Europe Books

It's my first time to really get into the picture of the holocaust as almost living the story by reading it, The story is more then amazing and get the reader into the actual world as lived by the author at that time.
As much amazing the Nazie's viciousness you will be amazed by the young boy (the author) bravery against all chances.
More then getting an historical event as seen by a movie about the holocaust, ANY ONE WILL LEARN from that story about the life we are living and more ..

It has been a long time since I have read a book that had me so "hooked". It has all the elements of an engrossing story... and to boot, it's all true. What an inspiration, delivered in clear, concise writing. It's surprising that it has never been made into a movie. Very highly recommended for all ages. Thank you for sharing it all, Mr. Eisner.

The facts as they should be told as part of a beautiful love story. Eisner had a deep love of his people, his family, his Helina and most importantly of his life. This is a compelling story and a must read for anyone interested in the Holocaust.

This incredible piece of writing is a materpiece! I was engrossed in The Survivor from the first page and was deeply moved throughout. Jack Eisner's incredible true story of survival against all odds in the face of unimaginable human cruelty and brutality by the Nazis, should be compulsory reading for teenage secondary students!!

Hello there, I'm not a big reader, but when I found your book at the library, it was too good and for the first time, I read it twice! I don't know how anybody could have make it through these circumstances. I recommanded it to my sister and she read it also. I always recommand it to all the poeple I know. This person is extraordinary! I'm still looking for a place where I could buy it.

I recently had the pleasure of reading this wonderful book and I found it to be one of the most exciting books I have ever read. The author deftly describes the events leading up to his discovery of a previous life. From the opening line, "They've come to KILL me!", Mr. Norsic takes you on his very personal journey of self-awareness -- I couldn't put it down -- a thrilling read! I highly recommend it to everyone!

Mr. Norsic's book once started, is difficult to put down. I found myself eagerly anticipating what further revelations awaited me as I turned each page. It is rare to find an authentic, believable reincarnation book and I am grateful to Mr. Norsic for having written "To Save Russia, The Reincarnation of Nicholas II" for the undeniable proof within its pages that Mr. Norsic is the reincarnation of Nicholas II.

I applaud Mr. Norsic's courage in the telling of his past life experience as he has helped to further enlighten and educate us all about reincarnation in an interesting and compelling way.

I recently read this very interesting book by Donald Norsic.The book was so well written I could not stop reading it. My eyes were glued to every printed word! The book so impressed me that I read it twice. I wanted to ensure that I missed nothing important and that I understood it correctly as written. No book in recent memory has made such an impression on me. I am currently reading it for the third time! I believe "namedejour" from Texas is being extremely critical. Mr. Norsic writes extremely well and his experence is worth the read!

Donald Norsic's story of his unfolding connection with Russia is riveting. We don't consciously volunteer to have our lives torn asunder in this manner. Rather we are drawn to the event horizon of the inescapable. We are each woven into the fabric of eternity by threads which stretch beyond time and space. Like Ariadne, Donald Norsic has grasped the threads of his destiny and is following them back to their source. His exploration of this mystery will shed light and understanding on our most profound realisites.

While I never disbelieved the concept of reincarnation, I had no particular reason to believe in it either, until Don Norsic's experience came to my attention. I like that the author's intent does not seem to be to convince readers that he is Nicholas, but simply to share with us the amazing string of experiences and "coincidences" that caused himself to reach a reluctant understanding of who he is and was.

I found his chapter 9 to be especially interesting with new information about the circumstances of the Tsar's murder.

Largely as a result of this book, frankly, I--forever the skeptic--now view reincarnation as a very likely possibility. The evidence seems to be building.

I bought this book to add to my collection of Greene Knowe Books that I read to my children when they were small. The stories kept the kids on the edge of their seats wondering what would happen next.

I almost had a fit when I saw this title, but with a little research learned that I already had it. The whole series is first rate.

