Ireland Books

Although Coatsworth won awards for other books and her Sally series is wonderful, this stand-alone book is my favourite. From the beginning it matter-of-factly addresses the sadness and cruelty of everyday life, but also the beauty of life and people's innate kindness. I remember crying when I first read it because I was sad that it had ended, but it isn't sad in the least.

For my book report I read The Wanderers.I learned from this book that you can never judge someone by there looks.In The Wanderers their is a boy that no one likes because of his looks. I thought that this was a good book. I thought this was a good book because it had a lot of exciting things.Some of the exciting things were a village was destroyed and burned, and a dog saved some people.I think this would be a good book to read for a summer reading book!

I would just like to add that the illustrations, by Trina Schart Hyman, are wondrous and glorious and what made me pick up the book in the first place.

I am a connoisseur of children's books, and this is one of my favorites. How I wish it were not out of print; I would make of it a Christmas present to any person (young at heart) I care about. Positive character qualities are lifted up; negative character qualities undergo fabulous transformation. It is a book of mystical Celtic adventures, but also a book about trusting God. If you've got a soft heart for fantasy and for God, you'll love this little volume!

Donald Grant and his wife, NY journalists, retire and move to a cottage in Ireland. Their experiences and adjustments to their neighbors, to small scale farming, and to the culture of Ireland makes entertaining reading.
They learn goat keeping, rabbit raising, and the ways of bees and geese. The evenings chatting in the pub, the village interactions, the local customs and other trivia of daily life make you feel a part of their Irish experience.

If you loved Under the Tuscan Sun than you will find a great book here! Donald Grant's book will make you reexamine your life and reorganize your priorities all while providing good reading pleasure. A bit dated as it was written in the 70's, but it is more about finding yourself and the cultural life in rural Ireland.

I may be guilty of a little bit of nepetism (Mary Grant being an aunt, a bit removed and seldom seen), but this book has been a family treasure around the house for years. Anyone looking for an inspiring story about a simpler life should look into this one for sure.

Donald and Mary Grant, two well paid journalists living in New York City, decide to do a career change in their late 50's. They purchase a cottage sitting on three or four acres, later to become 11 acres, and live off the land. They visit the local Irish Pub on Saturday nights, chat about farm animals, and throughout the year entertain friends from their previous life who thought them totally "bunkers". Donald for added income writes a column for an American newspaper describing their new life. At a time when Americans have had to make career changes late in life, I would highly recommend this book. I think they added to the success of their endeavor by choosing Ireland, for it is definitely a country where nature has it's way. Untamed, perhaps, but also unspoiled. I believe in my heart that the troubles in Ireland should not be and Great Britian should give Northern Ireland it's freedom just as Donald Grant felt after living there. The Irish are unique, pleasantly unique, and should remain so

As a mixed-ethnicity Bosnian who lived through this war, I must say the editors of this book were extremely well informed.
They present a set of writing from both local and foreign contributors painting a vivid picture of the true events in Bosnia and the surrounding area, as well as international reactions and the complete peace process.
The book was completed in December 1993, and came out on the market in March 1994, so it does not include the events from 1994 and later, which are also critical to understanding the war and its outcome, but I still strongly recommend it, because it is one of the best books on Bosnia of 1990-1993.

As a mixed-ethnicity Bosnian who lived through this war, I must say the editors of this book were extremely well informed.
They present a set of writings from both local and foreign contributors painting a vivid picture of the true events in Bosnia and the surrounding area, as well as international reactions and the complete peace process.
The book was completed in December 1993, and came out on the market in March 1994, so it does not include the events from 1994 and later, which are also critical to understanding the war and its outcome, but I still strongly recommend it, because it is one of the best books on Bosnia of 1990-1993.

An important collection of essays, interviews and literary texts, providing a richly varied introduction to Bosnia's multi-national and multi-cultural society, while chronicling and analysing its internationally sanctioned destruction. An ideal starting point.

