European Leagues Books

Daniel Richter, in this astonishing book, does an excellent job explaining social, political and economical aspects of the Iroquois people with strong evidence. This book is a resutl of a big reserach and Richter's dedication to the subject. I would recommend this book not only to students who need to take Native American History, but also to anyone who is interested in learning about the Iroquoi's life and their impacts on the French, the England, and the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries. Even though i am not a native speaker, i really enjoyed reading this book because of Richter's plain English.

The Ordeal of the Longhouse is an excellent start to gaining an understanding of how the Iroquois were affected by the onset of Europeans in their territory. This book does an excellent job of looking at Iroquoian culture and how it developed both before and after Europeans arrived. Europeans changed the cultures of all groups that they interacted with as each took on some of the characteristics of the other and the Iroquois were not exception. Richter takes great detail to play out the various council negotiations and treaty discussions that led to the formation of the five nations council in the view of the Europeans and how this affected diplomacy in the new world. The British, Dutch and French all were forced to deal with the five nations and having a book that so expertly captures their negotiations is wonderful. This is an essential study for anyone who wishes to understand colonial history. While newer books have been coming out on the subject this still remains the gold standard and one of the excellent studies on the Iroquois. A great addition to any colonial or native American historians library.

I've found this book to be both insightful and easy to understand. Though this is a well researched and referenced academic text it is accessible to the average reader, assuming an interest in the subject matter.

The Iroquois were a centerpiece of North American colonial life and I would highly suggest this book for those interested in History or Anthropology, as Dr. Richter takes broad approach to his analysis and documents cultural practices and history of interest to many disciplines.

This book is an excellent example of how to synthesize a wide variety of archival and secondary resources. It provides a deep analysis the relationships between the Holy Roman Empire and the Scandinavian countries. There is much to learn from this book in order to understand European relationships with foreign countries. A must read!

Chickering has produced a masterful account of the rise of the pan-german league and its discontents for german society. for those of you who just don- know, this book outlines why people develop all sorts of silly ideas and how they can somehow be taken seriously.

germans, especially lawyers from the Rheinland, had some strange ideas, fo scho!
rasciological, biological, castrophicalogical, leading to all sorts of facists tendencies from WWI (peace to the homies in Belgium, Poland, and Russia) to those castrated lapdogs of the NS-Zeit.

Great book. Check out his stuff on WWI. wicked smart.

A group of men come to misfortune at sea. They have the dubious misfortune to come to the attention of Captain Nemo and his highly advanced submarine, Nautilus. While this prevents them from drowning, they do get caught up with some of the odd Captain's other pursuits. Ned and company do certainly get some education in oceanography and marine biology along the way.

They do have to worry about what the antiheroic supergenius Nemo is actually up to, though.

I purchased this book to read to my five year old son. It is a great adaptation and there are pictures on every three to four pages which keeps him interested in the book. Great illustrations! We are loving every minute of it and read 2-3 chapters a night!

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was one of the best books of it's time and it's legacy still continues today. The author Jules Verne is able to create a world that is fantastic and believable at the same time. However there are moments in which the details become repetitive and rather insignificant.

The main character Captain Nemo, it is never obvious if he is the protagonist or antagonist, has a personality that is quite paradoxical. He believes that mankind has wrecked the earth and has given up on the human race as so decides to escape it by traveling the seas in his submarine. However, he is compassionate towards his crew members. At most times he is emotionless, but it is his emotional trauma that bothers him more than anything else. He is a complex character who is interesting, mysterious, and quite interesting to analyze.

The story line is intriguing and Verne's imagination adds to the impact of the plot. The story begins with a naturalist, his assistant, and a harpooner looking for a giant sea creature that has destroyed several ships. It turns out that this creature that they are looking for, and find, is Captain Nemo's submarine. Verne is also able to create a wonderful world full of different creature of the sea as well as the submarine it's self. At the time the book was written sea travel was common but submarines were unheard of. The description of the vessel and its ability must have wowed readers of the time.