Tolly has returned to Green Knowe and his Grandmother full of excitement at being there once more, but an unhappy surprise lies in wait for him: the portrait of the children Toby, Alexander and Linnet is missing from the wall. It would seem a small loss but for the fact that its absence means that the children's spirits are also not present in the house.

Grandmother Oldknow explains the painting's loss due to poor finances, though soon sparks hope in Tolly for its return due to the tale of the missing treasure of Green Knowe (which he vows to find), and stories of another family ancestor: Susan Oldknow. Born to a vain mother, a kind but absent father, a spoilt older brother Sefton, and an overly pious grandmother, Susan knows her blindness is a terrible blow to the family's pride: "I can't take her into society, she'll never be married, and I'll have her *always*!" her mother laments when the sad truth is revealed.

Smothered by a good-hearted but utterly disillusioned Nanny, Susan is not allowed to do a thing on her own, till her Captain father brings back a gift from his travels that shocks the entire family: a West Indian boy named Jacob to keep her company. Their extraordinary friendship can only be describe through L. M. Boston's beautiful prose, as when the two meet:

"'Who is it Papa?' Susan asked. Jacob answered for himself, in a voice whose smallest half-utterance she was never afterwards to mistake for any other. 'It's me, Missy.'"

As with Tolly's previous summer in the house, the line between past and present blurs, and he once again interacts with the older inhabitants of the house, though this time in a far more influential manner, going so far as to actively participate in the stories his Grandmother tells him each night. While other time-travelling stories leave me completely cross-eyed, the "Green Knowe" stories treat it as something utterly natural, and thus so do the readers.

As a sequel to "Children of Green Knowe", this second part (also published as "Chimneys of Green Knowe") is undoubtably superior to its predecessor. Though I missed Toby, Alexander and Linnet, their part in the first story was as whimsical spirits - Susan and Jacob have a definite story assigned to them, and interact with Tolly in a more important way, stirring events into being on both sides of the centuries.

Lucy Boston creates a sophisticated commentary on prejudice that still rings true today in her use of blind Susan and West Indian Jacob. As she comments, blind people were either poor and beggars, or rich and had servants to live for them, and Susan was certainly of the latter group. As such, the poor girl often finds herself strapped to a chair with her doll tied to its arm, disliked by her grandmother who thinks her condition a judgement for her mother's vain lifestyle, and punished for fingering things. Boston's descriptions of blindness in both Susan's life: "things stuck out of space like icebergs out of the sea", and Tolly's experiments (he discovers feet are more useful than hands in such an instance) are evocatively written, and so imaginatively told that it won't simply be children so have their minds expanded.

Second is Jacob, whose place in the story is still whilst England allowed slavery. This book was first published in 1958, and I was both impressed by Boston's distaste for slavery, and refreshed by the lack of extreme political correctness that so often clogs books on the subject written today. Boston presents the Slave Trade as a simple factuality, that could be neither explained nor excused, but simply a reality.

Truly, the "Green Knowe" stories are among the lost masterpieces of children's literature. Do everyone in your family a favour and read them - the house, the characters, the situations, and the sublime use of language that Lucy Boston uses is unforgettable.

I will never forget reading this book - and the others in this series - when I was in grade school. This was actually the first volume I read, although it's not chronologically the first in the group. It was one of those wonderful discoveries you sometimes make wandering aimlessly through the stacks in the local library - cracking a random volume, reading the first little bit, and realizing at once that you are beginning a literary love affair.

Then, as now, I was captivated by the magical "otherness" of L.M. Boston's Green Knowe and by the wonderful characterizations and tales within the tale. I couldn't put it down until I'd learned the fates of all the characters, and I wished that my suburban row house had even half the romance of the old manor house, and that my own prosaic grandma was a bit more mysterious.

Now that I'm much older (although not nearly as old as Grandmother Oldknow), I realize that the book is quite well-written - accessible for children but sophisticated enough to be enjoyed by anyone with a taste for the supernatural. And I've purchased a copy for my 11-year-old niece, who thankfully shares her auntie's interest in reading and love for stories with an otherworldly component. A must-read for book-lovers young and old.

