5 comments about The Ride of Our Lives.

1. I couldn't put this book down. It is so touching, and profound. At times I would put the book down and laugh out loud! What a family to belong to, I bet everyone who read the book was jealous, and wants to take a month trip of their own!



2. The PBS series based on this memoir is entertaining, but the book is so much more. It's poignant, it's deeper, and it's much, much funnier -- laugh out loud finny. Marge and Jack emerge in the book as three-dimensional people, not just the target of jokes that the TV version focuses on. You'll also learn heart-rending details of their childhoods, the pervasive sadness that both have coped with, and you'll understand why Mike Leonard thinks he leads a charmed life.



3. A good quick read. The book is funny,sad,and so much like most of our lives. The family is a say it like it is. We are just as we come take us or leave us. I would take them, read the book it was very enjoyable.



4. This was a wonderful real life account of a family's journey
   through life's many turns.A story all family's can relate too!
   Bought young and old will enjoy it. I liked it very much.
   
   Brian Klune, Colchester,CT.



5. I enjoyed the book so much. Mike Leonard has written an amazing book about a trip with his parents and how much he learns about them. The book makes you feel like you are riding along with them in the RV experiencing every mile of the trip. I laughed out loud and even cried like a baby in spots. I am now watching the series on the PBS channel on Thursday nights. If anyone can tell me how to get in touch with Mike Leonard (ie) email. Please let me know by emailing me at rangersfan5@optonline.net. I would love to let him know how great his book was.

5 comments about The Guynd: A Scottish Journal.

1. I really looked forward to reading this book because I have long wanted to travel in Scotland, and I enjoy the extended travelogue where people live in a new land for a long time and get to know the locals. This was a good book, but not great. I had unanswered questions when it ended. For example, why did it take her 10 years to realize she and he husband were incompatible? Why did she keep her apartment in New York during the time she was living in Scotland? I kept thinking that if this were fiction, some of it would be implausible. Still, the characters you meet are worth meeting, and I did enjoy the book.



2. Ours was not the 'big' house, but the 'gardener's cottage' which we rented for a year, and both the marriage and the enterprise of that particular country home survive. But all the characteristics and challenges of the estate, garden, community, and home came to life again in the author's witty, canny prose. This is the best description of the many, layered facets of Scottish society and how the great homes and their residents fit into the scheme of their surroundings that I have read.



3. I enjoyed the book, but was shocked when I came to the passage describing how the author, while in a late stage of pregnancy, climbed a tall scaffolding to paint a wall. It seems like an amazing lack of judgment for someone who was pregnant late in life.



4. I wanted to read this witty memoir because of my romantic childhood fantasy of living in a mansion or castle in Europe. Oh how lucky the American author was to have fallen in love with Scottish man with an ancestral home and property. I was rather envious of their son, Elliot, who was able to spend his childhood exploring and playing in the gardens, on the lake, and in the house.
   
   But life isn't a fairytale. This is a story about a deteriorated, cluttered mansion, its 400 acres and a marriage that started as a whirlwind romance and came to mirror the mansion itself.
   
   There's a lot of humor in the writing. How could you not laugh at the author's stories about how hard it was to heat the house, find proper tenants, clear out a garden untouched for decades and to try to throw junk out when married to someone who can find a use for everything.
   
   If you don't know what an Aga stove is, you soon will. I highly recommend this book, but suggest curling up in a warm house with a hot cup of tea and a blanket. You'll need it.



5. I bought this book at my mother's request. She loved it. I'll be getting it back from her and reading it too.

5 comments about A Drinking Life: A Memoir.

1. I picked this book up out of desperation for something, anything to read...and I must admit that the title clinched the deal. "A Drinking Life" - I couldn't resist. Drama, angst, highs, lows...it's all right there in the title.
   
   What I wasn't expecting was a book that depicts a time, place and way of life that has always fascinated me. One of the reasons I love "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is the vivid and at the same time, faded sepia description of a New York, and an America that I never knew. I've been to New York twice, have seen touristy parts and not so touristy parts, have been at turns delighted and appalled by its residents...and of course, in that short period of time, barely scratched the surface of this city that almost defies description. Because, of course, there are so many facets to it. New York depends on the area, the time, the circumstances. One person's New York may be a polar opposite of the next person's.
   
