2 comments about Alexander Kerensky: The First Love of the Revolution.

1. For serious students of the Russian revolution, or simply those - like myself - who are fascinated by the turn of events during this momentous period of history, Abraham's book is a fascinating and revealing account of one of the periods most important players in the revolution. Kerensky, who has often been derided by both extemities of the political spectrum ( the Bolsheviks and the Monarchists/Rightists) was in fact a committed Social Democrat, with a heavy leaning toward the latter political description. Abraham, throughout his book, tries to build up a picture of the man - with his inherent egotism - and the political revolutionary, and how the conflict between the man and his political ideals often lead to the false assumption that he was powerless and vaccilating. Whilst Lenin and his fellow emigre' Bolsheviks came in on the coat tails of the hard work done during the first - and perhaps most hopeful of the 1917 revolutions (February) - Kerensky and other hopeful Democrats were trying to build a future Russia where the kind of oppression suffered under the Tsarist, and then later Boshevik regimes, could have been avoided. Whilst Kerensky was undoubtedly no angel and did contribute to the eventual downfall of the Provisional government, Abraham, paints a picture of man that you can't help thinking may have helped in providing a more hopeful future for his people. Just think, none of the horrors of Lenin and Stalin!



2. Abraham's book is a bit wordy and caught up in blow by blow descriptions of back room discussions and negotiations of the period. He does provide a revealing portrait of Alexander Kerensky and his troubled government in the turbulent times of war and revolution. Worth reading for serious students of Russian history. A Contribution to the history of the Revolution that changed the world.

3 comments about English Girl, German Boy: World War II From Both Sides.

1. Reviewed by Lisa Kisner for Reader Views (5/06)
   
   This book chronicles the young lives of two people who grew up on opposite sides of World War II. Tessa grew up in England, while Martin grew up in what was once East Germany. Their story, told from personal accounts and reconstructed with the help of letters written by their parents, brings that period of time to life.
   
   Tessa tells of growing up with both parents, only to have her father ripped away, killed in the war. Her mother worked to support the family, sending Tessa and her sister to boarding school where it appears safer from bombings. Tessa's mother's letters to friends discussing rationing of food and clothing items gives readers, who have never experienced rationing coupons or shortages of necessities, a clear picture of daily life during those hard times.
   
   Martin tells of his upbringing amid Nazi propaganda. He also tells of the horrors of the bombing of Dresden and how he survived and ultimately escaped out of East Germany. His recollections and letters from his parents after the war reveal how much the German citizens suffered in the economic hardship that followed.
   
   This book gives an account not often told through the media. It chronicles childhood through young adulthood of two ordinary children on opposite sides of WWII. The book reminds the reader that most of the citizens of countries involved in the war were the not the power hungry, cruel politicians and soldiers depicted by the media. The authors wrote this book to give readers a different view of both sides of the war from the average civilian citizen's experiences. They have accomplished this and more.



2. Couldn't put this book down. Absolutely fascinating and riveting account of two people's experience during WWII from opposite sides of the war. It is heartwarming to realize that true human values survived the ridiculous war games that politicians and the military play, and that these two people survived the constant bombardment by their enemies, to meet and live happily together, going on nearly 50 years now. For anyone from the age of adolescense to adulthood, this book is a must read to understand the devasting effects of war.



3. This is an inspiring read that offers a unique view of WW2. A page-turner that opens one's eyes to the struggles and difficulties of families from both sides of the war. This book is for anyone who enjoys a story that brings history to life.

5 comments about Unknown Shore: The Lost History of England's Arctic Colony.

1. This is an OK read about the Arctic. There are actually two stories here. The first revolves around English explorer and pirate Martin Forbisher and the second about an American Charles Francis Hall. Forbisher was searching for the northwest passage to China and found what he thought was a passage way and a black stone. Assayers felt the stone could yield a fortune in gold. The passage Forbisher found was a bay and the stone contained little in the way of precious metals. Hall searched for the survivors of an earlier Artic expedition of Franklin. He was disappointed too. What he found were the traces of Forbisher's expedition. Both explorers searched for something that was not there.
   The book is of interest to those historians who like the explorations of the Arctic and Antarctic. What is facinating is the life of the Inuit or native peoples who inhabit this inhospital land. It was interesting to read of how these people adapted to their environment. The white man may have thought them savages. They were far more civilized than the white man. As stated an OK read about a little known expedition.



