Ireland Books

This intelligent and kind man all too often falls through the cracks of history. People forget that there was a completely different school of socialist thought that existed concurrently with the ideas of Marx. Kropotkin, like many others who believed in the ability of people to make their own economic relations, had the distinction of being persecuted by people on both sides of the political spectrum. Yet his book is remarkable for its lack of self-pity or resentment. The book is dense and full of the musings of a highly educated man of the late 19th century who indulged many other interests besides politics. His journey is remarkable, and we can only hope that he will become better known.

This work by Peter Kropotkin's is, I say this without reservations, a work of genius and an amazing reflection on the life of an amazing man. Kropotkin's stories of his childhood and his relations with his servants and other lower-calss individuals (he was born a prince) are very interesting, as are his tales of exploration. His version of anarcho-socialism is very intriguing, largely because he bears no hate or grudge towards anyone and he is a very gentle man. In his book, it becomes clear (without him saying it, of course) that he did not recognize just how unique of a man he was. This book is filled with marvelous anecdotes, from cutting political commentary to fascinating stories of journeys down the Amur River to a splendid little collection of stupid Russian Spy stories. This book is fantastic.

Prince Piotr Alekseyevich Kropotkin, 1842-1921, was a Russian geographer and anarchist. He came from a wealthy princely family and as a boy was a page to the czar. Repelled by court life, he obtained permission to serve as an army officer in Siberia, where his explorations and scientific observations established his reputation as a geographer. After returning to European Russia, he became an adherent of the Bakuninist faction of the narodniki and engaged in clandestine propaganda activities until arrested in 1874. Two years later he escaped to Western Europe, where he worked with various anarchist groups until his imprisonment in France (1883). Pardoned in 1886, partly as the result of the popular clamor for his release, he moved to England and spent the next 30 years mainly as a scholar and writer developing a coherent anarchist theory. In his most famous book, Mutual Aid (1902), he attacked T. H. Huxley and the Social Darwinists for their picture of nature and human society as essentially competitive. He insisted that cooperation and mutual aid were the norms in both the natural and social worlds. From this perspective he developed a theory of social organizationin Fields, Factories and Workshops (1898) and elsewherethat was based upon communes of producers linked with each other through common custom and free contract. Returning to Russia following the February Revolution of 1917, he attempted to engender support for a continued Russian effort in World War I and to combat the rising influence of Bolshevism. Following the Bolshevik triumph in the October Revolution (1917), he retired from active politics. Consistently nonviolent in his anarchist beliefs, Kropotkin,as both thinker and man, was admired and acclaimed by many far removed from anarchist circles.

My wife and I went to Scotland last summer for an in depth tour, and this book was indespensible. I read probably 15 books on the subject, and this was the best of the lot. The main drawback of the book is it is organized alphabetically, which makes it a little difficult to use in the planning stages, so I would use the Eyewitness Guides or Fodor's Exploring Scotland to plan the outline of the trip geographically, and then use this one to get into details. This was also a dynamite book to use on the ground in Scotland, so make sure you take it with you. It had many, surprisingly deep, broad, and informative self-guided tours of sites, some of which were indispensible for us since they were our only source of information on them (e.g. some sites didn't have much info avaialable, like the ruins, and some we didn't want to buy the guidebook)

Michelin Green Guides provide the traveler with some of the most easy-to-read, concise travel books available. If you want personal opinions and a lot of fluff, don't buy this book. This is for the traveler who wants the facts presented in a clear, organized format so that he/she can make up their own mind and develop an itinerary to suit their interests. It includes 'basic' traveler information (weather, tourist centers, etc.), route maps, historical overviews, structural descriptions, time tables, admission prices, and more. Every time we travel, we always have a Michelin Guide tucked away.

A great writer once said that brevity is the soul of wit. The writers of this book obviously took this advice to heart. The entries in this travel guide are clear and to the point. Even better, I found them to be very accurate. They give enough information to determine if a location is worth going to based on personal interests and time constraints, all in a size that was easy to carry around on my many treks across the countryside. This guide was my bible during my 4 weeks in Scotland. Couldn't have managed without it.