   Pete Hamill, in the first half of his memoir, describes the New York of Brooklyn from 1939 to 1950. In this New York, he and his Irish Catholic family struggle to better their situation. They live hand to mouth, in sometimes squalid apartments - too small for a family that keeps growing. And yet - when Hamill spends pages describing the more positive aspects of his childhood - I feel a yearning to be there. To see the far quieter and yet more greatly populated streets. I hope to hear the sounds of stickball, and radios playing jazz and swing into a summer night. I want to feel the safety and connection of a neighborhood that knows each and every member...one that shares the joy of the end of a war that they together shared the dread of.
   
   He describes D day in a New York that had been blacked out for months fearing air raids. "...without warning, the entire skyline of New York erupted into glorious light: dazzling, glittering, throbbing in triumph. And the crowds on the rooftops roared. They were roaring on roofs all over Brooklyn, on streets, on bridges, the whole city roaring for light. There it was, gigantic and brilliant, the way they said it used to be: the skyline of New York. Back again. On D day, at the command of Mayor LaGuardia. And it wasn't just the skyline. Over on the left was the Statue of Liberty, glowing green from dozens of light beams, a bright red torch held high over her head. The skyline and the statue: in all those years of the war, in all those years of my life, I had never seen either of them at night. I stood there in the roar, transfixed."
   
   He also describes his love of books, and words, and comics and the magic that happens when one is drawn into the new world of a story. When you discover a world, an existence, a universe previously unknown.
   
   "But when we lived on Thirteenth Street, the content of the comics was driving deep into me. They filled me with secret and lurid narratives, a notion of the hero, a sense of the existence of evil. They showed me the uses of the mask, insisting that heroism was possible only when you fashioned an elaborate disguise. Most important was the lesson of the magic potion. The comics taught me, and millions of other kids, that even the weakest human being could take a drink and be magically transformed into someone smarter, bigger, braver. All you needed was the right drink."
   
   And there it is, of course. The underlying thread of the book...drinking. From the earliest age, alcohol is everywhere in Hamill's life. In his neighborhood, in his home, even in his history - drinking is an accompaniment to all events, large and small.
   
   When he reads Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the passage that stands out is one where Jekyll drinks the potion and is transformed in a hideous way..."I read that passage and thought of my father." Hamill is deeply influenced by his father...hating what drinking does to him at the same time he is learning that drinking is what men do.
   
   As the book continues, some of the detail of Hamill's life is lost, certainly because (as he is first to point out) much of it was lost to him as well due to alcohol, but I also got the sense that this part of the book was rushed. It almost felt like Hamill was looking at how much had written about his early life and realizing that he'd better move things along if was ever to finish.
   
   Still - there are passages like these that sucked me right back in. "In the summer of 1950, all of us from the Neighborhood hung out in a place on Coney Island called the Oceantide. Built on the boardwalk at Bay 22, it was a block long complex with a swimming pool, lockers, a long packed bar, and a small fenced-off area where the young men danced with the young women to a bubbling Wurlitzer jukebox. Down the block was a shop called Mary's, which sold the most fabulous hero sandwiches in New York, great thick concoctions of ham and cheese and tomatoes laced with mustard or mayonnaise, along with cases of ice cold sodas."
   
   My mouth waters just thinking about it...I want to be there!
   
   Finally, towards the end, Hamill comes to the realization that he's spent his whole life trying to either be exactly like or nothing like all of the influences in his life. Nothing like his father, and yet just like his father. Exactly like the comic book artists and heroes. Exactly like and nothing like his friends from the Neighborhood. Not only his life, but his writing is an imitation or rejection of that of others.
   
   Which is summed up in the mantra he uses to quit drinking. "I will live my life, I will not perform it." There is much time and experience and emotions that he has lost - but in the end, he is able to find the strength to cut the losses.
   
   "And I loved my life, with all its hurts and injuries and failures, and the things I now saw clearly, and the things I only remembered through the golden blur of drink."



2. Pete Hamill"s deeply introspective memoir of his coming of age during the late 40's and 50's in working class Brooklyn is a brutally honest account of how alcohol gets integrated into certain rights of passage as people , especially men navigate the transition to adulthood.
   
   His story could be anyone's, except that Hamill writes in a gripping personal style that infuses each episode in his young life with a sense of urgency. The struggle to reconcile with a distant father never deteriorates into a sense of victimhood. I admired the fact that Hamill is able to describe his youthful feelings of anger toward his father without wallowing in them and always with a sense of someone seeking to understand and forgive.
   
   This is a great book on several levels. Hamill captures a sense of the old neighborhoods of New York that have vanished and the strong influence that a sense of place had on young people of his generation when the world was quite a bit smaller.