It's the spring immediately following the events of "The Children of Green Knowe," and young Tolly Oldknow returns to the ancient manor of his family to stay with his great-grandmother over the Easter break. He barely steps through the door when he senses that something is wrong--and how horribly wrong it is: his ghost-friends, Toby, Alexander, and Linnet, have accompanied their portrait on loan-out to an exhibition, and may never return, for Mrs. Oldknow is desperate for money to make repairs to the house and has been offered a high price for the picture. Tolly resolves to search for the long-lost jewels of Maria Oldknow, the stylish wife of his 18th-century ancestor, which disappeared when the grand "new annex" of the manor burned down in a suspicious fire in 1798. Yet he soon finds that ghosts still lurk in Green Knowe--or perhaps not ghosts at all, since his blind ancestress Susan and her young black companion Jacob lived far beyond the ages at which they manifest to him. As is often the case at this house, time becomes a half-meaningless concept, past and present blend and communicate, and Mrs. Oldknow's stories of Susan and Jacob, Susan's vain and flighty mother and spoiled older brother Sefton, her young tutor Jonathan Morley (who, years later, she married), and the sinister manservant Caxton seem to draw these Georgians even closer to Now. Tolly himself finds that his modern-day actions resonate into the past and that--in one memorable sequence--he can even travel back to it and help Susan and Jacob conceal a young poacher from Caxton in a secret tunnel he has discovered. And in the end, even before those stories lead him to the hiding place of the jewels, the portrait is returned, and in a beautiful closing scene we get a hint of the possibility that Susan and Jacob may come to know Toby and his sibs as Tolly does. A worthy sequel to the first book and nearly as good.

Lawrence Powell set out to write a book about the David Duke phenomenon, about how a KKK leader and Nazi could sit in the Louisiana legislature and run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican. But work on the book took him in another direction after he interviewed Anne Levy, a Holocaust survivor who confronted Duke in the state capital. Captivated by Levy's story, Powell has produced a terrifying, poignant and finally a triumphant book about the Holoaust as witnessed through the life of one of its survisors, Anne Levy.

Troubled Memory is a beautifully written and tender account of a personal story that stands as an intimate history of Hitler's final solution. Powell's prose will carry you into the Warsaw and Lodz ghettos and into the vegetable bin where 6-year-old Anne and her sister hid from the SS. This is a book that makes the Holocaust relevant to every reader. It will fill you with horror and wonder, and it will move you to tears.

Troubled Memory is the story of the Skorecki family, which survived the Hoocaust by escaping from the Warsaw Ghetto and going into hiding, intertwined with an accessible history of the Warsaw Ghetto. But is is also the story of Anne Skorecki Levy, 45 years later and transplanted to Louisiana, deciding that she doesn't want Klansman and Holocaust denier David Duke to become the governor of her state. On all three counts - as a tale of survival during the Holocaust, a history of that time and place and the story of little Anne Levy's dogged pursuit of the bigshot politician during his election campaign - the book reads like a taut thriller, a real page-turner from beginning to end.
In its linking of the Holocaust in Poland with the troubled racial history of the American South, Troubled Memory is reminiscent of Styron's Sophie's Choice - except that this is fact, not fiction. It's a compelling, genre-busting book that is not quite like anything you've read, and it leaves you both feeling good and with much to think about.

I am a student at Tulane University and have taken a seminar with Dr. Powell on the Holocaust. This book is the last book that he included on the syllabus for the course, and I understand fully how and why he wrote this book. At first I was a bit leery of his inclusion of his own work in the course, but the work is a great synthesis of traditional Holocaust study and how it pertains to American (particularly Southern) culture today.

