No comments about Ave Maria in Auschwitz: The True Story of a Jewish Girl from Poland.

4 comments about The Language of the Third Reich : Lti - Lingua Tertii Imperii : A Philologist's Notebook.

1. Victor Klemperer,a Professor at Dresden University,catalogued words used by the Third Reich from 1933-1945.Klemperer was stripped of his tenure at the University when the Nazi's declared that Jews could not hold such positions.In that time,Klemperer notated the words that became the "catch" phrases and "now" words of the Fuhrer's thinking.These words,he noted,were the "language of poverty" and appealed to the common masses,i.e "dummying-down" the language.This language,though,as he referred to it as the "L.T.I", the Language of the Reich,became the words used on the bourgeois lips in order to enflame German people against the Jews, and to embolden them to rise up for their Fatherland.
   Have you ever been in a conversation with someone who seems to "parrot" back what they have heard; nothing is an original thought, but only some form of "propaganda" or "mind-controlled" speech? I have! Perhaps this is why this book upset me so.I see and hear this everyday and it scares me to see how propaganda and word use in a very particular way can all of a sudden take on a new and more sinister meaning.
   I read this fascinating book after seeing LANGUAGE DOES NOT LIE: The Victor Klemperer Diary on The Sundance Channel.
   Other suggested materials concerning Klemperer,whose Diary was not published until 1995 include I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 (Modern Library Paperbacks), I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945: A Diary of the Nazi Years,and Biography - Klemperer, Otto (1885-1973): An article from: Contemporary Authors,and The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror.
   ANYONE WHO VALUES LANGUAGE, will undoubtedly find these books invaluable,fascinating,riveting and quite disturbing.



2. just a note about this book. reading it will not only help you understand history of the 20th century and of Germany under the Nazi Party's sickening rule, but will inform your hearing of the news and of governmental communications today. it will make your infuriation listening to the propaganda that has infiltrated culture at almost every level a much more informed infuriation. :-)
   
   this is an excellent, excellent book and the two other reviews accurately describe it to a potential reader.



3. ...this is an extraordinary book in any number of ways, and ought to be widely read....it's a book that almost anyone could read profitably, even many times. It's complexity is quite astonishing, but it's not the sort of complexity that is off-putting. In fact, it is so well written, so well organized, that it's complexity is almost unnoticeable. Still, it is a confession as well as an indictment, autobiography as well as analysis, cooly restrained and deeply moving often in the same paragraph. It is objective while being prfoundly personal. It wears it's Jewish spectacles (a phrase from the book) very lightly indeed.... More often it is wryly funny. It is its own evidence of the degree of assimilation (and blindness to the terror that was being prepared for them) of educated Jews in Germany prior to the rise of Nazism. It further substantiates, from a different angle, Arendt's famous insights into Nazi behavior. It contains in its preface an extraordinary statement of love, which, once read, informs the entire book. It is heartbreaking without once being sentimental. Indeed, it is heartbreaking in part because it resists the sentimental....



4. A professor recommended this book by Victor Klemperer to me several years ago, before his 1933-45 Tagebücher were translated into English by Martin Chalmers. At the time, my apprentice German was not equal to the work in the original language, and I read it in its French translation, ably translated by Elisabeth Guillot. I have since reread it in German, and, on publication, read this English edition. As far as I can tell, Martin Brady has done a masterful job of rendering Klemperer's informal and easily parsed style into addictably readable English. Before his career in the academy, Klemperer was a journalist, and in all of his writing, this tone prevailed.

   Klemperer wrote his "LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen" in 1945 and 1946, mostly from notes he kept in the diaries that later became the wildly successful "Ich will zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten" (I Will Bear Witness). He carried on his work despite the danger, and with an impressive amount of conscious objectivity. The work is an excellent, if impressionistic, study of the modes of Nazi language and their development in popular speech and culture. I would emphasize the _impressionism_ that colors this work, because Klemperer was only able to study a limited amount of presently accessible material; most of his work is based on the editions of newspapers, leaflets, and books that fell into his hands in Dresden during the war. He was a Jew in the Third Reich, and banned from possessing books written by "Aryan" authors. As well, over the course of the war the restrictions on Jews listening to radios, reading newspapers, and even talking in public became too great for Klemperer to realize any truly comprehensive study.

