Europe Books

Amazingly helpful and pleasent! The CD would not play. I called and spoke to David, who suggested I download Java 1.5. - Plus he sent me FREE Venice vol.2.
I really love the CD - images and narration are just lovely: informative, knowledgeable, beautiful. I have been reading several books about Venice, & the Venetian ghetto - and the cd made it all come alive.

Museum Planet's incomparable "talking book" guides to Venice are the next best thing to being there, offering a beautiful visual tour through hundreds of color photos, a knowledgable guide, in depth histories of the monuments. The best possible preparation for a trip to Venice, and a welcome review later, when the magnificent sites and views are brought to life again. Great gift for anyone who loves Venice, and who doesn't?

A very usefull and interesting CD Rom with many excellent photo's.
Keep up the good work. Hope other European Cities follow soon.

My attention was directed to a review here where my name was used regarding

A product I had never seen. So I bought the two CD-ROMs published by

Museum Planet--'Museum Planet Venice' Volumes I & II They're fabulous! I'm

Jewish, so the information on the Venetian Ghetto was particularly

interesting to me. Actually all of it was great. So buy these disks. Also

you can visit my website michelvanrijn.com for the latest dirt on the art

world. I particularly like to out ex-convicts like Al Taubman and tax cheats

and smugglers. Really the site is quite exciting if I do say so myself. Just

click on "latest updates."

michel van rijn

Whether you're a casual traveler or an experienced tour guide, a beginning graduate student of art history or a tenured professor who specializes in Venetian art, you're going to be overwhelmed when you get to Venice. As you step aboard one of La Serenissima's water buses and ply your way down the Grand Canal, your mind begins to spin. Every palace you pass is imposing, exquisite, saturated with history. No matter how much you think you know, you will be trying to recall important information for each and every astonishingly beautiful building. You can leaf through a guide book. But a much better way is to pop these inexpensive cd's into your lap top and listen to David Brown talk you through the whole thing.

Museum Planet Presents: Venice, Italy (vols I & II) is better than the kind of "acoustaguide" you get in a museum, primarily because it is so much more informative.

Say you're planning a morning ramble that will take in Ss. Giovanni e Paolo and perhaps later on Santa Maria dei Frari. You will be bedazzled by what you see in these churches; at the same time, you'll be besieged by a virtual commotion of visual data. With Museum Planet, what had been a jumble becomes comprehensible and knowable. It takes a lifetime to know Venice. Here's where you start. It really is the next best thing to being there; and it changes what it means to be there.

Right from the top I will state that I do not agree 100% with everything outlined in Professor Boyd's book on my favorite Nabokavian literary work. But I do share Professor Boyd's love for Pale Fire, and reading this book increased my enjoyment and appreciation of the work immensely. This was clearly a labor of love and it is an easy read (not dry and stale) for anyone who had the slightest enjoyment in reading Nabokov's book.

Amazing! When reading this insomnia-inducing book my head kept spinning with the mirror-like mirages of Pale Fire and I felt that everything I trusted and relied on when first I read that book were crumbling around me.

I have read Pale Fire twice and still only feel that I am barely familiar with how the common household objects in the place Kinbote is housesitting helped to create that zany land of the north, Zembla.

I dont want to spoil some of the surprises in this book (Boyd has gone back on his stance of Shade being the author of both poem and commmentary which he supports in his biography of Nabokov). But let me just say that these surprises provoked me in the middle of long nights to exclaim "What is goint ON? " and pace around frantically.

A haunting question (and by the way the ghostly aspects of Pale Fire which i had only felt in a vague way are exposed by Boyd to be something richer than i would have ever imagined) is not only how much control Hazel Shade had over the commentary but also how much control Nabokov's playful shade is exerting upon Boyd. The reviewer below me is onto something.

Boyd brings to Pale Fire his thorough knowledge of Nabokov's other works - for example his thesis - anti-thesis description of chess in Speak Memory or that bizarre short story The Vane Sisters - and illustrates how they help to see into the mystery of some of Nab's more complex works.

After reading Pale Fire twice, I naively thought that i understood it (yes that Bodkin in the University was suspicious, and yes the existence of internation thug Gradus i had previosly questioned) but i was only approaching the intitial layerings of this beatifully layered world. Im not saying that i am necessarily convinced with all Boyd has to say, but he has dazzled me with his insights and made me fully realize that I am far from understanding fully this work of art. It is to Nabokov's supreme credit that he could create a world that seems as immense, varied, and impossible to appreciate fully enough as the one we live in everyday.

Obviously I must not be as big a Nabokov groupie as other Pale Fire enthusiasts, because when I read Pale Fire in a college seminar, most of us spent weeks admiring Nabokov's academic satire and what we then thought was a purposefully horrible poem. Now I feel somewhat shamed because Boyd seems to think the poem itself is great poetry -- I cringe because our class read out loud particularly funny lines and laughed at what a good "bad" poem Nabokov wrote. Maybe Boyd does miss some of the humor, but that is all he misses. I don't think he leaves one line, joke, pun, or obscure reference unexplained. I enjoyed the first few chapters more because they stuck to many of the more obvious discoveries Nabokov intended his readers to make. By the middle, Boyd had my head spinning with some of the leaps of analysis -- I was too confused to agree or disagree. But by the end, his overall surprises and theories come together and make sense. No matter what you make of Boyd's theory, I applaud the book for its emphasis on close reading and for its obvious love of this great writer. Nabokov is one of this century's best and deserves this kind of in-depth reading. In the final chapter, Boyd answers some of the criticisms about his theory (by Michael Wood, for instance, a Princeton prof) and almost ends up sounding like Kinbote for a moment in his defensiveness. This book is a true discovery for a devout reader because it shows how to read better and more closely, how to link (bobo-link) seemingly unrelated bits together. Hats off to a great work of Nabokov scholarship -- Boyd brought in lots of information from Nabokov's other works that proved to be quite important.

For Nabokov, nothing was ever as simple as it seemed. In fact, "simple" and "sincere" were two adjectives that he despised. While teaching at Wellesley College and later at Cornell, Nabokov would give a low mark to any student who used the words, "simple" and "sincere" in a paper.

Nabokov was a writer who celebrated the complexities in life. He looked for unexpected meanings in even the most banal details of existence and the test questions he set for his students were notoriously eccentric, e.g., Describe Madame Bovary's hairdo; What sort of paper covered the walls of Anna Karenina's bedroom? for Nabokov, God was a subtle being, but tremendously inventive and perhaps a little sly.

