Ireland Books

The O'Sullivans are a family living in Ireland in the 1930s. Mother and Father and Michael and Brigid are often at their wits end dealing with the mischievous but loveable twins, Liam and Francie.

Hilda Van Stockum brings her characteristic wit, understanding of children and enchantment to the simplicity of family life. It is chock full of delightful adventures and sub-plots from a bygone era.

Brush up on your brogue and prepare for a delightful read-aloud for the whole family.

The sequels - *Francie on the Run* and *Pegeen* are wonderful too. *Pegeen* is our favorite.

Great story to read aloud to kids. Characters are spunky and positive. We went through the three books of this series non-stop.

Dorthea Meding's recent translation is timely and of interest to both historians of this important subject, the resistance, or Widerstand, within Germany itself to the course of the war, and its effects upon Germans then, and in the future. It is a remarkeable achievement in addition of skillful interviewing with the almost all of the surviving spouses of the key players in the 1944 plot to not only end HItler's lilfe, but to rescue the country from the brutal bombing, and mass expulsions taking place in the East at this time. It is humorously recounted, often (in the case of Dietrich Bonheffer's widow), always involved in the person of these women their constant concern for their children, their roles, and their views of the importance of the conspiracy later for Germany, and for what would came after the ashes of 1945. The women interviewed are extremely individualistic, and spirited, although many of them are close now to their eighties, or older. this reviewer regards the book as an important contribution to womens' literature, as well as to the literature of the resistance of this time.

What you ever wanted to know about the wifes whose men died fighting against Hitler in the underground during the Third Reich. Very intimate, touching and informing.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it to anyone interested in a well-written account of a young couple's experiences during WWII. I would love to read other books by this author - she is very talented. Thank you for providing me with a book that I really couldn't put down!! Good luck with future endeavors!

This is an utterly facinating story that is treated fairly and presented with immense talent by the author. As it is both a historical record and a love story, it will prove interesting to a variety of readers. Although many people toss the phrase around, this is truly a book that is hard to put down.

While somewhat dated, this is probably the best introduction to the period. I use the word "probably," because I am not an expert on Early Modern England, and therefore I do not know the entire literature available. What I can say, though, is that Russell's work is magnificantly written. The presentation of ideas is crystal clear and the writing is emotive and witty. In short, its a page turner (for a history nut). The glossary is incomplete but very helpful, and the revised bibiographic essay brings the reader closer (1988) to the contemporary historical debates. Having effortlessly read this book, I can easily engage more specilized studies of the period, like Russell's equally reccommended (though for different reasons) "The Fall of the British Monarchies 1637-1642," or Jonathan Scott's "England's Troubles."

This is THE essential title for any student studying the Early Modern British period. Informative, descriptive and passionatly imaginative this book brings together the threads of some of the greatest historians throughout the age (e.g. Clarendon) and intertwines them into something unique, bold and pioneering. Leading the thrust in revisionism Russell aproaches his work with a 'through' analysis of events (one even Wentworth would admire!). The way in which he combines facts, figures and enthusiastic description is one to be admired and one, as a devoted A-Level History student, I was eternally indebted to and grateful for.

If you want to understand something about the nature of Adorno's overall project, read the guy below, sadly cut off as he is in mid-sentence. If your only contact with Adorno is the bitter "Minima Moralia" or the (to me) rebarbative "Negative Dialectics", this is an essential complement. If you aren't interested in radical cultural criticism...er, why are you reading this?

Critical Models is a collection of essays, articles and radio talks, mostly from quite late in Adorno's career. I am neither a philosopher nor an academic, and would be the first person to admit that I'm not quite up to Adorno's more Hegelian moments. I'm just casting about for help in an increasingly bland, homogenised, uncritical cultural environment, and the best thing about Critical Models is that it's Adorno being unusually _helpful_.

This is Adorno throwing himself into the task of trying to build a post-war democracy in Germany, not Adorno the cantankerous emigre complaining that doors shut more violently than they used to. He urges the value of promoting the status of teachers, of rooting out and criticising Nazi attitudes (who'd have thought that they'd still be flourishing fifty years on). Adorno is seldom a very approachable writer, but here he's making the effort to communicate to a mass audience, and to a relatively uneducated schmuck like me it's critical dynamite. The spine of my copy of Negative Dialectics may remain forever uncreased, but this one will be carried around.