   I do not wish to seem like I am condemning the man with faint praise: Klemperer wrote the first postwar study of Nazi language and linked it directly with the operation of the regime. Subsequent researchers have borne out Klemperer's thesis: the euphemisms and barbarisms in the Nazi tongue exerted a considerable influence on popular culture and personal expression. It is not necessary to go back to the Forties to find this influence - it exists today in modern German. The contemporary quibbles over such words as "ausrotten" or "endlösung" mask the considerable reformation of German that occurred during the Third Reich.

   Students of twentieth century history cannot ignore this book. It is a must read.

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5 comments about Walking on Walnuts.

1. I loved the way Nancy Ring wrote this book. As educators, we struggle to teach students to use similies and metaphors in their writing. Why teach them these things if not to use them in real life?
   
   Nancy Ring found a delightful way to weave metaphors and similies throughout her book while at the same time shares her family history, her love of baking and art, and her struggles to make it in the world. I saw her use of the similies and metaphors as a tongue-in-cheek approach of relating life in general to her world of baking. I think she knew exactly what she was doing here and wondering if the reader was paying enough attention to catch it. Publishing the wonderful recipes passed down to her were an added bonus.
   
   I thought it very clever to start each chapter with a quote about something to do with nuts. I also enjoyed how she interspersed trivia about nuts into the story. You learn something new every day, don't you? Why not learn it while reading a good book?
   
   I enjoyed getting to know Nancy's family and friends as seen through her eyes. What a wonderful tribute and lasting legacy she has created!
   
   Nancy Ring, I would recommend your book to any English teacher struggling to show students some fine examples of similies and metaphors.
   



2. My mom insisted that I read this book because my career paths and quandries are remarkably similar to Ms. Ring's. I'm about 3/4 through it and I have to confess that the writing has so befuddled me that I've started skimming over the family history parts to get to the narrative of her restaurant stories, in fact I'm longing for even just ten uninterrupted pages of ANY straight narrative, preferably without walnut analogies or metaphors.

   If you're trying to decide whether you should read this book, let me give you a food analogy to help you out. This book is like a fruitcake. Densely packed with tasty tidbits and each and every tidbit is in every single bite. There's no escaping the pineapple if you don't like pineapple, no escaping the nuts either.

   The restaurant stories are entertaining, especially for anybody who's been in the industry; the family stories are compelling (and really deserve their own straight narrative, not this chopping up to accentuate Ms. Ring's life), the recipes look great and make me wish it were late summer so I could make that peach cake. The walnut facts and analogies are so tedious they make me want to cry.

   Basically I'm going to skip to the end of the book to figure out what she does (goes to work for a caterer? Opens her own pastry shop? Does she every marry Eric? Under a walnut tree in Central Park?) and I'm sorry, all you great grandmas and uncles.....I'd love to spend some time with you to get to know you, but you're too confusing a gaggle.

   Ms. Ring. In your next book, how about just a straight story, set in the not too distant past....some historical fiction based on your relatives and ancestors? That farm in Argentina--that's a great story-- imagine being that woman holding the farm together, trying to keep a kosher kitchen when all there is to burn is dried cow patties. You've got the material, now all you need is the time, right? Yeah, ha ha.




3. There are those among us who read cookbooks like normal people read novels. If you are among this group, you will rejoice at Nancy Ring's evocative memoir, "Walking on Walnuts." This lovely book braids delectable recipes (Burnt Orange Ice Cream, Peach and Honey Upside-Down Cake, among many others) together with tales of the author's family and the story of her own path towards professional and personal fulfillment.

