Government Books

This 356-page book was written in the traditional narrative style of CLIFF NOTES and READER'S DIGEST condensed books. If the large over-sized fonts were reduced to standard and if the empty white spaces were eliminated, the contents would have been condensed to 256 pages. This made the information very manageable for studying.

The vocabulary and writing style were simple enough for a high school sophomore or junior to handle. Also, the information was very well organized and concise. As an example, let us exam the chapter on the U.S. Constitution. The ten pages summarized and condensed 37 pages of GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA, the standard text used in high school AP Government classes. Basic information with a sprinkling of details and updated examples was covered. Subtopics were sectioned off, and important terms and vocabulary were bold printed for the reader to focus. After the topic discussion, there was a 15 multiple-choice question test. The questions were constructed in the same style as the items in the actual AP test. Following these exercises were three sentence explanations on each of the answers. All in all, the format as described above was used for all other chapters that followed.

After the subject reviews, there were two sample practice tests. Again, the multiple-choice answers were explained in detail. More impressive was the author's treatment of the Free-Response Section. On each of the essay questions, he provided scoring guidelines, sample essays, and analyzes of the written works.

Appendixes were located at the end of the book. These contained a glossary of key terms, a copy of the U.S. Constitution, a listing of important U.S. Supreme Court cases, and an eight page listing of internet sources.

My only criticisms of this book focused on the second and third items in the Appendixes. Instead of a copy of the U.S. Constitution, a better alternative was to provide an annotated and simplified version. This document was very hard to understand with its 18th Century prose and "high level" vocabulary. Fortunately such a simplification does exist. It is located in the latest Compton Encyclopedia under "Constitution." Secondly, the U.S. Supreme Court case listing needed to be better organized. The cases should to be individually grouped by Constitutional issue and sub-grouped by whether they expanded or limited the specific civil liberty.

As a suggestion, buy Pamela K. Lamb's 5 STEPS TO A 5 AP U.S. GOVERNMENT & POLITICS to accompany Soifer's text. Instead of a narrative approach, the contents was arranged in outline format. In other words, the information presented in U.S. GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS was further condensed in outline form by Lamb. This arrangement made it easier for studying.

This book is a great, concise prep for AP US Government. It has a clear well-organized layout and cuts out all the extraneous information so you know exactly what you need to know for the AP Test. I could not recommend it more highly.

This book prepared me well for the AP exam so I would and did recommend it to friends. Cliffnotes makes a great study tip but be warned of the mistake in the court case review. It's Map Vs Ohio not Illinois. But that's the only draw back.

Paul Soifer strikes again with his gorgeous portrait of the US Government, and preparation for the AP exam. I think I met Paul one time, albeit not for long, and he sold me on the book. I then took the book and have studied with it. I am assuming I will get a 5 on the test. Doc, This buds for you!

This is another great Cliffs AP book which will help you get your college credit. It really is a help for reviewing the branches of the government, how a bill becomes a law, the Constitution, the amendments, elections, and civil rights. Those are the main, "must know," topics you need to review to get a 5.

this book tells us about rfk,jfk and kenny o'donnel. it tells us about how they were, and it's very interessing. I suggest it to all people who are fan of the keenedys, like me. there are a few rares photos.

I used to work with the author's uncle, Cleo, who also plays a large part in this book. Over lunch and sometimes drinks after work, he used to tell us some of the wonderful stories of his and his brother's friendship with the Kennedy brothers. When I saw this book, I had to get it and it is bringing back wonderful memories of 25 years ago in Boston. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the author herself may have helped out in the office once or twice during school vacations. In any case, if you are a Kennedy fan, this is a touching, well-written book full of warmth and good stories about the Kennedys' and O'Donnells' as real people, written by someone who knew them. Don't miss it.

This is a very well written and, at times, touching book by (former JFK Chief of Staff) Kenny O'Donnell's daughter Helen (with a little help from former DNC advance man Jerry Bruno and her late father's audio tapes). There is great information about Kenny's relationship with RFK and, to a leser extent, JFK. As the elading civilian expert on the Secret Service, one word of caution, though: she misspells Secret Service agent Jerry Behn's name as "Bain" and she concludes that her father had a hand in planning JFK's Dallas motorcade route-he did not.
Vince Palamara
Secret service expert, History Channel, author of 2 books, in over 30 other author's books, etc.