The first half of the book largely provides a survey through a personal account of the sociopolitical landscape of World War II-era Eastern Europe: the reasons that the Holocaust occurred, bystanders, perpetrators and victims psychological profiles, as well as giving a very readable human interest story of the narrative of this one particular family. The second half picks up where most Holocaust narratives leave off: the post-war years, the family's emigration to America and the challenges that they faced in New Orleans as Holocaust Survivors, and finally, Anne Levy's battle against David Duke and the formation of the Louisiana Coalition against Nazism and Racism. The first half of the book is essential for understanding her drive in the second half of the book, and Dr. Powell does an excellent job in connecting traditional and new scholarship on just how frighteningly close Louisiana came to David Duke's authority and how important it is to be aware of the ideals that the Louisiana Coalition and Anne Levy espouse.

This book is written in a highly readable manner: the diction is not overly dense nor confusing and the personal story allows non-scholars to enjoy the material as much as a student of history or politics would. It is very obvious that Dr. Powell put an immense amount of personal effort and dedication into this account, and his contribution to the historical documentation of the Holocaust and its impact on contemporary society is a testimony to his skill as a historian.

This story chronicles the survival of small Jewish girls who were hidden in an armoire by their desperate parents in the closing days of the Warsaw ghetto. It easily matches the personal resonance and innocent terror of the far more famous Anne Frank Story.

Even after their final liberation as perhaps the only intact nuclear family to survive that infamous ghetto, the Skorecki family was due one more date with history. Survival, it turns out, was the story within the story. Little Anne Skorecki Levi, the little girl who survived by staying silent inside that armoire struck a blow five decades later for Jewish survival by speaking out against Louisiana's Neo-Nazi gubernatorial candidate David Duke, and helping to engineer his electoral defeat.

This account of Anne's travel along the arc from victim to victor is an inspiration and a reminder that each of us can and must preserve our collective memory, however troubling.

I read books on the Holocaust to try to understand the times, the mileu, the horror, and the suffering. After more than 20 books, I realize that I can only scratch the surface. I will, however, never stop reading because of my fear that someday the deniers and the downgraders might get the upper hand.

Thank you to the the author and Anne Skorecki Levy for relating a story that is very, very moving as well as insightful and timely.

The True Prince is a wonderful book set in London somewhere in the 1600's. It is a mystery, wraped in a play, tied in a cursed web of lies,seen through the eyes of an aprentice of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and set in the mistery of a young man's life, a man who never had a childhood.
That mystery is Kit: Merchendise of his own father at six, actor of so many roles at eight,and, what is he now? Which role did he ever play as himself? Is he all of them? Or is he none?...

The book starts off with William Shakespeare's playgroup practicing a new play, "The House of Maximus", which happens to be on e of the worst plays invented. A new player, Davy, arrives with a mysterious Welsh man. When the "Putrid Play", as it was nicknamed, was performed, the audience hated the play more than the players, showing their contempt by throwing their lunch leftovers. The next day, Kit, one of the best boy players in London, was in a court session for fooling around with Peregrine Penny, a corruptor of youth. Kit's bail was payed by a mysterious donor. After the court session, The troup returned to the Theater to find it locked up by Giles Allen, the landlord. So, the troup moved to another theater named the Curtain. Many plays and lawsuits later, to defend the Welsh Boy, as Davy is called, Richard fights Kit in a boxing match. This is where Dacy is somewhat revealed as what he really is, a theif trying to frame Kit. "King Henry IV", a great play, is thought up and soon they are performing it in the Swan, another theater. They perform the play many times until the summer tour, where Kit leaves the company right before the tour. Upon returning, Richard is launched into solving a series of crimes committed by Kit and his theiving friends. Eventually, with the help of the detective's assisstant named Bartholomew Finch and a penny gatherer named Starling Shaw, Richard is led to the Theater once more, where a kidnapping takes place and the mystery is solved.
The previous posts did not lie. This is a great book and i recommend it to everyone who likes reading.

First may I say that the above 2 reviews do not exaggerate in the least! I have never read a book with such deftly drawn characters! The description also amazes me; I feel like I know Elizabethian London as if I lived there and I never get bored of reading more about it in this book, whereas normally I am dying for it to end so I can get on with the real story! Kit is a fascinating character, as are the rest. An amazing book, all in all. You must read it!

