Europe Books

I loved this book! JC Villar is a wonderful writer; I felt as though I was right there with him to the extent that I could almost visualize some of the places he describes. He manages to impart a deep knowledge of the history and culture without being pedantic - he just casually slips it in. And his asides are hilarious! If you enjoy Bill Bryson, you'll love this book. Can't wait to read about more of JC Villar's travels and adventures.

The Seventh Wonder is part solid history book and part entertaining travel chronicle. This book details the author's expedition to rediscover the world's seven ancient wonders: the Colossus of Rhodes, the Tomb of King Mausolus, the Temple of Diana, the Statue of Zeus, The Great Pyramids, the Lighthouse of Pharos, and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The author took a three week vacation to locate and stand at the original locations of each of these ancient masterpieces. Though all but The Great Pyramids stood in forgotten ruin, the author's only regret at the end of his trip was that due to the war in Iraq he could not visit and verify the seventh wonder, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

The Seventh Wonder contained the perfect blend of background information about the purpose, construction, and stories surrounding each ancient wonder with the author's travel experiences while in Greece, Egypt, and Turkey. It's such a shame that structures that defined such hope, culture, and the life energy of so many peoples could crumble into disrepair, ruin, and the locations lost in time. Despite this, I think that an expedition to rediscover these sites would be an amazing journey. Until, I can book my own tour, The Seventh Wonder is a great alternative.

I actually went on the Egypt leg of the trip with the author, and I was pleasantly surprised at how well this book was written and how damn funny it is. Some of our misadventures on the trip made me so mad, the author and I did not speak for five years.

In any case, Juan mixes history with a generous slab of humor and sprinkles it liberally with his superb wit to produce a fantastic falafel of a travelogue. A few good stories were left out like the guy at the bazaar who begged us to buy two King Tut paperweights or his child would not get the kidney transplant. (feigned urgency is a common sales tactic). The GPS coordinates are a nice touch as are the cross references to relevant books to learn more about this topic or that.

This is certainly a book worth having just in case these seven wonders get blown to smithereens in the current WAR OF TERROR (oops, I mean war ON terror)... if things continue down the current path, we may never get to enjoy these wonders again. Oh well, it'll all be for a good cause. Like driving SUVs...

This is a thought provoking, educational, sacrilegious, hysterically funny, and practical travel guide. Or is it a study of historically significant architecture, the cultures that built it and the effect of those people and their construction on society thereafter, infused with GPS coordinates, cuisine commentary, bathroom humor and international pickup lines. I just finished reading the book twice in two days and cannot figure out if I was more entertained or enlightened. I'm motivated to trace the author's footsteps, avoid his pitfalls (literally), and capture the real life Indiana Jones experience of which the author wrote. Come to think about it, I did have that experience from my couch. The writing is first rate without being condescending. The book reads as fast and easy as a supermarket tabloid, which initially conceals the author's intelligence, the vast research that he must have done, and his knowledge of history. The author's fabulous sense of humor and insightful commentary on society and religion never make history books or travel guides, which therefore makes this book ultimately unclassifiable, with the exception of a great thought provoking book from which to simultaneously learn and laugh.

This is an engaging, well-written travel book. I loved all the details about the destinations,the history about the wonders and their links to contemporary society.

The research is superb and thorough; I loved the idea of including GPS coordinates.

I highly recomnend this book to travelers and history fans.

Every descriptive word is poured out with honesty and passion. The author's flare and supreme knowledge of the language allows the reader to relive his fascinating journey with tears of saddness and joy!

In the beginning of the book, the author gives us a marvelous glimpse of the world he knew and loved as a child. He makes us feel also the pain that he felt during the times when he witnessed his father's violent behavior heaped against his mother.
The details of the indoctrination of the Italian youth into the Fascist ideology should be an eye opener for all of us.
In addition, the author offers us a clear and painful look at the reality of war and its wretched consequences, and he does that skillfully, sometimes using humor to tone down the pain.
It is evident, however, that from the first chapter of the book to the last,the author considers his mother the true heroine of the book. Her faith, her inner-strength, her courage and her selfless attitude are beautifully manifested with filial devotion and sometimes with poetic flair.
Cione is an unknown name in the world of writing. I suggest that you buy "Sicily On My Mind", and when you finish reading it you will ask yourself: "Why not?"