A brilliant and essential collection of high-quality essays ranging from personal accounts to attempts at academic (but never dry) analysis of the components of the evil that preyed on Yugoslavia and destroyed Bosnia. A bitter criticism of the West's failure to play an equitable role informs all the essays. A remarkable achievement for the editors.

Even if you had no prior curiousity about Switzerland, this book would pique your interest. The author's stated aim is to create a multidisciplinary narrative, in the tradition of the Enlightenment (Johnson, Gibbon), explaining...well..."Why Switzerland?" - i.e. how did Switzerland arise, persist, and come to be so aggressively ecclectic?

And the author has some work to do. Not unlike the 'bacterial flagellum,' Switzerland's spectacularly improbable emergence from the fabric of history could be invoked by creationists to support a 'design inference.' It is, to paraphrase Michael Behe, as though a 747 spontaneously assembled itself and took flight.

Of course, Steinberg's answer to "Why Switzerland?" is much more interesting than "God did it." It cannot be summarized, but involves grain prices, the halberd, high-altitude athletic training, cottage industry, credit and interest and William Tell. At the very least, it has something to teach us about federalism, decentralization, peaceful coexistence and martial virtue.

For me the most fascinating part of this was to see how resistance to the Hapsburgs and then Napolean created a culture of decentralized disorganization - the opposite of Absolutist/Enlightenment France. The Swiss come across like the Duke Boys of central Europe ("Someday the mountain might get'em but the law never will..."). But this culture of rebellion also stands in contrast to Germany's stark tradition of blood and soil reactionism. Napolean's influence on Germany sowed the seeds of the World Wars. In Switzerland it acted as a sort of positive selection pressure, perturbing Alpine society and provoking its organization into Alpine civilization.

This is a very dense book, with more obscure names and places than a Russian novel. Some independent reference material (i.e. map, Wikipedia) is useful to figure out just which Johann is which, and to distiguish the various mountain passes from one and other (passes being the primary geographical feature and navigational reference point for most of the nation's history). But a reader's close attention to this book will be very well repaid.

This work, first published more than a quarter-century ago and twice revised, most recently in 1996, succeeds because the national Swiss characteristics which it explores are essentially timeless and unchanging. While tracing the begrudging and belated enfranchisement of women and the gradual integration of Roman Catholic and Jewish minorities who once were isolated, the author conveys the underlying tensions beneath a remarkably successful experiment in coexistence. As one who lived and worked in Switzerland for more than eight years, and whose own memoir, Living Among The Swiss, was published in January 1999, I can attest that Mr. Steinberg's generalizations ring true to my own experience and observations, and that they are supported by a myriad of political and sociological details that one would normally expect to learn only from a highly educated native. The prose, though scholarly, is highly readable, and evidences deep thought and mature reflection.

I work in the US for a Swiss company. Switzerland is unique in Europe and it's hard to figure out why. This book does a very good job of explaining the origins and dynamics of modern Switzerland. I should add that this is not a travel book, rather an examination of Swiss politics, history and culture. For a another, more irreverent, condensed but also insightful book on the Swiss, read the "The Xenophobe's Guide to Switzerland"

This turned out to be an utterly fascinating book, and it explained quite a bit about Swiss behavior and culture. While I of course can't vouch for everything in the book, I've tested a lot of it by observation and questioning the natives, and it seems consistent with reality.

Switzerland turns out to have a number of unique characteristics that aren't obvious to the outsider. For example, the government consists of an extraordinarily complex nested set of committees with a rotating presidency. The author makes the case that virtually all Swiss institutions, including government at all levels, the church and major corporations, are strongly influenced by an 800-year tradition of committee organization. In spite of having the most stable government in Europe (which my Swiss co-workers do not dispute), Switzerland has one of the most malleable constitutions in the world (which my co-workers do dispute).