Kenny O'Donnell has done an outstanding job of providing insight to a man who figured largely in world history. He has drawn a very real, very strong portrait of a man who set and met many personal goals in his personal and professional life. Robert Kennedy was, in my opinion the most interesting of his brothers. Mr. O'Donnell does an excellent job of describing the aura of sincerity Robert Kennedy exuded. He helps bring a man into focus who has been dead for many years by describing the consistencies of his character. Robert Kennedy was clearly a very driven, very determined and very hard working man. He was also a very caring, very committed and very compassionate as well. He was a central figure in world history and I think the late Senator's works have certainly influenced the world for the better. This book is definitely worth reading.

A Common Good is an enjoyable, fast-paced read. It is a warm portrayl of Bobby, Jack and Kenny O'Donnel as people. There are laughs and poignant moments. It s a must for anyone interested in Robert Kennedy.

It matters not your station in life. Whether you are a business professional, working journalist, high school or college student or simply a concerned citizen we are all looking for ways to better inform ourselves about the pressing issues of our time. There is so much information available on the internet but I suspect that most of us rely on just a handful of websites to keep us abreast of just what is going on.
This is why I found James F. Broderick and Darren W. Miller's new book "Consider The Source" to be so exciting. What we have here are critical reviews of 100 of the most important and influential news and information sites on the web. In my view there is hardly a person out there who would not benefit from perusing this book.
What Broderick and Miller offer in "Consider The Source" is a treasure trove of useful material about how to best access information on the web. Just to give you an idea, the authors review websites covering news, sports, entertainment, science, medicine and more. They critique each website for design, content and accessabilty and are careful note any bias they might discover. Obviously, many of these sites have a point of view and the authors deem it important that their readers understand this.
Happily, Broderick and Miller do not limit themselves to sites that originate in the United States only. "Consider The Source" offers reviews on news and information sites from Britain, India, France, Australia,Ireland and even Asia and Africa. In addition, you will see reviews of various U.S. government websites such as the Library of Congress, CIA, FBI and NASA. Some absolutely fascinating stuff there! In the list of 100 websites, the reader will find the familiar as well as a number of hidden gems they have probably never even heard of. Of this group I might recommend to you a site called The Onion. Hilarious!
As I read "Consider The Source" I jotted down the sites I would be interested in bookmarking. Not surprisingly, I came up with a list of more than two dozen. The fact is that I had never even heard of many of these sites. Still others were websites I had never even accessed before.
"Consider The Source" is written in clear, concise language that just about everyone can understand. Not a lot of jargon here! Reading this book is absolutely time well spent! I would not be surprised that if the authors chose to issue updated versions of the book from time to time. I highly recommend "Consider The Source" to everyone!

Consider the Source provides clarity among the internet chaos for readers like myself who depend on the Web for news. This book provides a "yellow brick road" leading to an honest evaluation of news and information sites on the web. Miller and Broderick have given readers an invaluable guide to the most accurate internet news sites.

Where can you get the news you need, and how can you keep up with it? A professor of journalism and a working reporter combine forces to produce a critical A-Z guide to the best - and worse - news information sites on the web, offering 100 critical reviews paired with a 5-star rating system. From learning the motives and bias behind different sites to considering alternative sites and news press and how they operate differently from mainstream media, CONSIDER THE SOURCE: A CRITICAL GUIDE TO 100 PROMINENT NEWS AND INFORMATION SITES ON THE WEB is a pick for both college-level collections strong in media studies and general-interest lending libraries alike.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This is the first book I have ever seen that gives the public direction on which news sites to visit. The Web has created content overload, but who to trust and who to devote limited time too? That is what this book has done. And it is not a boring look at Web sites, but instead brings each site to life and goes in depth on how they operate. I love the ranking system and especially was interested to see that many sites I never considered before were ranked so highly.

I can see why this book is promoted to students, journalists, PR professionals, and news hounds - but I'm none of the above and still found this book a great find! I, like most people, find myself going to the same sites over and over and was looking for something to expand my Internet reading list. There were dozens of sites that I had never heard of and have now been placed on my Favs list. Definitely got my money's worth on this one!