   Nancy Ring held a number of positions as pastry chef in some of New York City's finest restaurants, all without benefit of culinary school training. She learned to bake from her grandmothers, and she learned to create recipes from her own imagination. Her progress from utter novice to confident chef is fascinating, especially because she never seeks to pull the wool over her readers' eyes. She knows she's inexperienced, and she's not above naïveté and wonder as she traverses the Manhattan restaurant world--a world which shows its magic to the public and saves its horrors for those who create the magic. This only adds to the absorbing narrative tension of the story.

   To protect the innocent and not-so-innocent, Ring has altered the names of the restaurants which employed her, as well as the names of most of her co-workers. My favorite section takes place in the first restaurant to take a chance on Ring's as-yet-unproved baking talents; she works under a sassy woman named Arana who takes relish in appearing at the restaurant's staff holiday party dressed as a formally set dinner table:

   "She walked straight up to the chef and placed herself directly in front of him. Arana was very tall, and in those heels she towered over the chef, who stood barely over five feet. Her breasts were nearly exactly level with his eyes. When I tell you the crowd was disintegrated in laughter, I mean it. 'Arana,' the chef said in a tone somewhere between shock and appreciation . . . 'This is a party, not a watermelon sale.' Knock-down, all-out, knee-slapping laughter. Somebody yelled, 'Touché!' 'Hmmpf,' said Arana, real Mae West style, 'don't you know what I am?' . . . 'No, I don't,' he laughed. Arana stood with her hands on her hips, glaring at the crowd until they quieted a little. Then, when she was sure they would all hear her, she turned back to the chef, enjoying her captive and her audience. 'Would you like a bite?' she smirked. 'I'm the tart of the day.' "

   This is the type of book you immediately want to go out and buy for friends. Ring's own illustrations punctuate each chapter; in addition to being a pastry chef and writer, she is a talented artist. I can hardly imagine a more enjoyable read for anyone who enjoys cooking as much as they enjoy a fast-moving, well-plotted story.




4. I really liked this book because I could identify with the author on every level: artist, baker, family member. An intricately woven story of life in the 1990's as seen through the eyes of a struggling female artist and the generations of women who proceeded her. I love how each chapter ends with a recipe she struggles with during the course of the story and how food and walnuts are used as metaphors for life.



5. Yummy and lucious! Found this in the cooking section at my local bookstore and stumbled on a treasure!! It's part family history -- (a pet favorite subject of mine) -- part cookbook (I love baking) and part just-plain-fun! I loved reading about what life is like behind the scenes in swanky restaurants.
   
   And, as icing on this cake of a book, the author does her own illustrations -- and beautiful ones they are! Great work, Ms. Ring!

No comments about Are the Trees in Bloom over There: Thoughts and Memories of Two Brothers.

No comments about The Invisible Wall.

5 comments about Beyond Siberia: Two Years in a Forgotten Place.

1. I didn't that's for sure. Intrigued, I ordered this book from Amazon.
   
   Sharon Dirlam's report of the two years she and her husband, John McCafferty, spent in Russia's far east is interesting and informative. The time is during the 1990s, so it may be a bit outdated. The personal ways of the Russians I'm sure are not. The book is very much like a long letter assembled from a daily diary. Ms Dirlam is extremely observant, generous and fair. It is a good sample of writing by a Peace Corps volunteer.
   
   The book is a self published low budget production, lacking in photographs except for those on the cover. The binding is poor and my copy began to disintegrate by the time I got to page 20.
   
   I don't think it is appropriate for spouses of authors to write 5 star reviews of their wives books though. It indicates a lack of objectivity and smells of desperation.
   
   The book is worth reading for content and perspective, but most assuredly is not a 5 star production.



2. I enjoyed this book and am grateful for Sharon Dirlam making the effort to write it. Ultimately, though, I found the experience a little hollow. The book is a hybrid of a personal accounting of time and a series of reports on people, places and situations encountered. While some of the anecdotes may border on the banal, it does leave the reader with the sense of sharing the day to day rhythm of life in Birobidjan. However, occasional bursts of color do brighten the prose where the author appears to have taken some inspiration from an event or observation - and these make the book worthwhile.
   