3. In my quest for chronicles that detail the often entwined aspects of drink and journalism, I was delighted to discover Pete Hamill's candid tale, robust and surly - an account that carries the reader through his lushly-detailed memoirs that began in blue-collared Brooklyn. As the son of struggling Irish immigrants, Hamill grew up during the Depression with the enduring beliefs of the working-class neighborhood in which he lived -street-fights, low pay, loyalty to the neighborhood, and machismo drinking. His tale is rich with the nostalgia of days long past - marbles and stickball, Milton Caniff, Captain America, and the city Athletic League. He details his own lack of connectedness with an alcoholic father he longed to love and vowed not to imitate, only to fall prey to the same lure of the bottle.
   
   Hamill recounts his loss-of-innocence submission to wine at eleven, along with the internalization of the street-tough attitude that shapes his life in the ensuing years. His talent for graphics and natural ability in academics often leads him to the edge of success, only to fall victim to his own self-destruction. Dreams of becoming a cartoonist are interrupted by the reality of a Navy Yard job, yet resurrected again through art lessons from Burne Hogarth, then dulled by a desire to imitate stoic drinkers like Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The romantic association of absinthe and literature appeals to Hamill, a seduction that eventually draws him to a career in journalism. He details the rocks and bumps along the way - through newspaper strikes and Mexican jail. His obvious wanderlust takes him from Barcelona to Dublin, Rome to San Juan to Washington D.C., while trying to sustain a turbulent marriage, peppered with an infinite immersion into parties and booze, and eventual divorce.
   
   In 1966, Hamill meets Shirley McLaine at a party in Rome, and he details, very briefly, the eventual celebrity life he shared with her, but shies away from giving us a paparazzi view of truly personal details. Although he denies it, he is perhaps too immersed in drink to recall the nitty gritty. In his final look inward, he describes a New Year's Eve party and his feeling "as if I were shooting the scene with a camera from across the bar...I noticed that my hand was trembling and wondered if that was in the camera shot," - his own personal play that has lasted a lifetime, one written with a bad script that he rewrites at that very moment. Kudos for him.
   
   This is not a book that shows you how to quit drinking; rather, it is a searing, vivid account of one man's recognition of his own problem with alcohol. Despite years of succumbing to the liquor that constantly dragged him into the depths of the gutter, he emerged with a brilliant tale to tell.



4. A Drinking Life by Pete Hamill is a reflection on his drinking past. Without sentimentality Hamill tells a hard story. He portrays a loving mother, and an alcoholic father. He chronicles his impoverished childhood, his tough coming of age, his difficult search for meaning, his newspaper career, and his regrets about the way he treated his first wife and children. As the title implies his memories are tied together by recollections of alcohol, and a drinking culture that both fascinated and repelled him. The bar was a place of refuge where Hamill could be a man. It was a place to celebrate, to commiserate, to identify with others, to escape loneliness. It was the only place he bonded with his father.
   
   But the bar and the alcohol that fueled it had an evil side. It stifled human consciousness; it dulled pain, boredom, and joy. It allowed unconsciousness in the midst of living. During the 1960's at the peak of his newspaper career he realized drink was making his hands shake when he typed, and his mind so soft he couldn't spell easy words. He quit. Drinking memories ended. Hamill's love for the writing life was more important than his love for booze.
   
   His memoir is not a cautionary tale against using alcohol, nor is it a self-serving whine against the way he was brought up. He writes like the reporter he is. Honest sentences, specificity, and recalled emotion inform his text. He presents clear snapshots of his 1940's childhood in Brooklyn. He lets the reader draw conclusions, or judgments. He presents the characters who walked across his mother's kitchen floor--his Irish father, mostly drunk, and his siblings. He gives us his friends. He moves into the 1950's with raw adolescent energy--lots of sex, lots of booze. Drinking so overpowers the narrative, that at times I felt exhausted just by reading of his drinking binges.
   
   Hamill's talent, in this memoir and in other work, is a passionate love for real life. He spreads humanity on a broad canvas without moralizing. He paints violence, gentleness, loneliness, and companionship. Real life is hard to look at. Hamill gives it to the reader like he gives it to himself. Without bitterness, with humility, with forgiveness, and with compassion.