Boy, does this guy know how to write!
It's like riding a roller coaster of intense emotions: the moving, the humorous, the dramatic, the poetic. The author's mother comes through as a remarkable human being, whose love, faith and compassion are vividly woven throughout the book in a remarkable fashion.
The sections about the author's indoctrination into Fascism and the painful events of the war, are also painted with vivid strokes worthy of a masterful painter.
Pick it up and read it. You'll love it!

I am a history buff and "Sicily On My Mind" offered me the opportunity to learn some insightful details about the indoctrination of the Italian youth under Fascism, as well as some painful aspects of W.W.II.
The author related his youthful experiences in Sicily, from puberty up to his 21st year of age with a delightful style which oftentimes reads like poetry.
Joseph Cione is a marvelous storyteller.Page after page, he kept my interest alive to a point that I could not put the book down.I read the entire book in one evening!
I hope there will be a sequel to it. Will the author write one? Pleeeease!

I live in Buenos Aires now, but I used live in Sicily during the same time that the author did.
I found the author's accounts of his life under Fascism and World War II accurate and fascinating.
The author's command of the language and writing style are outstanding, considering that English is not his native language. Cione has shown to be a remarkable storyteller.I hope he continues to write more books like this one.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn is an intersting figure,a moral giant ,Shakespearean in his essence, equalled only by John PaulII and Nelson mandela among recent historical personage. Shamefully,disgustingly ignored by the left, exploited,shamelessly co-opted by the right,cafeteria style[much like JPII} he stradles above both camps,like Gulliver among Lilliputians. This collection, beautifully done considers the whole of the Canon,from stories written in the 1930's ending with his recent prose-poems[which are quite lovely and distinctive} A Large portion of the book are excerpts from THE RED WHEEL, his Magnum Opus,of which only the first two volumes[called Knots by the author] have been translated into English. The Red Wheel has been chewed and spit out by critics,though I cannot see why. It is in the great Russian literay tradition, long and varied and narrative and lovely. The overwhelming Chapter from the Gulag ArchipelagoII,THE ASCENT, is here, as are his major novels, speeches{the Nobel, Harvard and templeton adresses are here}.An essential volume to understand no just the 20th century, but the hole which exists in our post-postmodern world.

The first time I read anything by Solzhenitsyn was when I was given the opportunity to see his Nobel Speech from 1970 and learn of some of the horrors he had seen just because he was a writer. That day he said many things, too, and of all the words he threw into the audience one thing stuck with me. This isn't to say that everything he said didn't hit like a hammer because it did, but one statement, one paragraph, truly redefined the edges of suffering and made me think about what the word writer really meant. While remarking on the Gulags he made the comment:
"A whole national literature remained there, cast into oblivion not only without a grave, but without even underclothes, naked, with a number tagged on to its toe. Russian literature did not cease for a moment, but from the outside it appeared a wasteland! Where a peaceful forest could have grown, there remained, after all the felling, two or three trees overlooked by chance."
This took me by surprise and, reading more and more of his work, I came to understand how close he tiptoed the edge of a potent razor.

In this compendium of work compiled by Erikson and Mahoney, even the most casual of readers will be given a glimpse into a world that they might not even know existed. It mixes the casual with the terrible, the happy with the sad, creating a loom upon which one can truly look into the heart of the writer and see that he is crafting truths. The Gulag Archipelago was perhaps the most amazing of the pieces here, although the Red Wheel and other mentioned pieces are also well worth mentioning. Also worth mentioning is the fact that this book was translated in part by his son, allowing him to keep intact many of the truths he wanted so much to tell, and that many of these words are words that have never been printed in English. This means that the worlds that many people have never seen before, those forged by iron and starvation and by the silence that comes from being crushed by a curtain cast in iron, are on display and should be read and reread because they have meaning.
They are more history than history in many parts and more revolution than most revolutionaries ever dream of becoming. As both an author and a person willing to face expulsion from his country and death by his countrymen he did what few would ever think of doing; he continued to write so that the suffering he saw would never be forgotten.