Les monstres enlumines dans les manuscrits medievaux venaient des ecrits anciens, de l'imagination, et du royaume animal, tels que des baleines et des lions. Les residents des pays lointains, des incultes, et des forets se trouvaient difformes et monstrueux dans les ecrits les plus estimes d'Aristote, Ctesias, Herodotus, Homere, Plinius pere, et Solinus. Le christianisme attirait des convertis par ne pas s'opposer aux croyances culturelles qui n'etaient pas ouvertement antichretiennes. Alors des monstres, avec des ames a sauver, s'enluminaient L'univers et Les merveilles de l'est, tous les deux par des nonreligieux, autant que des psautiers de Byzantium et de Tiberias, tous les deux par des religieux. Les grotesques se dessinaient des le 15eme siecle, pendant lequel on redecouvrait le palais ou l'empereur Neron a fait peindre, sur des muraux des grottes, des etres avec des membres des animaux, des humains, et des plantes. Ainsi les grotesques, avec des ames a sauver, s'enluminaient-ils les images des pages du Livre des heures destine au richissime Bonaparte Ghislieri de Bologne.

Some of the monsters that medieval artists drew along the edges of manuscript pages were based on real animals, such as lions and whales. But many were made up from reading ancient and biblical writings. Respected writers, such as Aristotle, Ctesias, Herodotus and Homer in Greek, and Pliny the Elder and Solinus in Latin, saw foreign lands, forests and wildernesses as dangerous places. They thought of people, in such faraway lands as Ethiopia and India, either as deformed creatures looking somewhat human or as monsters.

Christianity spread by letting be whatever parts of other cultures didn't get in the way of what Christians believed. So St Augustine of Hippo accepted these stories. But he saw these monsters as having souls in need of being saved.

But it didn't matter if it was monks or, later on, professionals outside the church who copied and did the artwork. Artists and writers, particularly in medieval England, France and the Netherlands, were just as accepting as those who had gone before. The Universal History and The Wonders of the East on the one hand, and the Byzantine and Tiberius psalters on the other, were all known for monsters.

And monstrously ugly on the outside meant bad on the inside. For the final battle in the biblical book of the Apocalypse was between St Michael's good army of beautiful angels and Satan's bad of ugly dragons and monsters. Readers and viewers in the Middle Ages felt that they had to take sides in this fight. So they often scratched, slashed or smudged the faces of those drawn as doing evil in medieval manuscripts.

Joining monsters at the end of the 15th century were grotesques, as having parts from animals, humans and plants. They were based on cave drawings of mythical monsters. This art was in a palace of Emperor Nero that was rediscovered in 1488. So, for example, grotesques showed up on the edges of pages in the Book of Hours for Bonaparte Ghislieri, a wealthy resident of Bologna.

Author Alixe Bovey is an excellent starting point. Her user-friendly writing gives perfect examples of the MONSTERS AND GROTESQUES IN MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS. Her book works well with Janetta Rebold Benton's HOLY TERRORS and Jennifer Dussling's GARGOYLES. She paves the way for John Block Friedman's THE MONSTROUS RACES IN MEDIEVAL ART AND THOUGHT and A G Smith's GARGOYLES AND MEDIEVAL MONSTERS, both harder to start with first.

Les monstres enlumines dans les manuscrits medievaux venaient des ecrits anciens, de l'imagination, et du royaume animal, tels que des baleines et des lions. Les residents des pays lointains, des incultes, et des forets se trouvaient difformes et monstrueux dans les ecrits les plus estimes d'Aristote, Ctesias, Herodotus, Homere, Plinius pere, et Solinus. Le christianisme attirait des convertis par ne pas s'opposer aux croyances culturelles qui n'etaient pas ouvertement antichretiennes. Alors des monstres, avec des ames a sauver, s'enluminaient L'univers et Les merveilles de l'est, tous les deux par des nonreligieux, autant que des psautiers de Byzantium et de Tiberias, tous les deux par des religieux. Les grotesques se dessinaient des le 15eme siecle, pendant lequel on redecouvrait le palais ou l'empereur Neron a fait peindre, sur des muraux des grottes, des etres avec des membres des animaux, des humains, et des plantes. Ainsi les grotesques, avec des ames a sauver, s'enluminaient-ils les images des pages du Livre des heures destine au richissime Bonaparte Ghislieri de Bologne.

