Europe Books

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.

"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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

What an outstanding book! It is so hard to find good stories to share and teach about WWI. I had to order it in paperback from the UK where sadly, Foreman's evocative pictures were reduced and reproduced in black & white. This should be in every school library. Foreman's story is based on a true incident. My students loved the soccer connection and felt empathy for the four young men who face the bitter reality of war and the joy of one very special day.

This is an excellent book that stirs the emotions. The pictures are beautiful watercolors . Though it is important to learn the facts of WW I, this book will create an impression that will not be forgotten, which is even more important than memorizing facts. I borrow most of our books, but this is one book that I would recommend buying.

This story is included in our sixth grade anthology. The students love this story. I am sorry that the book is out of print.

This is a rare book for anyone who loves to teach and learn about history. Michael Foreman has taken a remarkable event (i.e. The Christmas Day Truce of WWI)and created a timeless tale. His book is packed with wonderful illustrations, and contains many facts about the Great War. Foreman has also woven primary documents from the time period throughout the book; most of which are in the form of propaganda posters. Overall, this book comes highly recommended, and it will be a shame if it is not re-printed soon!

Michael Foreman writes as beautifully as he draws. This is an evocative story of a Christmas truce during WW1 in which German and British soldiers become friends, singing carols and playing soccer together, learning to see one another as friends and fellow human beings. When the truce ends, each side deliberately fires over the heads of the other, unable to kill men they now regard as comrades. The German command learns of the game...War Game is a classic war story and should be in print.

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.

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.

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.

WAR STORY is Derek Robinson's masterpiece. It is better than PIECE OF CAKE, which was filmed in 1988 for LWT, and it is better than GOSHAWK SQUADRON, which was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1971. It is simply an excellent novel every bit the equal of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT or CATCH-22.

Unlike Robinson's other wartime aviation novels, this one gives us a single character to focus most of our attention on. Paxton is a young pilot, fresh from flight school, who thinks that the First World War is the greatest thing to ever happen to the world. He is longing for the chance to sink his teeth into the enemy and come home a hero. Instead he makes a mess of his very first mission -- to lead six replacement planes across the channel -- and becomes an air-gunner, paired with a cynical veteran pilot. He witnesses the Battle of the Somme, which he thinks is a great opportunity for the British cavalry to show their stuff. He meets a rich English girl who throws extravagant parties for the soldiers, and he boasts to her about the Germans he's killed.

Watching him butt heads with the more experienced pilots is perhaps the major conflict of the book, and a great well of black comedy. Paxton simply doesn't understand why no one else seems to be having a good time. He even argues with his pilot in midair. But no one can remain unchanged forever, which Paxton discovers by the end of the book.

The rest of Hornet Squadron is not left out. We are introduced to Kellaway -- who will reappear in PIECE OF CAKE and A GOOD CLEAN FIGHT in the next war; Cleve-Cutler, the new commanding officer who fortifies his pilots with Hornet's Sting, a potent mix of every type of booze imaginable; and Corporal Lacey, a public school-educated clerk, who tells us, "It takes no great skill to die. No skill at all, in fact. Thoroughly unqualified people do it all the time."

Until Robinson began writing, fiction of this sort was limited to the adventures of Biggles, hero of boy's-own pulp magazines. GOSHAWK SQUADRON changed that, and thank heaven. WAR STORY, by the end, is more moving and more focused than Robinson's other novels. It is funny and tragic in equal measure. Read it.

For mine this is the best of Derek Robinson's WW1 trilogy, but I am a huge fan of all his novels. War Story is totally authentic, the characters (in particular Paxton, O'Neill, and Lacey, plus Judith Kent Haffner) as usual are brilliant creations, and the historical background is very well researched. The humour is unsurpassed. As always for me, a profound sadness accompanies the ending and creates a sense of nostalgia which makes one want to start the story all over again. Top stuff.