It is important to point out that Teddie Adorno is spinning in his grave, for the very venue on which I am reviewing Critical Models is itself an example of the fetishized, reified and administered world that Adorno named, and critiqued. However, Adorno's philosophical tradition also includes the catchphrase what is, is right, and would probably view the Internet as more or less a necessary consequence of vast economic forces which it would be simple minded to simply ignore, or negate. And, his "dialectical" logic not only permits us to log on and praise him where praise is due: it requires us to do so.

This collection is of essays written after Adorno returned to the Federal Republic of Germany in the early 1950s. Because culturally Adorno was "very German" and indeed he resented the *Volkische* definition of Germanness imposed by Hitler, Adorno delayed his escape, as the son of a Jewish father and Catholic mother, from Hitlerdom to a dangerous point. He resided briefly in England and somewhat longer in America. Strangely, he did not like England and (given the choice) preferred America, and specifically California, the latter because of its climate.

This collection makes it clear that although Adorno was critical of many tendencies in America he was by no means knee-jerk in his criticism. Adorno enjoyed the very real democracy of American life and the very real empiricism of science as practised here...insofar as democracy and empiricism did not become, as a very different sort of emigre might call it, a shtick, or a number: or, as Adorno would call it, fetishized or reified.

But it is clear from these essays that Adorno would be very critical of changes in America that have occured since my generation, that of the immediate post-war Baby Boom, has taken over the shop. Adorno's work on Fascist tendencies in California, for example, located Fascism in our hearts and at our dinner tables. These tendencies are denied in ceremonies (such as the commemoration, last week, of the bombing in Oklahoma City) which are structured by press and lawyers in a way that fully denies anything like a spontaneous response.

One naturally wonders why it is that people at these commemorations, which memorialize real pain that should never be repeated, have to act in such structured fashions, and it was the structuring of Timothy McVeigh's life by similar tendencies that caused him, in all probability, to bomb the Murragh building.

It was irresponsible to decry social research that located Fascist and authoritarian tendencies so close to home and to expect no incidents such as the bombing of the Oklahoma City building. Adorno's work is a reminder to examine our own environment for barbarism, and Americans who have worked on issues of domestic abuse are in his tradition, even if they would actually find the guy irritating, arrogant and conceited...all of which he was.

Some of the book does require, because of Adorno's arrogance, a knowledge of German philosophy, which is not a laugh a minute by any means. The essay "On Subject and Object", for example, may be completely opaque, even to, and especially to, the "educated" reader if her education is in the typical American university. That's because what we mean by the subject may be divergent from what Ted meant, a difference expressed by our own "catchphrase", "that's subjective."

"That's subjective" means in ordinary usage that "that" can be dismissed, and despite the (laudable) place that mere listening plays in our life, "that's subjective" forecloses listening. Adorno writes from a tradition in which subjectivity is not a sink and instead is a source of value.

The surprising end of "on subject and object" is one in which the mere subject acquires value precisely by being removed from a place of origin: we realize, in the general murk of Adorno's style, that the very reason why we exhibit a false humility about our own subjectivity is that we are delivered a false story about our origins as "the first man", which exalts the subjectivity of a mythical Adam, and makes our own second-hand. Adorno makes the common sense point that given our initial resources (which are inferior, because less specialized, than those of other large mammals) "the first man" was probably the group, in which the "subjectivity" of each member had to be (paradoxically enough) treasured because it was a group resource.

The experience of reading the more difficult essays is one of struggle, and reward, in which one realizes that one's mere failure to comprehend is only in part a product of ignorance: it is one of dawn. This is in contrast to reading the typical American scholarly essay in which the very lack of participation and struggle...and the airy dismissal of important questions as marginalia, drives questions to the zone of the subconscious.

That is, Adorno is outside of the tradition which recast and rephrased problems into such a shape that they could be solved...that their solution was implied by their clear phrasing. Mathematics is an example of this. At its best (and Adorno conceded this in many ways) this tradition is a source of both power and democracy.

At its worst, however, and especially as applied to Adorno's own field of social research, this tradition makes people into objects precisely because it has to ignore the philosopher's tendency to delay, by questioning everything. The most obscene consequence of this is the political poll and its unstated influence on our elections.

Like Adorno's longer works but more accessibly, Critical Models rewards reading, and rereading: the very density of his style provides, in terms that would make the guy shudder, good value for the dollar...precisely because, as

The critical texts of James Joyce - many of them unreleased and others scarecly spread, written through a period of almost forty years , express in normal language the estetical convictions of the author who in his work , could manifest them in indirect form .
In them we can realize the evolution of the criterion of Joyce since the fourteen years old till past fifties .
This is a fundamental compilation for those who love the literature of James Joyce .