This book is one of the best I've ever read about Napoleon's death. I came by this book during my recent visit of the United States. I was discussing history and unsolved mysteries with a relative of mine when he introduced me to the book. He told me that for the first time a researcher had decided to challenge all the known theories about Napoleon's death. And what a challenge!! According to the author the great Emperor had been poisoned by arsenic during his exile in Saint Hélène. At first I was quite sceptical. Could that be the solution of this mystery? However, the more I read the more I was convinced by the author's argument and by the researcher thourough 'enquête'. Although we might not agree with the identity of the murderer we can't not sweep aside such scientific facts. The book is a real page-turner and I rest assure that all the fans of the subject (and even those merely interested by the scientific aspect of the theory) will find this book extremely interesting and disturbing (in a positive way, of course).

The infamous Napoleon Bonaparte died while imprisoned on the island of St. Helena. Until very recently, it was widely believed that he died of stomach cancer, which was prevalent in his family.

This book investigates the case made by Swedish dentist Dr. Sten Forshufvud. After learning the details of Napoleon's final days, Dr. Forshufvud began to suspect arsenic poisoning. Along with Ben Weider, the two delved into sources of available information regarding Napoleon, his imprisonment and those close to him. The authors present a very likely scenario of what really happened based on results of this investigation, along with an analysis of Napoleon's hair confirming arsenic poisoning.

Despite the hair analysis, the case is not completely solved, as Napoleon's final moments on his death bed did not indicate arsenic poisoning. Instead, the authors argue that arsenic was used to make Napoleon ill and then another method was used to finish him off. A likely suspect to the murder as well as a motive are also named.

This is a fascinating book for anyone interested in European history during a turbulent time.

Napoleon felt entitled to rule Europe and cheated to secure the necessary esteem by threats or show of power; but most Europeans did not acknowledge his title; `the Emperor'.
To protect its interests Britain planned, manoeuvred and worked in the dark to achieve one main goal: " preserve the British Empire". Britain's lust for power has placed, as the first priority on its policy, the `extermination' of Napoleon.
The distaste was reciprocated. Napoleon detested England's alliance with Russia and Austria.
In the end Napoleon was beaten at Waterloo.
Napoleon's captivity in Saint Helena, the island of volcanic origin in the South Atlantic Ocean, squeezed his health like a dry lemon. The island was infested and muggy; knout climate was already like a pogrom to massacre the ex-Emperor.

The fifty-two years old Emperor of the French knew he would die there. He had already encountered tuberculosis - facing the harsh winter weather conditions - during his campaign on Russia and the ruinous retreat in 1812.

He never recovered and remained frail for the next nine years. What started in the lungs, at the final stages affected the bones and joints accentuated by damp weather and feelings of despair.

The third in the author's trilogy on the 1813 campaign. He covers the entire period from September to December 1813, and in addition to Leipzig itself, he covers the battles leading up to it in Sept. and early Oct, the French retreat after the battle, the sieges of the fortresses incl Danzig, Glogau, Dresden, Magdeburg and numerous others, plus coverage of the Danes in December. Leipzig dashed the dreams of a French Empire when the armies of Prussia, Russia, Austria, and Sweden converged on Napoleon and his Grande Armee. It was the greatest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, so decisive it would be called "the Battle of Nations." Smaller countries like Poland and Saxony seemed to be submerged in the titanic struggle, and the battle shaped Europe for more than a century. Napoleon at Leipzig not only covers this pivotal battle, but also the maneuvers that led up to it and the retreat that followed. At Hanau, the Bavarians learned to their dismay that Napoleon was still the master of the battlefield. The book includes the campaigns of Marshal Davout in the north, and the fate of the besieged French fortresses. From glittering field marshals to ragged Cossacks, in massive battles or small skirmishes, we see the dramatic campaign unfold. George Nafziger s intensive research into the 1813 campaign shows how the finest general of all time was bought to bay. The greatest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, and the campaign that led up to it, is thoroughly studied for the first time in English in Napoleon at Leipzig
1996, hard bound in dust jacket, 7 1/2, x 10 1/2, 384 pages, numerous illus, maps, orders of battle, notes, index.

Leipzig is the greatest and biggest battle of all Napoelonic battles ever fought. This is a shame that only G. Nafziger wrote book about this epic battle. I like this book. The maps are fine, and the descriptions of the battles, including the Battle of Leipzig, are interesting. But this book is rather for Americans and Europeans, not for the British. They are interested only in Waterloo, and Peter Hofschroer. This book is also a big stuff for all wargamers.