Nabokov believed that "the unraveling of a riddle is the purest and most basic act of the human mind." He probably would have loved this remarkable book, an attempt to unravel the riddles and hidden meanings Nabokov, himself, embedded in Pale Fire.

When Pale Fire first appeared in 1962, reviewers said, correctly, that it could be enjoyed without puzzling over its hidden meanings but that it obviously hid many levels of complexity. In a now-famous article, Mary McCarthy called Pale Fire "a jack-in-the-box, a Fabergé gem, a clockwork toy, a chess problem, an infernal machine, a trap to catch reviewers..." But she also thought it was a thing of perfect beauty, symmetry, strangeness, originality and moral truth.

Even on a first reading of Pale Fire, we understand that Nabokov is playing a most elaborate literary game. Kinbote is hilariously mad, and his efforts to interpret Shade's poem as a commentary on Zemblan events can be seen as a satire of imaginative academics.

But Nabokov also scattered less obvious clues throughout the book. McCarthy decided that the "real" author of the commentary was yet another Zemblan who is barely mentioned, V. Botkin. And there are those who believe that Nabokov is telling us that John Shade didn't die but simply wrote the commentary under the name of Kinbote as a way of disappearing.

Boyd now interprets Nabokov's intentions in yet another way. He believes that both the poem and the commentary were inspired from beyond the grave as well as by Shakespeare's many ghosts.

Nabokov's Pale Fire is a monument to a brilliant scholar's persistent love affair with a book and its author. For more than three decades now, Boyd has made Pale Fire, and Nabokov, his obsession, much in the way that Nabokov, himself, was obsessed with butterflies. In 1990 and 1991, Boyd published his excellent two-volume biography of Nabokov and established himself as the world's premier Nabokovian.

Pale Fire, however, remained central to this thinking. When Boyd was asked to discuss Pale Fire on the Electronic Nabokov Discussion Forum, he discovered that his own views about this remarkable and original book were changing. Those views form the heart and soul of his own vibrant and energetic work. Even if we do not agree with all of his theories (and anything, at this point, must remain only a theory) we have to admire his scrupulous intelligence and dedication.

Boyd does not disdain eccentric flights of imagination. Nor is he afraid of being thought of as obsessive. There was a sweet madness in Nabokov, and quite obviously, Boyd has assimilated some of it, all to the good.

Nabokov's Pale Fire is more than a wonderful book; it is also a labor of love of the highest order. It can only enhance your understanding and love of both Nabokov and Pale Fire, and perhaps give you some insight into Boyd, himself.

This book on Pale Fire is some of the best critical commentary on a great piece of literature I have ever read. Shattuck's study of Proust's novel and Stanely Fish's recent book on Milton also come to mind.

The readers who will benefit most from this book are those who love Pale Fire and are very familiar with it. The study is so good and so thorough, I worry about it spoiling the act of discovery in newcomers to the novel. I read Pale Fire only once before reading Boyd's study. Oddly enough, it almost made me ashamed because I DIDN'T follow my curiousity and see where the clues could lead me. Granted, I don't think I could have reached Browning from the "Papa pisses" reference in Pale Fire, but many other clues could have yielding satisfying discoveries.

Basically, I read Pale Fire as a "Level 1" reader: getting the jokes and appreciating the more obvious ironies about Charles Kinbote. But in this book, Boyd shows how Nabokov's novel can be seen as a super-complex, but coherent pattern of signs, signs blinking at us from the beyond.

I won't spoil any more for those readers who want to discover more about Pale Fire on their own. My only advise is to follow your curiousity!

This is an excellent guide to Paris for anyone. Many of the addresses suggested by Stimmler-Hall are de rigeur for any Paris aficionado. That the author is able to cast a sexy light to what is already the sexiest city in a manner that is tasteful and intriguing is to her credit. The book itself is quite practical and pretty making for a great purse-friendly companion as well as coffee table decor.

At last, a book that celebrates and encourages women's sexuality in that sexiest of cities, Paris. Naughty Paris: A Lady's guide to the Sexy City is a beautiful and inviting book, offering a feast of sensuality for both the armchair traveler and anyone going to Paris for a fling.

The book is beautifully designed and photographed, and Heather has written a thorough and delightful guide. She recommends cafés for a quiet tête-a-tête, restaurants where you can indulge in aphrodisiac foods and luscious environments, the best places to buy that sexy French lingerie and sex toys. If you've ever wondered about those secretive places where you can get sexy with strangers, Heather tells you where the Libertine Clubs are and how to access these hidden pockets of Paris.

How to dress, how to flirt, books and films to inspire you before you go...Naughty Paris is a complete guide to sparking your sexy juju in Paris. Heather has thought of everything, and whether you're going alone, with gal pals or a lover, you're bound to get in touch with your sexiest self.

No female Francophile should be without this book.

Naughty Paris is exactly what I expected: wonderful! I have spent a lot of time in Paris, and I thought I knew the city well, but Heather has introduced to me to all sorts of new places. She has even given me a new perspective on some old favourites. I am off to Paris again on Friday with an already well-worn copy of this book, knowing I will not be disappointed by any of Heather's suggestions and hints!!

Classy, sassy and extremely well written, this true insider's guide to the sexy side of Paris will allow the reader to feel safe yet bold. I know it did for me. How fabulous is that!

This is an interesting little book...filled with helpful information for those ladies who are perhaps curious, yet a bit shy, about the "other" Paris--the Paris outside the usual tourist attractions. And for the lady who wants to pamper herself while in Paris, this is definitely for you. Stimmler-Hall has done her homework and will lead you through the places to buy (or look at?) sex toys, oggle the strip-teasing hunks, have a fine meal, a relaxing spa treatment and much, much more, sometimes even on a budget. She also gives valuable information and tips on how to stay safe and how to remain a lady throughout your "sexy" visit (Hint: Don't drink too much, as an obviously tipsy woman is thought to be very unattractive in Paris). This is definitely a book for the somewhat shy woman who wants to venture into a bit of the naughty, but wishes to have a safety-net along, as well. The author advises that some of the venues might be better enjoyed with a friend or even a group of friends, but she also provides advice and direction for the solo woman visitor in Paris. All of this with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek to encourage you to read on and perhaps find your own special bit of spice while visiting Paris. This might not be the book you would give your Grandma for Christmas, but it could be the ideal gift for your girlfriends!