5. Oh, the places Hamill will take you in this gritty, unflinchingly honest look at a fascinating interior life. Growing up in a poor neighborhood in Brooklyn, complete with cockroaches, Pete slowly acquires an understanding of what it means to be an Irish-American.
   Around age 8, his father, Billy, walked him to Gallagher's, the corner saloon, where young Pete got his first introduction to the camaraderie of the neighborhood bar. There he witnessed his father's serenading of the crowd, after loosening himself up with booze.
   It was an initiation that would influence Pete for many years to come. Throughout the book, Hamill notes the persistent, persuasive messages that our society gives, that drinking is an essential social lubricant.
   Be it a wedding, a funeral, the beginning of a job, or ending of one, joining the Navy, going on leave or vacation, on and on, drinking was invited, expected, nearly demanded.
   The book provides great insights into the times. Hamill writes, "We lived to the rhythms of the war (WWII). Before the War, During the War, After the War."
   Hamill's forays into the world of art are enlightening. While taking a drawing class, he becomes enamored of a nude model, and they become involved. His loves, travels, thoughts on religion and family kept me entranced, as well as his inevitable slide into an alcohol-induced moral deterioration.
   The surprising aspect here, was Hamill's moment of clarity, when he realized he had a choice, that he could disrupt the cycle of the "Irish-curse". We cheer for him as he strives to make a sober life for himself. An interesting life, told by a great writer.

5 comments about The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill, Alone 1932-1940.

1. Finest biography on Churchill ever written. A pity Manchester died before completing the third book of the trilogy.



2. The Last Lion, Alone covers the history of Europe from the time Hitler first came to power in Germany to the time that Hitler invaded the Low Countries and World War II began. During this period Churchill, who continually fought against the appeasement policies of Chamberlain, rose from Back Bench irrelevance to become Brittan's Prime Minister.
   
   The history of this period is a gripping saga of one man's malicious attempt to dominate Europe and another man's noble efforts to stop him - a classical case of good vs evil - told as an almost unbelievable story in the words of a master story teller.



3. William Manchester informs and entertains in this excellent historical account of the critical years leading up to WWII, juxtaposing the appeasement practices of predecessors Baldwin and Chamberlain with the unwavering belief in the principles of freedom held by Churchill. The book (along with Manchester's first volume) gives terrific insight into the transition from the glory days of the British Empire to the Post WWI apathy that beset the British public. As well, the work provides delightful commentary on the characters surrounding Churhill's life including his colorful mother Jennie, his wife Clementine and his nemesis Adolf Hitler.



4. After the fall of France in June 1940, Winston Churchill was begging USA President Roosevelt for military aid (in fact, all sorts of support was then needed) as no one knew what would the 'fate' of the French fleet was going to be.
   Churchill kept reminding the American president that Britain would not surrender even if left alone.
   Churchill was defiant despite the fact that the two 'key' American ambassadors, in France and Great Britain, were pro Hitler (or at least they were not anti-Nazi).
   Joseph Kennedy (USA Ambassador to GB) openly cautioned his fellow Americans against entering the war because the 'allies' would soon be beaten.
   However, I would have liked to see more comments about the position and reaction of the king - king George VI.
   Was he indifferent?
   We should remember that Hitler had been addressing the King as the man whom the British Government circles have loathed, and as the only 'hope' for a reconciliation between the Third Reich and GB.
   In this context it is true that Churchill was indeed ALONE



5. I was adrift when I finished this volume.
   grasping at pathetic things to read for a while - nothing satisfied - Manchester can set the stage, his historical background is so rich that you'll find yourself spouting about it to your friends.
   
   You'll learn more from this book than a two semester course in 20th century history.
   
   Churchill himself is the lead player in a panapoly of exciting elements. But manchester never lets the reader forget the place in history - the man was a masterful writer.

5 comments about The Dark Sacrament: True Stories of Modern-Day Demon Possession and Exorcism.

1. Fairly interesting accounts of some recent devilry in Ireland - up to 2007. Some stories are sure to scare you. The main focus is on two different (and busy) exorcists and some of their recent cases. The author provides a very nice account of exorcism through the ages as the last chapter of the book. It's a good companion read after "The Demonologist" (which WILL scare you SILLY - guaranteed)!!!! But after reading the aforementioned this seemed a little pale in comparison. I would still recommend it for anyone interested in the demonic and how to safely coexist in a world where evil is just about everywhere. As with "The Demonologist", this book also had me thinking very much about the good in the world and the existence of angels as well as these terrible troubled spirits or these demons who have never lived. My heart really went out to some of these people (the poor woman and her evil, evil husband on the Dingle peninsula in particular, and the woman who left her body at will).
   All-in-all, a very good read but I highly recommend "The Demonologist" first and foremost. (If you do read "Demonologist", make sure you have some good friends nearby that you can call on).



