridan Allen's "Nazi Seizure of Power". Lapp's book is simply a superb historical synthesis. Not many authors have choose to study single towns/provences during the Weimar Republic/Nazi revolution. One can only ponder of all footwork and sweat in writing such a concise historical book. One can study the social, political, economic, and emotional aspects of the Nazi revolution in Saxony. I would recomend this book to anyone who believes they know how common German people reacted to the Nazi movement. This book will add another aspect of the Nazi movement in Germany to anyone's repertoire.

Rose has written a masterful book, capturing the true essence of Antisemitism. I highly recommend this masterpiece. Buy it!

This book details the "bipartisan" nature of German anti-semitism. Non-Christian revolutionaries hated Jews as well, and Rose details their reasons by analyzing the political opinions of various Romantic/German philosophers of the 18th, 19th Centuries. He covers Kant, Hegel, Voltaire, Fichte, Marx, and ends with Wagner, and shows the intellectual development of revolutionary anti-semitism through these philosophers. Some are well-known, like the aforementioned ideologues, others are lesser known. The book shows the development of an anti-Semitic mythology, that began as a Christian anti-Semitism (the Ahasverus-Wandering Jew, Moloch and Mammon), yet by the beginning of the 20th Century, was a fully Secularized anti-semitism.

The important lesson from this book is how entrenched Jew hatred was across the German intellectual landscape in the 19th Century. It wasn't limited to a bunch of Capitalist Christians (as accused by many Marxist historians, who would no doubt be ashamed that their hero Marx hated Judaism), but atheists and socialists as well. A good companion book to this is "Scientific Origins of National Socialism", about Ernst Haeckel and the Monist League, and how the German scientists caved into Jew-hatred as well.