This book does an excellent job of outlining the current historiography of the Nazi regime. It is really only meant for scholars and it is fairly dense even for them. Kershaw does a masterful job of capturing each of the debates and this is really a great book if you want to write about Nazi Germany but don't know what to focus on. It is still relevant even today and does a great job of outlining the current debates that need to be addressed by historians.

If you have read more than a few books about the history of our world from 1930 to 1945 you may begin to have questions about the National Socialist Movement and the course and effects of its government of Germany. These are questions like:
- Was the National Socialist movement in Germany a unique event or was it a part of a larger historical process in the terrible 20th century?
- What was the relationship between the Nazi led government and the governance of the German economy?
- Was Hitler the author of all that happened in the Third Riech or was he an enabler of many things that were potentially present in Germany?
- What, exactly, was Hitler's role in the destruction of the European Jews?
- Was German(read Nazi?) foreign policy driven by a master plan for world conquest (or domination?) or improvised and opportunistic?
- Was the Third Reich a socially liberating event to the lower middle class or was it a reaffirmation of traditional hierarchy and power structure in another guise?
- What did German resistance to the National Socialist movement and government actually amount to?
- How is it possible to consider National Socialist genocide as part of a normal historical account?
- How is is possible to do objective and empathetic history in the face of the moral values of the Nazi movement and government?

If you find these questions significant and interesting, there is no better single book to read. Each of these questions is covered by Mr Kershaw more or less in two phases. First there is review of the schools of interpretation promulgated by various historians, most of them professional, and then the author makes his own judgement and evaluation of the contentions at hand. Of particular interest to me is the very thorough coverage of the views and controversies among German historians of the last sixty years as these are rarely reported in the US media. Mr Kershaw does not completely ignore the work of popular historians but it is clear that all the points of view they may have are in fact covered by the range of views among the academic community. The author's personal insights and judgements seem well considered and generally appropriate to me.

I think the only area these professional historians have trouble with is the area of the emotional and psychological appeal of the National Socialist movement to so many Germans. I think to really confront that confronts all of us to acknowledge that there may be a darker side within us that could be touched by the myth structure of racial homogeneity and purfication. Consideration of that question of good and evil is just
beyond the job description of a professional historian and belongs to the philosopher or theologian.

Of particular value, and only to be expected, is the extensive bibliography and the sometimes illuminating foot notes. The concerns of some reviewers about the dense terminology should be noted. Part of that seems to be the result of translating terms from German that come out as rather involved hyphenated words in English. On the other hand the issue is that some of the problems studied here are complex and the answers are not simple and ways of talking about them strech our vocabulary. Ultimately my view is that real knowledge and understanding sometimes involves hard work and digging through this text is work. So be ready to do that or don't bother.

If you have read a number of popular histories of the Nazi period, I recommend this book and The Art of the Third Reich (seperately reviewed) to grasp the tangible and intangible aspects of the terrible and instructive time.

This book is a collection of short and dense summaries of other prominent works written on Nazism. Thoroughly researched and contanining a wealth of information, Kershaw's work is a valuable introduction for any researcher or college student. However, I think the esoteric rhetoric and scholarly details makes it kind of hard to digest for the casual reader not familiar with German history.

Kershaw is God. This book is the bible for any scholar of the Third Reich.

I first read Kershaw's Adolf Hitler: Hubris and Nemesis. I couldn't put it down. I then picked up Kershaw's The Hitler Myth. Also an excellent read. I then moved on to The Nazi Dictatorship and within the first 5 minutes I realized I was in over my head. I am a 38 year old lifelong student of WWII. I have been reading about WWII since I was a kid. And I have a Masters degree. Yet this book was way over my head. This book is a HEAVY read and in my opinion is probably meant for history scholars, not amateurs like me. I'm giving it 5 stars based on the aforementioned works by Kershaw and the assumption that this book is of the same quality. But I didn't read it.

An excellant companion and suppliment to Martin Gilbert's early work The Holocaust which I have read many times. Well written with many pictures that only reenforce the words.

I peticulary feel great admiration for the author by the fact that he does not waste the reader's time by adding politcally correct 'victims' to the list of the persecuted as most writers on this subject have done to history's detriment. Though Gypsies are entitled to have the extent of their suffering at the hands of the nazis known. They too were forced into the ghetos and were often shoved onto the same trains and the same gas chambers with the Jews, though occasionally on thier own.

In this volume, including many photographs and artwork, Martin Gilbert charts the Nazi mass murder scheme, which they called the Final Solution,
which remains one of history's most despicable acts of inhumanity, callousness, murder and sadism. A new word had to be coined in the English language to describe it- genocide.
Gilbert begins by charting the background of European Jewry and the persecution they suffered.
Gilbert includes a chart of the pre-Second World War Jewish population of the countries in Europe from which Jews were to be murdered during the Holocaust.
They add up to almost 8 million.

Chapter Two charts the rise of Nazi Germany, and the pre-war persecution of the Jews by the Nazis.
It includes an analysis of the Nazi programme concerning the Jews which openly declared the aim of genocide against the Jews of Europe.
In September 1930, as German parliamentarians walked to the Reichstag for it's first session, in which the Nazi Party had it's first significant representation- 107 seats- crowds of Nazi youths cried out as the parliamentarians passed" "Germany wake. Death to the Jews".
This can easily be compared to the declaration of ""Jews! We have already dug your graves," by Hamas official Mushir al-Masri at a half-million strong rally of support for Hamas in Gaza's central square on Saturday, 15 December 2007.
Gilbert discusses the boycott of Jewish businesses by the Nazis, which one is chillingly reminded of when we see anti-Israel pressure groups launching boycotts of Israeli products and concerns today.
He charts the persecution, expulsion and book burning, the anti-Jewish laws passed at Nuremberg in 1935, and Jewish emigration from Germany, the four biggest destinations of refugees from Nazism before World War II, were the United States, Argentina, Britain and Palestine. The chapter covers the German annexation of Austria in 1938 and the 1938 pogroms against Jews across Germany and Austria, on 18 October 1938, known as Kristallnacht.
He also charts the Kindertransport, which one can study in detail in the following book: I came alone: The stories of the Kindertransports wherein more than nine thousand German and Austrian Jewish children- between the ages of three months and seventeen years- were brought to Britain after the Kristallknacht; the voyage of the St Louis, the ship carrying Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, which was turned back by the United States. An estimated 660 of the 930 Jewish refugees who were forced to return to Europe on the St Louis were murdered in the Holocaust; an article on those who helped Jews to escape Europe such as the Dutch woman Gertrude Wijsmuller and Portuguese diplomat Dr Aristides De Sousa Mendes.