2. GREAT BOOK, IT WILL BRING YOU BACK TO MASS, BUT I COULD ! PUT IT DOWN THAT'S WHY I GAVE IT 4 NOT 5 STARS.
   
   WAYNE STEVENS



3. This book had me hooked from the first page. It was well written, and fast moving. The stories in this book detail how the unseen dark forces invade our lives, and tells how the people in these circumstances battled the evil one. I found it very informative. It will give you a healthy respect for the powers of darkness, and show you just how horrific a life can be transformed by the presence of evil.



4. The Dark Sacrament carefully and thoroughly describes several cases of demonic activity in Ireland. The heroes are the families who endure years of supernatural harassment and two clergymen who are very humble spiritual/Christian giants who engage in supernatural warfare with the evil forces. This book is a great read for anyone interested in the cosmic battle between God, his people, and evil!!!



5. This was a great book. The intro was a bit slow, but once you started reading the tue stories, it renews your faith in God and say your prayers at night!

5 comments about Memoirs of the Second World War (An Abridgement of the Six Volumes of the Second World War).

1. `Memoirs of the Second World War' by Winston Churchill
   
   This abridged (6 volumes) edition of Churchill's WWII memoirs is as important today as it was when penned. One is left with a true sense of the thoughts passing through the Prime Minister's mind which led to the extraordinary choices he was to decide through the bulk of the `40's. I've always felt the European perspective of the war years was under appreciated in America, when after all, these were the souls who dealt with the ravages of war at their front door.
   
   Churchill's beautiful prose and detailed account of all major Allied decision making is required reading for any history, and certainly any WWII aficionado. It probably should be for all American high school students, as well. Whether or not you agree with these opinions, I definitely think you'll find a passionate, wonderfully composed piece of history in this excellent abridgement from one of history's greatest intellects.



2. This book is one of the most comprehensive I've ever read.
   
   I have a huge quantity of books about Second World War, including biographies of important people who took part in it; I can ensure this one is always within easy reach of my hands.
   Of course, you must be conscious before reading this book that it's been written by an English leader who was responsible not only for his country but for lots more and the War itself. He wrote it, based upon his documents and remembrances of those hard days.
   I didn't read the six volume set that is his thorough and complete biography, however "Memoirs of the Second Word War" is a wide-ranging book, starting in the thirties and going through all periods of war, till some time post-war.
   
   If you have a deep knowledge of WWII, might see that some facts are missing.
   In this book he does not make any mention of allies who took little but important part during those tough days. For example, he just talk about the capture of Monte Cassino , in Italy, without making any mention of Monte Castelo and Montese which resulted in prison of one entire German Division (148º Infantry) in a hard fighting, by FEB (Brazilian Expeditionary Force). These details however, do not take his merits away. On the contrary, Sir Winston Churchill show us others things that we, mere mortals, would not imagine that could be happen at that time, such as how dubious, distrustful and cheek Stalin was!
   He also exposes his disagreements and discussions with American allies when they had different point of views in some issues, and shows himself as a human being and not as a superman.
   
   We must be aware that, as he has said, "It must be not supposed that I expect everybody to agree with what I say", so it is a book to explain his point of view of this important event and not to please someone. Of course, you do not have to get this book as unique reference for researches or studies but as an addition to them.
   
   "Memoirs of the Second War" is a masterpiece which must be read for everyone who enjoy and study WWII.



3. Since this book was updated, there are new facts have come out about the statistics of WWII and the roles the Allies and the Axis played in it.
   That's to be expected.
   It is one sided with Churchill at times believing in his absolute right and his problems getting his view across to the Americans and the Russians.
   At times he lays too much emphasis on the fact that Britain won the war with the "help" of the Allies. And at other times he states that without the Allies Britain would have been sunk.
   As confusing and horrible as that time was, reading another book about the American side would be also helpful as we had to fight the Japanese also and it was our POW's on the defensive there. It seems to downplay the effect the Japenese had on the war which was not trivial at all.
   
   Though he seems to describe the battle of Leyete and Midway fairly well.
   It's a good read, and it's interesting to see the other "side" of the war from a great man and you won't be sorry to read it.



4. I read this good book, here in Brazil.Among the World War II great leaders, only Churchill wrote a book about that war.
   About american eugenics , race and gender relations, there isn't a single word against or about, in this big book, with more than 1,000 pages.There's some maps inside.This book isn't only about World War II, but also about the war's roots and fruits, includind about Cold War.
   This book is very biased.The Churchill's mistakes in World War II, were enormous.About France's battle in 1940, seems that Churchill was in another planet then, not as England's leader then.Ever big Churchill's or England's failure, has almost nothing or no place at all, in this book.About war production and military weapons, there's almost nothing.
   Secrets about Colossus computer and the breaking of german Enigma code machine or "purle" japanese code,were war secrets and also had no place on this book.
   Even with so many bias and other failures, this book remains good and easy to read.