In 1916 the main character, Oliver Paxton, a very young and inexperienced officer pilot, ferries a plane to France in order to join Hornet Squadron. Paxton hopes to accumulate feats of glory and has an "outsider's" view of the war, typical of the man who has not seen a comrade die before his eyes. His cavalier attitudes make him an outcast in an environment where teamwork and belonging count for a lot to a man's sanity. Gradually, through several funny and tragic events, Paxton replaces his do or die for England attitude with a more realistic view of the futility of war, specially World War I.

War Story is funny in the same way Catch 22 is funny, it contains hilarious dialogue and absurd situations only possible with a bunch of well educated men who are resigned and almost certain of their impending and sudden flaming death and are constantly fighting their desire to flee the war and to survive but do their daily duty as if nothing else mattered. The tragedy is that the funnyness is all withing the real tragedy of a war few who were fighting it understood at all. Robinson is a master at the art of writing war novels. I fully recommend this book. I do wish the rest of the trilogy will be reprinted again.

In War Story, Derek Robinson begins his fictionalized account of "Hornet" Squadron in the British Royal Flying Corps (RFC). Although War Story was written after several of Robinson's other novels depicting "Hornet" squadron, it essentially serves as a "prequel" that explains the background behind the unit and at least one key follow-on character. The book is set in June 1916, just as the British are getting ready for the Battle of the Somme, and the squadron is equipped with the unusual FE2b "push-pull" aircraft. There is much less aerial combat in this book compared to Robinson's other books, and the focus is more heavily on character development within the squadron. As usual in his style, Robinson introduces the reader to a host of different personality types resident in a typical fighter squadron. Overall, War Story is an excellent novel of life in a First World War fighter squadron and the way that war affects individuals differently.

The main protagonist in War Story is the not very likeable Lieutenant Oliver Paxton. This character reminds me somewhat of the character "Goodrich" in James Webb's Vietnam novel Fields of Fire; like Goodrich, Paxton encounters great difficulty in bonding with other members of his unit and is regarded as foolish and/or incompetent. Yet like Goodrich, Paxton does experience personal growth through the "school of hard knocks" and by the end of the novel, he has involved into a totally different person. Other major characters include the no-nonsense squadron commander Hugh Cleve-Cutler, the unflappable squadron adjutant Major Brazier (a former infantry lieutenant colonel demoted for shooting several of his troops who ran away under fire), and O'Neill, Paxton's tormenter and copilot. Kellaway, who goes on to be the squadron adjutant in Robinson's Second World War novels "Piece of Cake" and "A Good Clean Fight," is introduced as an accident-prone young replacement. The relationships in the squadron may appear a bit odd or overly cruel at times, particularly in the brusque manner that replacements are treated, but this is probably quite accurate. Of course, one by one, "Hornet" squadron is shorn of is veteran and rookie pilots, leaving only a handful alive.

War Story is not quite as cynical as some of Robinson's other novels, but he does hammer home the lack of any romanticism in the air war. Even the most idealistic pilots are rapidly worn down by fatigue, stress and the realization that their number is bound to come up in the near future. While not quite as good as Goshawk Squadron or Piece of Cake, War Story is still a very good depiction of squadron life in the First World War.

An excellent book which is sadly out of print. The story and characters met here also appear in Goshawk Squadron and Hornets Nest. This book gives a real feel of what it must have been like to fly and fight in the air in World War One. Like many of Derek Robinsons books it contains a combination of humour and horror. The relatively comfortable lives of the pilots on the ground is thrown into stark relief with the danger and discomfort of their lives in the air. I can highly recommend it

Best treatment of weapons and Renaissance-era warfare !!

Bert Hall delves deep into the technological history of Renaissance warfare and demonstrates both how much and how little new technologies have changed the face of battle. It deftly combines both a technical understanding of how those technologies were made with Mr. Hall's detailed understanding of the military history of that period.

The work is primarily focussed on the effects of gunpowder and firearms, but begins in the pre-gunpowder era of the late middle ages. By demonstrating how wars in this period were waged, the author shows the reader just how little the first gunpowder technology changed the way wars were fought. In essence, he shows how commanders faced with the new technology tried to fit it into traditional roles previously occupied by the longbow and crossbow and how it did not immediately eclipse those weapons in such roles.