Gilbert go's on to document the Jews who escaped from the Nazi death machine to fight alongside the Partisans across Eastern Europe.
He also has an article on the 20 to 30 000 survived the war in hiding. These 'hidden children' were those under the age of fourteen, many of them babies, whose parents managed to find someone- a non Jewish person or family, or a Christian institution- with whom they could live, without their Jewishness becoming known.
Books on more about this subject include Hidden Children


The article on 'Righteous Gentiles' is about the many thousand of non-Jews who risked- and in many cases lost- their own lives to save Jewish lives.

Chapter Seven discusses the Last Year of the War, which discusses Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1944, acts of individual defiance, Anne Frank in hiding, rescuers such as Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg, the Death Marches, the Death Marches and the Fate of non-Jews such as the 231 800 Gypsies murdered by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945.
The article on the deportation centre at Drancy France, shows the identity card of Anny-Yolande Horowitz, together with her signature and fingerprint.
Anny-Yolande was born in Strasbourg on 2 June 1933 and deported to Auschwitz and murdered in September 1942, three months after her ninth birthday. The registration card, issued at Tours on 4 December 1940, notes that she is Jewish (juive) and that she is under police surveillance as a foreigner although Strasbourg, her birthplace was part of France when she was born.

Another photo of one of the 11 400 French Jewish children who were murdered is of Camille Himelfarb-Sarnacka, born in Paris on 10 June, 1940.
In 12942 she was arrested with her mother in front of the Goncourt metro station in Paris.
On 16 September 1942 she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered there on on reaching the camp.
She was two years and three months old.

The last chapter deals with the Liberation of the Death Camps and some of the survivors such as children like Idel Levitan and Renja From, the homes found by survivors, the war crimes trials and holocaust memorials, the second generation and bearing witness, the lives of the children and grandchildren of holocaust survivors (most of whom live in Israel), and bearing witness.

The last article before the chronology and bibliography is the article 'Never Again' describing the meaning of the cry that Never Again would something like this be allowed to happen.

Martin Gilbert, better known for extremely detailed, research-heavy histories and biographies, has chosen to work from established primary and secondary sources in this history of the Holocaust. As a result, the reader with a strong background in this history will not find much new. However, the book is extremely well-written and very accessible--I read it in two sittings, and my 12-year-old brother has just started it.

In addition to effective writing, Gilbert includes some chilling photographs and reproductions of other primary sources. Especially disturbing are German documents cold-bloodedly noting that so many Jews arrived at such-and-such a camp, of whom X were killed immediately, and Y put to work.

Parents who believe their children are of an appropriate age might consider reading this book together as a way of introducing the most important, and most horrific, crime of this century. It is important.

I have been interested in the Holocaust for some time, and picked up this book because it seemed like it would be a good overview, and still give me the human side of the story. I was happy to find out that it was very well presented--every two pages is a new topic, and it is laid out with pictures, graphs, and personal recollections which make it easy to grasp. The book is laid out chronologically, which makes it easy to follow, and the language isn't difficult to understand.

Mr. Gilbert's grasp of history and what makes history accessible is discovered during the reading of this book. He seems to know that, with this topic especially, the use of personal stories personifies the experience for the reader.

A very good book, and I would recommend it to anyone.

Distinguished historian, Martin Gilbert, one of the world's leading authorities on the Holocaust, culminated three years of extensive pictorial research with this new and important illustrated volume, "Never Again: A History Of The Holocaust." Many of the book's photographs are from the massive permanent exhibit at the Imperial War Museum, London. Owing much to "those who have assembled the basic Documentation," his text is well written, easy to follow, and allows the horror of the events to speak for itself

In this visual chronology, Gilbert's narrative compellingly captures the richness of Jewish life in Europe before the rise of Nazism, the effects of antisemitism, and, ultimately, the destruction of much of European Jewry. Also portrayed is evidence of the desperate search by many Jews for safe haven, after 1933, from the horror which was to come. The knowledge that a multitude believed that such a thing as the systematic mass murder of millions was impossible, and/or that the threat would pass, is what truly consternates and deeply saddens. However, there were few places of safety to accommodate even those who did want to leave their homes.

Gilbert documents German military conquests and the spread of Nazism, beginning with Poland, and ending with Italy, Greece and Hungary; the establishment of Jewish ghettos throughout Europe, and life, (and death), in these walled-in communities from which few could escape; individual acts of defiance and group revolts in these ghettos - most famously the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, led by the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB); the stories of "Righteous Gentiles" who risked their lives to save the Jews; the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941; and the death camps. He also writes of the fate of slave laborers and those who were forced to participate in what were, literally, death marches; the liberation of the Jews; the war crimes trials from Nuremberg to Eichman. Interestingly, he addresses questions that are still being asked about the Holocaust today.

Included are individual stories, like those of Anne Frank, the children of Izieu and Otto Schindler. Reflections and testimonies of witnesses and survivors illuminate the period as do the extraordinary moving photographs.

Martin Gilbert's work provides an eloquent record which, at times, overwhelms us with the truth. Now, more than ever, as the survivors and perpetrators grow old and die, it is paramount to understand and give meaning to the grim record of human destruction. "Never Again" powerfully counteracts the dehumanizing nature of Nazi extermination. As the statistics "represent real people," names are put to faces in photographs and the stories of individuals are told. With the publication of this work Eli Wiesel said, "This book must be read and reread. It will be painful to you, but you must read it anyway. To know? No. To understand? No, not that either. But simply to remember all those whom the world, once upon a time, tried to forget."
JANA

Here Chomsky compares and contrasts the responses of western governments (specifically, those of Clinton's USA and Blair's Britain) to two instances of "ethnic cleansing", both of which received extensive media attention at the end of the millennium. In Kosovo, there was NATO intervention, a 78-day bombing campaign, and a much-publicised war crimes tribunal; in East Timor, at the very most, a few regretful shakes of the head and perhaps the suspicion that we are not, as yet, quite living up to our high ideals of truth, justice and liberty. Chomsky collates some of the facts underlying this apparent irony and shows that, as usual, the paradox has a rather simple solution. For example: (1) The indictment against Milosevic confines itself largely to crimes committed after the bombing began; it seems logical to assume that (a) "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo was not a major motivation for the bombing, and (b) any crimes committed before the bombing are not a major concern of our new generation of moral crusaders. Nevertheless, on the grounds that they sanctioned and participated in "ethnic cleansing", Milosevic and his cronies have been routinely portrayed as the worst enemies of human life and moral decency since Adolf Hitler. (2) The 1999 massacre in East Timor (much advertised in advance as the inevitable consequence if a referendum concerning independence from Indonesia should go the wrong way) was the latest episode in an extremely well-documented record of slaughter dating from the Indonesian invasion of 1975. All the atrocities, including the accession to power of the Indonesian leader Suharto in 1965, with its attendant third of a million casualties, were carried out with western backing and with US armament and training. The solution to that paradox, then, is obvious: the west has, as is traditional, no problem with genocide just so long as it's done by the right people. Chomsky is adept at drawing out the salient points (e.g. the timing of the Serbian war crimes indictment noted above) from voluminous and often skewed information; and, as befits a scientist, his sources of evidence are painstakingly documented. The focus on two contrasted sets of events throws the Standards of the West into sharp and unpleasant perspective.