When I recommend this read, I recommend it on many levels. First, I think it has something to say and, secondly, it managed to touch me as it said it. This peaks volumes on the subject and on the way the author conveys the subject, taking my mind into places too horrible to be fanciful flights of even the most convincing horror writer. Third, it works as a historical medium, reminding us what freedom entails and where all the Russian forces of nature went when their pens fell silent. That, most of all, is a reason to read this: how many pens churned in what was once a forest simply to be silenced?
Powerful is just a word until you see it taking form.

I'm a newcomer to Solzhenitsyn's writings but after reading his One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, I was anxious for more. This Reader provides just the sampling I desired. It is not only valuable from the literary aspect but also from the historical. I gained insight regarding the Bolshevik Revolution, especially the dehumanizing effect of the Soviet regime under Lenin and Stalin. The effect on Solzhenitsyn of imprisonment in the labor camps is truly remarkable and spiritually edifying.

This set is a major step forward to the presentation and understanding of Solzhenitsyn to English speaking readers. It is a process that will still take years, but I suspect this volume will be pivotal.

In the early days, the writer's books were rushed into print with so-so or even poor translations because of their timelineness and importance. His exile to USA happened at the crest of his frame, but the political establishment was post-Watergate mediocority and the literary establishment not up to speed to help; we were not ready for him. Any great writer and/or polemicist is going to be controversial to somebody. And Solzhenitsyn's voice is a shrewd construct made of turning Soviet literary realism against itself, juiced up with a vocabulary simultaneously streetwise, grand, goading. Understand Russian or not, you really need hear him speak sometime. There is really no equivalent figure in English, modern or ancient, here or in Britain. You would have to conceive of Upton Sinclair as an experimental literary giant plus a man of subtle moral dimensions, then put him in the body of the old prize fighter John L. Sullivan, and finally put him on a soapbox with all the scary zeal of an early century 20 labor rabble rouser. The closest personal affinity Solzhenitsyn found in his own fiction (minus core belief, of course) was Lenin. Solzhenitsyn is the anti-Lenin. And even more. To our soundbite culture, he just looks crazy. We prefer our Rooskies to be chummy vodka drinkers with a wink in their eye, or comradely cosmonauts. In our own history we only produced such figures just before and during the civil war era. The experience scorched our national soul with fire for good and doubtless killed some brain cells; we want the benefit of being on the good side of such turbulence, but don't want to look into that well too deeply for those old issues anymore, whatever they may be. We cover the hallowed ground with platitude, and allow a black gospel singer to replicate the pitch for us on public occasion, then back to business. We in this nation are now so far into such denial as to risk a repeat along new fault lines. This sad and tragic process is known as history.

Professors Ericson and Mahoney have emerged in recent years as the key interpreters of the Solzhenitsyn cyclone for us, and let nobody convince you it is not a cyclone. Truth doesn't come easy; come here if you dare. If the headlines are old, the second fiery wind of artistic sophistication, fully schooled by the giants of literary modernism, is still to be experienced. For Solzhenitsyn resembles Tolstoy only in scope; in the great Russian tradition of literary engagement (unlike our consensus seeking) the game is to take such giants on, and Solzhenitsyn does on every level. Ericson and Mahoney here not only do an able job, but a superlative job of explication, choice, and presentation of the writer, fresh as if for the first time (in some sense it is). Each vital and core statement is here, many in new translations, plus new things from the entire career we haven't yet seen in English. Excerpts are made very well; the greater artistic treasures beyond this set are previewed. The volume works for both those coming new to the writer and those of us who have been following him for decades. I was especially gratified to find major doses of Cancer Ward, a great and dense modern novel wrestling with the nuclear core of what went haywire worldwide in century 20. Then Matryona's House -- is this the best story in any language for 200 years, or what? Yeah, Ivan Denisovich seems missing in action -- but that sui generis masterpiece has remained readily available everywhere at all times. Everybody now knows Ivan worldwide, as they also know the term GULAG. So Ivan does not require this volume, though oddly his creator still does.

