4 comments about Lincoln's Other White House: The Untold Story of the Man and His Presidency.

1. The author has done a wonderful job showing what a real human being that Lincoln was. A friend of mine borrowed my book and liked it so well that
   she went out and immediately bought 5 more to give as Christmas presents. It is just the right size for a gift book and so well written anyone will be proud to own it. I have also bought 6 more copies to give all my family for Christmas. Everyone should read it, everyone will enjoy it. written by Malcolm Kelly, a Kentuckian proud or both Mr and Mrs Lincoln who were born in this state.



2. I especially enjoyed the fresh approach to Lincoln and to his wife Mary Todd, who comes across in this new book as an elegant, urbane, and gracious `Republican Queen.' The account of the Lincolns' marriage and their home life at the White House and the Soldiers' Home, from observers such as the Union Army soldiers who guarded him for three years, is fascinating. The book is based on extensive research and is enriched by fresh anecdotes about Lincoln, by Whitman's and abolitionist Longfellow's poetry, and letters and memoirs of the diverse personalities with whom Lincoln interacted, particularly his generals and cabinet members.



3. I have read a number of books on the Civil War in Washington...Fine as those books are, they do not accomplish two things that are splendid contributions of your book on the weekend home that the Lincolns made of their cottage at the Soldiers' Home.
   
   First, we often forget the huge personal burden that the war place on Lincoln and his belief, strong in the summer of 1864, that he would be defeated in the next election and that the gains in the war would slip back into Southern control. We can see in your book how his days and nights in the cottage helped Lincoln to hold on to and expand what he had until victory in the 1864 election was assured.
   
   The other is the loving relationship of the President with his wife, Mary Lincoln. We often hear of her oddities and running up of debts. What we do not hear of, and what admirably is stressed in your book, is what you describe as "the mutual affection and mutual dependence" that always linked them despite their great differences in character. Respect for Mary Lincoln, and her contributions to the greatness of Abraham Lincoln, is something we could use more of in writing American history.
   
   I will not go on expect to say that I think I have already indicated the greatness of your book, and my hope that librarians and readers everywhere will have an opportunity to benefit from its revelations and the new light it brings on the life of one of our very greatest Presidents.



4. It must be difficult-given the plethora of books on Lincoln-to shed new light on an old subject. However, Elizabeth Brownstein does. Through careful and thorough research, Ms. Brownstein addresses issues hitherto unexplored. Lincoln's summer home...provides a suitable setting to describe Lincoln's activities outside the White House. One learns, for instance, that the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation was completed here. One also learns that, far from being a retreat from the hustle and bustle of Pennsylvania Avenue, the home facilitated Lincoln's open-mindedness about receiving virtual strangers at virtually any hour of the day or night and resulted in serious sleep deprivation.
   
   However, it was in the other topics addressed in the book that Lincoln's character is at its most illuminating. His fascination with weaponry, his patience in his dealings with his wife, and his ability to establish collegial relationship with people of vastly differing temperaments are all thoughtfully explored...The characters highlighted are dispassionately analyzed in such a way as to enable the reader to be part of the scene at all times. For instance, Lincoln's wife, so often pilloried...is given a fair hearing and is properly depicted as a courageous soul confronted by agonizing choices and exaggerated expectations of the First Lady's performance as a suitable consort of the most admired President in American History...Mrs. Brownstein provides a valuable service for readers interested in the less dramatic, but no less insightful, clues about Lincoln the President, confronted, as he was, by the unprecedented challenges associated with his era.

4 comments about The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel: Chief of the German High Commmand, 1938-1945.

1. Of all Hitler's generals, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel is arguably the most villified. Nicknamed "Lackeitel" (Keitel the Lackey) and "The Nodding Jack*ss", the Chief of Nazi Germany's Armed Forces High Command has been dismissed by both his contemporaries and historical critics as a servile, desk-bound, paper-pushing non-entity, professionally incompetent and morally weak, whose bumbling and sycophancy noticibly hobbled the Reich's war effort. Albert Speer described him coldly as "one who blindly and without dignity echoes his master's opinion", and Hitler himself, while admitting Keitel was "loyal as a dog", treated him very much like a dog, once mocking him for not understanding the differences between a field piece and an anti-tank gun - "And he's a general of Artillery!"
   
   A description can be accurate without telling the whole story, in his memiors, penned while he was awaiting execution at Nuremberg, Keitel - who was fully aware of how he was percieved by both "friend" and foe alike - tried very hard to tell his side of the story. For that reason alone, aside from its obvious historical value, this book is worth reading.
   
   Keitel was selected by Hitler in 1938 to head up the Oberkommado der Wehrmacht, in theory a military bureau designed to take over the functions of the Minister of War (a post Hitler abolished to increase his control over the Armed Forces) and to serve as Hitler's military staff, but in actuality a body created soley to undercut the power of the OKH, the Army High Command. As its leader, Keitel therefore found himself known as "Hitler's man" in the Army and incurred the appropriate wrath of his former comrades. Unfortunately, Keitel also bore the brunt of Hitler's animosty towards the Army, so much so that he nicknamed himself "the Fuehrer's lightning rod." His principal role throughout the war was as an executive agent of Hitler's will, administrator of a huge staff apparatus, and the duties of a personal secretary and government minister. In those tasks he performed quite well, bringing the qualities of obedience, diligence, and hard work to a table that was overflowing with work from day one. Fully cognizant that his position was merely a tool of Hitler's power aspirations, he referred to the OKW as an "abortion of an office" and made it clear that he would have been much happier somewhere else - anywhere else, but that Hitler refused to either let him resign or take any of his advice. So perhaps Keitel was not so much a lackey himself as merely occupying the job description of one.
   
   Keitel's MEMIORS are various in objective. He wanted to tell the story of the years 1938 - 1945 from his own perspective, to defend his personal reputation against criticisms which were dogging him even at Nuremburg, and he wanted to answer the moral charges leveled against him at his trial. It is in the last two capacities that the book is most interesting; Keitel has some interesting criticisms of his own to throw around, most notably of Hitler, whose autocratic-but-chaotic command style, unstable personality and lust for power made him a truly difficult man to work for; and of the Allies, whose prosecution of Keitel (as well as the other Nuremburg defendants) was tainted by a hypocrisy and self-righteousness Keitel exposes in some detail.
   
   MEMIORS is obviously not a perfect book. Keitel wrote it on death row, with the clock literally ticking in his ears, and was operating mainly from memory; furthermore, editor Walther Goerlitz (THE GERMAN GENERAL STAFF) took it upon himself to edit Keitel's person reminiscences wherever he found them, something I found very annoying, as were the footnotes which argued with Keitel's assertions - footnotes are for facts; the editor's personal opinions need to be handled in a forward. This aside, I found it an entertaining and valuable read, one that provided "a view from Hitler's elbow" and gave a man who would rather have been a farmer than a soldier a chance to speak his mind before it was snuffed out by the hangman's noose.



2. Granted, Keitel was not the most gifted German Field Marshal in the German Army, yet he held his job until the very end. There are several reasons for this; the first being of course his blind obedience to Hitler. However, Keitel was not the only German officer to fall completely under Hitler spell. Secondly, whatever his faults, he was a capable administrator who managed for Hitler the vast amounts of paperwork, the OKM was bound to receive from all three branches of the military, in addition to other branches of the Third Reich.

   His was a thankless job which in the end reduced a man who had once been a respected officer in the Army to a defeated man who was left to answer for his master crimes. Keitel, in his defence makes one excellent point, he argues that if so many within the Armed Forces hated him or believed that he should be replaced, why didn't anyone force him to go? These officers did nothing, because no one else wanted his thankless job, because they all saw what it did to Keitel. At Nuremburg, Keitel was sentenced to death by hanging; a fate which Keitel knew awaited him as soon as he was informed of the trial. The fate that Keitel did not attempt suicide to escape the trial shows us that in the end, Keitel was an honorable man whose only crime was to let himself fall totally under the spell of a Hitler.

   The book itself only rates 3 stars because as someone has mentioned in a previous review, the editors of this book have taken it upon themselves to decide what to keep and what to edit out. A total lack of any photographs adds to the less than perfect rating. All in all however, this was an interesting book which allowed us a glimpse into the mind of Field Marshal Keitel.




3. I believe few people would not read this book without more or less a kind of admiration for the author for his unique strong nerve, because without strong belief and strong nerve system, knowing any moment death would be at his door, he would not have put not only his personal history but also a whole nation's history into the account in such an accurate and crystal way within such short period-only six weeks.
   The power of this extraordinary book lies in that the author as an exclusive high rank of a Field Marshal of German armed forces, the Chief of Staff to the High Command of Armed Forces, who working inside the German headquarters, who having participated all the enginering of military plans, has provided rare and valuable historical materials and revealed the truth of the inside the Third Reich, contributing to the establishing the truth of history from the other side, although they are certainly not welcome by the current official establishment account of the history. I wish people read this book with a wide open mind.