I recommend J. B. Cheaney's books "The Playmaker" and "The True Prince" to my community college literature classes for two reasons. First, these books have obviously been painstakingly researched because they give readers a "feel" for the time. Shakespeare emerged from and was nurtured by a vibrant, energetic (and a little dangerous) era, full of possibility. These times come alive in Cheaney's books. Second, in additon to the full-fleshed characters and engaging plots many young adult books have, Cheaney also gives readers something they don't experience as often: good style--"sparkling" one reviewer called it, and sparkling it is!

True Prince, a worthy, but complicated read. Its plot is a complex one, with a sub plot joining the fray every other chapter. So I'll do my best to give you the gist of it. The book is about London's finest acting troop, with none other than William Shakespeare, yes the real one. Their first problem is that their play house is taken away, so they set off to find another one. 50 pages later they accomplish this task, before anyone has a chance to catch their breath from hauling everything from their old theater to the new one; a bitter rivalry is born between Kit and Davy, two aspiring boy actors. Kit being London's finest. The only thing keeping Kit from killing little Davy, is Richard, the books main character. While Richard is protecting Davy, he finds that the troop may be harboring a thief, Kit the main suspect. Apparently Cheaney felt that Shakespeare's cameo appearance needed a follow up, Robin Hood joins the melee of characters.
Some of the flaws in this book were that it had too many characters, around 20 of them, some with the same first or last name. It was also kind of long and could've moved a little faster, even take out some bits. Now, don't get me wrong, I did like this book, it did have its redeeming qualities. Being an actor I liked this book just because it was about theater, but not the plays themselves, but what happened behind the curtain, where the real drama is. Also, Cheaney is a fantastic writer of realistic fiction. It seems so real and all of the many characters are well developed.
My over all rating of this book is a four out of five stars, could've been shorted, but it was worth it

Joel Agee's Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany offers a hilarious and universal account of the passage from boyhood to manhood. Enjoying this book does not require an interest in its unique setting. Never mind that the entire work occurs between 1948 and 1960 in the Stalinist dictatorship of the German (un)Democratic Republic; or that the author's Jewish American mother is living with her children and second husband in the anti-fascist Soviet Satellite of the only recently vanquished Third Reich; or that the author's biological father is Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, James Agee; or that his stepfather is an East German writer whose socialist themes become less relevant the more the dictatorship he lives in takes hold. Joel Agee so powerfully conveys the challenging and exciting passage of a male from age eight to twenty, that distinctions of place, time, name, and circumstance meld into a broader truth.

By page thirteen, the book's ever more ironic and outrageously funny form takes shape -- the fibs to Mom, friendship mischief, the struggle to fit in with peer groups, and the stirrings of sexual awakening that should have long ago made this work a classic.

I too have been urged by friends to write a book about my youth. In 1981, at the age of 18, I decided to reunite with my father and immigrated from the USA to the DDR. I was later expelled in 1986 for political reasons and lived elsewhere in Europe until my return in 1991 following the Fall of The Berlin Wall. I remained there until April of 2000 at which time I returned to the USA.
This book brought back some memories despite the difference in time. (The Author went to the DDR in 1948 at the age of 8. I went to the DDR in 1981 at the age of 18) I had no idea that there had been any other Americans that shared an even remotely similar story and Joel Agee does a great job of telling his story with far more emotion and prose than I ever could.
The book is a wonderful insight into life in a country that no longer exists...from the view point of an American child/young adult. I especially recommend it to anyone who has grown-up or lived in a country where they felt they did not belong. In my opinion, Agee entered the DDR in its infancy and left just as its darkest period began. I entered The DDR at the height of the Reagan Era and witnessed its collapse from within. Two historic phases. I only wish that both of us could have witnessed more.