The editors expand our understanding, but also set out verdicts in concise statement: "Solzhenitsyn is, in truth, a liberal conservative who wants to temper the one-sided modern preoccupation with individual freedom with a salutary reminder of the moral ends that ought to inform responsible human choice." The editors thus make the case that the writer is within, not without, the arena of modern political dialogue (ie., a liberal in the classic sense, not a traditionalist or nationalist). And within that dialogue, one bringing in the lessons of the past, not a mantra for endless "change" running clear off the tracks (like the "Red Wheel" of Soviet communism -- introduced metaphorically in filmic scenario as a burning wagon wheel broke loose early in August 1914). After a lot of misunderstandings still at large, then, it is both safe and sound to let Professors Ericson and Mahoney teach. Here is a writer worth inhabiting for your own lifetime, and may the wind be at your back -- you'll need it to stay ahead of the fire.

Expertly compiled and collaboratively co-edited by Edward E. Erickson, Jr. (Professor Emeritus of English, Calvin College) and Daniel J. Mahoney (Professor of Politics, Assumption College), "The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New And Essential Writings 1947-2005" is a compendium of the literary, philosophical, and political writings of Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn who was born on December 11, 1918 in Kislovodsk, Russia, underwent twenty years of involuntary exile in the West, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, returned to live in Moscow and continue writing his observations and commentaries about the social, ethical, and political issues of our time. Solzhenitsyn is a Nobel laureate whose writings spoke truth to power, whose courage against a totalitarian regime led to his exile from his native country, whose commitment to ethics marginalized him in the democracies of the west, and whose poetry, short stories, novels, essays, and speeches are as relevant today as they were over the past four decades of his controversial career. Reflecting and demonstrating his life's work to date, "The Solzhenitsyn Reader" is a seminal contribution to academic library collections and especially recommended reading for students of Political Science, Russian Studies, European History, and Russian Literature.

This is one of three books written by Aline Griffith Romanos about her adventures as a undercover spy during WW II in Spain. It is excellent! I first read the book 25 years ago, have read them all more than once, recommended all three books to many, and have heard only high praise for the series. They are fun, well written, and real page turners!

I have purchased 4 books by Aline Romanos. I absolutely love them. The fact that there is truth behind the story and that she really was an upper-class lady as well as a spy excites me. I find myself wishing I lived an adventurous life. She has a talent when it comes to recreating her life and exploits. I could not put it down!

Fascinating. My daughter is reading "The Spy Who Wore Red" and finds it fascinating as well.

I can only echo the words of the previous reviewers! Countess Aline's books (...Wore Red, ...Went Dancing - so far!) are compelling, and I was truly absorbed from beginning to end! When I finished the first, I couldn't wait to start the second - and now I'm impatient to get the third - "...Wore Silk" - from my sister! I had to keep reminding myself that she would NOT be killed, as she was alive to write these books! And her ability to manage the pertepual romantic current with no "smut" is impressive! Her description of "masculine hands," the brush of lips on her ear, or the mention of leg-to-leg contact during the tango says it all! But beyond that, she teaches so much about Spanish customs and culture, from the attraction of bull fighting to how on earth they manage the high combs and mantillas, to daily routine, meal times, siesta - she never stops. How can this remarkable strong female hero be of the same generation as my mother?

My mom first gave me this book to read back when I was in high school. I recently picked it up again at the library to take with me on vacation - and was once again drawn into this amazing - and real life - mystery. In fact, I enjoyed the book so much I almost didn't want to leave my hotel room until I finished it (which didn't make my brothers too happy)! Aline weaves mystery and international intrigue with a jet-setting lifestyle as she hob-nobs with the likes of Liz Taylor and Audrey Hepburn while trying to solve a mystery that's haunted her for 20 years! I'm just starting her next book, "The Spy Wore Silk" and reccommend that anyone who loves a good mystery (and don't we all?) should check out Aline's books. They're absolutely addictive, and, in this case, that's a good thing.