From there, the author goes on to show how the peculiar advantages and disadvantages of the increasingly sophisticated gunpowder technology came to revolutionize strategic and tactical thought.

It is a rare work that considers topics ranging from the way in which the differing "recipes" that existed for gunpowder vastly altered the explosive potential of the substance to the tactical innovations and battles of Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba. Mr. Hall handles both technological and historical matters with equal ease and effectively demonstrates how deeply the two are intertwined.

It is a tremendously engaging and enlightening work, and very well documented in its more than 800 endnotes. Perhaps surprisingly for an historical work, it was a real page-turner. When forced to set it down, I found myself counting the hours until I could get back to it. I will definitely be looking for additional books by this author.

1.000 words could be not enough to praise this book. Bert Hall produced a long needed work that will remain a foundation-stone in military technology of the black powder era.

It didn't take long for me to be pleasantly surprised at the high level of scholarship and clearly presented facts, the sort of writing all too often lacking from this area of history. As the author notes, many technology historians, military historians, and arms and armor writers propagate continuing myths and assumptions that can't be supported when the facts are examined closely. Here, Hall does the topic justice and it is clear he did his homework. The chapter discussing the technology of gunpowder was especially interesting, and supports his case for the reasons firearms developed as they did. I recommend a trip to the Metropolitan Museum in New York to have a look at their firearms, where many aspects of his discussion will further illuminate the items on display.

This book presents a serious, unbiased and well documented view on gunpowder-technology origins and evolution and its real significance in medieval and Renaissance land warfare. However, only the projectile weapons have a good coverage, and warfare (and use of gunpowder) at sea is almost totally forgotten! If its title reflected its contents this book would get SIX stars from me.

This was a book that changed my life. It's fast and spell binding reading. An amazing drama that's only too real.

This is one of the most important books written on the Shoah.
To reply to the reviewer who wanted to know what America could have done I dont know maybe excepted boats of Jews when they tried to come to America instead of refusing to and sending them back to their eventual slaughter. Thats just one of many.

I had read suggestions over the years that the Roosevelt (FDR) Administration had a weak and obstructionist policy towards the plight of the Jews in Europe in the years leading up to WWII. Unfortunately, I let this book sit on the bookshelf for nearly twenty years before I got around to reading it. I was appalled at the extent of US governmental indifference and interference! One of the major problems facing the Jews who could sense the imminent danger in Germany was that of finding some place to move to. Most of the Western world did not want to accept them as refugees and especially in the numbers that were materializing. As the grandson of an immigrant, I had written a term paper on the US immigration policy with apparrent pride when I was in junior high school. I understood the various quota systems that favored North Western Europeans and heavily discriminated against those of other races. I had understood the reasons that it took two of my grandfather's brothers so long to immigrate here. I understood why many immigrants went to Canada instead (including the fact that Canada is a fine country). I had understood the laws requiring that persons coming to this country needed to provide proof that they would be able to provide for their own support once they got here. However, Arthur Morse gave examples after examples of how all of the existing immigration laws were twisted, tightened and squeezed to keep the Jewish refugees from finding a new home here. We were just another country that left them to fend helplessly for themselves in Nazi Germany. "While Six Million Died" is a difficult book to read for an American. It is a reminder of the anti-semitism that generations after the Holocaust find hard to understand. At best Americans can say that their government's behavior at the time wasn't any worse than that of other governments. The shame is that it wasn't any better either. America has faced its' disgrace over its' past racism and the scandal of the Japanese internment camps. However, I have not noticed much ado about the issues that Morse raises in "While Six Million Died". That is why this is such an important book to read.

I have written my review in the form of a poem.I dedicate this poem to Arthur D. Morse:

I am Liberty. I am Columbia. I am the Mother of Exiles!

Never again will my head be bowed down in tears, My torch held low and dim. Shame on you Franklin Roosevelt for the Bloody stain on my gown, which shall Never wash off.