However, it's Verne's over usage of description and unnecessary plot that tends to ruin the pace of the story. For pages on end there is a constant rambling of encyclopedia-like information. Is it really necessary to know the name, size, origin, composition, weight (etc) of some random mineral that naturalist happens to find?

Unfortunately these random occurrences make the book a little hard to follow, but in the end it is still a classic that everyone should end up reading.

For those rereading 20,000 Leagues under the Sea after many years of telling yourself it was time to read it again, you will find William Butcher' translation quite a surprise. Not only quite accurate but you find additional chapters, not found in earlier translations. The sixty pages of "Explanatory Notes" puts a whole new slant on the story.

I was disappointed to find this was a children's version of the Jules Verne novel. Amazon's description of it doesn't make this clear.

Nonreligious man in the pure state is a comparatively rare phenomenon, even in the most desacralized of modern societies. The majority of the "irreligious" still behave religiously, even though they are not aware of the fact . . . The modern man who feels and claims that he is nonreligious still retains a large stock of camouflaged myths and degenerated rituals.
- Mircea Eliade, _The Sacred and the Profane_.

_Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless_, published by Cornell University Press in 1998, by Daniel Peris, is an academic account of the creation and development of the Soviet League of the Militant Godless and its actions in Russia. The League of the Militant Godless constitutes a little known aspect of the Soviet state in its persecution of religion and especially the Holy Russian Orthodox Church. This persecution of the churches was carried on by Marxist fanatics beginning in 1917 when the Bolsheviks gained power until the late 1930s when the League was revitalized. In addition to much of the needless bloodshed and economic horrors inflicted upon the Russian people by communists, the crimes of the League of the Militant Godless and militant atheism among the Soviets against the Russian peasant and his religion constitute one of the outstanding criminal acts against both God and man of the Twentieth century. Make no mistake about it, many modern day atheists would like to see the same events recur again in their desire to see the churches suppressed totally and dominated by the state! This book traces the growth of the League of the Militant Godless as a bureaucratic organization within the Soviet regime. The book is academic in tone and thus it may be difficult for some to follow (including footnotes in Russian); however, for all students of history it represents an important achievement in our understanding of Soviet Russia.

The Introduction to this book traces the development of the League of the Militant Godless as a bureaucratic organization beginning in 1917 when the Bolsheviks seized power. This introduction explains the notion of "godlessness" and how it applied to many of the Marxist atheists at the time. The League's chief enemy which it sought to utterly eradicate was the Russian Orthodox Church (though it opposed all Christian churches generally, as well as all religions) which was the traditional religious institution of the Russian people. The Russian Orthodox Church claimed close to 100 million believers and included priests, monks, and nuns as well as others who had devoted their life to the service of Christ. Following the introduction, the author turns his attention to policies, confusion, and cadres within the League of the Militant Godless from 1917 to 1925. The author mentions the role of the League and its attempt to "make Holy Russia godless". The author compares the League to similar instances of militant godlessness in revolutionary France and Mexico, where crimes against the Roman Catholic churches there remain most prominent. The author notes the strategy of the bezbozhnik, i.e. the godless, in attempting to "divide and conquer" by separating the church from the state. The author also notes the attempts by the "godless" to increase "education", i.e. propaganda emphasizing "science", and literacy, while at the same time desecrating sacred relics, participating in church services as subversives, and denigrating sacred objects within the churches. Following this, the author turns to organized atheism within the 1920s. The author notes the attempts by militant atheists to organize to present a united front against the religious. The author makes notes of the publications of the propaganda put out by the League. Following this, the author turns to a discussion of Soviet atheism, noting how militant atheism comes to take on religious aspects of its own (referencing the works of Eliade in this respect). Thus, it can be seen that no matter how hard the atheist tries to escape the confines of religion, he will always end up promoting ideas that are religious in nature himself. (Such can also be seen in the development of modern scientism, where many "scientists" claiming to be atheists at the same time advocate ideas which are religious in nature.) The author notes the role of propaganda, illiteracy and atheist anti-intellectualism generally, and print propaganda. The author also notes the role of anticlerical propaganda (the book itself includes several illustrations from posters featuring various forms of anticlerical propaganda used by the League). In particular, priests were linked with kulaks and perceived to be parasites and exploiters living off the people (while in reality the communist elite managed to fully exploit the people and the peasants of whom the communists, including Marx himself, despised). Further, the regime sought the creation of a new Homo soveticus, a sort of Soviet Ubermensch, and included anti-religious propaganda in the creation of such a man. The League continued to desecrate churches, destroy icons (as well as issue particularly virulent propaganda against the use of icons, often maintaining that the kissing of icons was leading to an outbreak of syphilis), and replacing Orthodox rites, holidays, rituals, and theology by Soviet versions. Following this, the author turns his attention to the claims of Marxism regarding the demolishment of religion upon reaching socialism. The author maintains that while officially it was considered that religion would disappear when socialism was reached, that a conflict developed between those who sought to actively oppose religion and those who sought to allow the alleged natural development of socialism to take its course. The author notes for example how debates were staged between atheists and priests, and often when the ignorant atheist would lose to an educated priest in debate they would simply send the priest away to the camps. Following this, the author turns to the role of the League in Iaroslavl' and Pskov between 1925 and 1933. The author makes notes of the various conflicts between League, Party, and State, as well as the various bureaucratic developments within the League. The author also notes the role of the League within Bolshevik political culture, showing how Soviets attempted to replace religious activities with Soviet ones, such as the "canonization" of past revolutionaries or the preservation of Lenin's body. The author also notes the role of godlessness and the League with Soviet leaders including Josef Stalin. In addition, the author makes note of the role of cadres within the League and their importance for antireligion. Finally, the author discusses the "second coming" of the League and its revival in the mid-1930s. The book ends with an epilogue and conclusion tracing the role of the League among the Soviets.