   According to the Marshal, the invasion of Poland was to retake the territory that originally belonged to Germany; while the invation of the Soviet Union belonged to a preventive war (which has been confirmed by Soviet historians after more than forty years later). From the point of view of the Marshal, before invasion of Poland, Germany had tried hard to resolve the problem by negotiation, and they provided pretty fair offer to both Poland and France: Germany Government even publicly disavowed his interest in Alsce-Lorraine which, I believe few people know that before Louis XVI was part of Prussia. The Marshal has revealed some truth of the history which I believe have never been known to the public for some political reason. For instance, the Marshal has given justification about the famous commissar order and commando order in the east front, he pointed out that because the Soviet arbitrary refusal either to recognize the Hague Rules on Land Warfare or to consider themselves bound by the Geneva conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war, and due to the illegal partisan warfare occurred in the east front which was openly encouraged by Britain and the Soviet Union, so that the war with Soviets was a war fighting for survival, and Hitler demanded that German should dispense with all their outdated and traditional ideas about chivalry and the generally accepted rules of warfare, and smash terror with counter-terror. Another fact the Marshal revealed is the chivalry act German shown in their offering Greek honorable settlement in recognition of their brave struggle and of their blamelessness for the war: Hitler ordered the release and repatriation of all their prisoners of war immediately they had been disarmed; the poor countryside was to be preserved and the country's production was not to be touched except where it might be used to aid the British. And Hitler wanted the troops' victorious entry into Athens without a special parade in order to avoid injuring Greek national pride. The Marshal has cleared the true nature of the Conference that had took place in 1937 which Allied exaggerated its importance at the Nuremberg Trail, the Marshal argued that on the contrary to what Allied asserted, there was no Otto contingency plan, no Green or Red contingencies, but only the most tenuous defense of German frontiers to the east and to the west and preparations of the evacuation of the endangered frontier area to the west of the Rhine and the east of the Oder. Based on the Marshal, unlike what the Nuremberg imposed on German, the fact was that Germany had no any plan to wage a war against the Allied when Germany invaded Poland, because Hitler was strongly confident that the Allied would not intervene the matter which was a pure German domestic affair; the Marshal pointed out that at the time when the war broke out not only German Navy was in an infancy stage compared with the British mighty Royal Navy, but also German Army and German Air Force were in a weak shape: There were only 23 army division, while opposing them were 110 British and French divisions! The Marshall revealed the true reason of why German army halted before Dunkirk : Unlike all the accounts prevails in the current history, Keitel states it was not Hitler who should be responsibility for it but the generals who did not have guts to accept responsibility for it themselves if the operation failed due to the disadvantageous terrain which was with an extensive low-lying plain, intersected by thousands of waterways and all well below sea-level where the Kleist's Tank Army standing near by.

   I should say that after reading the whole book nobody who has a slight sense of military virtue would deny that the Field-Marshal should not be regarded as war criminal but a loyal and patriot soldier for his country; that nobody who has heart would be indifferent to the dignity and noble act the Marshal shown in the Trial by fighting not for his own skin but for Germany, by shouldering the whole responsibility to shield German armed forces, would be unmoved by the touching letters the Marshal wrote to his defense counsel and the Allied Control Council for Germany to request a soldier's death, to face firing squad, instead of being hanged; that anyone who has a little knowledge of the international law, especially of one of the western world's fundamental legal doctrines: Nulla Poena Sine Lege-No punishment without a penal law in force at the time of the commission of the act, would come to the conclusion that the Field-Marshal should be acquitted and the trial for him is unjust.

   I'd like to draw readers much attention to the last chapter written by Walter Goblets who like many politicians, high rank of military personalities, diplomats all around the world bravely and sharply criticize the Nuremberg Trial as a travesty on justice based on international law, shedding new lights on history, and arousing people to deeply contemplate. On this subject, I also recommend the book Nuremberg: A Nation on Trial and the book Doenitz at Nuremberg: A Re-Appraisal.




4. Granted, Field Marshal Keitel was a rather pathetic and hollow man, but even a man such as he did not deserve to see is memoirs so badly taken care of by a bad publishing company and a clueless editor. Let's start from the beginning, my first problem is with the binding of the book : it's cheap very cheap... Next, there's not a single personal picture (I'm amazed the publisher didn't bother to print some considering how there is such a huge number of pictures of the man and of the period...). The price is also much to high if you compare it with other memoirs of the period, also the book quality and it's size doesn't justify such a high fee.

   On to the editing job it's the worst, any serious scholar or historian will tell you that the most interesting thing about memoirs is the fact that they are direct sources of information on a given period, as long as they remain integral. Sadly, the editor didn't see it that way and every time Keitel tried to talk about something other than army administration to express himself about more personal subjects it was edited out of the book! Also all the beginning of the memoirs from year 1934 to 37 were cut from this edition... It's not like the book would have been to big or anything! (It's actually rather small...) The only positive thing is the addition of some personnal letters which weren't present in the german original version.

   On to the content of the memoirs. The botched editing gives for a rather ironic result. Imagine a man like Keitel, a fair administrator a very obedient soldier but a rather weak and empty fellow whom Hitler pushed around and forbade to express any personnal feelings all is life. Now that he finally decided to speak and try to express is own feelings, thoughts and emotion on something which ultimately resulted in the death of millions, including is own at the hand of Nuremberg's hangman; it is the editor who decided to cut him off...

   In case you didn't get the point yet, stick to the german version, it's much more rewarding for any serious reader unless you're only interested in hearing Keitel ramble on an on about the different aspects of the OKW organisation and being edited out every time he goes out of line (that should be enough to put anybody to sleep...)

5 comments about A Son of Thunder: Patrick Henry and the American Republic.

1. A must read for anyone interested in Henry and the time period.
   
   It does go easy on Henry with his battles with Jefferson.



2. ......he was a fictional character. A couple of years ago, I had this book on my desk, and a Nurse tried to argue with me to the effect that "Patrick Henry wasn't real". Poor soul, I never did convince her...Even if you accept that he was real, all you probably know is an eight second sound bite from an 8-10 minute speech. There was a LOT more to Mr. Henry than that.
   
   This was no enigmatic Tom Jefferson or glacially distant George Washington; Henry was the nicest, and most personable of men. What you saw was what you got. Oh, he was tough in the courtroom, and in legislative debate, but he was, in most ways, an ordinary man supporting his [large] family with an extraordinary talent. He had his troubles: the initial failures at running a tavern drove him to the law [Who were the three signers of his law license? That's still debated]...his first wife's long mental illness, and eventual death just as The Revolution was starting would have taxed any man. But, Henry had a mission, and kept going.
   
   At the time of "Liberty or Death", Patrick Henry had been a prominent legislator for ten years. Remember the "Stamp Act"?...And, before that, the "Parson's Cause", our first important court case on religious liberty? And after the famous speech...first elected Governor of Virginia...Militia Colonel...bitter opponent of ratification of the US Constitution...father [along with George Mason] of the "Bill of Rights". His ratification debates with John Marshall are the stuff of legend. Though Henry and Marshall were opponents, they remained friends, and law partners.[The famous Randolph murder case] Both were surpassingly nice guys. Henry was the father-in-law of Marshall's opponent, and enemy, Judge Spencer Roane. Marshall was so nice that his enemies liked him: Roane was so acidly unpleasant that even his friends couldn't stand him.
   
   Henry had but one real enemy, and that was his political ally, Mr. Jefferson. The circumstances go back to the aftermath of Jefferson's unhappy time as Governor. The story is beyond this review, but was probably a misunderstanding. These are the two men largely responsible for our own freedom of religion; very different men. Henry was a lifelong devout Christian, and loyal Anglican, the nephew of a Priest, the son of a Vestryman. But, he always supported liberty. He was taught toleration early by his "dissenter" mother. [Dissenter doesn't mean athiest: in Mrs. Henry's case, it means Presbyterian: in some cases, Baptist. Methodists weren't dissenters; they were considered a branch of the Anglicans].The "Parsons Cause" was far from his only court case on the matter. When Baptist minister John Weatherford was jailed in Chesterfield County, near where I live, for preaching the Gospel, Henry got him out of the charges, and quietly paid his costs.[Weatherford didn't find out till later who had paid his fines]. Baptists telling this story will usually leave out the fact that an Episcopalian lawyer got Weatherford out of the mess...Episcopalians leave out Weatherford's name...From me, you get both. Though Mr. Jefferson wrote the "Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom", Patrick Henry laid much of the practical foundation.
   