This book was a well-written testimonial of a contractor combatant who helped rebuild Iraq after our toppling of Saddam. The book was unique and interesting because of its personal insights about a number of different topics, among them: American-Iraq relations, being a contractor in Iraq, and the media's mistaken view on both the war and on contractors.
The author seems to be both well read and well-grounded. If nothing else, the concluding chapter houses some thought-provoking and succinct views about the war in Iraq and about his personal contribution towards its positive conclusion. He even expresses his initial skepticism about the war and its aims.
Combat Contractor is both a fun and informative read - rarely nowadays is this ever the case! Read it, enjoy it, benefit from it!

This book is told from the first person perspective of a true American hero. It is action packed with gun battles on the streets of Iraq, in-fighting amongst the locals, and the struggle to run a profitable business while staying alive in the most dangerous place on Earth.

Once I started reading, I could not put the book down. Andress provides incredible insight into the challenges that Americans and Iraqis face in the struggle for a free and democratic Iraq. It describes how Americans and Iraqis are risking their lives together in an effort to rebuild a free and safe Iraq.

After reading this book, I have much clearer insight into the Iraq situation. This book should be mandatory reading for all military officers, politicians, and critics, and supporters of the Iraq war.

I have just finished this great book written by a very courageous man that is the very epitome of what Americans used to be; big-hearted can-do men of adventure that seize the day and change the world for the better. It is a gripping account of this former US Army Ranger officer's experience running a logistics and security company in Iraq helping with the building and supply of bases for US and Iraqi forces, and the rebuilding of the Iraqi infrastructure. (He was an officer with the Army Rangers.) He lived outside the "Green Zone" with an ad hoc bunch of special forces guys from US Special Forces to Gurkas and Russian Spetnaz with a supporting cast of Iraqis willing to risk their lives and be real heros while most of the other contractors were hiding behind the US military. I just finished it and I have to say I'm most impressed.

This is a first-hand account of what it is really like over there and not a bunch of second-hand stories from someone hiding in a hotel in the Green Zone, like the other books about Iraq. It is truly a must read for anyone who wants to know what is really going on over there, and the story of the brave men who are building a democratic future for Iraq. See his video on youtube by searching for his name.

The liberal press has attempted to submarine progress in Iraq, just like it did in Vietnam. The Carter Andress book tells it like it is. Contractor's play a vital role in the security of the key players in fostering Iraqi democracy, and Andress see's the big picture in this book. This is a great read, but not for those lacking the determination to see this thing through.

First, I agree with that said by the first Reviewer, especially about Andress' perspective differing from the "2-3 day visits to Iraq" making those people experts! Andress has lived the Iraqi experience. His work and that of his company puts them in a unique position to KNOW how the majority of Iraquis fell about the US. His efforts make it possible for us to make the progress needed to make the Iraqui people self-sufficient.
Only then should we think of leaving this country!

Contrary to the media portrait being painted of Contractors in Iraq, i.e. Blackwater, these men are enabling our "experts" to accomplish their tasks without being killed! Obviously the insurgents will try to kill them at every opportunity! Kill the Guards and the Bad Guys will have their way with the people....and our troops!

For a first-hand look at how Iraquis and Americans are working together read this book!

John Billheimer is off to a great start here with a first novel that includes another first, a transportation thriller. It features a good plot that keeps moving at all times, some fresh material for those of us who can't stand another serial killer, and sense of humor. Not everybody could get a good weekend read out of the misadventures of a federally subsidized bus company in West Virginia, but Billheimer certainly can and does.

Especially after having met John Billheimer, I am in awe over his initial offering into the world of mystery fiction. CONTRARY BLUES wonderfully captures the essence of small-town West Virginia life and what goes on in ingenious yet simple minds over the incursions of modern-day life. This is a great first effort and if you are like me, you'll be captured into reading the next four of his Owen Allison series. An easy read, a page-turner of exceptional quality and a real sense of West Virginia everyday life brought to you by someone who 25 years ago called West Virginia home.