Reading this book gives one insight not only on Stalin but also on the political system that he constructed around his personality. Its effects are still being felt in today's Russia--much of Stalin's struggle with his identity and place in the world was and still is mirrored by the Russian state itself. Tucker is a masterful storyteller; one comes away with a great sense of both the historical moment and the political weight of the subject matter. This book should still be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the Russian political system.

Tucker's careful storytelling hews to historical facts and grippingly narrates Stalin's creeping domination of the Soviet idea. This book is complete. A must read for all interested in recent Russian history.

This is an excellent biography of Stalin, the middle book in a proposed trilogy. Tucker weaves events in the Soviet Union around the twisted, paranoid personality of Joseph Stalin, former seminary student. What I found to be the most intriguing was how every time Stalin changed his mind about something, everyone had to fall in line or risk being labeled a "wrecker" or "counter-revolutionary." Stalin was not particularly brilliant, and he was not Lenin's choice as a successor, but he had a genius for bureacratic maneuvering that put him in the powerful position that he held for years. For all his paranoia and all the damage he did to Russia, it is amazing that someone didn't actually knock him off. It is a chilling reflection on how obsequious even the best of us can be when motivated by fear.

Over the years, I have read a number of books on Stalin, some good and some awful and I am convinced that this book, along with Professor Tucker's other work, "Stalin as a Revolutionary" is the best work on this subject (Adam Ulam's work would be the best one volume study of Stalin).

What sets this book apart from the others is Tucker's first rate understanding of Stalin and the world in which he operated. Only someone as stubborn as Stalin could have imagined he was creating paradise on earth while at the same establishing one of the most hellish regime's in world history and Tucker captures him in all of his evil. Even though he is a widely respected actademic, Tucker writes in such a way as to make this 20th century monster understandable to expert and beginner alike.

The only complaint that I have is that Tucker has yet to follow through with the next part of Stalin's career. It seems to be truism of late that no one can complete a multi-volume work on one of the leaders of World War II. Kenneth Davis was unsuccessful in his magnificent FDR biography as was William Manchester in his attempt to capture Churchill in his series of books on the great prime minister. I am only hoping that wealth of material that has become available with the fall of communism and the Soviet Union does not hamper Professor Tucker's efforts.

Neither Stalin, the collectivization crisis, nor the terror suffer from a dearth of good and serious studies. Yet despite the crowded field, Tucker's "Stalin in Power" is by far the best treatment of all three complex events. No other book sets out as credible, well-researched and well considered a theory of the workings of Stalin's mind. The great challenge presented by the Soviet thirties is the comprehension of the real logic behind what appears from the outside as mass irrationality. Most writers' personal models of depth and social psychology are inadequate to the task. Tucker succeeds, by a significant margin.

while this is clearly based on true experience, it is hard to believe that such a professional account was written by jan karski himself. marvelous as it is, it is also a piece of propaganda for the polish government in exile. is there any information out there about a possible ghost writer or 'collaborator'?

In Story of a Secret State, Jan Karski recounts his work with the Polish Underground during WWII. The book was fascinating overall, though I found a few short sections to be overly detailed and a bit dry. Impressively, Jan speaks of his own heroic actions without sounding boastful. I especially enjoyed the his depiction of all the brave people who helped him carry out his work. Karski's account of his visits to the Warsaw ghetto and the death camp surely benefitted from his precise description, making the events horrifically real. I highly recommend this book to all.