I'm personally fascinated by language issues, so I read ahead to that chapter before finishing the lengthy chapter on politics. Again, Switzerland is unique in its treatment of dialects, which have very different social implications and practices in the French, German, Italian, and Romansh areas. According to the author, the urban Swiss Germans gave serious consideration to aligning themselves with 'greater Germany' in the 19th century. This obviously did not take place, and one of the unique results is that the local versions of Schwyzer Tüütsch (choose your spelling depending upon the valley you're in) are universally spoken without significant class variations. In other words, this chapter explains why the Italian Swiss are more likely to be comfortable in standard Italian, and the French Swiss are more comfortable in standard French, than the Swiss Germans are speaking standard German. As any outsider who speaks German is painfully aware, the Swiss Germans read and write standard German (Hochdeutsch), but generally prefer not to speak it.

Swiss seem more willing to discuss politics than religion, but the chapter on religion was enlightening. After all, Switzerland was at the heart of the reformation, with Zwingli in Züri and Calvin in Geneva. Again, the Swiss are unique among European countries in their treatment of religion and the extraordinary compromises they have made to allow the peaceful co-existence of roman catholicism and protestantism.

The Swiss military is, unsurprisingly at this point, another unique institution. Virtually the entire male population is expected to belong to the reserves for most of their working years, and they keep their weapons and ammunition in their homes. It was only recently that 52 year olds were no longer required to serve a short annual duty. I've found that the military intrudes regularly when you are working with the Swiss, so besides being interesting, the chapter on the Army is helpful in becoming more aware of some of the workplace dynamics.

How can a country with 4 different official languages have and maintain a common culture? What do the different regions have in common? Quite a bit, actually. Anyone who deals with the Swiss on a regular basis or spends over a week here would find this book a helpful start on building an understanding of Swiss institutions and culture. This would also be an excellent book for students doing cultural area studies of Europe or Switzerland. It is a good read, and anyone interested in contemporary Europe would enjoy it and find it educational.

This book was introduced to me through a friend and, quite frankly, my first reaction was to cringe at the idea of reading such a bulky historical book. But from the first letter I was transfixed by the dialogue between husband and wife on both political and personal matters. This book brings with it a new aspect of Churchill's personality - he was not only a great statesman but he was a passionate man who loved his wife dearly which is seen clearly in the letters that were intended for her eyes only.

I often wonder how he would have felt to know millions would one day read the letters he wrote to his "clemmie-cat". In any case, its a great read :)

Cheers, Meagan.

When I considered buying that book, I first felt quite uncomfortable about the idea of reading an exchange of private letters between Winston and Clementine. Fortunately, I overcame my discomfort fast. I quickly enjoyed reading that thick epistolary volume about their political and personal matters. The personal letters of the Churchills revealed to me how influential Clementine was on Winston across the board. Their deep love and trust was the secret of their successful marriage, even if Winston was not always an easy husband and politician to deal with. Corresponding by written messages (today perhaps by email) with each other on a regular basis, even when they were together, proved to be an excellent way to help them keep their enduring flame for each other intact. Today, too many marital and extra-marital relationships get dissolved prematurely because of a lack of enough communication between both players. Life is after all a comedy in which men and women play their part and need to know or rediscover how to communicate their joys and pains to one another in order to increase the odds that they will be successful in their relationship.

The real service that this book performs is to remind the reader that great historical figures are not one dimensional. Chuchill was a renaissance man, warrior, journalist, historian, memoirist, politician and statesman. He was arguably the single greatest personage of this century and his name has become a symbol for the indominitable spirit of a free people. The collection of letters sent to and received from his wife are entertaining as well as educational. They provide a feel for the time in which they were written and place many of Churchill's famous accomplishments (and failures) in proper context. Amazingly, unlike today when the more we know of a public figure, the smaller they seem, in Churchill's case one comes away convinced that this was a great man in the truest sense, and that much of his greatness is due in no small part to his marriage to Clementine.