I am the Mother of Exiles! Suffer my children unto me and I will protect thee. Woe be unto those who commit murder and mayhem upon thee! For I will step down from my pedestal, Not with books in my hand but with a flaming sword, And my shining torch. And lead my children to freedom and safety!

Heed my words, those who choose to destroy freedom. For I am Liberty. I am Columbia. I am America!

This volume tells of how the USA and Britain during World War II, were not only apathetic to the fate of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, but actually obstructed all efforts to save them.
The book explores the questions:
What did the rest of the world, in particular the United States and Great Britain, know about the Nazi plans for the annihilation of the Jews?
What was their reaction to this knowledge?
After it was learned from a German industrialist, and relayed by the representative in Switzerland of the World Jewish Congress, Gerhardt Riegner, of the plans by the Nazis to exterminate European Jewry (and after well over a million Jewish men, women and children had already been butchered , Czech exile Ernest Frischer urged the Allies urged the Allies to ease the blockade of Nazi-occupied Europe so that relief supplies could reach occupied Europe, and proposed that the International Red Cross supply food parcels to ghettos and concentration camps as it did prisoner of war camps. He asked that Jewish children be evacuated from German-occupied territories.
It was debated but no action in this regard was taken.

By January 1943, new evidence had come to light about Nazi mass murder. Riegner provided the American State Department a detrailed 4 page description of Nazi atrocities.
It was reported that the Nazis were killing six thousand Jews each day in Poland.
A 'Stop Hitler Now' Rally was organized by Rabbi Stephen Wise at Madison Square Gardens on March 1, 1943.Chaim Weizmann, President of the Jewish Agency for Palestine stated that "The world can no longer plead that the ghastly facts are unknown and uncomfirmed. At this moment expressions of sympathy without accompanying attempts to launch acts become a hollow mockery in the ears of the dying. The democracies have a clear duty before them. Let them negotiate with Germany through the neutral countries concerning the possible release of the Jews in the occupied countries. Let havens be designated in the vast territories of the United Nations which will give sanctuary to those fleeing from imminent murder. Let the gates of Palestine be opened...the Jewish community of Palestine will welcome with joy and and thanksgiving all delivered from Nazi hands".
Due to violent Arab opposition to Jews entering Palestine, the British closed the gates of the Palestine Mandate and turned back thousands of Jews fleeing Hitler back to the Nazi ovens.
The British announced that there would be no Jewish immigration into the ancient Jewish homeland "unless the Arabs are prepared to acquiesce in it.". They were not, and so millions of Jews who could have been saved died.

The British also rejected the idea of a Jewish parachute unit from Palestine to rescue Jews in Europe, as they were afraid this would advance Jewish Nationhood in the Land of Israel.
The USA refused entry to many Jewish refugees, including a consignment of ten thousand Jewish children, because of domestic objection to Jewish immigration. There was no objection however to the refuge in the USA of thousands of British children, from the German blitz of Britain.

Australia, with it's vast unsettled spaces, announced at the Evian Conference of 1938, that 'As we have no real racial problem we are not desirous of importing one."
Refuges were suggested in such places as the Dominican Republic, Mindanao, British Guiana, the Orinoco basin in Venezuela and Angola.
It all came to nothing.
The proposal, by Dr Weizmann, for the Allies to bombing the gas chambers and furnaces in the death camps was rejected after it was opposed by the Soviets.
And a deal offered by Eichmann to exchange hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives for ten thousand trucks was also rejected.
The Ghetto Fighters House, a kibbutz in Israel founded by survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto published the Vittel Diary by Itzhak Katznelson whose recurring theme was apathy in the face of Nazi murder:
"Sure enough, the nations did not interfere, nor did they they warn the murderers, never a murmur. It was as if the leaders of the nations were afraid the killings might stop."
The Allied powers could have saved millions of Jews and chose not to.
Great Britain, the USA and the Soviet Union bare some responsibility for the Holocaust.
The Jews realized that only their own state and army could save Jewish lives, and citizens of countries that did not lift a finger to save Jewish lives have no right to condemn Israel in any way for saving her children against those who would murder them.