This is part of a 3 part series on the 1813 Campaign...Mr. Nafziger has given us a detailed and well researched account of the campaign. This thoughtful book gives the best recent account of Leipzig available in English. It is unfortunate that this decisive campaign is not the subject of more books.

For those of you unfamiliar with George Nafziger's work he is meticulous in his research and detail...if he tells you a regiment is located in a certain place at a particular time you can pretty much take it to the bank. Unlike a lot of authors, Mr. Nafziger does the research and allows the facts to dictate the direction of the book...Having no axes to grind means that the information being presented will also be more balanced than you find in a lot of books as well.

Generally when I see a book by George Nafziger in the time period that I don't own; I get it...

Michael La Vean
Fellow, International Napoleonic Society

The second edition of NAZI GERMANY AND WORLD WAR II offers an articulate, balanced, comprehensive, and generously illustrated edition of the Third Reich from Hitler's birth in 1889 to the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946. The first six chapters deal with Hitler's rise to power and his regime's policies to the outbreak of war in 1939; the last five chapters detail the war and the Holocaust. As the title suggests, World War II, which is the logical outcome of Hitler's racial ideology and the central event of Nazi history (and of world history from 1939 to 1945) is given extensive coverage. The heart of the book is a well-told narrative that emphasizes political history and war, but there is enough interpretative and analytical material, as well as coverage of cultural, economic, intellectual, and social topics, to justify the book's description as a comprehensive survey.

The second edition, which incorporates the most current research and suggestions from students, colleagues, reviewers, and other readers, contains an extensively revised chapter on the Holocaust, highlighting recent controversial interpretations. Readers will find new material on popular support for and resistance to the regime's murderous racial policies and expanded coverage of the war, including the unprecedented massacres of soldiers and civilians on the Russian front,the deadly bombing of Germany, the Normandy invasion, the Battle of the Bulge, and the final destruction of the Third Reich. Excerpts from primary sources placed in text boxes--authentic, sometimes plaintive voices from the period, some from well-known figures but more from ordinary people, including children--are a completely new feature of the second edition.

Students and other readers, whose suggestions and enthusiastic reception of the book, have helped encourage me to write a second, and, I hope, improved edition. They reinforced my conviction that the story of Germany's descent into hell under the Hitler regime will always need to be told.

I have taken the class with Dr. Wall and the text is excellent. It covers and enormous topic in a concise and methodical way without being bogged down in infinite detail. It reads well and has a wealth of facts and data as well as a bibliography that is very thorough. Dr. Wall continues to be one of the finest teachers in the state of Colorado and an asset to his students. The finest compliment I can offer is that I kept the book after the class, adding it to my personal library of excellent works.

The second edition of NAZI GERMANY AND WORLD WAR II offers an articulate, balanced, comprehensive, and generously illustrated treatment of the Third Reich from Hitler's birth in 1889 to the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946. Although there is no formal division, the organization of the subject matter and the degree of coverage given each topic separate the book into two parts. The first six chapters deal with Hitler's rise to power and how his regime's policies changed German society to the outbreak of war in 1939. The last five chapters detail the war, the Holocaust, and the collapse of the "thousand year Reich." As the title suggests, World War II, which is the logical outcome of Hitler's murderous racial ideology and the central event of Nazi history (and of world history from 1939 to 1945) is given extensive coverage. The heart of the book is a well-told narrative that emphasizes political history and war, but there is enough interpretive and analytical material, as well as coverage of cultural, economic, intellectual, and social topics, to justify the book's description as a comprehensive survey.

The second edition, which incorporates the most current research and suggestions from students, colleagues, reviewers, and other readers, contains an updated bibliography and an extensively revised chapter on the Holocaust, which highlights recent controversial interpretations. Readers will find new material on popular support for and resistance to Hitler's murderous racial policies and greatly expanded coverage of the war, highlighting the unprecedented massacres of combatants and civilians on the Russian front, the deadly bombing of Germany, the Normandy invasion and the Battle of the Bulge, and the final destruction of the Third Reich. Excerpts from primary sources placed in text boxes--authentic, sometimes plaintive, voices from the period, some from well-known figures but more from ordinary people, including children--are a completely new feature of the second edition.