5. Winston Churchill was a man of destiny, and he came to realize that, although he seldom hints at it. Without him Western Civilization would be drastically different today, for the worse.
   
   Somehow he makes the day-to-day machinations of world governments read like a suspense novel. Yet he is concise, reserved and free from hyperbole. I think this is possible because he so clearly saw the Big Picture and knew deep down what really was at stake. The story didn't need to be enhanced for those who could understand, and those who couldn't . . . oh well.
   
   This made the early decades of the Twentieth Century come alive for me. I now feel like I lived through those times.
   
   I loved the book, and I love the man!

5 comments about Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968.

1. I read this about 6 years ago when it was assigned in one of my undergrad classes. There are enough online reviews for you to read about the plot and like. Rather I want to tell you how her voice has stuck with me. I think of her ability to see the slivering when everything is just gray, and her amazing capacity to keep going. Whenever I think I can't go on, this death/or lost/ or series of unfortunate events as shattered the very last of my will I remember her words. I highly recommend it. I regally give this as a gift, I know I'm not just giving someone a powerful story, but really I'm giving someone a packet of extra strength for when they need it most in life.



2. This is a well-written, quick read. Heda's 27 years of suffering - first at the hands of the Nazis & then under the communist regime in Czechoslovakia - is heart rending. It's a book that should be part of high school curriculums to raise awareness of what too many people had to endure in the middle of the last century. It would be much more effective than relying on a history textbook that deals only with the 'facts.'



3. I would recommend this book to anyone. Even if you think you don't like reading about history, you'll like this book. In fact, it is books like these that are the reason I love history so much, and why I'm majoring in it. It isn't about the politics or the wars or whatever else (although those are certainly important), it is the story of a woman trying to survive through a hell most of us cannot even imagine has existed on this earth, especially not in the last 50 years. Peoples' lives are what connect us to the past, and what make it relevant to the future. It gives a little meaning and heart behind all the dates and events that you have to memorize in class...make them more personal. And furthermore, you will be inspired by this woman. Her strength and character is admirable, to say the very least. Actually, I don't think even a fictional writer could invent a heroine more honorable than this one.
   
   So please, read it. stories like these deserve to be shared.



4. it is a great book use in my world civ class, and highly recommmand by my professor and TAs.



5. Clive James, in "Cultural Amnsia' - his magesterial review of literature and totalitarianism - said: "Given thirty seconds to recommend a single book that might start a serious young student on the hard road to understanding of the political tragedies of the twentieth century, I would choose this one". It tells a remarkable personal tale of a Jewish girl in Prague caught up by the Nazis and going to Auschwitz, then her escape and return to her beloved Prague, and subsequent worse sufferings under the communist government in the 1950s and 1960s. Her husband was a high ranking government official but later was put on a show trial and killed.
   
   "Under a Cruel Star" (also called "Prague Farewell" in some editions) is not as bleak as the story sounds. It is a slim volume of hope and understanding, written elegantly by a woman who later in life worked as a translator from English and finished her working life in the Harvard Law School library.

3 comments about European History for Dummies (For Dummies (History, Biography & Politics)).

1. It is understandable that this book is brief about everything. However, with that simple introduction of people and events, they didn't give me any impression unless I had already known them. There is no maps with this book, not a single one. The author suppose us to know Europe very well before we read this book.



2. I read this whole book through; every word. I liked it. It gave an interesting, readable overview of European History. European History covers a long period of time so topics get limited time. That's OK. If I saw a topic which was interesting I can research deeper with other books. Much of European history is bloodshed, bloodshed and more bloodshed.
   
   The topic which raised my eyebrow was the author's treatment of the Inquisition. I'll exagerate for fun: He made it seem as if people were tortured with wet noodles and feathers and the stories about horrific torture have been greatly exaggerated. He says, The stories of horrific acts of torture are popular misconceptions trumped up by a few 16th century Spanish Protestant writers with a grudge, writing under the pseudonym, "Montanus". Lang says, although torture was used; better results were had by questioning. Maybe it's because the Inqusition only gets about 5 small paragraphs in 382 page book that it seems like this whole inquistion thing has been down played.
   
   I've never heard anyone downplay the Inqusition unless they were Catholics or Christians defending their faith.
   
   Lang maybe right. It's just a new viewpoint for me. I'll have to research further. This is the only reason I gave this book a three***.
   