I read Joel Agee's book "Twelve Years. An American Boyhood in East Germany" in German and in English and tried very hard to get a used copy of his first american edition - without any success. Finally, he is back again with a new edition, and allthough my english is not as good as it should be, I just want to write down some words abaout this book. For me who always lived in Western Germany it is one of the most interesting books about the communist part of Germany, the GDR (in german it's DDR). It was not meant to be a political book, but it has become one anyhow. The reader is not only enabled to follow a very private story of growing up as a boy (including all the problems most man - since they have been boys - know and prefer not to talk about it), but to understand how culture and everyday life had been transformed by the communist ideology in a way that could be critizised only by children: some simply laughed about it and learned, that even only to laugh could have negative consequences. And getting some idea of how adults did discuss the political penetration of everyday life makes you feel glad to be grown up in a non communist state - but still you can understand that this adults they had their living like others had, and that they were fathers and mothers having everyday problems like others had. This book indeed touched and pleased me. It is a marvellous written autobiographical kind of literature. If you'll read it, it will take a part of your heart and your intellect to. You'll have to love it.

I'm delighted to see that Joel Agee's memoir is now available again, and I look forward, with pleasure, to re-reading it. In beautiful prose, Agee not only reveals the pains and pleasures of his growing up (it could be anywhere), but gives us a portrait, from an unusual angle, of life in the newly formed German Democratic Republic, i.e.,communist East Germany, during the period 1948-1960. The historian will find the book of particular interest, but so will anyone else who enjoys entering the unsual world of a sensitive young man with a terrific eye for detail, and who is frank about his inner life.

Agee returned to the U.S. just as the amazing 60s were about to roll their thunder, and I can't wait to read his follow-up memoir, his "American Manhood" in another world far removed from the East Berlin of his youth.

"Twelve Years: An American Boyhood in East Germany" is a fascinating memoir. Eight-year-old Joel Agee was brought by his mother and stepfather to the Soviet zone of Germany (what would become East Germany) in 1948 and lived there for the next 12 years. As Agee's stepfather, Bodo Uhse, was a prominent Communist, Agee had the best that East Germany could offer: a villa with servants, summers at the Baltic Sea, and numerous opportunities to recover from his dismal performance at school. Agee does provide an insight as to how the Communist intelligentsia in that country thought -- their explanations for the closed border, their view of the Stalinist (and Soviet-bloc) purges in the early 50s, and their conflicting views of Khruschev's revelations. This memoir is also a coming-of-age story, filled with teenage angst and sexual frustration. What distinguishes this from many other memoirs is that it is exceptionally well-written. Although Agee was never able to get his bearings in the East German school system (or was, as we would say today, a "slacker") his descriptions are almost poetic. Well worth reading.

This was just the book I needed to get up to speed on the Euro. Written in a lively, informative style, it gave all the background info and nuts-and-bolts workings of the new currency. I plan to keep it by my desk to answer questions over the next few years before the conversion process is complete. Even if you studied Economics in college, you'll find yourself learning a great deal through this book.

This is an excellent introductory book. It is very easy to read and is very concise. It is written from a general rather than a particualar nationalist view as are several other books on the EURO. It also has a large listing of web sites where other interesting information is available.

I have read 2 other books about the Euro and this one is by far the best. It offers an unbiased view of the Euro unlike most other books. It is very easy to read, informative, well organized... I could go on and on. If you want to learn about the Euro if you are a student or businessman, get this book.

I bought this baby as the background for an advanced level international econ paper on the fluctuations of the Euro, and it is wicked good. It hands out the basic knowledge like the Rams hand out touchdown balls, and even though it was written before the Euro's current problems, you can easily piece together the reasons behind the malaise.

The only caveat is that if you're really into the mathematical and graphical side of economics -- this puppy ain't for you. If you look at the overload of math that Krugman's International Economics textbook gives you, this pales in comparison. I wish it had more of that, if only so that on those nights I can't sleep, I have one more resource to use. But that's what I have my girlfriend's stories for.

Anyway, go buy it. It's good.