   On a personal note, I am honored to be, occasionally, one of the actors who regularly present a reenactment of The Second Virginia Convention of March 23, 1775 at St. John's Episcopal Church in Richmond. Yes, the original site is still an active Church. I'm not Mr. Henry, I'm either John Tazewell, or Thomas Nelson, jr. Should you ever get a chance to see either Mike Wells or Kevin McGranahan play Patrick Henry, take it. Different men, different renditions, both superb. Which do I prefer? Of course I don't dare say, since both are friends, who might read this. The honest answer is I don't know. My wife prefers one, my son and daughter the other, but I prefer both. This fine book is sold in the gift shop at St. Johns, and at Scotchtown, Henry's home in Hanover County. It is well written, and comprehensive. It is, sadly, the only academic biography of Mr. Henry we have in print. Robert Douthat Meade, famed as biographer of Judah P. Benjamin, wrote a wonderful two volume biography of Mr. Henry, published in 1957, and in 1969. Good luck finding it. But, even if you have Dr. Meade's [I do, signed; I won't tell where I got it, but it set me back $55], I can recommend this volume strongly. It's time you knew...



3. Before moving to Virginia I, like many Americans, only knew Patrick Henry for his famous sound-bite, "...give me liberty or give me death." This well-written book has helped open my eyes to the depth of Patrick Henry and the significance of his contribution to American life. Consider his accomplishments: self-made attorney, elected several times to the Virginia House of Burgesses, elected to serve in the first Continental Congress, colonel in the pre-Revolutionary Virginia militia and three-term Virginia governor. He did all of this before he was 45 years old. He was a successful farmer and land speculator. He was a faithful sponsor of religious freedoms and political rights. Once our independence was established, he fought for a 'bill of rights' to protect us from the federal government. We owe a lot to Mr. Henry and, curiously, most people barely know his name.



4. 
   
   I enjoy history. I enjoy reading about the history of The United States, and the history of the world. While earning a BS in Physics I took almost enough history credits to get a BA in History. Through all the history I've read Patrick Henry seemed to be a supporting actor in the creation of the US.
   
   Last year my family and I went to Colonial Williamsburg. For one of the events Richard Schumann acts as Patrick Henry. Mr. Schumann stands out under an Oak tree. He greets the audience, informs them of the events of the day (in 1776) and then takes questions from people. I was so fascinated and so enjoyed this the first day I went, that I went every day I could for the rest of the week, and when recently we flew back to the East Coast to see Washington DC and Colonial Williamsburg, I went again.
   
   In response to some questions, Richard Schumann as Patrick Henry will "speculate" on the future. I asked if he thought there would be any good biographies written on him. As a typical Patrick Henry speech, he responded with a five to seven minute answer. He talked about the first biography written, about 30 years after Patrick Henry died, and gave the background on a number of other biographies written over the last 200 years. Finally he recommended "A Son of Thunder" by Henry Mayer.
   
   This is a well written book. It is informative and engaging.
   
   The book moves chronologically through Patrick's life. It starts with his ancestors, focusing on his parents. We learn of some of the major events in his childhood. As a child Patrick Henry was pretty easy going and had little drive. One he got married Patrick Henry finally grew up and started studying to become a lawyer.
   
   Patrick joined Virginian politics and led a major change. For decades politics were run by the Virginian aristocracy. Patrick worked with the common men. He supported them, and they supported him.
   
   Patrick is known for his ways with the spoken word. He was very gifted. The book gives some insight into how he developed this gift. As a lawyer he lost few cases. In fact after he beat Thomas Jefferson in a case, Thomas Jefferson gave up law.
   
   Patrick Henry was very influential in the creation of the United States. The first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, are largely due to Patrick Henry forcing James Madison to commit to supporting them.
   
   The book shows that Patrick Henry was a good man. He had a few flaws, but Patrick Henry rates high in my mind for making the effort to make a difference.
   
   This is a good book to read. If you have any interest in the creation of The United States of American, this book is worth reading.



5. Few biographies manage to avoid the perils of the genre, and this one is no exception. Mayer celebrates his subject, misunderstanding Henry as a fore-bearer of Jacksonian democracy and failing adequately to appreciate Henry's conservative commitment to social hierarchy, genteel leadership, and religious establishment. As a consequence, Mayer cannot convincingly explain Henry's espousal of Federalist politics in the 1790s, which makes sense only if we abandon any lingering neo-Whiggish inclination to find in Henry a self-conscious commitment to democracy.

   There have been numerous other biographies of Patrick Henry. I would still recommend Moses Coit Tyler's 1887 PATRICK HENRY, which was reprinted by Chelsea House in 1980 with an introduction by Lance Banning. William Wirt Henry's three volume PATRICK HENRY, LIFE, CORRESPONDENCES, AND SPEECHES (originally published in 1891 but recently republished) should be used with care, since W.W. Henry incorrectly attributes a number of letters and other sources to Patrick Henry which more recent scholarship has established were written by others. Richard Beeman wrote a good analytic biography, PATRICK HENRY: A BIOGRAPHY, in 1974, which provides an excellent brief introduction to Henry's politics. The most comprehensive modern scholarly biography remains Robert Meade's two volume master-work, PATRICK HENRY (1959, 1967).

   Mayer's prose is far more sprightly than Meade's, but Meade provides the more balanced and judicious treatment, and Meade's documentation of his conclusions is much superior. While Mayer updates Meade and Beeman in a number of places, his work does not supercede theirs, and should be read in conjunction with the earlier scholarship. Mayer's is a good book, especially as an introduction to a general audience. It is not, however, a work of historical biographical scholarship in the same class as, say, Drew Gilpen Faust's biography of James Henry Hammond, nor is it researched with the same meticulous care as Meade's account of Henry.

5 comments about Tito and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia.

1. The reader from Zagreb already pointed out some of the many factual errors and erroneous conclusions which this book is rife with. The author seems especially error-prone when straying away from Tito himself to attempt making larger conclusions about the events in the region and their sources and consequences.

   Instead of picking on little details, I'll just make some helpful recommendations.

   If you want insight into Tito and the wartime Partisans, read Milovan Djilas's "Wartime" and Fitzroy McLean's "Eastern Approaches".

   For some further (less flattering) insight into Tito postwar, read Ion Mihai Pacepa's "Red Horizons", which is mostly about Rumania and Causescu, but mentions Tito several times, speaking in some detail about the relationship between the two dictators.

   If you want insight into the true Serbian role in WW2, read the excellent "Sebia's secret war" by Philip J. Cohen. The facts are readily available, they've just been obscured by the long-discredited postwar propaganda that the author chooses to repeat in this book, for reasons known only to him.

   If you want to know about the massive bloody payback that was extracted right after WW2 for the crimes the Ustasha commited during the war, against both them and anyone else implicated by proxy (and just for not being zealous enough politically), read "Operation Slaughterhouse" by Guldescu and Prcela. It's difficult to find, and is a large volume, but if you really want to know, try to find a copy.

   If you want to really know how the wars in the former Yugoslavia started, read Laura Silber and Allan Little's excellent "Yugoslavia: Death of a nation". And no, you won't find old-fashioned platitudes about religion and "all of them being savages, so what can we do?" in there.

   I can see from some of the other reviews here that this book has already done damage. But if you are really curious about the region and it's history, read the above volumes, and you'll certainly be far better informed than this sadly deficient volume can provide.

   Sadly, the author seems keen on repeating old and tired cliches about the region, dating from WW1 (and that weren't particularly true even then), and his thin attempts at excusing the role of the Serbs in the recent wars with moral relativism are almost upsetting (knowing less informed readers might believe such conclusions). After all, if everyone started extracting payback for historical wrongs, we'd be left with a planet of blind people. Such arguments are no excuse, even with the over-inflated claims the author makes about WW2 war crimes, while ignoring the true extent of the crimes of the Chetniks (and their habitual and consistent cooperation with Nazis and Italian Fascists).

   As for his claims about Bosnian "fundamentalism", well, he's clearly never actually met a Bosnian Muslim. Or at least, not before the wars, which understandably somewhat tipped people there in a unfortunate direction. Without a shadow of a doubt, no Bosnian would have tolerated Wahhabi vermin among their midst before the horrors of the recent war there. Trying to project minority postwar attitudes backwards is very ill-informed, and just plain wrong.

   The author also mentions postwar Ustasha terrorist acts, however, he absurdly seems to think that problem was not dealt with in-country. In fact, it's well known (among those of us with a clue, at any rate), that all Ustasha attempts at postwar infiltration were met with failure and shooting deaths of the participants. Also, agents of the infamous UDBA (Yugoslav secret police) were famous for hunting down both Ustashe and other dissidents worldwide and assasinating them. This is well known. It puzzles me how the author was unaware of the extent of such activities by Tito's secret police.