This book was assigned for a graduate course I took in Eastern European history; I couldn't believe that any required reading could be so exciting. It is the true story of Jan Karski's experience as a messenger for the Polish underground, and it doesn't include a dull page. Karski completed several missions, was captured by the Germans, and escaped. The leaders of Poland's Jewish community, knowing that Karski was going to the West, arranged for him to disguise himself as a guard in a death camp so that he could witness the atrocities. He not only went and included his horrifying experiences in this book, he personally reported what he saw to president Roosevelt and other prominent Americans. Karski knew that the West was betraying Poland and, as a last ditch effort to influence Western policy, he wrote and published this book in 1944. It was a best seller and, I believe, a Book-of-the-month club selection. So much for not knowing about what Hitler was doing to the Jews! Do read this amazing story and, to get the full background, read the book "Karksi, How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust," by E. Thomas Wood.

This book belongs on everybody's short list of Polish and East European history. Jan Karski was a truly heroic man and is story is told in plain, straightforward langauge as the story of one man who took enormous risks to tell the story of the Holocaust. A necessary corrective to much of the polemic on the complex issue of Poles and the Nazi occupation. Not to be missed. This is the second anniversary of his death here in Washington.

Jan Karski's trip to England and the US, which warned the Allies of the Holocaust in progress, is well known. However, Karski is often incorrectly thought of as some sort of unusual moral giant who tried to save the Jews all on his own. In fact, as this book makes clear, his heroic trip was planned, ordered, and performed in the context of his active, multifaceted involvement in the Polish Underground. For example, Karski's visit to the Belzec death camp was facilitated by a rendezvous on the nearby property of a Polish farmer who was also a member of the Underground (p. 340).

Karski was involved in the defense of Poland from the first hours of WWII. A few authors (e. g. Alfred-Maurice de Zayas) have tried to deny the existence of a German fifth column during the German-Soviet conquest of Poland (September-October 1939). In actuality, Karski's very unit came under fire from members of this fifth column (p. 8). The attackers were Polish citizens of German descent.

Karski ended up in Soviet and then German captivity. He repeatedly writes of the unbelievable barbarity of both conquerors. While in a Gestapo prison, Karski slashed his wrists in an unsuccessful suicide attempt. He had feared that he might break down under the incessant torture and betray his confidants in the Polish Underground. Karski was freed by a daring commando attack by the Underground combined with a well-placed bribe of a German guard.

Karski elaborates on the forced Germanization of Poznan (pp. 78-82), something attempted unsuccessfully before under Frederick the Great and then Bismarck. The Poles were brutally expelled. Very few of the remaining Poles chose to register as Germans and thus become Volksdeutsche.

Karski (p. 132) succinctly summarizes the attitude of almost all full-blooded Poles to the Nazis: "The German occupation was never recognized by the Polish people, and there could be no doubt on this score because, in Poland alone of all the occupied countries, there never appeared anything resembling a legal or pseudo-legal body composed of Poles and collaborating with the Germans. Indeed, in all of Poland, not a single political office in the German-controlled administration was ever held by a Pole; not a single head of any province was Polish".

Jan Thomas Gross has insinuated that Poles had no Quisling because the Germans did not want any Polish Quisling. Jan Karski's personal experience with the Germans adds to the refutation to Gross' silly claim. While a captive of the dreaded Gestapo, Karski was personally approached by a high-ranking SS man (pp. 155-163) who tried to induce him to become a Polish Quisling. The SS-man promised him relief from torture, and then appealed to the hopelessness of the Polish cause and the certainty of German victory in the wake of the fall of France and the seemingly-incipient peace treaty with England. The SS-man also cited the sensibleness of all the other nations that had formed collaborationist governments under German rule and said that Poles should also, for once, come to their senses and do the same. Karski refused.

Karski visited Nazi Germany itself. He reports (p. 217) never encountering any sign of German opposition to the Nazi rule. (Of course, some developed later as Germany began to lose one battle after another, and the attempt was made to assassinate Hitler in order to save Germany's skin from increasingly certain defeat).

A certain amount of detail is given to Karski's visits with British and American leaders. It is a shame that Roosevelt made such supportive statements about Poland while, behind Karski's back, he was already selling out the Poles to the Soviet Union.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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