A SEASON TO INVESTIGATE FIRST-TIME NOVELISTS - Boston Globe. A fine beginning, funny, irreverent, written with an ear well-tuned to authentic West Virginia dialogue and an eye for small, accumulating scenes...Billheimer unfolds his wry tale steadily, with just the right mix of humor and menace, and his Department of Transportation investigator-auditor, Owen Allison, is convincing and likable.

The Contrary Blues is such a page-turner that you might not realize until you reach the end how cleverly it is constructed. Humor, colorful West Virginia colloquialisms, and poignant characterization make this book a lot more interesting than the average mystery.

John Billheimer's first Mystery novel, Contrary Blues, leaves you feeling satisfied and wanting more. Fans of Rick Boyer, Bill Crider, and Bill Tapply will recognize the sure fire formula that made their writing a success. A fast moving plot taken to sudden and unexpected turns, characters who jump out of the pages into your living room, and an unassuming hero that Mr. Middle America can relate to. Billheimer tells his story in a quick but enjoyable pace, giving the reader a glimpse into everyday life in a region of the country most of us have never stepped foot in, and with the subtle humor and true to life street dialog that show his respect for his characters and his reader alike. This one is sure to be enjoyed.

Counseling with With Our Councils, was inspiring and instructive. It changed the way I administer- now and in the future. A must read for church leaders.

I enjoy reading this book. Elder Ballard said, "The Lord's church is organized with councils at every level, beginning with the Council of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and extending to stake, ward, quorum, auxiliary, and family councils." Elder Ballard teaches the importance of counsels to solve problems. A council provides valuable feedback and ideas that have significant impacts in a ward. In one case, a deacon advisor influenced the deacons quoroum to improve attendance, the ward was influenced and attendance increased and eventually impacted was felt at the stake level. Revelation, priesthood authority, and council combine to provide quality service, needed stablity, and needs safely met.

Focus on people. Council meetings should keep coordination and calendaring to a minimum. The best resources and talent are available and time is precious, use the time to talk about people's needs. Information discussed in councils should be confidential. Elder Ballard says, "All councils in the Church should encourage free and open discussion by conferring with one another and striving to have clear, concise communication. Councils should discuss objectives and concerns, with mutual understanding being the ultimate goal."

Sometimes a leader will voice his decision without counseling with his council. Priesthood leaders exercise authority to make decisions. Priesthood leaders lead with love and good example. Leaders have the benefit of the council; spiritual gifts are associated with the responsibilities of the members; and unity and purpose provide a powerful force.

The reviews given are very accurate. May I add that this is a must read for anyone serving in a leadership position in my opinion. Elder Ballard illustrates the how and why we should use councils within the church. He also includes a chapter on using councils within the family that I found very effective.

I would also recommend Leadership for Saints in conjunction with this book. I found that Leadership for Saints expanded on leadership topics beyond using councils.

If you remember, several years ago, Elder Ballard gave the same talk back to back in general conference. Remember the subject? It was on councils (See "Ensign," November 1993, "Strength in Counsel," "Ensign," May 1994, "Counseling with our Councils.")

This book is in response to those two topics, so consider this a course in ecclesiastical management and religious organizational behavior. We are not using the Church councils properly, and this book is one apostle's attempt to put us on the right track.

So often leadership is equated with office, or is seen as bossing people around. This is not only wrong, but is dead wrong. We have so many pairs of eyes in our wards and stakes: the elders presidents, the high priests, the Aaronic Priests, the Female's Relief Society, and every other auxiliaries, we are literally dying of thirst right by an artesian well.

This book has really opened my eyes. I think that we have all the helps we really need under our noses. The key is for the leaders to open the floodgates and let the people get busy. People in the ward have ideas and insights that the priesthood leaders may miss.

The whole sum of creation was began with a grand council. This is the eternal example for all of us.

Without exception this book is one of the greatest of its time. Not only does the author give accounts of how the saviour counseled others but how to apply the same principles in our everyday world. A must read for all practioners of the faith.