I was encouraged to write a second, and, I hope, improved edition by the unwavering support of the Wadsworth editorial staff and the enthusiastic reception of the first edition by students and other readers. They have reinforced my conviction that the story of Germany's descent into hell under the Hitler regime will always need to be told.

It's said that the Devil can quote Scripture to prove his own point - and something like that has been tried with the Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the Norman Conquest of England. The French claim it as French. The English have claimed it as Anglo-Saxon. During World War II, Hitler tried to use it as a kind of Book of Genesis for the Third Reich. William the Conqueror, 7th Duke of Normandy, was the descendant of Vikings. ("Norman" derives from the Latin for "Northmen.") The Scandinavian connection appealed to Hitler's racial, mythic notions. Among the Tapestry's 11th century images of conquering warriors, he sought ancient origins for his supposed Germanic super-race.

In fact, maintains R. Howard Bloch, these competing claims are only possible because the Tapestry itself hardly takes sides between the conquered Anglo-Saxons and the conquering Normans, and seeks to reconcile those whom it portrays. Its point of view is neither clearly Norman nor Anglo-Saxon. Without dwelling on fixing blame, it shows both armies fighting bravely. ("French and English fall together," it says of the battle at Hastings.) All may go on to become King William's peaceful subjects. Bloch finds in the Tapestry's well-recognized ambiguities an intention by its designer to tell the story without maligning either Normans or Anglo-Saxons.


Sterling Professor of French and the Director of the Humanities Division at Yale, as well as author of several books about the Middle Ages, Bloch brings an unusual array of qualifications to this subject. His mother, formally trained as a textile engineer, was a craftswoman who covered the walls of their home with creative needlework; his father an expert in the manufacture of finished cloth. In considering the Tapestry, its purposes and the influences it reflects, especially those found in other woven, painted or embroidered fabrics, Bloch speaks the language of textiles as one born to it.


He points out from the beginning, as all writers on the Bayeux Tapestry must, that it isn't strictly a tapestry at all, but an embroidery, on a long (about 230 feet) linen strip; and that we have no other record like it. Despite the crude medieval drawing, the Tapestry vividly brings alive the sweep of events. The most photorealistic horses, for example, could not pulse with more vitality, or fall in battle more convincingly, than they do in these images. In the Tapestry's unfolding story, we see the Anglo-Saxon Harold Godwineson swear his oath of loyalty to Duke William. It doesn't tell us whether he had a choice, or was tricked. Is King Edward the Confessor of England, on his deathbed, revoking his promise of the crown to his kinsman, Duke William of Normandy? Promising it to Harold? There sits Harold in majesty, crowned -- if it was with indecent haste, the Tapestry doesn't say so -- the day after Edward's death. Duke William "is told of Harold," the Tapestry tells us neutrally, and he prepares to invade. There is the mysterious woman, Aelfgyva. With generations of scholars we wonder who she is, and why she is here. Is that cleric merely touching her head, or slapping her so that she'll never forget something she's witnessing? The images quicken their pace, reaching the bloody clash at Hastings and the Norman victory. Something is missing at the end of the Tapestry; perhaps the lost portion showed King William in majesty, matching the earlier crowned and enthroned Harold.


Professor Bloch understands the Tapestry with an appreciation of what may be called the southern angle: that the Normans who had campaigned in or been to the Italian peninsula, Sicily, the Holy Land, Constantinople, brought back with them both novel combat tactics and a network of cultural threads that linked their northern homeland with Byzantium and with the whole Mediterranean world. He points out not only the famly Scandinavian links of style and motif with the Tapestry, but those found in sumptuous Byzantine silks, proposing lights for what have been obscure corners of Tapestry interpretation. In so doing, he gives greater attention to the enigmatic borders of the Tapestry -- those often-cryptic passages above and below the main narrative -- than do some other commentators.