   All that said, I can agree with the conclusion that Tito was the most benevolent of the recent dictators, and he truly did make Yugoslavia a world player while he was in charge. No small achievement, there. Also, the standard of living and personal freedoms (while certainly not maching, say, those of the United States), were better than in all other communist countries. Then again, that was at the expense of massive debts, that had to be paid eventually. But, it was fun while it lasted.

   Either way, don't waste time with this volume. Read the others I mentioned if you want true insight.




2. Richard West's book on Tito is more than anything, a study of the relationships among the inhabitants of eastern europe rather than a biography. Nevertheless, the book is well written, informative and at many times entertaining. It is crucial to understand the history of the area known to many as the powder keg of europe in order to learn about Tito. West does a good job of depicting the complicated relation between not only Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, etc. but even more importantly - the Muslims, Catholics, Christians, etc. I am glad that West was so staunch in his disapproval of the Ustasha - whose methods repulsed even the Nazis. However, he seems to be one-sided in the sense that Serb extremist atrocities are rarely mentioned and not as detailed. The struggles of Eastern Europes does not have good or bad guys. Both Serb and Croat extremists have performed horrendous acts on their own people and will have to look back on their history with deep sorrow and regret. To be fair, both sides have also had many strong character leaders attempt to end the violence. Many of which paid with their lives. Tito was the only person to unite the region. I wish West had even more access to Tito to provide a better picture but I guess there are other books that are more precise. In the end, the first 3/4 of the book are solid but the last section regarding the state of the Balkans after Tito seems rushed and is rather forgetable.



3. This book is very well researched and is one of the only books not to carry any ethnic bias. It is a history review rather than a documentation of Tito the man. It starts just after the Toman Empire collapsed and ends just weeks before the recent fighting of the 1990s.

   I have been living in Slovenia for the last 3 years and made some travels into Serbia and Croatia. I learned more from this book that the 3 years living here. It is long and somewhat academic but a reasonably easy recreational read.

   Do NOT get the other book about Tito (by Djlias)-- this was written for an audience who is interesting in debating Markist philosophy.




4. I've racked my brains and the only benevolent dictator I could come up with was Yugoslavia's Marshal Josip Broz Tito. Richard West writes a favourable, even-handed, and comprehensible account of Tito, who ruled Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1980. He even provides a background to the South Slavs before talking about Tito, because it is important to understand the dynamics going on under the Ottoman Empire and later the Balkan absorption by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1878.

   Tito, a Croat, was indeed born during an interesting period, when tensions were growing in Europe between the two alliance blocs, the Entente and Central Powers. He had his brush with Pan-Slavism, as he went to help the Czechs and Slovaks during his military service.

   West also takes time to talk about the Independent State of Croatia, the fascist puppet state under Ante Pavelic, the mastermind of Yugoslavian King Alexander's assassination in 1934. That regime was brutal, as Serbs were butchered, bombed while in worship, and hurled off cliffs. Even the Franciscan priests participated in the killing.

   Tito's wartime exploits make interesting reading, as he was besieged from all sides, by Germans, Italians, the Ustasha (Croatian fascists), and monarchist Serbs under Draza Mihailovic. It didn't help matters that the Allies saw Mihailovic as the more viable threat against the Germans. Only when Churchill got information from the code-breaking Ultra did he realize that Tito was the greater danger against the Nazis and hence recognized that they had better give Tito higher priority.

   His own brand of Communism, Titoism, was freer than Soviet Russia, Maoist China, or Hoxha's Albania, but also tried to make the various nationalities live together in collective brotherhood. That hope would turn out to be unrealistic, but he did try to clamp down on nationalism. True, he did jail some opponents and nationalists, such as future Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, but he didn't carry out large scale massacres like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. He was one of two "good Communists" in the eyes of the West, the other one being Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania.

   His role as one of the leaders of the non-aligned third bloc, along with India's Jawaharlal Nehru and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser holds relevance today. 11 Sept has made non-alignment a non-option. Unfortunately I haven't seen any countries who have made a firm stance of neutrality.

   This book was written before the outbreak of the war in Bosnia despite its publication in 1994. In light of what happened in Bosnia and Kosovo, critics might tear into Tito for keeping the genie of nationalism firmly stoppered. It was a little after a decade when Yugoslavia disintegrated. Like leaders such as Charlemagne and Louis XIV, his death left a leadership vacuum that led to political fragmentation.




5. Mr. West depicts the legendary marshall in a powerful and distinct manner, pointing out throughout most of his book that the unity and stability of Yugoslavia after WWII stemmed from Tito's forward-looking political philosophy, putting aside the wanton carnage of Ustasha and Cetnik militias and focusing in the rebuilding of a nation surrounded by suspicion and devastation.

   By overcoming Churchill's Machiavelian realpolitik and Stalin's carnivorous vacuum filler, Tito galvanized a Communist nation into unparalleled prosperity and experimented on a system without precedents. Truly, his death catapulted the land of Southern Slavs into the demise and bloodshed of the 1990s, Yugoslavia lacking leaders with character, vision and charisma to resume his political -if not economic - masterpiece. A book well-written and well-researched recommended for the historian and current affairs hound alike.

5 comments about Galina: A Russian Story.

1. Of all the singer's biographies I've read (which is plenty!) this remains at the top of the heap. It is a journey that could have only come from the pen of Vishnevskaya and, unlike so many autobiographies which eventually turn into a "And then I sang _____, and then I sang at the White House, and then I . . . " Galina reads almost like a novel. Her description of the Soviet Union during the war years is positively chilling. The road she took to success, punctuated by hardships followed by tragedies is never less than enthralling. How many biographies can truly be called "page turners?" Well, this is one!
   
   The insights she gives into the Soviet system, the role and treatment of artists by the government, her personal views on politicians, singers, composers all come off with rare candor that almost caused me to blush.
   
   Feeling mezzo soprano Elena Obratzsova had been been a betrayer, she humiliated the young singer in public shouting out "Judas" writing of Obratzsova's exit, "Like a snake with a broken spine, she crawled past the amazed Americans, who stood aside to let her pass." Ouch!
   
   My favorite passage from the book succinctly, and pointedly paints the most vivid picture of the Soviet system:
   
   
   In this vast, monstrous theater, with our faces twisted by
   underground jargon, we Soviets wriggle and squirm for one
   another. We are actors by compulsion, not by calling, in an
   amateur theater run by no one. And all our lives we perform our
   endless, pathetic comedy. There are no spectators, only
   participants. Nor is there a script, only improvisation. And
   knowing neither plot nor denoument, we act.
   
   I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Whether or not one is a fan of opera, this will prove to be an enlightening, fascinating read.



2. [Taken from my review of the hardcover edition - same comments nevertheless apply.]
   
   As one reads this book, where Gospozhá (Mme.) Vishñévskaja is throughout blunt about everything she turns her pen to, one really gets not only great entertainment generally (it is most excellently written!!); it is a superb window into the Russian soul at its best in addition to being an outstanding analysis of the conditions of artistry, artistic life and life generally under the Soviets!! It also serves as an excellent guide into the great composer Dmítriy Dmitrjévich Shostakóvich's life and artistry as well as that of her husband Mstíslav Ljeopóljdovich Rostropóvich; furthermore, its recounting some of the scandals forced by the Communist leadership when they couldn't accept the fame and worthiness of such books as "Doktor Zhivágo", "The First Circle" and "The GULag Archipelago" as well as such pieces of music as "Lady Macbeth of Mcjénsk District", the 13th Symphony and enough other works of Shostakóvich is positively juicy even in the midst of the disgust and revolt caused by reading how intolerant Communism really is!!!
   
   An ABSOLUTE MUST for any intelligent person to read and have in his library - especially if he is into the arts and/or politics in any way whatsoever!!!! This is one of those relatively rare books which both entertains AND edifies - and does it all superbly (what a life experience on her part!)!!!!
   
   [POSTSCRIPT: This very book (which I've enjoyed rereading MANY, many times!!!) also was critically influential in preparing me to go hear - and fall in love with!!!! - Shostakóvich's operatic 'magnum opus' "Lady Macbeth of Mcjénsk District" when it was given its Canadian première by the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto in 1988.]