Three words describe Chabot's book: clear, concise and informative. It's a dog eat dog world for my small business and I needed quick answers to my Euro questions. "Understanding the Euro" is ideal if you need to get up to speed fast but can't just call a buddy at the European Central Bank. Before finding Chabot's book, I purchased quite a few expensive executive summaries that soon made their way to the recycle bin. Chabot's book, on the other hand, was a quick read filled with concrete answers in plain English. It gave me a quick introduction to the politics surrounding the currency and explained seemingly complex economic issues using easy to understand charts. My accountant and I both liked the Q&A format for quick reference to our more practical questions. I liked the book so much that I bought copies for everyone on my team preparing our Portugal project launch. The project VP (now nicknamed "Mr. Eurotrash") now loves to pepper his cocktail party conversations with Euro-speak a la Chabot.

In short, Chabot's book is one stop shopping for my staff's Euro questions so don't bother wasting your time and money on other books. Buy it!

Scholars can make careers out of analyzing this wonderful novel, so I'll comment on the edition I'm reading, the Barnes and Noble full-size paperback. The text size is just within the range of "comfortable" for a middle-aged reader, a feature not easy to find in the great classics.

The footnotes and endnotes greatly enhanced my reading experience, as did the insightful introduction.

I hope more publishers realize that modern readers want to tackle the classics, but we do need help in the form of notes explaining foreign phrases and cultural terms and allusions from another land and time. And we need text large enough to make the reading a pleasure rather than a squinting endurance test. This B&N edition is a winner.

Lord knows there are enough hungry doctors of literature willing to annotate and introduce the classics!

Note that Modern Library Classics full-size paperbacks are also often excellent. In any case, if text size is an issue, better try to examine the actual book before deciding, because even these publishers have a few titles with tiny print.

"Vanity Fair" by William Makepeace Thackeray, published 1924

This is a funny story with some funny names, to wit, Becky Sharp is sharp in getting her way. Miss Sharp was in a finishing school with another girl in the early 1800's, they both left at he same time. Miss Sharp in a snit because the school mistress did not do her honor as Miss Sharp felt was her due. He friend just left. The story does not get much further than that: good things happen to Becky, and bad things happen to Amelia Sedley. Miss Sharp does get her comeuppance, and Miss Sedley does get to be happy, but that is just so much ho-hum, and here we go again. You know that Miss Sharp will do something else to 'improve' her situation.

I first saw the Reese Witherspoon movie a year ago, not having read the book. I was intrigued, so bought a copy, feeling quite virtuous for having bought a classic novel with the intention of reading it. It took me over a year to get around to reading it, during which time it sat on the shelf silently convicting me of my good intentions to read the classic work. I finally picked it up and decided to try it, to "improve my mind". Boy, was I surprised to find myself laughing and utterly engrossed in it. It is written in a different style of English from that of today, of course, but it is not as difficult to get through as, say, Jane Austen (whose books I do enjoy, so stop shrieking at me, all you JA fans). It is written tongue firmly in cheek and with delightful sarcasm and satire and cynicism. I am about halfway through as I write this and the more I read, the more I'm struck by the resemblance between Becky Sharp and Scarlett O'Hara. I wonder if Margaret Mitchell was a fan of this book?

I urge you to give this book a try, if you want a very funny and witty experience. I am enjoying it very much.

It's obvious Thackeray is the king of satire. What's not so obvious is that he was ahead of his time in his writing style. His voice could be that of a star blogger on the Internet. The sardonic wit, the cynicism. Have things changed so little?

His characters are not so much flawed as they are downright hateful. Even Dobbin, the saint and only true innocent in the book, is annoying in his loyalty to the bloodless Amelia. Still you're happy when he wins her in the end. As for Becky Sharp, you can't help but root for her early on. Towards the middle of the book, however, you begin to hate her. Thackeray is brilliant. You can forgive a woman anything except not loving her child. Once Becky rejects her son, she is no longer endearing. You can't care anymore. And he doesn't focus on her so much anymore, as if that was the end of the one character you had the most feelings for.