Winston and Clementine: Happily Ever After

This is the story of a political marriage. In some ways it will be familiar to the contemporary reader, though it began and ended a long time ago.

Both husband and wife in this marriage were interested in politics. The husband was elected again and again over decades to high office. For decades his wife fought at his side, entertained at his table, offered her judgment to him and his colleagues and his enemies. She took his place in his absence, and sometimes in his presence. She became an international figure. She had power, and she used it. Always she had a mind of her own.

Sometimes this couple would quarrel. Once a serving dish was thrown. There was a period, not too long, when one of the partners was out of sympathy with the other, or anyway in sympathy with another.

They knew trouble. They lost a daughter and many friends to death, and some friends to betrayal. They fought political wars at home in which their own party tried to deprive them of office. They fought shooting wars abroad-including the worst ever. More than once, they seemed down and out. Their livelihood as much as their career was threatened. After decades of struggle they reached the summit of power and they knew the adoration of a nation and a world. By then they had grown old together.

Readers of this story will find that wives did not enter politics yesterday, and private lives were influential in politics before last week. But in other respects this story is unlike anything we have known in this time. Here are two people who won every honor that human affairs can offer, and they won them together. Meanwhile they operated upon those natural and traditional lines that involve that deepest of partnerships. Their division of labor augmented the strength of them both beyond what either could do, apart or together, if they both had done the same parts of the job. True, this is the story of a political partnership. More than that, it is a marriage.

The editor of this book is the youngest child of Winston and Clementine, Mary, now Lady Soames. She brings to the work care, intimacy, and insight. She has adopted some of the best devices of Sir Martin Gilbert, Churchill's official biographer, to make the book available to the reader unfamiliar with the times and the people. Her notes are useful. She lets the letters themselves convey the story.

One sees right away the amazing pace at which these people lived. Winston Churchill was a soldier whose bravery and judgment in battle were beyond doubt. He wrote every line of every speech he ever gave, save perhaps one, and they are not surpassed in eloquence or impact or amplitude. He wrote serious books, nearly forty of them. He served in the British House of Commons, and mostly in the Cabinet. Meanwhile he made his living writing and speaking in publications and before audiences all over the world. Their house teemed all day and much of the night with secretaries, researchers, and colleagues. He wrote once that statesmen should exist in a condition of "stress of soul." Ever he took that advice for himself.

And necessarily, then, he imposed it upon his wife.

Winston Churchill and Clementine Hozier were married in September 1908, and they remained so until parted by death in 1965. Martha Washington, wishing to keep her relations with our Founding Father private, burned most all of the letters that passed between them. The Churchills' letters are preserved intact in their remarkable abundance. Partly because they were so busy, and partly because they took many vacations apart, occasions to write were frequent. In their day the post traveled rapidly-Fed Ex was not necessary; e-mail was unavailable; the telephone came along, but its frequent use developed later. And so they wrote, and well they wrote.

Nuggets are found in every shaft of this mine. Sir Winston is candid with his wife as with no other, especially in times of triumph or stress. When the first war begins, he unveils his character: "Everything trends towards catastrophe & collapse. I am interested, geared up and happy. Is it not horrible to be built like that? ...Yet I wd do my best for peace, & nothing wd induce me wrongfully to strike the blow." Another time, in a very different mood, he writes: "you have seen me very weak & foolish & mentally infirm this week...." And then the man of unbreakable will proceeds: "I cannot tell you how much I love & honor you and how sweet & steadfast you have been through all my hesitations & perplexity."

Clementine often bears the burden of saying to her husband what others cannot. When the first war begins, she cautions him about the feelings of a dismissed Admiral: "there only remains the deep wound in an old man's heart. If you put the wrong sort of poultice on it, it will fester." When the second begins, she writes: "...there is a danger of your being generally disliked by your colleagues & subordinates because of your rough sarcastic & overbearing manner.... Therefore with terrific power you must combine urbanity, kindness and if possible Olympic calm."