2. I was very interested in Frobisher Air Base now Iqaluit Airport. My interest centered around the part it played in the US nuclear war plans, early warning, communications and strategic location during the 80s and 90s. First I needed to learn about the history of the area and exploration. Unknown Shore provided that first glimpse of early life and exploration. The cast of characters and the way their names became geographic locations are explained to a lesser degree though. If you like reading about remote and harsh areas of the world you will like this book. It could use a few more maps and pictures but I say that for every book I read.



3. An unfortunately rare example of an eminently readable work of history. Ruby does an outstanding job of setting his story in the context of the times with a modern historian's insight into social and cultural history. This is far more than just another in a series of the latest vogue in Arctic exploration narratives. Through skillful use of his sources, the author brings both his European and Inuit protagonists to life. The reader is left with the haunting image of fragments of a remote Arctic island studding the landscape of a prosaic London suburb as testimony to both the folly and awe-inspiring tenacity of the sixteenth-century explorers. This is fascinating complementary reading for students of the colonization of other areas of the world.



4. Robert Ruby's Unknown Shore is a little misleading in its subtitle (The Lost History of England's Arctic Colony) in as much as the history was not quite lost nor was there actually a colony, only the briefest of attempts at a colony in a farcical plan to mine the soil for gold. That said, the book is quite entertaining as it pieces together the story of Martin Frobisher and his ill-fated Elizabethean Arctic adventures and the always fascinating Charles Francis Hall's discovery of the location of Frobisher's Meta Incognita in the nineteenth century. (For a wonderful and full account of Hall, see the very fine Weird and Tragic Shores by C. Chauncey Loomis). The two stories blend fairly well and the author keeps the narrative sparkling along at an entertaining clip. This was a good Arctic read for those addicted to these books and a good place to begin for someone who wants to learn what the addiction to these Arctic books is all about from a book that shows men whose addiction to that cold world ran so much deeper than merely reading about it.



5. This is a tale about an English pirate-turned-explorer who few people have ever heard of, and the establishment of British colony on an Arctic island that is perhaps even less known...but that's short-changing this elaborate true adventure. Bought this one because I liked the author's last book, "Jericho," which was a history of a place, but also of archaeology itself and of wave after wave of quirky scientists who came to study the ruins of the famous city. This new book has an even broader sweep, from pre-naval power London where morality always took a back seat to fortune-seeking, to the coast of West Africa where a ship's crew was worth less to investors than a few tons of pepper, to the Czar's palace in Moscow, the roiling North Atlantic and the confusing, ice-packed passages above North America. This is a tale festooned with accurately-drawn characters. The scholarship is so clearly reliable that you know that you're not getting the pop-magazine caricatures of, say, Sebastian Junger's "The Perfect Storm." Also, with Ruby's style of examining a place through the eyes of multiple adventurers from several eras, you're getting a deeply-textured tale that makes Krakauer's "Into Thin Air" seem one-dimensional. And you also get a fun - and often funny - yarn featuring modern reporters in polar bear pants, privateers who seize all shipping - even that of their countrymen - a pompous alchemist, mutual puzzlement as white man meets Inuit, horrific storms at sea, and discussions of the how Queen Elizabeth's sex life affected exploration. By the end, I had not only enjoyed myself but absorbed an extraordinary amount of the FEEL of an era - or two - and a place. In this sense it's also comparable to Patrick O'Brien's seafaring Maturin and Aubrey series.

No comments about In Praise of Devon: A Guide to Its People, Places and Character.

1 comments about Winston Churchill (Very Interesting People S.).

1. In perhaps the most succinct but certainly the most impeccably accurate biography of Winston Churchill ever written, Professor Addison's beautifully written narrative presents Churchill 'in the round.' Churchill lived 90 years and was intimately involved in many of the 20th century's most important events. Many good writers have given us LONG biographies of Churchill, but it takes a special talent to write a superb one in just over 100 pages.

3 comments about The Voice of Destruction.

1. This book has also been published in the English language under the title: HITLER SPEAKS.
   
   Covering events mostly from the early to the middle 1930's, this book fills an important gap in the development of Hitler's thinking. It comes after MEIN KAMPF (1923-1925) and the then-unpublished HITLER'S SECOND BOOK (1928), but before HITLER'S TABLE TALK.
   