He argues that the Tapestry deliberately leaves crucial questions unanswered. It means to withhold one-sided judgments. The Tapestry does NOT tell us whether Harold swore fealty to William willingly, or whether he knew he was holding his hands outstretched over sacred relics, making the oath a much more serious matter. It leaves unstated, not alone what King Edward intended at the last, but what it was in his power to do. Though the evidence suggests that English hands made the Tapestry, it is NOT clear whose voice, so to speak, tells the story. The Tapestry, Bloch maintains, is not a work of partisan propaganda. King William, he says, wanted Anglo-Saxons and Normans reconciled under his unifying rule -- and wanted the wider world to acquiesce in his dreams of even wider empire. Without knowing for sure when or where the Tapestry was made, or by whom ordered, or where it was designed to be displayed, Bloch says, we can find all this on its face. It's an argument that anyone interested in the Norman Conquest, the events surrounding it and those that flowed from it, should want to consider; and it is engagingly written. I couldn't put it down. Its story is, of course, still relevant -- to, among much else, the fact that Prince William of England will someday be King William V because he'll be counting from King William I, the Conqueror.

Of all the great historical and artistic sites in the world, the Bayeux Tapestry is perhaps second on my list of places I would like to visit (Troy comes first). Actually not a "tapestry" (it is technically an embroidery) the Bayeux Tapestry, dating from the Eleventh century pictorially tells the story of William the Conqueror's invasion of England and victorious battle at Hastings. Exactly who sponsored its creation, designed it, and embroidered it remain mysteries, as does its ultimate purpose. Bloch's new book does not seek to supply sensational answers to these continuing controversies (as did, for example, Andrew Bridgeford's "1066: The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry"), nor even to solve the perplexing mystery of the identity of the woman "Aelfgyva" who appears in the Tapestry. Instead, Bloch provides a fast-reading discussion of the historical and artistic context for understanding the Tapestry. He concludes that there are many Scandinavian/Norman elements incorporated into the the design (and Scandinavian textiles are the most closely related art works known), but that Anglo-Saxon illuminated manuscripts appear to supply the models for the style of illustration. And the author traces back important design elements to Byzantine silk weavings.

Bloch contends that the Tapestry was consciously created as a way to bring together the Anglo-Saxon and Norman peoples on both sides of the English Channel (although it seems to me that this view is suspiciously congruent with modern notions of multiculturism rather than Eleventh century realities). Regardless whether one accepts or rejects this viewpoint, the book's narrative provides an informative examination of the Norman and Anglo-Saxon worlds which gave birth to this unique artistic treasure.

Dr Bloch explains the tale of the Tapestry in a very clear and appealing manner. In particular, he describes the sequence of events depicted by the Tapestry itself as well as the political environment of early 11th century Europe that led to the pivotal Battle of Hastings. His insights are cogent and sound. I highly recommend this brief but thorough work.

This is the best way to practice the grammar from each chapter of the book. I have been studying with other books as well and I can say this book and the workbook are one of the best I have found to improve my English.

I'd like to learn english and I hope this book help me.

I'm an ESL teacher and I've used this collection for over 3 years to teach adults. I have many students who have learned using it and in my household only there are 3 of them. Yes, I've taught my own family! It's filled with great exercises, fun lessons and easy to do step-by-step class plans. Buy it, it'll change your method. With this books you don't even need the flash cards!

I would like to ask every person who read this book to help me find the german version of it. It would be very important for my father to have it. Maybe one of the readers knows where to find it. Thanks for your help...

This is a superb, well researched, highly organized, and very readable biography of an important Russian emperor. The author provides an indepth description and intelligent analysis of Nicholas' personality and character, the emperor's orientation to autocratic rule, Russian political, economic, social, and cultural history during his reign, and the importance of the political, economic, and social influences of Western European nations on Russia. Lincoln goes much beyond just presenting a chronology of events, by explaining why historical events happened as they did. The final epilogue nicely places the reign of Nicholas in the broader context of Russian history that preceded his reign and the events that would unfold subsequent to his time. My only slight criticism of the book is that maps were not included. Nevertheless, it is one of the best historical biographies I have ever read. Lincoln's larger worker, The Romanozs is equally terrific.

Nicholas I has always had a bad press in Russia as well as abroad. The Russians considered his regime to be harsh, riddled with contemptuous foreigners, in short 'un-Russian'. This image was created by exiles such as Herzen and Bakunin, and reinforced in communist times. In the West, Nicholas rigorous opposition to political novelties like constitutions and republics did little to improve his public relations. Lincoln sets out to make clear what made this remarkable man 'tick'. He does that by commencing his biography with the Decembrist revolution, which gave a clear indication of the new tsar's state of mind. Time and again, the two key elements of Nicholas' reign are called to mind: autocracy and legitimacy. Lincoln has produced a convincing, and very well-written, biography of Russia's most important tsar of the nineteenth century. I am uncertain whether this or Nicholas V. Riasanovsky's _Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia_ is the best biography of this man, but Lincolns extensive references appear to tip the scale in his favour.