Chomsky uses the NATO bombing of Milosevic as a framework for analyzing the direction of Western foreign policy, specifically in East Timor. While NATO (remember, not UN) forces were destroying non-military targets and infrastructure in the name of a "just cause", US sponsored paramilitaries were rampaging through E Timor slaughtering thousands. It is the awareness of this hypocrisy (as well as the well documented FACT that NATO bombing would worsen the humanitarian crisis it was designed to alleviate) that forms the framework for his analysis. With recent events in the world (easy to predict for those of us who actually know our own foreign policy, our history, and the history of the regions and people in question) Chomsky is one of the few, non PC, intellectuals who are willing to actually hold their own nation to the standards that we hold other nations to. Not surprisingly, CNN, Fox, and the other worthless entertainment disseminators masquerading as flag-waving "news" outlets refuse to cover the obvious issues raised by Chomsky (or Zinn, Fisk, Pilger, Nader, Roy, Herman, Said; the list is much to long to list). Oh well, its just the bodies and misery of the "evildoers" (read: Bush Daddy's old friends who no longer know their place) that are piling up in the name of corporate US hegemony. Also, beware of negative reviews like the one above (nothing wrong with negative reviews, but it woiuld be nice if they would at least attempt to deal with and refute Chomsky's thesis) that quote passages completely out of context.

This is scholar and public servant Noam Chomsky at his analytic best. The focus is "new internationalism where the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will no longer be tolerated," as thunderingly stated by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Never content with rhetoric, Chomsky examines the record of new internationalism for actual results, paticularly in test cases like East Timor, Kosovo, and NATO member Turkey with its repressed Kurdish population. The tone is sober, the style searching, the results depressing for a new millenium, demonstrating that more of the same old bloody double-standard wine is being served, this time in new rhetorical bottles. There's no need to editorialize on the professor's findings. They speak eloquently for themselves. Instead a salute is due him: his tireless ongoing pursuit of truth, pleasant or not, his refusal to bow down before the gods of government and media, his steady deep regard for the powerless and voiceless - all in modest, accessible fashion - recommend him as the conscience of the nation and the hope of a better America.

This is Chomsky at his continued best. His insight into and knowledge on American's involvement in Kosovo and East Timor is once again unparalled by other intellectuals. Chomsky is one of the most important assets to truth and knowledge ever to exist.

(...). I had always towed the party line about the evil Serbs and their misdeeds, but have changed my tune after reading this enlightening, if disturbing book. Some may accuse Chomsky of being an apologist for Serb atrocities, but it is clear after reading this text that all sides, most notably NATO, were engaged in quite troublesome behavior that cost many thousands of lives. I heard Bill O' Reilly dismiss Chomsky as a "revisionist," and it is sadly interesting that most critics of this and similar works simply stick a "communist", "liberal", or "revisionist" label on the author without ever addressing the points made within the work. If you are looking for a wealth of facts on deceitful and imperialist American policy in Serbia/Yugoslavia and Indonesia/East Timor, I doubt if a better source could be found.

This book shows the inhumanity of the Soviet system under Stalin, and also the complicity of the Truman administration and the Brittish in turning over to Stalin those long-suffering refugees from Communism to be murdered or imprisoned in the gulags. It is to our everlasting shame that our troops rounded up those who had escaped to freedom from the U.S.S.R. and sent them back to their doom. The story rings true, and Nina Markovna was a woman who suffered greatly during the war, but who, by the grace of God, was lucky enough to run into some decent people who helped her escape the clutches of Stalin.

I have never felt such emotion and drama while reading an autobiography . Nina's Journey should be read by every Amercan high school student as part of History class. I know that I am not the same person I was before I read this book. Never before has a story touched me so deeply and stayed with me like this one has.

Markovna's "Nina's Journey" is refreshingly rare in not having allowed the slightest pressure of prevailing political correctness to influence the author's transparent honesty while describing her life in the Soviet Union leading up to WWII, or her life in Germany as an "Ost arbeiter" (worker from the East), or becoming at the war's end a fugitive from the Western Allies forced repatriation of the newly freed "Ost" to Stalin's deadly gulags.
Nina Markovna knew from years spent inside her native land that to Stalin and members of the Communist Party WWII was not as much a National War to save Russia from the Nazi invaders as most of us in the West understood it, but a Revolutionary War to try to preserve the Party's iron-fisted rule over their people. Ironically, during that crucial time when Hitler's Germany, by breaking the existing Soviet-German Friendship Pact, overnight became Stalin's external enemy, the Soviet population, with the exception of Party members, openly became Stalin's internal enemy, an even greater threat. Markovna makes us understand why.
It is a narrative that could be told only by one who lived it. Those who write history as a profession make an interesting distinction on this point: Markovna is seen as a "primary" historian - she lived it. Those who write of events at a later time, on a broader canvas, are considered "secondary" historians, often subconsciously perhaps influenced to a degree by the prevailing political correctness of their time. Not so the author of "Nina's Journey".
I have read this fiercely courageous account of Markovna"s journey through her youth - a Slavic Christian girl, on the run from both her native despotic rulers and later from Stalin's Western Allies - and I was prompted to read it again after seeing Mr. Visser's review on this web site in which he states that "...Markovna's account is honest from her personal point of view... but she totally neglects the terrible, murderous and downright criminal behavior of the German occupiers elswhere in the Soviet Union during 1941-45". I strongly object to Mr. Visser's use of the word "totally", reminding him of Nina Markovna's heartrending pages which recount the tragic fate of her young Jewish friend, Maya.
As for the rest of his critique, it actually works in Markovna's favor, making her account historically valid precisely because she does not presume to describe the fortunes and misfortunes of those in other parts of the Soviet Union, letting the recording historians who came later to do it, instead. She also, Visser admits, subconsciously perhaps recognizing the innate bravery of the author, chose to take "the loser's side". Nina Markovna openly acknowledges that while in theory the Germans were her bitter enemies, be it the high-ranking officer who helped her family to escape the concentration in Ohrdruf, or the ballet master who provided her with the necessary papers that helped her to avoid forced repatriation, or the farmer's wife, stuffing a bag with food for her starving family, their humane spirit lifted them above the constraints such theories put upon them.
To read such a remarkably balanced account of the recent past, that is often presented slanted and one-sided, is as if a puzzle in disarray was reassembled into one coherent whole. The reader understands clearly why Nina doesn't run away from the German invaders; why the Cold War followed WWII, when our children were instructed to hide under their school desks during "drills". It was all because the leaders of the Free World had accepted Josef Stalin as their ally - this tyrant without conscience, whose diabolical nature Nina Markovna had experienced from her early youth. A reader of "Nina's Journey" cannot help but experience it as well.