Old but still worthy of respect, this is a collection of most of the works by James Joyce that could reasonably be described as Critical. Here we see Joyce in many guises - youthful literary hack, angry old man protesting against breach of copyright, and above all explainer of Irish and English culture to the Italians. The most fascinating pieces in the book are a series of lectures Joyce gave in Italian on the subjects of Irish history, James Clarence Mangan, William Blake and diverse other topics. Those who've attempted to claim Joyce as an apolitical webmaster or conservative elitist (I'm talking to you, Roger Scruton) are in for a shock. His socialism and proto-post-colonialist sense of historical injustice are in full display.

These are, to be sure, the kind of thing you read not because you're interested in the subjects under discussion (who, apart from elderly Irish poets, cares about James Clarence Mangan?) but because you're interested in what Joyce has to say about them. All his criticism is of the strategic rather than tactical kind, the kind of criticism certain writers engage in so as to clear the ground for their own efforts. He's no John Updike, prepared to write 2000 words about anybody he happens to find interesting.

Apart from a vacuous introduction by Guy Davenport, this is a fascinating book. I'm sure it's far from complete, seeing as nobody can even agree about where Joyce's books stop and his drafts begin, but it'll do until time and decay simplify the picture. Joyce is the great pathfinder of modern Irish writing. Hail to the Chief.

Branka Magas wrote The Destruction of Yugoslavia: Tracking the Break-Up 1980-92, a collection of her writings published between 1981 and the end of 1991. She prefaced her book with a summary: "Yugoslavia did not die a natural death ... [it was] destroyed for the cause of Greater Serbia". She blamed Nationalists seeking a racially homogeneous Serbian state and ex-Communists wanting to stay in power, led by Milosevic and supported by the primarily Serbian Yugoslav National Army. Non-Serbs defended themselves with greater vigor than expected, and at a great cost. Ms Magas had predicted the course of events, and her book received outstanding reviews.

Ms Magas is a Croat and a left-wing thinker who could be expected to read history as a "class-firster"; she argued in The Destruction that in this region at least nation matters more than class. She makes the same point in Croatia, describing in great detail Croatia's history from the early Middle Ages to the present.

She describes the connections between Croatia and other states. For centuries Slav, Croat, Dalmatian, Slavonian, Serb, Jewish, Italian, Yugoslav, and other identities have participated in the creation of the Croatian state.

For this general reader the book appeared even handed and fair. She was particularly good, I thought, in describing the conflicts and debates between Croats who advocated an independent country and those that argued at various times for becoming a part of Austria, Yugoslavia or a larger European federation.

Robert C. Ross 2008

Consultant and scholar Branka Magas presents the culmination of her intense research in Croatia Through History: The Making of a European State, an in-depth scrutiny of Croatia's history and development from its origin in the early Middle Ages to the modern day. The evolution of Croatia's institutions, ideology, social customs, and political strategies are all examined in turn. Croatia's rich and complex past includes eras when it was territorially and/or administratively divided between various states, and even times when the threat of extinction loomed. Croatia's long struggle for survival has produced a spectrum of national ideologies, some advocating independent statehood while others reach for the benefits of becoming part of an Austrian, Yugoslav or European federation. An even-handed history that pays close attention to the many plural ethnic, cultural, and national influences upon the region, illustrated with a handful of black-and-white and color images. Highly recommended especially for public or college library history shelves.

"Cry Bosnia" is definitely a good "coffee table book"- it's oversized and has lots of photographs. At the same time, it's so much more. "Cry Bosnia" tells the sad story of the Bosnian War, which is now fading from the collective memory in the face of the Iraq War, in the words of the people who were there. Through Paul Harris' haunting photos and his interviewees, we see how the world stood by as the strong took advantage of the weak. If you're interested in the Bosnian War, contemporary history, or human drama generally, then this book is for you.

I found this book hidden in the corner of the post exchange on Eagle Base in Tuzla. From the moment I opened its pages I knew that I would never put it down. Many volumes speak about the political, social, economic and ethnic divisions which caused the war in the Balkans. Cry Bosnia is not a dry history book which feeds the intellect with numerous facts and figures. Paul Harris, through his photography, has allowed the people of the region speak to us through their hearts. It is through the pictures and commentary that Cry Bosnia speaks to the hearts and minds of those distant witnesses of the Balkan War.

Harris doesn't spare us as he shows us the pictures of both human and physical destruction of a land of beauty. When we view those pictures we see faces of grief, despair and rage. At the same time we see hope, courage, laughter and the spirit of tenaciousness as a people attempt to rebuild their lives in the midst of a senseless war. When we see these pictures we see the ugliness of our humanity. Bosnia reflects the beast which is within us as the "world" allowed slaughter to go on as is asserted in the text. If anything Cry Bosnia can teach us to move beyond our negative spirits and recover the good from within us. Such a reflection from a war should move us to be more accountable to one another as our world gets smaller and smaller.