(see KKJ's review as well)
Am also a former student of Baker's (in Singapore a long long time ago) and I have to say, he definitely IS the one to write a book on S'pore/Malaysia. Cheers to you Mr B. Or may we call you "Jim" now? :)

Of all peeps to write a book about Singapore and Malaysia history this would be the man. I just ordered it and now I wait. Mr. Baker has always stood out to me as a great teacher. I had the privilege of being taught by him, I was never a history buff or even interested in becoming one. After having to take four classes of his in my senior year, due to my previous years performances, I can now say history intrigues me. I look forward to reading this. Class of 1988

Baker spins a tale as dizzying as it is captivating; as intoxicating as it is true. The twists just keep on coming. This is the best thing since Goosebumps.

This is a wonderful book as Jim Baker knows what he is talking about as he has lived in Singapore his entire life (60-70 years). So, naturally, some of the history of Singapore he knows first-handed, as he acurately describes how the nation became a first world country. This gives the truthful and honest facts of both Singapore and Malaysia as it is a must read for anyone looking for the best info. on these two nations.

This book is wonderful, as it fully explains the history of Singapore and some wonderful facts, not commonly found within many other books on Singapore. Jim Baker is an excellent teacher and writer, talking about the thing he knows best, Singapore, as he has lived there his whole life. This is the book to go to for the true and honest facts of both Singapore and Malaysia. A must read.

This book is truly a work of art! Beautifully illustrated with wonderful copies of actual documents such as the Declaration of Independence. It's a hands-on learning experience. Every school library and home should have a copy of this patriotic masterpiece. Highly recommended read!

Although this is not an exhaustive academic study of the Declaration, this is a very useful and informative book. There are many illustrations and other props included that add to the literary content. When I bought this book the intent was to use it as a coffee table book that folks could pick up when they come to visit. It serves that purpose well, but I believe that it could also be an interesting book for an adolescent who is very interested in American history.

Museum in a book indeed! And it's not just for the youth either. The fact is our history is lost to most Americans, especially when it comes to the Colonial/Revolutionary War era of our nation. This book - The Declaration of Independence: The Story Behind America's Founding Document and the Men Who Created It - can change that. In my opinion, it should be in every American school, in every American library, and in every American home. It should be required reading for every public school child and immigrant. Of course, that would never happen - the ACLU wouldn't allow such a dastardly thing - imagine forcing school children and American-wannabe's to learn about what made this country great - and it IS great. The greatest, in fact, even with its faults.
What our fore-fathers did was something that one would never see today - people willing to give one's life, to possibly suffer in a torcherous prison - by signing a document to ensure a free and independent country where one would not have to be controlled by a tyrant. Where a peanut farmer, an actor, or a backwoods lawyer could become the President. And this book gives not only wonderful written descriptions on how that all came about, but allows the reader to experience, through replicas of original documents that one can actually hold and read as if grasping the original (including a draft of the Declaration) writings that made the formation of our great United States.
By the way, there is no political correctness in this book - just pure factual American history - so if your are looking for the anti-European revisionist history books mandated by the liberal left, this one isn't for you.

This book I just purchased a week ago and it has served me well. I am a graduate of 8th grade and I know that this book would be useful in so many branches of school work such as oral presentations and visual aids. This book describes in a lot more detail than I could ever have emagined. I'd recommend this book to history teachers any time and for 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders learning about this subject. GREAT BOOK!!!

Rod Gragg has done an excellent job of accurately portraying the events leading to the declaration of independence. Furthermore, he did an excellent job of remaining true to the actual historical events, rather than approaching the subject with a political agenda. I highly recommend this book to any person desiring a deeper understanding of America's founding fathers and the events that led to our independence. I can not wait to read more of Mr. Gragg's books.

Here is a book for every adult American who cares about what happens to his/her country. It will make you depressed and angry and ... well-informed. Get it.

Could a second American Revolution be required to set America on the correct path once more? "Delusional Democracy: Fixing the Republic without overthrowing the Government" is a deftly written call to action - not to overthrow the government, no, but to do whatever they can to set our democratic institution on the right path once more, to cut through the oceans of false information and misrepresentation that do no right for its citizens. Offering advice and protocol to save America while there's still time, "Delusional Democracy: Fixing the Republic without Overthrowing the Government" is highly recommended to community library political shelves everywhere and for anyone who wants an honest look at today's government.

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to know what really is happening in our country today. I don't see how we can continue to ignore the trampling upon our freedoms and rights as Americans.

The best book i have read this year. Joel Hirschhorn tells it like it is.