But using the technique of day-time soap opera with its thousand and one sub-plots, Thackeray urges you to read on regardless of the fact that you don't like any of the characters. You wonder where its going to end. Is anyone ever going to be happy? Is anyone ever going to get punished? Some of the characters do get punished of course, but some of them don't, or they don't know they're being punished. What good is it if they don't know it?

It's hard to accept a story where a lot of the bad guys don't get punished. And yet, in the end, you can't help but being satisfied. I have no idea why. Is it because Dobbin finally does get Amelia? That Becky does seem to get what she deserves? And what does Becky deserve? Less than Amelia? Is Amelia happy in the end?Happier than Becky? Probably not. And that alone would probably make Becky happy if she thought about something besides herself for once. All I know is that as long as those two are miserable, I'm happy.

Sue Lange
author, Tritcheon Hash, [...]

William Makepeace Thackeray gives a brilliantly witty view of society in the 19th century. Though it's about 300 pages too long, if the reader perseveres, he will be rewarded. The character of Becky Sharpe is one of the best in the history of literature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Col. North does a great job of intermixing strait facts of history with the first hand accounts of the men and women who were there. It really helps bring the historical facts to life.

I think this should be required reading for WW2 history classes, and is great reading for any history buff.

Added bonus- it comes with a great DVD.

This book does, for the war in Europe, what 'War Stories II' did for the war in the Pacific. It is an excellent,complete account. Of course, the input of actual participants only enhance this great read. Don't miss reading this one.

I am enthusiastic about the book and want the book read generally rather than on special merit. Why do I want the book read? Well, there is a whole rising generation for whom WWII is so old and far gone that they really know NOTHING about it. This book is a fine quick overview and quite readable. It doesn't get bogged down in the details of tactics, strategies, or troop movements.

What it does offer that is very inviting is what makes the TV show a success and is suggested by the title. It has the war stories of many individuals to flesh out the brief summaries of aspects of the war. These stories include regular soldiers, people who have since become famous like Senators (and Presidential hopefuls) Dole and McGovern, and Chuck Yeager. There are also stories from women, people who were children at the time, several women including a Russian woman who fought against the German, and a German pilot. As you can tell, these are not the political leader, the generals, or important commanders in the war. The events they participated in were not the key turning points of the war, generally. However, they help us understand how the war was experienced by some of the millions of individuals whose participation in it made the defeat of Hitler possible.

My hope is that young people will read this book and not only learn about the war, but will also become interested enough to move on to other books on World War II and American History. This material is easy to read and is far from being comprehensive or complete, but it does tell its stories well and can be the springboard to something more.

The book also comes with a DVD with three of the episodes of the TV show that inspired this book. Several of the stories in the book are included on the DVD. So, maybe the DVD will spark someone to then read the book.

Oliver North has a great affection for the men and women who fought to keep our country free. This book covers the European theater of World War II, and contains a multitude of stories told by those who fought in it. Sometimes it's difficult to imagine what these folks had to go through to defeat a very determined emeny, and those of us who are the inheritors of that legacy of freedom should always honor them. My own father was one of these people (although he died many years ago), and I thank him, and these others, every day for the life of liberty I, and my family, enjoy because of their sacrifices.

We are reaching a time when the members of the greatest generation, those that fought against the Nazi's and the Japanese are rapidly leaving us. It is good to see this series of stories from individuals who were there. By capturing their stories it may be possible for us to catch just a glimpse of what it must have been like to live when the country was more together than at any time before or since.

As with the other books in this series, this book presents a rather eclectic collection of stories. All services are represented. And the story tellers are as different as they can be. Bob Dole relates the day he was wounded with the 10th Mountain Division. One of the Tuskegee Airman relates the story of a 'colored' pilot during the war. Chuck Yeager tells of being hit by German cannon fire and the propeller of his airplane coming off.

This is a series of personal stories. It does not ahve the broad expanse of an integrated history, it's about real people.