   The disappointing part about the book, though, was that it left me without much of a sense of where Sharon starts her journey, what she and her husband were looking for, or whether they found it. The book screams for answers on these point; the reader is gently picked up at the start and gently let down at the end, but there is little attempt to answer "why?" The author appears to lack a willingness to be vulnerable, choosing instead to make the experience more of a polite conversation with the reader; perhaps unconsciously reinforcing the position stated several times in the book that only those who have been through this experience first hand can really appreciate the anecdotes.



3. 'Beyond Siberia'', Sharon Dirlam's account of her two-year sojourn as a Peace Corps teacher brings an unfamiliar part of Russia to life. I found the structure and writing most engaging! While offering a chronological account of hers and her husband's experiences in Birobidjan, Dirlam includes many fascinating details about the life and culture they encountered. 'Zhag za Zhagem' ['step by step', page 54 and later], we see the philosophical and often humorous responses of their Russian friends to the difficult conditions of their daily lives. Dirlam's experience as a travel writer comes through in her vivid observations and pithy reflections.
   
   This book offers a wonderful and varied cast of characters, succinctly telling anecdotes, valuable insights, and some interesting (and not always obvious) contrasts between Russian ways and those of the US. A particularly telling sequence in this regard is the story of Dirlam's return home midway through her tenure in Birobidjan--on Fourth of July.
   
   When I finished this book, I felt like I'd been given a privileged angle of vision on an intriguing part of the world and its inhabitants, the Russian 'Jewish Autonomous Region' as it was once called. Highly recommended to teachers, Peace Corps volunteers, armchair travellers, and anyone with a curiosity about a little-known part of Russia.



4. "Beyond Siberia:Two Years in a Forgotten Place" is a vivid account of an American's experience of living and working in a remote section of Russia. Dirlam's manages to convey objective and insightful views of the people she learned to respect and learn from. It's an especially useful read for anyone planning to work in the Peace Corps, but for those readers like myself, it is one great learning experience that is lacking in many books about Russia. Highly recommended.



5. As I read these other reviews I'm curious if they were reading the same book that I read. I gave it 2 stars only because I have read worse books. That is not to say that the information in the book is not interesting, or heartfelt, but I just feel poorly written. Dirlam repeats herself in many useless issues, such as the numerous times that she metions the reavealing dress of the russian girls. The book is also a bit scattered, it did not flow well. I would recomend against purchasing this book, rather for an excellent book on siberia read Colin Thurbron's "In Siberia" it will delight and amaze you.

2 comments about Bialystok to Birkenau: The Holocaust Journey of Michel Mielnicki.

1. This is an important, interesting, compelling, and well written testimony by Mr.Mielnicki. It is the kind of work that will take one beyond the well known general statistics and facts of the holocaust, and also into the realm of the heart. In particular it is highly informative regarding events in the Bialystok Region, from which hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were murdered. I read it in one sitting, and paused only when in it's pages I unexpectedly found Mr. Mielnicki's first hand account of the destruction of my families town of Zabludow Poland on June 26th, 1941. I highly recommend this book. In fact,it is a book that in an ideal world would be read by everyone. It contains a very good introduction by Sir Martin Gilbert, and is well illustrated with maps, and interesting and well chosen photos. This is a book to own



2. This is an important, interesting, compelling, and well written testimony by Mr.Mielnicki. It is the kind of work that will take one beyond the well known general statistics and facts of the holocaust, and also into the realm of the heart. In particular it is highly informative regarding events in the Bialystok Region, from which hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were murdered. I read it in one sitting, and paused only when in it's pages I unexpectedly found Mr. Mielnicki's first hand account of the destruction of my families town of Zabludow Poland on June 26th, 1941. I highly recommend this book. In fact,it is a book that in an ideal world would be read by everyone. It contains a very good introduction by Sir Martin Gilbert, and is well illustrated with maps, and interesting and well chosen photos. This is a book to own

No comments about Those Were the Days.

No comments about Last Waltz in Vienna: The Destruction of a Family 1842-1942.