A must read book!

This book is well written and concise. It serves as a fantastic wake-up call to the American people. It succinctly describes the anti-democratic practices, tendancies, and directions in society, the economy, the mass media, and government that have been eroding our participatory institutions by distracting citizens for decades.

It is an indictment of the corruption that flourishes at all levels of society and particularly in government. It exposes the culture of lying and spin and describes how untruth damages democracy.

This book gives form and focus to the discontent shared by people around the country. It is a clear call to arms against the status quo in our time and offers thought-provoking and unconventional ideas for how to reform the system through citizen action.

This is a non fiction book by Joseph Roth whose other books are mainly fiction - he was a prized journalist and writes like the best of both worlds - this book is an extraordinary picture of a period of life which we don't know enough about - because WW II got in the way and rendered information about Jews and life in Germany and eastern Europe in the 20's and 30's sort of academic and moot - It is an important and compelling and sad book - sad because we readers know facts that the author doesn't - we know what happened and he doesn't know the future. It is a valuable book which I have recommended and given to many friends.

"The Wandering Jews" of the title are the displaced and unwanted Jews of Eastern Europe (from where Roth himself came before he made himself into one of Western Europe's foremost journalists and writers) before World War II. As Roth puts it, "Eastern Jews have no home anywhere, but their graves may be found in every cemetery." And as Roth foreshadowed (that line originally was published in 1925; this translation also includes the preface and an afterword to the later 1937 edition), the plight of the Eastern Jews only promised to become more dire. Indeed, one senses that Roth despaired that any strident alarm would be in vain. Thus, more than an alarm, THE WANDERING JEWS is a requiem. (And Roth went on to drink himself to death in 1939.)

In the first part of the book, Roth sets out to limn the character and essence of the Eastern Jew. I am willing to believe that he is thoroughly successful. (Example: "None of the many untrue and unjust accusations that are brought against Eastern Jews by the West are as untrue and unjust as the accusation that they are what the gutter press likes to call Bolshevik. Of all the world's poor, the poor Jew is surely the most conservative.")

In the second part of the book, Roth provides snapshots of five different aggregations of the Eastern Jews -- in the ghettoes of Vienna, Berlin, and Paris, in America (where there are "people who are more Jewish than the Jews, which is to say the Negroes"), and in Soviet Russia. As for the future of the Jews in Russia, Roth was somewhat optimistic in 1925, but by 1937 that optimism had been dispelled altogether. (Roth thus proved himself more cold-bloodedly realistic than many contemporary European liberals.)

Joseph Roth was a superb writer and a masterful polemicist. (I recently read a collection of H.L. Mencken's journalism, this particular one "A Religious Orgy in Tennessee", dealing with the Scopes Monkey Trial, and while there are obvious similarities between Roth and Mencken, who were contemporaries, Roth was by far the better and more cultured writer.) Here, the sardonic and sarcastic tone, albeit understandable, is at times wearing, but it is readily tolerated and forgiven by virtue of the sheer acuity of Roth's intellect and insights and by his compassion.

Roth is extremely prescient, not only about communism and Soviet Russia and about the Nazis and the Holocaust ("Centuries of civilization are no guarantee that a European people, by some ghastly curse of fate, will not revert to barbarism."), but also, startlingly so, about the Zionist/Palestinian dilemma. With regard to that last conundrum, I will let Roth, once again, speak for himself:

"Zionism and nationhood are by their nature Western European ideals * * *. Only in the East do people live who are unconcerned with their "nationality", in the Western European sense. They speak several languages, are themselves the product of several generations of mixed marriages, and fatherland for them is whichever country happens to conscript them. * * * Natiionality is a Western concept."

"The young halutzim [Zionist Jews who seek to establish a Jewish presence in Palestine] are brave farmers and workers, and they demonstrate the willingness of the Jew to work and till the fields and become sons of the soil, in spite of having spent hundreds of years among books. Unfortunately the halutzim are also oblighed to take up arms, to be soldiers, and to protect the land against the Arabs. Thus the European example has been carried into Palestine. * * * The Jew has a right to Palestine, not because he once came from there but because no other country will have him. The Arab's fear for his freedom is just as easy to understand as the Jew's genuine intention to play fair by his neighbor. And despite all that, the immigration of young Jews into Palestine increasingly suggests a kind of Jewish Crusade, because, unfortunately, they also shoot."