The letters of Winston are often more abstract and reflective than those of his wife. Sometimes they are effectively first drafts of things he will later publish. His life is saved once in the trenches by an annoying general who makes him walk two miles under fire just for a little chat; when he returns his dugout and all in it are destroyed. He reflects: "it is all chance or destiny and our wayward footsteps are best planted without too much calculation. One must yield oneself simply & mentally to the mood of the game: and trust in God which is another way of saying the same thing...."

At the same time, one sees in the husband a sharp need for his wife. It is he who is "lonely among crowds." It is he who has no one but her "to break the loneliness of this bustling existence."

History has more to say of Winston than of Clementine. He saved his country and more in a desperate crisis, and he leaves behind him a written account of prudential wisdom that is not surpassed. Both his words and his deeds exhibit a longing for honor. He fought for it. He met its demands with utter resolve and lifelong resilience. But of course there was more to his life than that. Honor itself is limited by the high purposes that define it, including the promises and affections that make a family. So he could write to her, at one of the lowest points in his life: "the nearer I get to honor, the nearer I am to you."

Churchill ends My Early Life, his explicitly autobiographical work, with the passage: "Events were soon ...to absorb my thoughts and energies at least until September 1908, when I married and lived happily ever afterwards." And so together they did. And do.

I am the founder of a charter school in Michigan. Before deciding to found such a school, I read voluminous texts about the history and purposes of public education. This is, by far, my favorite text on education history.

Most education historians make the mistake of blindly accepting as a premise the common misconception that the intended purpose for the development of compulsory education in Prussia was the mass production of soldiers and obedient subjects. Research proves this to be utterly false. While certainly it cannot be argued that the training of the young has been misused at points in history by tyrants, including Hitler, you can't label an invention by its misuse. All innovations have the inherent danger of perversion for evil purpose.

Compulsory public education has a very interesting and wholesome history. The research of Melton sheds much needed light on the perpetually maligned history of compulsory education. This is a must read for those wishing to learn the intricate truth of the evolution of Prussian/Austrian systems of education. The revelations of this probing research succesfully challenge the commonly held prejudices regarding state-run educational systems.

Melton's view of schooling in Prussia and Austria is both informative and precise. He is an under-rated scholar with fascinating perspectives on 17th century European history.

This is a fine book. Meticulously researched and referenced. My interest in the history of education arises out of the fact that I don't intend to send my daughter to school choosing instead to educate her at home. One reason I'm doing this is that mainstream school, whether state or private, is not primarily about education but about structuring society to create a class system and about mentally programming its participants into some role within society. That's quite a bold statement to make and I made it after only a little research. While I might be totally convinced of it, I have be aware that it might be wrong since my daughter's future is at stake. Hence my desire for further research, a desire most ably satisfied by this book. If you read Melton's book you will be left in no doubt as to the veracity of the statement. Also in the book you will find described most of the mind control and indoctrination methods that we associate with modern school and which in alternative education circles is known as the hidden curriculum.

For me a major benefit of this book is that it is written by someone not involved in the alternative education movement, someone who has probably never heard of us or read any of our material. In 'Absolutism', Melton offers independent verification of some of the ideas circulating among an otherwise small group of people. Melton agrees that Prussia is where the origins of compulsory modern schooling lie, but whereas the movement customarily places them in the Prussia after the battle of Jena round about 1805, after Fichte's addresses to the German nation, Melton has them in the Prussia of the early 1700s with methods under the direction of one August Hermann Franke. A piffling discrepancy you may think which makes no difference to the children with lives blighted by school, but all the difference in the world when analysing the philosophical roots of compulsory school. It should also makes a difference when considering reforms to school or its abolition. With Melton's work we can now make a small but significant correction and state that the origins of the education systems in most countries of the world are attributable to Christian Pietists under contract to the Prussian State. Before, the origins were customarily attributed to solely the Prussian State with the silent implication that the origins are secular.