   Rauschning elaborates on Hitler's attitudes towards Poland. It becomes obvious that the Fuhrer never saw the 1934 Polish-German Nonaggression Pact as anything more than a temporary expedient, and that he never seriously considered accepting Poland as an ally against the Soviet Union (p. 119). This adds refutation against the claim that WWII had been triggered, in part, by "Polish intransigence".
   
   A common Nazi anti-Semitic theme is the one about Jews being vermin (presumably fit for nothing other than extermination). Interestingly, Nazis also thought that way of Poles. Albert Forster, the Gauleiter of Danzig (Gdansk), referred to Poles as lice (p. 110). (So did Joseph Goebbels, in his diaries).
   
   Rauschning elaborates on Hitler's obsession with Jews. He believed that it was driven in part by Hitler's fear of his partial Jewish ancestry (p. 235).
   
   In his MEIN KAMPF and SECOND BOOK, Hitler had vilified the Jews, and presented Slavic lands as ones to be conquered for lebensraum purposes and filled with German settlers. But what exactly was to be done with the Jews and the Slavs was left to the imagination of the listener. Not so here! Hitler makes direct threats against both Jews and Slavs as biological entities. He speaks of using both Jewish property and Jewish lives as hostages in response to the anti-German actions of other nations (pp. 88-89). (This foreshadows his infamous January 1939 statement, in which he said that, if "international Jewry" caused another war, he would destroy Europe's Jews in response.) He first speaks of resettling Czechs in Siberia (p. 38) and then, repeatedly complaining about the great fecundity of the Slavic peoples (p. 33, 137), proposes to solve this problem through such measures as keeping men and women separated for years (p. 137). He quips: "There are many ways, systematical and comparatively painless, or at any rate bloodless, of causing undesirable races to die out." (p. 138). (In time, the Nazis did implement both active and passive genocidal techniques against the conquered Slavs, as discussed by Raphael Lemkin. The Nazis also worked to develop mass-sterilization methods, preferably ones that could be used covertly against the intended victims).
   
   In this book, Hitler develops his anti-Christian themes, but not as strongly as in the later HITLER'S TABLE TALK. In this work, Hitler refers to Christianity as an effeminate, Jewish invention (p. 49, 235). He trusts that the dogma of the Vicarious Suffering of Christ will give way to acceptance of the new Leader-legislator, who will liberate the faithful from the burden of free will (p. 225). Hitler also clearly exhibits the views of a moral relativist: "There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the scientific sense." (p. 223).
   
   Nazism is often misrepresented as a form of extreme nationalism. In fact, Hitler believed that the concept of the nation was a political expedient of democracy and Liberalism (p. 232), and was just as outdated as the concept of the dynastic feudal state that it had replaced. He wanted the concept of the nation replaced by "purely biological values". (p. 233).
   
   Nazism is also commonly misrepresented as a form of capitalism. In actuality, Hitler scorned both Communism and capitalism, just as he had done earlier in MEIN KAMPF and the SECOND BOOK. In the present work, he commented: "The classless society of the Marxists, he [Hitler] contended, was madness. Order always meant class order. But the democratic notion of a class order based on the moneybag was equally mad. A genuine aristocracy was not born out of the accidentally successful speculations of bright businessmen." (p. 39).



2. To understand why, read my related essay at: http://www.hashkafah.com/index.php?showtopic=22001



3. These supposed recollections of private conversations with Hitler were shown in the 1980's (see Der Spiegel 37:92-99, 1985), after investigation by a Swiss schoolteacher (Wolfgang Haenel), to be fraudulent. The book was used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials and also cited in postwar histories (e.g., Rise and Fall of the Third Reich), some still in print.
   Richard Pipes, otherwise a splendid historian of the Russian tragedy, also quotes this book.
   Hermann Rauschning met Hitler twice, in public forums, and had no private conversations with him. He had a falling out with the regime and then concocted this "memoir." In 1943 he gave a presentation at my alma mater (Wartburg College, Iowa), no doubt to many a reverent ear.
   The danger of making Hitler or any other tyrant into such a cartoonish figure is that subsequent generations are lulled into thinking that a potential dictator would present himself as an obvious neurotic. Quite the contrary.
   Four stars for historical importance, despite its blatant falsity.