3. Vishnevskaya's reputation for forthrightness AND the sub-title she chooses here --A Russian Story-- indicate strong intentions for this book. Not 'MY Russian Story', but 'A Russian Story', because Galina Vishnevskaya tells an epic Russian story, honoring with a severe truth the Russia of sorrows of which her story forms but a unique part. This is no prima donna's idle tableau of a curtained career. Vishnevskaya's art comes of suffering, & she doesn't head down that road. She divulges her art generously, but her attitude never self serves. Her aim is always higher - she's interested to say not only what HAPPENED in Soviet life, but what WAS. and WHO!--- Vishnevskaya regularly excoriates with galvinizing abandon the soviet lackeys with whom she had to deal! She names names and motives, because it's the damned truth! The West in general and artists in particular owe a huge debt to Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya for the willing sacrifice of themselves in exile for the simple truth. Rostropovich garners the commentary in the West with the cello & conducting, but Galina is the heart of genius, and THAT seems the telling component in this book. Her depiction of Solzhenitsyn is heartrending, and stands as the book's axis; everything leads to it, and derives from it. Her friendship with Shostakovich, her brilliant feelings toward him-- an almost daughterly reverence informed by the highest artistic aesthetic. It's also through the part Shostakovich played in her life that we meet a musically learned Galina as well. She was a musician FIRST, singer second. How rare and wonderful - no wonder Slava fell in love! Galina dances with the shadows of Shostakovich throughout, & it's one of the book's endearing aspects. There are wonderful stories too of Britten and his music, & a surprisingly frank exposition of Furtseva, soviet Minister of Culture, whose enigmatic machinations both helped and ill-served Galina more than once. Vishnevskaya can sing AND write! The book ends when you don't want it to, leaving Russia... it's ultimately a love story -- Galina and Russia. Maybe she'll yet write her American story.



4. Galina, né Pavlova, has many interesting stories to tell about her remarkable life: as a baby abandoned by her parents, an army officier and a polish/gypsy mother, she was raised by her paternal grandmother. Galina overcame so many difficulties in her life, surviving the blockade of Leningrad during the war and so many hardships such as tuberculosis and starvation. Unlike so many singers' biographies, this intelligent artist shares more than anecdotes about the opera world and her many successes in the theatre. She speaks of her personal friendships with people such as composer Shostakovich her neighbor, scientist Andrei Sakarov, also a neighbor, and writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a live-in guest in her dacha. There is much commentary written with not a little bitterness about the Soviet authorities who so often thwarted her career and blocked free expression in the arts within the Soviet country and in other countries where she was invited to perform. She writes very well and with much insight into philosophy, human relations, personalities, etc. I found the book very absorbing and hard to put down. Her close friendship with British composer Benjamin Britten also yields many stories of their memorable times together both at Aldeburgh and on vacation in Armenia and Russia. Her remarkable and at times stormy marriage to cellist/conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, her third husband, brought about big changes in her life, and their mutual courage and boldness to stand up for freedom against the Soviet regime cost them their citizenship.



5. "...We were actors in real life and human beings on the stage."
   
   Thus spake Galina Vishnevskaya, in interviews she and her husband, Mstislav ("Slava") Rostropovich, gave in Paris in 1983, captured in a companion book ("Russia, Music, and Liberty: Conversations with Claude Samuel.") to this one. The quotation barely begins to suggest the Kafkaesque world in which they lived, when they were musical artists of the highest order in the Soviet Union.
   
   Vishnevskaya was a "prima donna assoluta" at the Bolshoi Opera during her prime, arguably the finest Russian soprano of all time. And, as her prime overlapped those of Maria Callas and Renata Tebaldi, one can only wonder what her international reputation might have been had her career been entirely in the west; the first two-thirds (and best) part of it was largely away from the gaze of the international music community.
   
   This is, as she subtitles it, her "Russian story" covering her life up to the final hours in 1976 when she left the Soviet Union, eventually (two years later) as an exile. And it almost ended before it ever started.
   
   Born in poverty to parents who abandoned her to her grandmother, she possessed an incredible voice as a child. Largely self-taught, and then - at age sixteen - improperly taught - she didn't learn proper voice technique until after she had established a beginning career in operetta. Then she contracted TB, and the doctor caring for her offered that the only cure - which she refused - was to collapse the infected lung. It was only by mortgaging her future singing fees for black-market purchase of scarce antibiotics that she recovered.
   
   In 1952, in her mid-twenties, she auditioned for the youth group of the Bolshoi Opera Theater, was instantly accepted, underwent a meteoric rise through the Bolshoi ranks on her voice and talent, and soon became the prima diva of the troupe. In 1955, she met Rostropovich, whose courting of her is one of the few lighthearted sections of an otherwise chilling tale of intrigue, deception and lies in the intelligentsia circles in which the pair of them existed and performed.
   
   The next two decades (1955 - 1975) of this journal focus largely on one person, and the special relationship that they had with him: Dmitri Shostakovich. As artists, it was only natural that their paths would cross and thereafter, for the rest of Shostakovich's life, intertwine. But this was more than acquaintanceship; it was friendship based on trust during Shostakovich's years when it was virtually impossible for him to trust anyone. And Vishnevskaya defended that trust with the ferocity of a tiger. One anecdote of her ferocity will suffice as an example.
   
   In the early 1960's, the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko was well-published in "accepted" Soviet literature journals despite his "rebelliousness." His famous poem, "Babi Yar" (1961) about the German slaughter of Ukranian Jews during WW II, gained overnight success, and Shostakovich, moved by the poem's message, placed it at the core of his Thirteenth Symphony with Yevtushenko's warm agreement. The work received its Russian premiere "as is" on December 18, 1962, and was tumultuously received by the audience but not by officials of the state, who read into it a message of Russian complicity in the matter of anti-Semitism, a subtext of Yevtushenko's that was undoubtedly accurate, as he revised the text shortly after the premiere without consulting Shostakovich. Some years later, in London where Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich met up with Yevtushenko, Vishnevskaya gave Yevtushenko a tongue-lashing over his "revisionism" that runs several pages.
   
   In an act of supreme political courage involving another Russian writer, Rostropovich provided refuge, for four years in the early '70's, to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose writings on conditions in the Soviet Union were officially banned. Solzhenitsyn subsequently went into political exile, but this act of courage was to have its effect on the careers of Vishnevskaya and Rostropovich, particularly the latter, who for all intents and purposes had his abilities to perform and conduct stripped away from him. Only by "pulling in markers" were the two of them able to secure permission from Brezhnev to go abroad on a two-year "artistic leave."
   
   "Galina" ends on a note of uncertainty and apprehension, as Vishnevskaya, in 1976, boards a plane with her two daughters to join Rostropovich in the West, eventually (1978) in exile when their citizenship was revoked for the Solzhenitsyn matter. But this is merely the end of her "first" Russian life and the beginning of another, more international, one. Her own career as a diva continued for nearly another decade; Rostropovich went on to become an internationally-known conductor while continuing his career as a preeminent cellist; with "perestroika," they made an historic return to Moscow in 1990 (after Gorbachev restored their citizenship), at which Rostropovich conducted what is to me the finest performance of Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" Symphony (immortalized on a Sony CD that also included Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever" and William Schuman's orchestral arrangement of Charles Ives's "Variations on America").
   
   Nowadays Vishnevskaya loves to brag about her six thoroughly-Americanized grandchildren. They oversee the Rostropovich-Vishnevskaya Foundation, a charity for immunizing Russian children against disease. She recently founded the Galina Vishnevskaya School of Opera in Moscow, for providing master classes to promising young artists. All in all, a rather remarkable "follow-up" for this peripatetic pair of seemingly perpetually-young 75-year-olds.
   
   But the clock cannot be turned back. "Galina" serves as a gripping reminder of how things were over the fifty years that the two of them spent in the Soviet Union. And, at least as important for me, it serves as one of the most honest and accurate appraisals of Dmitri Shostakovich the person as one is likely to find, from one who knew and loved him as a true friend.
   
   Even in a totalitarian society, supreme artistry can sometimes carry clout. For Vishnevskaya (and Rostropovich), there was enough clout - barely - to get out and "live to tell about it." Thankfully.
   
   Bob Zeidler

5 comments about Get a Life! (Star Trek).

1. You can tell that a lot of research and time was put into making this book and it really shows because it is so hard to put down once it gets going. If you have ever wanted to know the workings of and behind the scenes stories of Star Trek conventions, then this is for you.
   
   In "Get A Life!", William Shatner gives the history of the end of Star Trek (which is just a retelling of the story that is in his other book "Star Trek Memories") but it sets up the story of how the conventions began beautifully. Not only that, but Shatner interviews cast members as well as those who worked behind the scenes of the series, fans and conventioneers who run the conventions. Needless to say, you get an insight into this world.
   
   If you loved other books that he has written on Trek, then this is no exception. I'm telling you, it is just a real page turner because you can relate to these people in the interviews if you are a Trekkie. Shatner literally goes undercover in make-up at a convention to get the true feel of a Star Trek convention, so this is also first hand experience speaking the entire time. The best thing is that by the books end, you get the feeling that Shatner (finally!) understands the fans and knows why we love it so much. Overalll, really fun! Definitely a must have in your Star Trek library



2. Funny, witty, creative, insightful, deep hearted, informative..etc. So many differnet terms you can use to describe this very enjoyable write up by the former Admiral Kirk himself.
   