   This downplaying of the Inqusition seems wrong but I may come back and give it a Five*****. An historian shouldn't just pander to the masses and go along with popular misconceptions. They are supposed to educate us about the truth. I simply don't know if what he says about the Inquisition is true since he is the first that I've heard tone it down like this. He does admit that we could have down without it but...
   
   I'm reading Sam Harris' book End of Faith and the stories of torture make me ill and then I read Lang's book and it's like, no biggy, yea a few people were burned at the stake but hey. The contrast in reporting this event is so large. It could be that this is a Dummy book which makes light of everything which is fine...I enjoy that, but Lang does say that the stories of torture are exagerrated, so maybe Sam Harris' book is exaggerated to make us angry about religion???????????????????????



3. I took AP European History. I used this "for dummies" book in order to prepare myself for the exam. It was one of the few books that I could read without falling asleep. If I would have had this book before I took the class to give myself an idea of where the class was going, I would have saved myself a lot of pain, trouble, and headache.
   
   The most important aspect of this book are the interesting side stories about certain individuals. They make history more personable and sometimes funny.
   
   I would highly recommend this book for anyone interested in a *broad* overview of European History or for someone who is sick of the conventional history books.

5 comments about First Light.

1. I served in the RCAF durin ww2. I later flew fighters in th USAF, served as captain on USAirways for 28 years.I have written 5 books on aviation.Jeoffrey Wellum's book is a master piece.His breath -taking descriptions of aeral battles puts you right in the cockpit of his BEAUTIFUL Spitfire.
   " The narrow legs of it 'undercarrage give it a delicate apperance.It has the air of a thoroughbread---It's ellipitical wings and sleder body give it an air above all other fighters,the sound of it'sRR Merline engine produces a sound ,like nothing else in the air.I firmly believe that the Spitfire was the most beautiful fighter of ww2, and I as jeoffery said ,I would also give my arm to fly it.
   I don't know which was his most dangerous flying conditions were,weather flack, or bullets. He did a yomans job in all these instances.
   I have read dozens of books by RAF fighter pilots, This book is at the top of my list.Great job " BOY"



2. Excellent first person account of the Battle of Britain but not the best I've read. If you're looking for something with a little more of the overall picture, try Fly For Your Life by Robert Stanford Tuck. Tuck's book is definitely the best memoir on the Battle of Britain I've come across and one of the best WW II books I've ever read.



3. This is one of those books I pick up again and again just to read a random chapter. It is that well written. It tells a story of a generation of people and there unbelievable courage & humility. I know because my own father was one of them. The deeply humourous and self depreciating strong and silent type. I doubt we shall see there like again.



4. Bookwriters use their fantasy and imagination to tell a tale.
   Geoffrey Wellum has written from his younger years, from his own experience,what kind of world he faced.A story so incredible that our mind almost refuse to believe it's true. There's one way of capturing a reader, and that is HONESTY. Mr.Wellum is dead honest.I'm reading the book for the tenths time, stil laughing at some situations and very, very sad at others.A book very hard to put down.I guess most of the persons who want to read this book is aviations "freaks", but this book is a good read whoever you are.I've been so fortunate to have met, one of my heroes,mr Geoffrey Wellum, and talked to him.A fantastic person that I hope to meet again.



5. The best first hand book on flying - particularly the Spitfire, I have ever read. And I've read a lot!

5 comments about American Jennie: The Remarkable Life of Lady Randolph Churchill.

1. to me jennie churchill was a selfish ,pleasure seeking woman who only cared about herself.she couldn't wait to get nannies taking care her sons are puting them in abusive boarding schools.she as a wife was a marriage were she couldn't stay faithful or not keeping her husband in debit.to me why winston feeling of love for her i just don't get.his nanny was more a mother to him than jennie.



2. American Jennie in the US, and Jennie Churchill in the UK - the mother of Winston Churchill - the title says it all. Anne Sebba has created a character who had to triumph in two countries. The method is simplistic, almost from a 1950s children's comic. The goodie is Jennie nee Jerome, from an American, and therefore liberated background. The baddie is her husband, Lord Randolph Churchill, from an English, aristocratic background. His supposedly becoming infected with syphilis early on in the marriage increases his badness. It gets worse when his career as a Conservative politician develops and he spends long hours in the House of Commons. Beautiful, well-dressed, extravagant, piano-playing Jennie is justified in taking a lover and triumphs as the heroine.
   