This book is without a doubt the most breathtaking, exciting, epic, harrowing, (fill in the blank!) autobiography (or biography) I have ever read. I have loaned this out to at least five other people who have had the same reaction. Nina and her family had perhaps 30 adventures (within one great adventure) any of which would top the most memorable event in the average life today. Nina evades starvation, instant death, rape, murder, treachery, and more in the course of her late teenage years just before and during World War II. Her style of writing and convictions make you know that whatever she is writing about, no matter how unbelievable today, is completely true. Gone With The Wind is a trifle compared to her adventures.

Epic Scenes: Wandering through the river of Russian prisoners captured by the Germans and actually finding her father. Her successful plan to avoid rape by the Russian Army. Her mother's desperate trek to get to work on time in the ice storm or risk imprisonment. Her family's voulunteering for slave labor in Germany to raise their standard of living. The happy ending at the American air base. Scores more.

If this story were made into a movie, it would be the epic to end all epics. Since it tells what actually happened to her, it relates the good relations between the Russian people and the German Army relatively free of the SS influence in southern Russia. Compared to their life under Stalin, the German occupation of Odessa was a golden moment for the average Russian living there at that time--something that the populace paid for with their lives when the Red Army swept in again. By the time Nina loses her Jewish friends to the second, SS-led German invasion, genocide merges with the on-going sorrow of daily life of the Russian people as just something else to endure and survive.

Nina's Journey is filled with details little understood by Americans today, but what remains is an epic struggle by on Russian girl to survive the upheaval and strife of the late 30's and early 40's. I couldn't put it down.

Having never truly suffered, most Americans born in the post war years as I was can not really grasp the supreme tenacity of the human spirit. Nina's Journey opened my eyes to just how much suffering brings out the absolute best in some people, the demonic worst in others. Nina Markovna lived in the Soviet Union under Stalin, when "comrade-citizens" living in constant fear of nighttime purges commonly kept bundles of winter clothes ready year round in the event of imprisonment at short notice. Rampaging gangs of gulag orphans terrorize the towns, their status as children of enemies of the state condemning them to short brutal lives of homelessness and starvation. Nina records the arrival of the German Wehrmacht to Crimea in the early 1940's--instead of fighting them, the beleaguered citizens welcome them as liberators from their own cruel regime. When the Red Army gains the upper hand, Nina's family escapes to Germany as "guest workers" where at war's end, they must avoid repatriation to the Soviet Union at all costs. This book is filled with heart rending scenes of life lived at the ugly edges of endurance, where often the only thing between life and death is the intervention of a single good soul, whose refusal to give in to the hate of war is testimony to the power of love. This book gives witness to the fact that though one person might not be able to do everything, he can do something. And those small somethings saved not only lives, but souls.

This book is great as a reference and as a source of important information concerning no frill airlines. The author's writing style is relaxed and lively. Whether you are just trying to kill some time by reading, or, you are a frequent flier, this is a great book for you. I learned a lot of useful information that I am planning on using whenever I travel again.

The past, present and future prospects of no-frills travel. The pioneers, the airlines, the successes, the failures.

The book takes you behind the scenes, where the decisions that affect the way we travel are made. It gives a comprehensive and detailed account of why and how low-cost carriers appeared on the aviation scene, of the people who visualized them and spent years in courts battling the sclerotic establishments set on crushing competition and fending off change, of the reasons why low-cost carriers have traditionally thrived in environments where conventional airlines have suffered, of why they have prospered and are going from strength to strength.

At times hilarious, "No-Frills" is a fabulous book, so packed with information that after reading it you'll be lulled into thinking you have acquired enough knowledge and experience to start your own airline and make money out of it too! The 2006 edition is fully updated to include the latest developments in an industry that's as volatile and prone to change as no other.

The growth of low cost airlines in Europe, the USA and elsewhere in the last few years has been astounding to many observers. The carriers have profoundly changed the nature of the airline industry in the largest aviation markets in Europe and the USA. The book "No Frills" by Simon Calder is therefore very timely and informative to all the stakeholders of the aviation industry ranging from airlines, governments, the travelling public, airline management, employees, regulators, distributors of airline services and suppliers of aircraft, spares and other related services.

Millions of people are enjoying the benefits of low cost services. Large numbers of passengers are defecting from the traditional legacy carriers to these low cost airlines, not just those who traditionally travel economy class but also those who normally fly business class. This excellent book traces the low cost carriers from the early success story of South West Airlines in the USA to the highly profitable and dynamic airlines such as Ryannair, easyJet and others.

Those wishing to learn about this latest phenomenon in the airline industry are recommended to read this book. Readers will be able to understand why some of the largest legacy carriers are having it rough and why some have gone under. Those wishing to establish their own low cost airlines will benefit immensely from the experiences of the successful low cost airlines.

The No Frills sector of airlines is revolutionizing the way airlines do business. Simon Calder does an excellent job of exploring this trend in both Europe and the United States. If you are not somewhat familiar with European airlines and the difference between No Frills, flag carriers, and majors than you may want to read some other books before coming to this one. If you are somewhat knowledgeable though this is a great book to start with. Very well written and covers things in exhausting detail. The analysis is top notch and this book is essential for anyone studying the airline industry.