   This late 1990's book takes the reader through a wide variety of emotions, knowledge and underground information when dealing with all things that go on at the various and too many to count "Star Trek Conventions" around the country and even the world. William Shatner has always been facinated by the type of people that show up at the various conventions, dressed up like characters on the show and worshipping every word he has to say as if it was from the mighty ship captain himself. But one thing Mr. Shatner never did, was actually focus on what was going on around him. He would fly into the location, quickly be escorted in right before he was to speak, do his 45 minute talk to the crowd quickly, wave goodbye and get his pay check and head back home and do it again when he was up to it. That was all it was to him. But suddenly the Captain was killed off in Star Trek: Generations and had no more TV shows to do. Now he was being booked to more conventions then ever, and thats when he realized, that he had never even understood the people that he was addressing all of these times. That was until he decided to write this book and quite a book it is.
   
   You will go through the entire gambit of emotions with this book. It is never nasty or spiteful. If anything William is very humble and seems to be genuine in his hopes to learn about the fans and the conventions that he has always thought was just full of crazy fans who need to "Get a Life" as he famously said on the just as famous Saturday Night Live skit so many years ago. Mr. Shatner has a way of being friendly, down to Earth and talks in this book not as a serious author, but as the same William Shatner we have always seen and heard everytime we see him. He learns everything there is to learn about the people who go to these conventions. The types of things they buy. The types of costumes they wear. The history of how the conventions started in the first place. Talks a lot about things that he himself has to deal with when associating with the fans. Answers a lot of questions he has been asked over the years. And even has some very touching and deep moments when some of the fans are explaining why they love Star Trek so much. It is quite surprising when you hear some of the answers they give and how much the show and entire series really means to them.
   
   This is a must read to anyone who is into Star Trek, gone to a convention or just enjoys learning more about the Star Trek fan base and history. It is quite informative and just very interesting. William even goes undercover in a mask at various points so no one will know that thier beloved captain is walking amongst them and has some interesting revelations as he observes first hand what is going on at the various tables, shows and speaker sessions that each convention is made up of. I really couldn't put this book down. The moment I started reading it I was hooked and I'm not even that big a Trekie. I never even been to a convention and still haven't even seen every episode. But something drew me into this book which really just had a very high intrest level that won't bore you for a moment. The interviews are short and sweet and the humor constant and even gets in a few moments to poke fun at a certain Mr. Nemoy who Shatner has kept close contact with over the years.
   
   I really was quite surprised in all honesty at how good this book was. We all know the image we have of Shatner. Being a hammy, over acting so and so who steals lines, talks in huge pauses and seems to eat up the screen time. And he freely admits to or even tries to explain all of these views people have on him without holding back any shame of admiting truths or non-truths to us. But after reading this book you are almost humbled and regretful that you even thought of him in that way. He truly shows a new side of him that you never expected. It is not often that actors on a TV show would even care to learn more about their fans or the people that worship them so dearly. I will definitely be reading this book again soon enough just to see what I missed and to laugh yet again. Some of the stories and situations are just laugh out loud moments that you can't believe you are reading. He doesn't hold anything back and you really get a new respect for the man we had watched in various movies and television episodes over the years. Most of all he has always cherished and loved the fact that he played Captain Kirk and doesn't run away from the fact of what people percieve him as any longer.
   
   Anyone who is into Star Trek or even those non-Trek fans who want just a nice light read when they have read all the deep Non-Fiction pieces out there.. has to read this book. I can promise you, it will be a pure enjoyment and enlightening experience that will break some of the images and stereotypes the majority of people have had over the fanatic fans who frequent these conventions. The only complaint I had was I wanted even more. It just never seemed enough. The captain may have died in the movies but this book is proof enough he isn't going anywhere any time soon. He will be with the Trek fans for a very long time to come. And I think we should all be very nervous for that fact as he will be watching from now on.



3. The book title comes from a bit William Shatner performed on Saturday Night Live where he bellows out the line when the audience at a Star Trek convention gets a little....well, out of the galaxy.
   
   It started an oftentimes silly debate on whether Shatner actually meant what he said, with fans lining up in several camps of thought. Shatner had avoided appearing at the ever-popular conventions and books by other castmembers were none-to-kind at times to the fine captain.
   
   But as anything in the entertainment business, never means never doubt that things can change. Shatner agreed to promote Star Trek Generations through a series a speaking engagements. And this is where his humor takes over.
   
   Shatner takes a basic premise - chronicling the phenomena of Star Trek through fans, castmembers, memorabilia dealers and convention promoters - and turns it into an event shrouded in mystery; he dons a monster outfit and sets out to interview folks at the conventions.
   
   The pictures are priceless and the text not only gives the reader a true appreciation on what the series has meant to so many people, but how the research gave Shatner a vehicle to come to terms with the legacy he left through the TV series and movies.
   



4. This book is part biography & part the history of the "Star Trek" fans. Throughout you see Mr. Shatner as a driven & often anxious man who is in the pursuit of both critical & commercial success.
   
   The first chapter where he describes the death of Kirk's character and the author's interviews were the most entertaining. The author using plenty of humor admits that for ages he was clueless about what "Star Trek" truly meant to the shows fans. This part gets a little erratic. But, he gives numerous examples of how he learned to appreciate both the fans and the show that made him famous.



5. The man who popularized the phrase, "Get a life!" writes a book to deal the dirt on those people for whom the expression most applies. It sounds like a wacky idea, but it actually turned out quite well. William Shatner and his co-author Chris Kreski have a pleasant, enjoyable, breezy prose style and what they're talking about it actually interesting. There's an entire strange sub-culture that goes on in science fiction fandom and it's fascinating to get a peek at it. Unfortunately, since this comes from William Shatner, it's not going to get at the darker side (through no fault of the author), but for what it is, it succeeds.
   
   First of all, I should state that while I'm a fan of (a few of) the Star Trek series, I'm not terribly big into fandom. So while I'm certainly not ignorant of the vocabulary, I was a bit fuzzy on the details. But once the stories and the backstage secrets are revealed, well, it turns out there aren't that many big surprises. Shatner may have been astonished to learn that fans were as interested in hanging out with each as with the "stars", but it shouldn't come as a shock to most other people.
   
   The book is more a journey of exploration than a straightforward journalistic look at fandom. The journey belongs to William Shatner. Apparently at one time he was famous among fan-circles for arriving shortly before his appearances, saying a few quick words and then counting his money on the next flight out of town. But after his character was killed off in one of the Star Trek movies, he decided to take a closer look at what went on at the convention scene.
   
   GET A LIFE! begins with a potted history of organized Star Trek fandom. Given that Shatner freely admits to have had nothing at all to do with that, I can only assume that this portion of the book was researched by either Shatner or Kreski. Although the progression isn't exactly unexpected, I enjoyed reading about how it came about.
   
   The book then moves into Shatner's relationship with fandom. Moving from his aforementioned "take the money and run" approach to gradual curiosity to understanding, reading his journey is quite interesting to see how someone from outside looks in.
   
   Now, human nature being what it is, we can gather that not everything is warm hugs and embraces within fandom. I'm no fool; a quick look around the Internet can bring up thousands of flame-wars, feuds, angry grudges, various "he said / she said" battles and, in some extreme cases, lawsuits and restraining orders between various members of fandom. The book never gets into this topic, which I found a bit of a disappointment.
   
   The portrayal of fandom is almost overwhelmingly positive. Lip service is paid to the looniest aspects - the folks who dress in Star Trek uniforms to inappropriate venues - but for the most part, anything negative is glossed over. The reasons for this rest on the author. I imagine it must be virtually impossible for William Shatner to go to a convention and not be greeted by a venerable wall of yes-men who happily tell him that everything is running fine, everyone connected with the organization is well liked and that there's nothing bad going on at all.
   
   Still, despite possible inaccuracies and/or omissions, I did enjoy reading this one. It's funny, amusing and quick to read. There are numerous unrelated anecdotes, but I didn't find them at all distracting. Overall, I liked reading this. It's not the deepest sociological study you'll ever read, but the look it takes at certain individual fans is especially interesting. The thought of William Shatner donning a latex match and wandering through the dealers room to do research is certainly an amusing idea.

3 comments about Within the Whirlwind.

1. Eugenia Ginzburg was the first Russian Communist to write extensively about being caught in the "meatgrinder" of Stalin's purges. It took her a long time to figure it out: "We were creatures of our times, of the epoch of magnificent illusions."
   