"Because both Nietzsche and Nazism are central to the twentieth-century experience and because both retain their symbolic explosiveness, the disputed nature of their relationship has become a defining part of the cultural and ideological landscape, one index to our perceptions of the modern world" (232). This brilliant quote provides in a nutshell the basic existential weight of Steven E. Aschheim's fascinating historiographical work concerning the many mis/uses of the work of Friedrich Nietzsche in Germany between 1890 and 1990. It has become customary - and for good reason, too - to see in Friedrich Nietzsche, the self-proclaimed "anti-Christ" of the late 19th century, a type of proto-Nazism, particularly in its glorification of aesthetics at the expense of any metaphysical notions of human dignity. Although this may - and perhaps even should - be the way that Nietzsche is thought of, Aschheim shows that it is by no means necessary that this should be the case. The book very much could have been titled "The Nietzsche Legacies in Germany 1890 - 1990".

St. Paul exhorted the early Christians to be "all things to all people". In what Nietzsche himself would likely consider a delightful twisting of Paul's words, we can truly write that Nietzsche was, after the time of his insanity (and even more so after his death), "all things to all Ubermenschen (overmen)". Briefly, Nietzsche proclaimed "the Overman" who would lead humanity to a more Dionysian (as opposed to more Christian) "humanity". He knew that some would consider him this great human-overcoming-of-humanity, but in his greatest (or at least most literate) work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche denied it, painting himself as a type of proto-prophet, prophesying about the prophet who would truly point the way to the Ubermensch/Overman. This concept of the Overman - of being the Overman - seems to have caught on in Germany quite quickly.

Perhaps as with all religions - and it does indeed seem that there really was a type of Nietzschean religion (even temples dedicated to him were designed, but not built - there were as many interpretations of Nietzsche after his death as there were followers of Nietzsche. It seems that early on, he was the most popular among the avant-garde in Germany, but by first World War, he had become a household name. During the Great War, an Englishman even dubbed it the "Euro-Nietzschean War"; it appears that by this time Nietzsche was known internationally and his influence on the Germans just as much.

There is a type of subplot to this book, however, and that is the quest of certain Germans in the 20th century to subsume Nietzsche to a type of ahistoric German-ness: there were some, for instance, who would drawn a straight line from Martin Luther's longing for freedom to Friedrich Nietzsche's ultimate rejection of Christianity. The idea of a German religion and a German mysticism (which actually is at least as old Martin Luther, who polemically titled - against the Italians/Roman Catholics - a popular, anonymous, high medieval-era mystical work "The *German* Theology" - and it has been called this ever since). Thus, the book is true to its full title: this is the story of the competing legacies of Friedrich Nietzsche *in Germany*.

The Nazis do come in for treatment in the final quarter of the book; Aschheim notes the various ways in which they used a number of Nietzsche's themes while also, at the same time, found it necessary to explain away various statements in Nietzsche's writings that ran counter to their thought - especially his remarks about the stupidity of anti-Semitism. Within this hermeneutical conundrum emerged the Nazification of Nietzsche and their horrific usage of him against the Jews: by hating Christianity and seeing it as the product of Judaism, the Nazis claimed that they really were fulfilling Nietzsche's dreams of a world without the Church by first annihilating the Jews. Such logic - which only feels like a small stretch - causes one to wonder whether or not a text is not just the totality of its variations, but the totality of its readings as well. Can Nietzsche be blamed - at least in part - for the Holocaust?

But the book ends in cryptically Nietzschean mode, the man with his doppleganger, the light with its shadows: the question is unanswered. If any sense is to be made of it - a subtle sense, no doubt, nuanced and refined through repeated examinations - this is a fine place to start. The various types of Nietzscheanism discussed throughout the book are likely to leave many readers perplexed, for they could be as bewildering as they were socially and politically charged. But, speaking and writing are never neutral - and Nietzsche never intended to be, either.