There is much more in this book. As well as home educators, practitioners of alternative education and education historians, this book will appeal to people interested in other aspects of the history and in the politics, philosophy, and religion of eighteenth century Prussia and Austria. In it you will read about Cameralists, the textile industry, labour shortages, seigniorial authority, the rise of agrarian capitalism and much more. Chapter 3 deals with things like baroque Catholicism, popular comedy and drama, and literate theatre - stretching the relevance to add a bit of colour I suspect but good fun nonetheless.

Be warned though, this book is not a primer. You will need to have some prior familiarity with the material to derive maximum value from 'Absolutism'.

As I said at the beginning this is a fine book. Thank you for writing it James Van Horn Melton. Good health to you and your family.

This book gives a concise biography of Amy's life, yet is written in a way to draw the reader into the circumstances and time in which Amy lived. I gained a great admiration for Amy. She truly lived out her love for the Lord and the Indian people.

This book opened my eyes to see the truth of the children in India. It broke my heart for these children, but I loved hearing the story of Amy's dedication to these children and how she changed thier lives. It encouraged me to see how God worked in the situations that she was in.

A very good approach to the suffering of children in India. It Was well written. Is a very good example of the power of prayer and how people need Jesus

This book gives the reader an insight into a fresh and new yet contradictory view on EUROPEAN CONSTRUCTIONS of the AFRICAN BODY. A great read.

A very sophisticated piece of work. With great insght into many medical/historical perceptions and social mechanisms!
Absolutely Stunning!

P.S: Looking forward to another one.

A disquieting and destabilising experience is what I was left with after reading Butchart's Anatomy of Power. On beginning the book, I at first thought that it was just another social history, albeit incredibly detailed in its probing of what doctors did in the name of science. But, as a I read on, the commanding thesis of the work took ever greater shape, and by the end I was as convinced as Butchart is of the argument that without the socio-medical sciences there can be no bodies at all. This leaves one with a real dilemma in terms of what to do in terms of liberation and the struggle against oppression. While the book doesn't answer this key question, it surely poses it with a greater degree of lucidity and insight than many other books about Africa, colonialism and liberation.

Highly recommended!

Daniel Kuhlmann, Stockholm

Sir Stenton has composed a masterpiece of a history text in his most famous book. A caveat, however, in that the text itself was written by someone who was a professional historian. As such, the text is as dry as you would expect. It is, perhaps, the most comprehensive text on the subject available to the open market, but while it is very name, date, and place intensive, there is little in the way of anecdotal information that might interest the merely casual reader. For someone who is interest in more an introduction than an indepth analysis, I would recommend The Anglo-Saxons, edited by James Campbell.

This book is the single best source of information about Anglo-Saxon England. I would only caution that this books is not for the novice historian. Unfamiliarity with the topic will leave you wondering what your reading and completely lost.

This book is filled with factual information, but because Sir Frank Stenton also lends his sagacious opinions the book is both enjoyable and easy to understand. This book is several hundred pages long with tiny print, and so packed with information, that you'll know everything possible about Anglo-Saxon history. Stenton always prefers the probable to the outrageous and does not seem to go with the popular opinions about kings, queens, or events. You must read this, but only if you're really, really interested in the subject. Otherwise, it'll go right over your head.

I just loved this book. It was perfect for some light reading.

In clear prose, with a distinctive, piercing style, the author addresses the subject and exposes its surfaces and depths. Anyone interested in these poets should be sure to purchase a copy

Sentiment and emotion ride the waves with scholarly precision as Flinn pens the book Dean Koontz wishes he could write but knows he can't. Masterfully ignoring the conventions of the techno-thriller, this book steps boldly where Tom Clancy fears to tread. If you liked "The Bridges of Madison County" or "Trade and Tariff Policy in the Weimar Republic," this is the book for you.