"No Frills: The Truth Behind the Low Cost Revolution in the Skies" is a guide to understand how this kind of airline works.
It's perfect to understand the structure and the way they manage to get the profits, Simon Calder has made a perfect book.

I highly recommend this book for those people who want to know how a low fare airline works.

"The Nuremberg Raid" is another of Martin Middlebrook's excellent, objective, and dispassionate documentaries on the airwar over Europe. Again, Middlebrook has spared no effort in identifying places, dates, and times, linking documents and personal accounts together in his mastery way. No glorification, no condemnation, just pure facts, given a personal face by eyewitness accounts. This, as well as great writing, are the key to Middlebrook's success.

Together with "The Battle of Hamburg," "The Schweinfurt-Regensburg Mission," "The Berlin Raids," and "The Peenemuende Mission" (some of which are out-of-print but worth every penny if you can get them), this book becomes another must in any serious library on the aerial bombing campaigns of World War II.

The Nuremberg Raid by Martin Middlebrook is an outstanding description of a British bombing raid against the city of Nuremberg. In telling this story, there are two major sections, the lead-up to the raid and the raid itself.

The section leading up to the raid tells the general history of British bombing in WWII, what drove the British to bombing at night, their track record bombing at night, and there recent targets. In addition, Mr. Middlebrook gives us a description of Bomber Command, it's men and their aircraft along with a similar description of the German forces.

The heart of the book deals with the actual raid itself. In these chapters, Mr. Middlebrook goes thru painstaking details about the bomber-stream and the events that occur to the bomber-streamer. In here, we learn about how this is the deepest penetration by the British, how the German night fighters responded to the raid, and how the raid was not compromised before hand. Mr. Middlebrook gives excellent details on the shoot down of most of the 96 bombers lost. Of particular interest was how British bomber pilots thought that the German had a gun that fired scarecrow shells (they exploded so as to look like a bomber being hit, in actuality, it was British bombers being hit by Schrage Musik). Also of interest was the British use of Serrate Mosquitoes to intercept the Germans.

This is an outstanding book. Once more, Mr. Middlebrook has hit a homerun. I'll give this one 5 out of 5!

On the night of March 30/31, 1944, Bomber Command sent every available bomber to Nuremberg in an effort to destroy it once and for all. So determined was Arthur "Butch" Harris to have one less target to worry about, that he sent his bombers out in less than ideal conditions. The night sky was largely devoid of clouds--that is, until the target was reached--and the moon was bright. The conditions were therefore very much to the German's advantage, and the defending night fighters took a grievous toll on the bomber force. In the end, the raid was a complete failure: Nuremberg was hardly touched and Bomber Command ended up losing over one hundred bombers. As Middlebrook points out, the choice of Nuremberg has been somewhat controversial, so much so, that some have contended that the raid was conducted with the Germans having known full well what the night's target was. I have little hesitation in saying that the Nuremberg Raid is a superb book. Meticulously researched and loaded with detail, it draws upon numerous sources, including many personal narratives, to construct aa complete an account of one of Bomber Command's raids as one can expect.

Mr Middlebrook has done more with this book than chronicle what was arguably the costliest raid the RAF staged during WW2. More importantly, it's a look at the daily operations of RAF and German aircrews late in the war. The RAF had standardized their tactics, and the Luftwaffe switched from a rigid to a fluid system of control for its nightfighters. Excellent first-person accounts illustrate the points the author makes throughout the work.

The original edition was published in the early '80s with a short update concerning rumors that Ultra revealed the raid was compromised; to protect this intelligence source the raid was allowed to proceed. This "conspiracy theory" is as untrue as the persistent myth that Coventry was destroyed for the same reason. In actuality there are a myriad of reasons why a mission might be cancelled; it's extremely unlikely that the Germans would have connected a cancellation of the Nuremberg Raid with intelligence concerning their defenses.

The only area where the book is wanting is the chapter(s) concerning "Butcher" Harris. Research since the book was written has shown that he was obsessively committed to bombing cities-to the point of insubordination on several occasions. Anyone else would have, and should have, been fired. The book doesn't address any of these issues. Contrary to what other reviewers have said, the Bombing Offensive was not "propaganda driven". Bomber advocates such as Harris, as an extreme example, felt that the sacrifice their crews were making would definitely shorten the war-maybe even end it without the need of invasion. Sadly, they held to these views even when events were showing that the offensive was not causing the damage expected, and a re-think of the entire bombing strategy was in order. Highly Recommended.

This is probably Martin Middlebrook's best-written account of an RAF Bomber Command Operation in the Second World War. Middlebrook wants the reader to believe that Air Marshal Harris, the commander of Bomber Command, was correcting in pursuing his night-time area bombing philosophy instead of trying to hit military or industrial targets with precision daylight strikes. Throughout, Middlebrook's sympathies and admiration for the brave RAF bomber crewmen that he knew from his youth are clear. Yet this book pushes a point of view that borders on religious or zealous faith, rather than a level-headed assessment of the facts. What pushes Middlebrook over the edge of reason here is the nature of his subject. While Middlebrook's other bomber books on Hamburg, Berlin and Peenemunde covered costly but successful operations (more or less), the raid on Nuremberg in March 1944 was an unmitigated disaster. RAF bomber command suffered its heaviest losses in one night of the war and inflicted negligible damage on the enemy.

Middlebrook begins with several very informative chapters that detail the bombing campaigns in Germany during 1939-1943, the composition of the bomber units that would take part in the raid and the German defenses. As usual, Middlebrook is very thorough and the order of battle is very detailed. However, shows a very profound bias toward area bombing throughout and it starts in assessing the three major raids just prior to the Nuremberg raid. Middlebrook makes a very important point when he states that, "even in non-cloud conditions the bombing results on Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Berlin had been poor ...bombing photographs indicated that not one aircraft released its load within the city's limits!" The point is that RAF Bomber Command did not have the capability to destroy cities because they couldn't hit them and that Air Marshal Harris knew this but continued on with an area bombing campaign that had degenerated into random killing. Wars are won by killing the right people at the right moment, not by killing randomly.

The pre-mission briefs to are covered in great detail and it appears that the intent was to deceive the crews about the nature of the mission, the strength of the enemy defenses and even the weather. The night chosen for the attack was poorly suited for infiltrating a 700+ stream of bombers across Germany due to the illumination from the moon and lack of cloud cover, but Harris ignored these facts and the crews were filled with overly-optimistic estimates. It is also significant that Harris chose an aim point in Nuremberg well away from the MAN tank plant (Middlebrook fails to mention that it was producing 100 Panther tanks per month at that time) and the SS barracks in the city and instead placed it in a residential area that he expected would burn well. The crews were told that the target was the tank plant and SS barracks.