   "Within the Whirlwind" is the second volume of her memoirs. I have not read the first, but the editors say she pulled her punches then, hoping for publication at home (which didn`t happen). She avers that this volume is only the truth. Not the whole truth, she admits, but nothing but truth.
   
   This seems credible.
   
   At least, her memoir is readable. I forced myself to go 100 pages in Solzhenitsyn's "GULAG Archipelago," but it was unreadable. Ginzburg's memoir is windy but readable, basically a series of vignettes of encounters during 18 years of exile/imprisonment in the Soviet Far East.
   
   Her pen portraits of fellow zeks (political prisoners), free workers, apparatchiks, common criminals and commandants are deft, though there is no way to be sure how realistic they are. Each story has a point, often about little expressions of humanity or courage breaking out in what was otherwise a hellhole.
   
   Like all memoirs of the great slave societies of the 20th century, Ginzberg's is shaped by survivor bias.
   
   Although she spent some time in the more brutal camps -- felling trees where the temperature came to 40 below, on little food -- her background (teacher of literature, musician) got her easier posts most of the time, where she ate somewhat better and had some shelter. Also, she was never beaten or tortured.
   
   The same survivor bias shows in memoirs of prisoners of the Germans and Japanese. The ones who did not get jobs in kitchens or offices seldom survived to write memoirs. (A.J.P. Taylor accepts that 2 million died building the White Sea Canal; they left no memoirs.)
   
   The capsule story is that Ginzburg had two sons. One died of starvation in Leningrad. She adopts a foundling daughter and falls in love with a German doctor. After her final release, she stays in the east because Anton, her new husband, has not yet finished his endless sentences.
   
   Later, when they are allowed to go back to European Russia, where Ginzburg's first, undivorced husband turns out to have survived both the Germans and the Russians, she skips over whatever arrangements were worked out.
   
   Among many interesting tales, there are some broader generalities that come through that might surprise American readers.
   
   One is that not everybody in the GULAG was an innocent zek. There were huge numbers of what Ginzburg calls common criminals, a not unexpected residue of tsarism and civil war. The zeks were terrorized by the criminals, in some ways even more so than by the Party.
   
   During the war, the zeks were wild to fight the Germans. The notion, promoted today by some neocons, that the Russians would have revolted against Stalin if given the chance is not supported here.
   
   In the end, Ginzburg takes a lenient view of her persecutors, viewing the common run of them as misguided, weak, ignorant. Her hatred is reserved for the few actors at the top.
   
   Thus she excuses herself from a great earlier crime. She and her first husband were stalwart Communists until the knock on the door in 1937. In an epilogue, Ginzburg says she did not know much about what had been done to the kulaks.
   
   In one sense, this may be believable. She was teaching literature in college far away in Kazan. In another, it is not. The drumbeat of hatred against the kulaks and wreckers was part of her daily life. It required a determined failure of imagination to avoid drawing conclusions.
   
   Even after her first 10 year sentence, she was still failing to imagine. And that, to me, is the heart of the book -- a failure to imagine.



2. This book shocked, sickened, and inspired me. I never realized how terrible Stalin's purges were until I read Ginzburg's historically accurate and emotionally compelling memoir. Unforgettable characters, disturbing mental images, and harrowing brutality made up the Soviet Gulag and Ginzburg's book showcases them beautifully! Outstanding memoir!!



3. Eugenia Ginsburg was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in 1937 on a false charge of terrorism at the height of the Stalin purges. In her first book 'Into the whirlwind' she describes her arrest, her interrogation, her mockery of a trial and two years in solitary confinement in prison. She was then transported to Magadan in the far East of Russia to a labour camp, and the first volume ends as she is beginning to cope with the undescribably harsh conditions in the camp.

   'Within the whirlwind' describes the next fifteen years until her return and rehabilitation. She describes how her life was saved by gaining work as a nurse in the camp hospital where she met her second husband.

   This book leaves the reader astonished how Evgenia could describe her life with such humour and at the same time with such human understanding. All the time, however, the reader is reminded of the inhumanity, lying and deception of the Stalin regime.

   At one stage, the vice president of the USA, Henry Wallace, visits the camps, and the prisoners are removed and the guards temporarily take their place and manage to convince the gullible American that the camps are manned by well fed and enthusiastic pioneers.

   Eugenia returns to Moscow, her life destroyed, having lost one of her sons. She ends on a note of optimism, that the truth will be told in her native land. She died however in 1977 and never saw her books published in her native land nor the destruction of the communist regime.

   This book is now out of print, which is a pity. Everybody interested in Russia should try to get hold of a copy and read it and ponder on the demons that helped produce the country as it is today.

5 comments about Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis.

1. This book is a very well conceived idea that tries to understand what happened at the Alamo through the eyes of three people. Each provides a different perspective to life in Texas and life in the United States in the time period leading up to the Alamo. A crook like Bowie has fled from land speculations schemes and is trying to make a name for himself in Texas. Travis has abandoned his family and gone to make an honest life and escape the debt he built up. Finally we have David Corckett the hero of Tennessee who has lost elections and patience with Andrew Jackson heading to Texas. All of these three have led colorful lives with Crockett being the most interesting. This book serves as a biography to all three while describing the importance of the Alamo to Texas. It is very well done and you find yourself going through the book very quickly. I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in understanding what life looked like in the United States in the years leading up to the Alamo.



2. William Davis, best known for his excellent works on the American War Between the States (oh, alright, "Civil War" if you insist) delves into the Texas Revolution with this work, and presents historians with an excellent glimpse at the three principal figures of the Alamo Siege. This triple biography gives an excellent in-depth look at the careers, motivations, and personal lives of three men on their march to an appointment with destiny.
   
   I highly recommend all of Mr. Davis' works, especially "Deep Waters of the Proud" and "Look Away!"



3. Davis is meticulous in his research, teasing from the legends what we know, what can be deduced, what is probable, improbable, and impossible. So, if you want scholarship, an in-depth understanding of the truth, as near as it can be determined, this book is great.
   
   Davis' sketches of the personalities and characters of Crockett, Bowie and Travis were also impressive.
   
   But, IMO, if you want a wallopping page-turner, look elsewhere.



4. OK, that is a bit of a negative title, so I want to start off saying that I really enjoyed this book. One of the problems with the story of the Alamo is that it all too often is isolated in the time during the battle and not much of the events and lives of the participants are ever explored. This leaves a story disconnected from all that ran up to it, all that caused it.
   
   William C. Davis does an admirable job assembling the lives of three people who are somewhat elusive in the historical record until their "big day" at the Alamo (even Crocket has his blank spots in his history). It is important info that informs us all why these men were "that" Travis, Crocket and Bowie.
   
   He gives them life in a narrative that quickly moves in a conversational style. Further, he does an admirable job not judging these men on today's more "civilized" standards, allowing us to come to know the men as they were, in their day, without being weighed down by modern approbations and regrettable "social" historical analysis so popular with too many historians.
   
   Now the criticism: As my little review title suggests I feel that there was one road, one equally important, not explored that led to the Alamo. It is a road that is just as important as the other roads Davis explores; that of Travis, Crocket, and Bowie.
   
   It is a road without which the Alamo would not have occurred, propelling the three heroes into American mythology. It is the road traveled by Santa Anna.
   
   Of course, at 587 pages, this tome is already a bit larger than the average popular treatment of any particular historical event and it is probable that Davis struggled to keep the story under one thousand! Still, Santa Anna's journey was just as tumultuous, interesting and central to the story as Travis, Crocket, and Bowie's, and just as important.
   
   Davis admits that he started with the idea of a Bowie bio, so it isn't surprising that he dwelled on Bowie more so than the other two. But, given the re-direction he took with his story a little less on Bowie could have sufficed as the story of Santa Anna was included.
   
   After reading the book, I felt a hole in the story. Why, exactly, did the Mexicans do all they did? Not just during the months preceding the Alamo, but for the decade before. How did Santa Anna get to his position? What drove him to lay siege to the Alamo and that small band of Norteamericanos? I know Santa Anna is not the American hero that the other three are, but where is the hero without the villain?
   
   In any case. This book is highly recommended for anyone wanting a well researched story of the actions and personalities that led up to the Alamo. Even with that one small detraction, I say read it!
   
   By Warner Todd Huston



5. "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
   
   Author William C. Davis does not follow this advise and gives us the true story of these three icons of Texas. We find that aside from Crockett's three successful congressional campaigns and Travis' legal practice in Texas, these heroes were not very successful nor particularly honorable as that term is defined today. Bowie was an unsuccessful con artist who married his Tejano wife for her money and connections, Travis abandoned his pregnant wife in Alabama to evade a warrant for his arrest for debt, and Crockett was long estranged from his second wife at the time of his death. They were not exactly paragons of virtue but in the manner of their deaths they were and are heroes and that should not be forgotten, and Davis does not forget this. I am reminded of a line from another movie, Casablanca, in which Humphrey Bogart says, "They got a lucky break. Yesterday they were just two German clerks. Today they're the 'Honored Dead'." Bowie, Crockett and Travis are Texas' Honored Dead.