This book provides an excellent historical study of the Soviet League of the Militant Godless and the crimes of that organization against the Russian churches. In particular, the Russian Orthodox Church bore the brunt of the brutality of militant atheism during the Soviet era. These crimes should be duly noted by all those who seek understanding of the horrors unleashed upon the world by the totalitarianisms of the Twentieth century. The role of godlessness in the creation of those totalitarian regimes is not to be under-estimated. May we never forget those religious who suffered at the hands of the "godless" in Soviet Russia.

I thought I would add my user name to this review and some anecdotal information.

Be warned, this volume reads like a doctoral thesis. Lots of facts and footnotes, but not much excitement. Daniel Peris presents a Soviet Union, great on sloganeering, but not much in the action department. This should be a warning to our leaders here in the U.S., you cannot attack a situation by creating a bureaucracy, one need only look at our so-called "war on drugs." But I digress. The author focuses solely on the Soviet regime's efforts to remove Russian Orthodoxy from the life of the typical Soviet peasant or worker. I would like to have known more on how this organization approached Islam and other non-Christian religions in the hinterlands. As we approach the millenium, U.S. society has managed to accomplish, what a Soviet bureaucracy couldn't, the eradication of religion from the public square. The difference being is that we, as a people, simply appealed to society's base insticts.

My mother and other family friends visited the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era. Their observation was that when an important family event occured it seemed important that the parents of a baby or bridal party visit the neighborhood or town monument to the great patriotic war. So the Soviet leadership just replaced religious icons with icons from their own history.

In closing this book should be in the library of anyone interested in the history of the Soviet Union.

Be warned, this volume reads like a doctoral thesis. Lots of facts and footnotes, but not much excitement. Daniel Peris presents a Soviet Union, great on sloganeering, but not much in the action department. This should be a warning to our leaders here in the U.S., you cannot attack a situation by creating a bureaucracy, one need only look at our so-called "war on drugs." But I digress. The author focuses solely on the Soviet regime's efforts to remove Russian Orthodoxy from the life of the typical Soviet peasant or worker. I would like to have known more on how this organization approached Islam and other non-Christian religions in the hinterlands. As we approach the millenium, U.S. society has managed to accomplish, what a Soviet bureacrcy couldn't, the eradication of religion from the public square. The difference being is that we, as a people, simply appealed to society's base insticts.