This short book is an excellent introduction to the new Czech Republic. It begins with a quick look at the geography and climate of the country, and them moves into its history. After that, it does a wonderful job of explaining the Czech Republic, including (but not limited to) its religion, politics, economy, and even the problems facing it. All this is done in a mere 67 pages, but it nonetheless gives the reader a comprehensive understanding of the country.

I enjoyed the layout of this book; it includes many black-and-white pictures, many interesting sidebars, and even a chronology at the back. If you are interested in the Czech Republic, and want a short, concise introduction to the country, then I recommend that you read this book.

My wife and I recently participated in a cultural exchange between Britain and the Czech Republic (CZR). Our library yielded an armful of guide books and coffee-table picture books.

But for our purposes, Mr. Otfinoski's book took the prize. Though intended for younger readers, it offers engaging reading for anyone. The subject matter seems well researched, the writing is lucid, and each chapter includes a selection of bibliographic references. There are plenty of illustrations, mainly black and white but well chosen and relevant to the text they support. Most of all, the book gives a clear outline of the CZR's recent history and paints a believable picture of its current politics, business, culture, and everyday life.

Since the publisher's description hasn't been included in the Amazon listing, here is the table of contents:

1. An Introduction to the Land and Its People

2. From a Medieval Kingdom to a Modern Nation

3. Czechoslovakia under Two Brutal Masters (1918-1985)

4. The Velvet Revolution and the Velvet Divorce (1989-present)

5. Government

6. Religion

7. The Economy

8. Culture

9. Daily life

10. The Cities and Towns

11. Present Problems and Future Solutions

Back Matter: Chronology, Further Reading, and Index

Most books of this type I would consider more of a reference, where you would look up a single topic you wanted to know about and only read that part. But this book was unusual in that I read it cover to cover. The topics are arranged so that the information flows naturally through each setting, giving detailed but not boring surveys of the daily activities of people living in villages, castles, monasteries and cities. This is done by focusing on single archetypical examples of each and staying with them throughout the chapter, so you actually kind of get to know the setting and some of the people in it, who are often real people taken from historical accounts. This is in contrast to most so-called 'daily life' books, which are often simply historical generalizations with a few anecdotes thrown in. I especially liked the illustrations of the various locations, placed next to diagrams of the layout, which makes it easy to understand both the appearance and function of the buildings and land features. It was also interesting to learn how different the economics were in the thirteenth century, with labor being cheap and materials expensive; each chapter repeatedly showed how important the cost of every single thing was in daily life. In the intro, the author sets out the goal of providing a solid introductory text on medieval life that isn't oriented toward either children or highly trained scholars, but general readers, and the approach taken here succeeds nicely.

Edit: I would also add that writers of medieval historical fiction would do well to read this book if they want to get some of the nitty-gritty details right- it would seem a lot more convincing.

Having studied medieval and renaissance life as a personal hobby for years, I've read a lot of books on this period of time in Europe's history. My previous favorites were the series of books by Frances and Joseph Gies (Life in a Medieval Castle, etc.), but this book is now my pick. It's a general overview of daily life, starting with a chapter titled "Medieval Socity" and continuing through a thorough examination of "The Life Cycle," "Material Culture," and life in various types of situations, from villages to the monastic life. What is truly refreshing about this book and sets it apart from the others is that it's actually a good read! It lacks the utterly dry convoluted wording of far too many books on the medieval period out there, yet does not talk down to the reader or engage in flights of fancy (as "A World Lit Only By Fire" does gleefully). Readers are additionally treated to numerous black & white illustrations, including the construction of various medieval garments, what a 13th century spoon looks like, and assorted images of people from historic documents doing everyday activities. But wait! There's more... there is also a glossary, three appendices (Games, Recipes, Music), a wonderful bibliography, and an index. If I have to find fault with this important work, it is that some of the images and facts are not documented well enough. For example, there is a drawing of people harvesting grain showing many important elements of period clothing, but the caption makes no mention of where this drawing was obtained or its date so that it can be researched further. Some facts also dispute facts found in other books, so it's up to the careful reader to do some research to verify Singman's writing. But I can't recommend this book enough, especially to the student, the living history enthusiast, or anyone wanting a book that gives a clear snapshot in readable form of what life was like for the average person in medieval Europe.