This is a remarkable and brilliant portrait of a marginal and now tragically vanished people by a remarkable and brilliant person.

Joseph Roth's "The Wandering Jews" is one of the best written and most important books about East European Jews ever published. At a time of growing anti-Semitism (the first edition was written in 1926 and an update was published in Paris in 1937) and an immigration crisis affecting Germany as countless refugees poured into Berlin from the East, Roth--himself a Jew from Galicia, the easternmost part of the former Austrian empire--creates a sympathetic yet clearsighted portrait of contemporary Jewish life. In the process he effectively responds to all the stereotypes and libels heaped on East European Jews. For the contemporary reader, however, what is most affecting about this portrait is Roth's ability to convey a panorama of Jewish life on the brink of destruction. Though no one (except maybe Hitler) could have predicted, even in 1937, the extent of the devastation that would be visited on European Jewry, Roth's writing in this book serves as an indelible and moving memorial to a civilization that would soon disappear forever. It must therefore count among the first books in what would now be called "Holocaust literature," and one of the most meaningful works of protest literature--protest against the stereotypes that reduced Jews to objects of scorn and contempt; protest against the violence that would ensue from these stereotypes--of all time. Michael Hofmann's understated and articulate translation of this poignant, heartbreaking little book is a tremendous service for English-language readers. It fills in a vital space in the emerging image of Joesph Roth, a writer finally receiving his due in the precincts of European modernism, and it should be read by everyone interested in good writing and the problems of 20th century history.

Again and again--with one neat phrase--Roth puts anxieties into words that it took others whole books to communicate, and then, only vaguely. Not even the magnificent Kafka comes close to a tidy phrase of self-condemnation such as this, referring to the deracinated Western Jew, with his "secret perversities, his cringing before the law, his well-bred hat held in his anxious hand". This statement took my breath away. So did many others in this short book throbbing with love, fear, and sadness. Roth was himself a Jew, one of the thousands who had served his "adopted 'country' " in the Great War (as so many other Jews did for so many other countries) only to have reality--eternal victimhood, eternal wandering--thrust him away, from Vienna, to Berlin, and then to Paris. Like so many educated Western Jews, he looked back to the shtetl with admiration for its nurturing of an authentic self (coupled with a faint relief at not having to live there). This tension--and its guilt-feelings--are so tidily explained in Roth, and his predictions made in the 1930's so chilling--that I jumped almost with relief on his touting the Soviet Union as a better place for Jews. Ah...but an afterward to the second edition contains Roth's warning that things in the USSR have changed, and perhaps his enthusiasm was misplaced...

Then, reader, I cried uncle. Joseph Roth was perfect. Anger and love mix with poetry and humility. He neither rolls in the mud of guilt, nor clutches an ideology through all contrary evidence. Instead, he sings Kaddish for a people gone, a people authentic and pure and of, as Kafka said, "the prayer shawl, now flying away from us..."

This book was a paen by a 'civilized (read westernized)' Jew on the cusp of WW2 and the holocaust. Roth travelled in most of post-WW1 Eastern Europe to learn the plight of his Jewish compatriots. In the original edition (written in 1926) he speaks of Eastern European Jews (mostly those of Galicia and the remnants of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires) being able to find freedom of conscience and a world without anti-semitism by moving to the West. Unfortunately, by the West he meant Germany.

In the epilogue of the 1937 edition (which he wrote from self-exile in Paris) he takes the "New Germany" to task for the treatment of the Jews. He make major points as to the failure of the League of Nations to protect the Versailles Treaty 'national minorities' and specifically the treatment of DPs (displaced persons, people literally without a country). He makes the point that animals are protected in most countries better than Jews and DPs.

He is prescient when he speaks of an 'impending disaster' and seems to presage 'donor burnout'. He tells how right after a calamity, everyone seems to want to pitch in, but after awhile, except for a few philantropists, everyone pretty much wants to go back to their own lives.
This book is among the strongest statements made prior to WW2 of the approaching calamity, not just for Jews but all of Europe.