5 comments about The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant.

1. Henry VIII's story does not end with the beheading of Anne Boleyn. Hutchinson pulls from many sources of Henry VIII's contemporaries to tell the most interesting bits of Henry's last few years as King of England. The chapters do not follow a consecutive timeline, but rather skip around and focus on a single theme such as reforming the church, the ordeal surrounding the king's marriage to Anne of Cleves, the war waged with France, Henry's health, etc.
   
   I found this book very easy to read for a number of reasons. Hutchinson continually reminds the reader of certain characters and their relations/roles to King Henry VIII. If you still can't figure out who someone is, simply flip to the back of the book and there's a whole list of names and a short one or two line "biography" on each person. There's also a timeline in case the flipping back and forth between years gets confusing. I didn't have any problems following along and I'm not well versed on Tudor history! In fact, this is the first historical biography I have ever read! And I read it for pure enjoyment!
   
   So, if you're looking for an interesting book on one of the more interesting characters of the English monarchy, I highly recommend you consider this book!



2. This book is a great comprehensive look at the last few years of Henry VIII's life, which is often overlooked due to the scandals of his earlier years. It explores in depth his last three marriages, the conspiracies and rivalries abounding in his inner circle, the religious climate, his volatile temper, his waning heath and final illness, and his majestic funeral. We see some familiar characters like Cromwell exit the scene in Henry's familiar tyrant fashion, and we become more familiar with others who filled large rolls behind the scene. I would recommend this as a great supplement to the collection of any Tudor enthusiast as a readable and straightforward account of Henry's final, tumultuous years.



3. I found this book was not very reader-friendly. It was interesting, but not interesting enough for me to finish...



4. In response to the fellow that gave this book a 1-star, one cannot possibly understand the important political maneuverings in the final days of Henry without explaining details of his reign, of which I feel was the point of the book. I also did not mind the review of other parts of his reign because it included interesting primary sources.
   
   This book is a good starting point to understanding the Tudor political atmosphere and why it is how it is in the wake of Henry's death, backed with good solid sources of letters and financial records. It is also remarkably readable and interesting.
   
   The only thing I didn't prefer are the conjectures of Henry's ailments. At this point it's just a guess - and I'd prefer to just have the symptoms stated instead of a guess stated like a fact.



5. This book does a remarkably good job of presenting the facts about the final years of Henry VIII, a time when political and religious factions were vying for control over the course England would take after Henry's imminent death. I've read a lot about Henry over the years but this book taught me many things about him that I never knew before. This book contains an overview of the political and religious situation towards the end of Henry's time and also presents many interesting new findings and details you probably won't read anywhere else. It's written in an erudite yet relaxed style that is easy, even entertaining to read, and feels like listening to a lecture by a skilled history professor with a sense of humor. This book is a valuable and very welcome recent addition to the world's historical knowledge of Henry's time. I heartily recommend it to anyone who shares my fascination with Henry VIII or English history in general.

2 comments about Vienna Voices: A Traveler Listens to the City of Dreams (Writing Travel).

1. This is a beautifully and sensitively written collection of personal impressions of Vienna intertwined with flashbacks of personal history of a Viennese Jewish family in the years before and after the Anschluss.
   A very delicate treatment of a highly emotional topic.



2. Weinberger's glimpse into Vienna's rich cultural and historical life serves as a launching point for researching her in-laws' past. Though well-off and industrious throughout the late thirties, the onset of World War II forced them to flee, uprooting their lives and sense of identity like thousands of other Jews in the city.
   
   Weinberger's smooth writing style makes it easy to envision sitting in one of the city's countless coffeehouses on a mild spring day. Yet simultaneously, it is impossible to ignore its undercurrent of war-related anxiety, a constant reminder that a war continues to ravage its victims' lives long after its end.
   
   Although Weinberger's work might be classified as travel writing by some, she encompasses aspects of many other genres -- history, memoir, nonfiction, humor -- creating a memorable read.

No comments about Armoured Cars in Eden - An American President's son serving in Rolls Royce Armoured Cars with the British in Mesopotamia and with the American Artillery in France during the First World War.

No comments about The Incendiary: The Misadventures of John the Painter, First Modern Terrorist.