I would like to maintain an absolute neutrality concerning the book, THE NIETZSCHE LEGACY IN GERMANY 1890-1990 by Steven E. Aschheim, Associate Professor of History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1992, when this book was published. I would only wish to comment on a tiny point which concerns me greatly. The book provides a scholarly look at the manifold positions taken by those who have read Nietzsche and have expressed opinions regarding German nationalism, particularly regarding Zarathustra in the trenches in World War I, the Third Reich, National Socialism, and Nazism. Notes are at the bottom of each page, but many names and a few topics can be located in the book by using the index on pages 331-337. The index has three minor entries for music. In this season, I am concerned about music as a form of artistic expression which allows someone to communicate a message that surpasses logical forms. Overall, Nietzsche might be associated with a form of transcendental irony that throws in comments about music whenever philosophy seems to be missing the boat on which he would like to embark. A quick look in the index of THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY establishes that Nietzsche wrote about German music and German songs in sections 19, 23, and 24 in the first edition of 1872, and even more aptly in sections 6 and 7 of the "Attempt at a Self-Criticism" added at the beginning of that book (BT) in 1886.

"But let the liar and the hypocrite beware of German music: for amid all our culture it is really the only genuine, pure, and purifying fire-spirit from which and toward which, as in the teaching of the great Heraclitus of Ephesus, all things move in a double orbit: all that we now call culture, education, civilization, must some day appear before the unerring judge, Dionysus." (BT, section 19, Tr. by Walter Kaufmann, p. 120).

Nietzsche thought the key to culture was in its highest form, "if only it can learn constantly from one people--the Greeks, from whom to be able to learn at all is itself a high honor and a rare distinction." (BT, p. 121).

In 1918, Ernst Bertram's NIETZSCHE: AN ATTEMPT AT A MYTHOLOGY appeared in Germany. In it, Nietzsche's analysis of German spirit as a link to the primitive spiritual power which Nietzsche expected music to express, seriously opposes a pallid form of civilization:

"The identity of music and Germanism which the young Nietzsche sensed everywhere enabled him to perceive this Germanism as the most serious and eternal opponent of everything that was mere civilization. ... (The idea of the polarization between civilization and culture is as typically Nietzschean as it is typically German.)" (Aschheim, p. 150).

As an American, I am more likely to associate rock 'n' roll with an ability to assert ultimate values, but the need for an intellectual analysis of the difference between rock's potential and the dominance of commercial forms acceptable within modern society seems to be the same as Nietzsche's preference for Dionysian ideals "at a time when the German spirit, which not long before had still had the will to dominate Europe and the strength to lead Europe, was just making its testament and abdicating forever, making its transition, under the pompous pretense of founding a Reich, to a leveling mediocrity, democracy, and `modern ideas'!" (BT, SC section 6, p. 25).

My inability to derive any larger message from THE NIETZSCHE LEGACY IN GERMANY 1890-1990 is probably due to the intellectual seriousness of this book, in which countless thinkers find themselves in a political situation which suffers from great shifts almost yearly, if Thomas Mann, DIARIES 1918-1939, as quoted on page 149 of this book, is a good indication. I would prefer to picture the German people being led more dimly, subject to a vast fraud, constantly trying to do the impossible, orchestrated from on high by someone more powerful than Richard Wagner. But in my book, instead of being serious politics, it would be a joke, like reading `The Onion' or watching news on the Comedy Channel.

Like the battle for the body of Patroclus, conflicting interpretations of Nietzsche are strewn across the twentieth century, leaving few proofs of a triumph of the will. Between the irrationalism indicted by Lukacs and the vigorous liberal depicted by Kaufmann, we are still in search of Nietzsche. The work of Kaufmann,especially, was a critical first step to any reevaluation of this legacy. Yet its perspective fails to completely account for the record and the shadow behind the man, now too often exempted of the implications of his own savage eloquence. This work is a corrective and traces the whole history of the question from the 1890's onward, and resummons the grim stages of Nietzsche's appropriation by preposterous figures of all hues. From the not-so-discrete Nietzscheanism of the avant-garde to the Zarathustra in the trenches of World War I to the phantom of the opera during the Third Reich the horrific travesties seem too recurrent to release their author from all complicity, even as they leave the deeper Nietzsche intact. It is difficult not to swing between extremes of interpretation here, and the book carefully constructs the middle ground, as we pass on and say goodbye to all that.
The book details that several hundred thousand copies of Zarathustra were printed for distribution to the soldiers in the trenches during Great War. One can begin to deduce the rest from that.