Middlebrook follows the take-off of the massive bomber stream, all the supporting operations designed to help the raid and the massive German interception in great detail. Although the front of the stream made it past the German defenses, the Germans had perfected the "Tame Boar" method of intercepting streams before they reached their target and ripped apart the center of the stream. Visibility was excellent and the bombers were leaving contrails due to unusual conditions. About eighty British bombers were lost in a ninety minute period. The Germans had a very good night; Middlebrook notes that over thirty bombers were shot down by just eight night fighter crews. Two German lieutenants shot down seven and six bombers in one sortie! The flak gunners also had a good night - one battery shot down three bombers in five minutes with only twenty shells. All the while, the British crews watched in horror in the moonlight as bomber after bomber went down in flames. Nor were the British aware of the German "schrage musik" attacks from underneath with specially-modified cannon that fired into the bellies of the British bombers. It was one of the great aerial slaughters of all time. Nevertheless, the bravery of the British crews to press on to target in the mistaken belief that their actions would contribute to victory is sobering.

Compounding the heavy losses, the raid itself was a total failure. Nuremberg was heavily cloud-covered and most of the bombs fell well outside the city; only 60 German civilians were killed in the city, including 24 women and 8 children. Even worse however, was that 107 bombers missed the target by 55 miles and bombed Schweinfurt by mistake (and only succeeded in killing one woman and one child). A total of 110 German civilians and 19 Luftwaffe personnel were killed in the raid and about ten fighters were lost. Contrast this with British losses of 108 aircraft (96 bombers were shot down, the rest were crashed or damaged beyond repair) and of the aircrew, 545 of these brave men were killed and 152 captured. Middlebrook notes these cold-blooded facts but then concludes that the raid succeeded because it carried the war to the German people and "it was the German civilians who cowered for their lives in cellars and shelters while the English slept safely in their beds". Aside from this being an asinine "aim for the RAF", it ignores the German V-weapons campaign that was pounding England in 1944 without risking aircrews.

Finally, after all the excellent post-mortem analysis Middlebrook brings the reader to an emotionally biased watershed. Instead of realizing that the Nuremberg Raid clearly demonstrated that night area-bombing was not a cost-effective way to win a war, he launches into an impassioned defense of Harris' beloved area bombing. Middlebrook writes, "The morale of the German people never broke...but this does not mean that the theory was wrong: only that it had not been proved. What might have happened if Harris had been given the 4,000 heavy bombers [that he wanted]?" This completely ignores the fact that RAF Bomber Command could barely find major cities in the dark, except for the few targets in the Ruhr within range of OBOE. How would more bombers have changed this fact? More bombers missing the target still does not add up to victory. Even when RAF bombs hit cities, they tended to kill women, children and the elderly, not people likely to contribute much to Hitler's war effort. Middlebrook's assertion that the bomber raids caused the Germans to allocate thousands of anti-aircraft guns, searchlights and flak crews to home defense is also specious. First, anti-aircraft guns and searchlight cost a lot less to manufacture than four-engine bombers, and few of them were destroyed in battle unlike the 8,325 bombers the RAF lost. Second, the flak crews were often teenagers, women and Russian volunteers, all of whom required far less training than RAF bomber crews. Thirdly, Middlebrook ignores the huge investment that Britain had made into air defense of the UK and the fact that Britain did not have a free ride in this area even in 1944. Actually, it is apparent that RAF Bomber Command diverted far more resources from Britain's war effort than it did from Germany's.

This is a well-written and detailed account of one of the fiercer air battles of the Second World War. It should be on the bookshelf of anyone seriously interested in the air war in 1939-1945. However, the emotional bias of the author colors his assessment of the raid and serves to offer up a false conclusion. It is no disservice to the brave RAF crewmen who died on the raid, they did their best and they were heroes, but the raid was idiotic in intent and execution. Commanders like Air Marshall Harris would send brave men to their deaths for no reasonable purpose should not be excused for "having a bad day" or making a mistake. Unfortunately, the author cannot bring himself to this condemnation and it is up to the reader to make a less biased conclusion.

There was such wisdom here, that while reading it I'd bought my mother a copy, and now I'm rereading my copy again a year later.

Lindahl does an excellent job of guiding us through a 'cultural tour' of the Nordic mindset toward health. The info is organized well, into chapters covering physical fitness, a proximity to and relationship with nature, relaxation, and diet. Through each of these, she illustrates how it's different from the frenetic life of a business professional (which she'd once been), and give practical advice for those of us whose lives are still frenetic.

While reading On My Swedish Island by Julie Catterson Lindahl, I noticed I had a myriad of feelings towards it. At times, I was bored reading about herbs that are apparently capable of making your life more enjoayble, but at other times, I perked up upon reading about Sweden's "Every Man's Right" law. The book was well organized and easy to read through. I felt as if I could do some of the things Lindahl mentioned and create my own Swedish paradise inside my New Jersey home.
To begin with, Lindahl suggests various ways to achieve inner peace. The Swedes are big on being outdoors and this value shines through in the writing. Although Lindahl is British, she married a Swede and appreciates and respects their values. She used to run on the treadmill everyday but ditched this habit and began going outside to run and cross country ski. "..I live in part of the world where the overwhelming majority of people perceive going out into nature as an integral part of life. A 1995 study showed that 80 to 90 percent of Swedes and Danes...spent recreational time in forested and natural environments or parks." (Lindahl 49-50) It's hard to get out and enjoy nature when no one else around does and too many things are going on. I appreciate how much the

This has become one of my top favorite 5 books because of the wisdom the author shares. Everything from simply living spaces, simple food, the outdoors, being content with less and more observant about the world around us. Call it Scandinavian zen or simply wise living.

The author hits the nail on the head when she shares how our choices can make our lives better and that these choices often have to do with being still and observant and not allowing big business or hurried people to sway us from taking the path less traveled.

Its a book that I read and then set down, then pick up and read some more, and set down. I savor the lessons I have learned from the book and have recommended it to simple living group friends who like myself try and live a self sufficient lifestyle void of so many of the 'must haves' that American society pushes.

Living here in the Sierras I also appreciated the authors wonderful stories about what the outdoors offers. Be it walking for fitness, or enjoying the fresh fish and vegetables it offers.

So much to be learned from the author and cannot recommend the book highly enough.