5 comments about Monica's Story.

1. Monica Samille Lewinsky appears to be either incredibly naive or incredibly childish. This book is not a page turner. If you are interested in her camps' POV... then you may like this book. The author says her "disorderly routine and her neurotic behavior over weight perfectly explain why she never cleaned the notorious blue Gap dress that was stained with the President's semen" (page 11).
   
   She is characterized as very naive. She documented every little detail as if it was major, which appears that she had a motive for the future use of this information. It gave me thoughts that she was contemplating possible blackmail, book deals, and/or movie deals.
   
   Yet again... she was either incredibly smart, naive, or silly.



2. This book was quite dumb, and all that it does is emphasize how dumb people can be. If you're a Republican right-winger who's more interested in a president's, a man's, sexcapades than what he does with the economy, then read on by all means. This mindless book was made for you.



3. Any woman in her early twenties, who has ever fallen in love with a man who is married and forbidden by conventional ethical and professional standards, will find empathy in this book.

   Whatever side of truth or political scenario this book attempts to portray, I primarily read it as a romance and enjoyed it more than ever. The book's appeal lies in the dynamics of the affair between the young intern and the president, rather than any political truth-finding. Maybe, there are too many 'truths' out there, and who are we to judge which one is true. This is Monica's version, so why quibble about absolute realities?

   The book certainly does a good job of revealing her a human figure rather than a man-hunting slut responsible for the impreachment of Clinton.

   Why marvel Marie Antoinette and Josephine, and not Monica? I admire Monica Lewinsky as a person who enjoys poetry, loves life, watches her weight, experiments with men, and most of all braves what the world thinks of her. I really think people ought to stop thinking of her as a sex symbol.

   Tragic as the love story's end is, Monica RULZ!!!




4. This book was quite ridiculous. Although I applaud the author on his efforts, the book was among other things boring and without depth. The story somehow tries to paint Monica as highly intelligent, sure of what she wanted and able to speak her own mind. But she is also supposed to be lost, confused, and have low self esteem. Am I the only person who sees the contradiction here?

   I honestly picked up this book simply because it was in the library and sounded interesting. I am not truly interested in either politics or gossip. Although I knew information about the Lewinsky scandal (who didn't?), I never defended one side or the other. I don't think Lewinsky is an evil women who should be burned at the stake. I also think that some people are too quick to criticize her without considering the fact that we've all done something we aren't proud of in our lives. I think she was truly in love with the President and that she didn't try to set him up. However this book goes way too far in trying to make her sound innocent. Any decent person will own up to the fact that they have done something wrong. But this book made Monica into the hurt little victim, without taking any responsibility for her own actions. The thing that bothered me the most was that no one ever considered Hilary or Chelsea seriously in the story. Monica somehow seems to almost completely write them out of the picture as if the family didn't matter. Of course she does mention that she followed Hilary's actions so she could know when the President would call her. For someone who is so intelligent it is surprising to me that she never considered what effect it would have on other people (namely the Clinton family) if she and the President actually did get married, something she often daydreams about in the story. Does she expect to just lovingly become Chelsea's stepmother? Although the author tried to avoid this he truly ended up making Monica sound extremely neurotic.

   In life there is usually no black or white area. Most situations can not be interpreted as completely right or wrong. All people live in a gray area, meaning sometimes they do the right thing and other times they don't. In this book we apparently meet the first person who doesn't, because Monica Lewinsky lives totally in the white area. I wish I had picked up a book with much more depth.




5. Not indepth reading, but remember the story and the people it includes. The book details Monica's emotions to conincide with what headlines the public knew. Worth reading, if you are interested in what took place (obviously from her side). Many facts and the Starr Report excerpts to legitimize assertions.

5 comments about In the Footsteps of Alexander The Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia.

1. If you pick this up, don't expect any in-depth or informative analysis of Alexander's life, conquests, tactics, motives or personality; expect a Junior High School reading-level synopsis of the route traveled by Alexander's army with brief, sporadic, uncohesive glimpses of major events along the way. The pictures add a bit of life to dehydratated and uninspired prose.



2. Wood's book is problematic in a variety of ways, but it's predominant flaw is that it examines the actions and personality of a man who lived 2300 years ago through the prism of a thoroughly contemporary morality. Wood is fond of passing judgement, and does so with all the political correctness (and all the ancestral guilt) of a 21st century Anglo-Saxon man. To impose our world view on the world of Alexander and on the man himself is to disfigure them both. Behavior that seems odd, irrational or morally reprehensible to us had a completely different significance in Macedonian society (and Persian society) at that period in history. Alexander was acting within his reality -- he was a man of his time, and to lose sight of this leads Wood to misinterpret. He enjoys it rather too much for the account to feel balanced.
   
   The depth of his research one cannot vouch for, but however extensive it might have been, the story he presents to the reader is incomplete and his exploration of the material is shallow. The 'facts' he presents are sometimes incorrect, and when they are events whose truth remains in doubt, he fails to mention it unless it suits his agenda. He dispatches significant events in Alexander's life in a sentence or two, yet spends entire paragraphs on his own feelings about the journey and in freely imagining for the reader what a man from another culture was feeling and thinking over 2000 years ago. He takes account of biases in the source material rather selectively, and often does not even identify his sources.
   
   I have read better researched and better considered books on this subject. The photographs that accompany the book are excellent, and the maps quite good and easy to follow, but the content is best passed over.



3. This is an outstanding book that covers the DVD of the same title.The pictures are wonderful.The reading itself is fascinating.It is divided into several sections that takes us step by step through Alexander's conquests, with ancient cities and today's actual names.
   Mr.Wood is a natural in writing ancient history.I hope he continues exploring and taking us with him,in places we cannot go.



4. The story of Alexander The Great remains just as relevant today as it did when the "Alexander Romance" was published many centuries ago, consider that many of the areas he conquered such as Iraq and Iran are still international hot spots today when it comes to the current state of the world. Michael Wood's "In The Footsteps Of Alexander The Great" is an entertaining read because it plays like a cultural travelogue, documenting how the story of Alexander is still passed down from generation to generation in Greece and the Middle East. In some places he is a heroe, in others a ruthless barbarian, even a devil. Woods writes about his journey down Alexander's trek with vivid details, providing fascinating insights into other corners of the globe and the customs found therein. For readers who enjoy learning and reading about other countries and their traditions this will prove to be a fascinating trip. However, the only thing that makes Woods' book not the gem it should be is that in his actual writing of Alexander's history he subscribes to much of what has already been dismissed as propaganda by historians like Robin Lane Fox and authors like Mary Renault. It is no surprise that since Woods is after all making a TV program here, he indulges in the more wild, ear-catching legends surrounding Alexander such as the burning of a temple for the sake of doing something fun when drunk (eventhough Alexander, as was common in Macedon and Greece, enjoyed wine to excessive lengths) and the killing of Betis by dragging him from a chariot to imitate Achilles (this is ridiculous considering Alexander always honored opponents who fought bravely). Woods apparently likes using information gathered from writers like Cleitarchus, who is notorious for writing fictitous accounts with exaggerated numbers, events and even Socrates made fun of the guy for his flights of fancy. Luckily Woods is not writing a biography here but an account of the current state of the lands Alexander conquered and it's peoples. As a journey through these areas and as a look at how potent the image and story of Alexander are today there is no better book. But for an actual reading of the life and times of Alexander The Great, I recommend "Alexander The Great" by Robin Lane Fox and "The Nature Of Alexander" by Mary Renault, two others who write with a more serious sense of scholarship.



5. I'll keep this as brief as possible. The book is a well conceived mixture of the history Alexander the Great's Asian conquests and the story of author Michael Wood's quest to follow Alexander's voyage throughout Asia and film it all for a BBC miniseries. He not only draws on the traditional sources such as Arrian and Plutarch, but also on local legends in the areas Alexander captured. The photographs are beautiful, and the maps help give a geographical perspective to the reader. An easy, interesting read, the book can be read in one evening by devoting full attention to the book.
   The only criticism I have is one that is unavoidable by Wood. There are parts that tend to drag a bit, by giving casualty estimates and exact military strategies that would most likely not appeal to the average reader. The best aspect, however, is how Michael Wood gives insight to a brutal, raging alcoholic treated all too kindly by Arrian. It is worth the money to someone genuinely interested in history, but don't waste your time if you're not willing to give the attention this book deserves.