   Jennie is promoted as the engineer of Winston's success as a politician and world leader during the Second World War. Yet she died in 1921, when he was still in disgrace over the failed attempt to capture Gallipoli in 1915, which plan he had masterminded. It would be another 20 years before Winston, by then in his mid-60s, would become British Wartime Prime Minister. One would have thought that his wife, Clementine nee Hozier (Clemmie), who he married in 1908, would have warranted more credit by Anne Sebba for her role in his success.
   
   And what of Winston's younger brother John (Jack) Churchill? Ignored by Winston in his writings, as though he didn't exist he died in 1947 in relative obscurity. Anne Sebba has written Jack out of her biography in a single line. He was the illegitimate son of 7th Viscount (`Star') Falmouth. In other words he wasn't really a Churchill so neither Jennie nor Winston could be expected to take any responsibility for him. Winston and Jack are as alike as two peas in a pod, both Churchillian, both grandsons of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. Jack's two other children were John (Johnny) a well-known artist, and Clarissa, Countess of Avon, wife of the former Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden. Now in her 88th year, Clarissa has just written a very interesting book Memoir, published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Clarissa and her two siblings were in no doubt that their grandfather was Lord Randolph Churchill, even though Anne Sebba paints him as a mad syphilitic. What rot!
   
   I have it on good authority that one of the major copyright owners of the Churchill papers is so disgusted with Mrs Sebba's book that they have withdrawn permission of copyright. From the point of view of an historian, a true biography of Jennie, Lady Randolph Churchill, has still to be written. In fact, Elizabeth Kehoe's book, Fortunes Daughters, the story of the three Jerome sisters, Clara, Jennie, and Leonie, is a far better read having been more carefully researched. Also, while not perfect, look at Dark Lady, the biography of Jennie Churchill by Charles Higham, for a more balanced and historically accurate portrayal.



3. Great new book on a wonderful and timeless life. We own and have read the two volumn work by Martin on Jennie, but this is a fresh and well researched look at the times and people who shaped her son Winston's life. If this work interests the reader there is in Jennie's own hand her book, The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill. While not in print, it can be found on the used books websites.



4. American Jennie by Anne Sebba is the story of the incredible life of Lady Randolph Churchill. American Jennie Jerome fell in love with Brit Randolph Churchill in a whirlwind courtship. After overcoming parental objections on both sides of the match, the couple wed and quickly produced son Winston. But the romance faded soon, and both engaged in affairs. They pulled together to get Randolph into the House of Commons, but for most of the rest of their lives, they lived apart. Sebba digs through newspaper accounts, family records, diaries, and letters to produce this well put together biography of an unusual woman. Jennie was well known for her beauty and her indiscretions in a time when women were still considered a husband's property. She produced a literary magazine, helped get both her husband and son seats in the House, traveled extensively, and cared for her husband at the end of his life. Randolph, who suffered from syphilis, was a difficult man, capricious even before the disease attacked his mind. Sebba tries to defend and protect Jennie where possible, but even in the best of lights, Jennie was an atrocious mother who ignored her children. In the end, the picture that emerges of Jennie is of a woman determined to live life on her own terms. She produced children, but that didn't make her a mother. She was married, but was a better wife to her lovers. She lived very much in the moment, always in debt and buying Worth gowns. Sebba does her best to make Jennie likeable, and to an extent, she succeeds. Jennie would be a wonderful addition to a dinner party, but not someone you could count on as a friend. A couple of complaints: there are not nearly enough photos of Jennie. For such a famous woman, I'm sure there are many more out there that would have shown her recognized beauty to better advantage. Also, Jennie and her sisters spoke French, so they peppered their letters to each other with French phrases. Sebba also throws several in her writing. I don't know French, so I often felt a bit left out. Sebba easily could have included translations in brackets, because the meaning was usually not easily gleaned from the rest of the passage.



5. When I say this is not a flattering portrait, it is only because, at the end of the day, I don't think Jennie Churchill was a particularly good person. She was a bad mother--even by the standards of the day; she was an unfaithful wife; she was a spendthrift; and she was, in my opinion, rather clueless as to the real world.
   
   Any portrait of Jennie could not be flattering; she's famous for being infamous.
   
   Now, beyond the topic of the "real" Jennie, my major criticism is that this book is not well written. It's just not an easy read. The thoughts seem scattered and not in depth, the deeper nuances of Jennie's character and motivations were not explored, and overall, the book does not flow.
   
   I think the subject of this book is not to make Jennie look good. It's to shed insight on why she was the way she was. In that manner, I think by the somewhat disorganized storytelling, this book misses the mark.