Average customer rating:
- This book is marvelous--a must for visiters to St. Germain des Pres
- Into a Paris Quartier
- Quick, lightweight, and very personal tour
- Don't be fooled by the cover!
- It Bites the Big Croque!
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Into a Paris Quartier
Diane Johnson
Manufacturer: National Geographic
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Binding: Hardcover
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Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light
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A Year in the Merde
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Paris Tales
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Chasing Matisse: A Year in France Living My Dream
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L'Affaire
ASIN: 0792272668
Release Date: 2005-05-01 |
Book Description
As a child, Diane Johnson was in love with the books of Alexander Dumas, especially The Three Musketeers, 17th-century residents of St. Germain-des-Pres, an area of Paris that sprang up in the 9th century around a famous Benedictine abbey. Today Johnson herself lives in the richly historic quartier and has discovered the musketeers' haunts and those of its many other famous denizens. "Thomas Jefferson lived on rue Bonaparte, just a few doors away on the street where I am now living more than two hundred years later," Johnson writes, "and Franklin was just around the corner on the rue Jacob. The novelist Henry Miller stayed up the street at the Hotel St. Germain, where Janet Flanner, the venerable New Yorker correspondent also lived." Though modern St. Germain is lively and prosperous, and the recent past-the heyday from the 40s through the 60s, famous for jazz and existentialism-best known, "the seventeenth century is still strangely present, and I find that to understand the now, it is necessary to see it back then." From her kitchen window, Johnson looks out on the slate-covered dome of a chapel begun by the fascinating and licentious Reine Margot, wife of Henri IV. "Since I have come to live on the rue Bonaparte," Johnson writes, "I find that beside the shades of Jean-Paul Sartre and Edith Piaf, there is another crowd of resident ghosts that urge themselves forward for recognition-ghosts of four centuries ago, of the three Musketeers D'Artagnan, Athos, and Porthos; of four queens-Catherine de Medicis, Marguerite de Valois, Anne of Austria, and Marie Antoinette; of the sinister Cardinals Mazarin and Richelieu; Kings Louis XIII to XVI and Henrys; and numberless other misty figuresin plumed hats whose fortunes and passions were enacted among the beautiful, imposing buildings still making up this neighborhood." More recent centuries are also represented within a few minutes walk of Johnson's apartment. Empress Josephine resided on her street and Napoleon's mother nearby. The painters Delacroix, Corot, Ingres, David, and Manet lived in the neighborhood. Composer Richard Wagner spent a year here and Oscar Wilde died here. The list goes on and on. With her delicious imagination and wry and opinionated voice, Diane Johnson's stories and ruminations about her fascinating neighborhood will be a true feast for anyone enticed by the City of Light.
Customer Reviews:
This book is marvelous--a must for visiters to St. Germain des Pres.......2007-05-16
This book is absolutely marvelous! Especially for those who travel to Paris and like to stay in the St. Germain des Pres district, as I do. Ms. Johnson gives many informative bits of info on this area in Paris. It's an absolute delight to read!
Into a Paris Quartier.......2007-03-09
Nice book. The writing isn't very clever, nor humorous. Pretty straight forward. However, if one knows the 6th as I do, I found the book very informative and I felt like I learned a lot about this wonderful arrondisement! If you don't know the 6th district, I'd pass on reading the book. If you do, I think it's a must read.
Quick, lightweight, and very personal tour.......2006-11-22
Like Jan Morris' "A Writer's House in Wales" which is part of the same National Geographic Directions travel series, this is a quick-reading, relaxed, and very personal look at a part of the world with special significance to the writer. And personal this is -- Diane Johnson practically gives the reader directions to her own front door. I hope this hasn't created any security problems for her.
Johnson walks her reader through a history of her neighborhood, St.-Germain, Paris' sixth arrondissement, and its mix of history, literary associations, and notable architecture. It's all interesting enough, but I felt somewhat disconnected from it all, and am not convinced I came away from the book with a really good sense of what the neighborhood is all about today -- as opposed to in D'Artagnan's day, which she spends almost as much time discussing.
Maybe the problem is that this view is *so* personal, we have to care about or be interested in the author to really get the most out of seeing her home and her neighborhood through her own eyes. Because I've never read any of Diane Johnson's novels or other books -- and in fact had never heard of her before I picked up this title -- I didn't really have much invested in her as a guide. After finishing the book, I still don't.
I have a number of books about various Parisian neighborhoods stacked up in my to-read pile, and I will be interested to see how this one ends up comparing to others in the genre. On its own merits, though, it is a fast and ultimately lightweight read: a nice breeze through the town, but not, perhaps, a tour I'd immediately recommend to other reader-visitors.
Don't be fooled by the cover!.......2006-03-15
This book is a very personal walk through the history of the area where the author has lived in Paris. It has loads of historical and architectural information - wonderful reading.
It Bites the Big Croque!.......2005-12-30
Horrid. Just Horrid.
Average customer rating:
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German Novellas of Realism, I: Sifter, Droste-Huleshoff, Golthelf, Grillparzer, Morike (German Library)
Jeffery L. Sammons
Manufacturer: Continuum International Publishing Group
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Plays and Essays (German Library)
ASIN: 0826403174 |
Book Description
Richly illustrated with maps, historical and contemporary photographs, and period artwork, this guidebook takes tourists and armchair travelers on a stimulating journey through the small towns, rolling hills, and windswept coast of Flaubert’s Normandy. The novelist’s homes and the locations that are prominently featured in his controversial works are the focus of this pictorial travel guide, and include the ancient town of Rouen, where Flaubert was born in 1821; the resort town of Trouville and its frequently painted beach; Croisset, where Flaubert’s riverside house gave him the refuge to write; and the quiet country town of Ry, which claims to be where the real Madame Bovary lived and died.
Customer Reviews:
Rare combination.......2007-05-06
Ms. Patton's book is a rare combination of travel guide, literary criticism and biography penned in an engaging and witty style. It even has a section on Normandy cheeses. Yum. Read it before you read Flaubert, or while you read Madame Bovary, as I did. Read it before visiting Normandy. Or just read it because it's so enjoyable. The type of book that brings a place to life more than your average travel guide.
an excellent quick read on flaubert and normandy.......2007-03-16
My brother gifted me this book after he found it an excellent armchair companion. (He's been there before, reads Flaubert, the whole deal.) I found the book a great combination of biography (of more than one notable personage), travelogue, history, culture (present and past). Very good layout and photos, handy maps to check where you'd be when she writes of a town. Her writing style is light and flowing, so I finished it in a few hours, and am comfortable with the idea of returning to it as needed... maybe even one day, managing to get to France, to Normandy, to Ry and the rivers and cheeses of the region.
Book Description
"The initiated and the uninitiated . . . both will benefit from the selection and quality here." (New York Times Book Review)
"These stories constitute a lively-and sometimes tragic-history of a vanished civilization." (Chicago Tribune)
This marvelous collection of Yiddish classics, some never before translated into English, offers the full and wonderfully vivid panoply of shtetl life from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Written by such masters as Sholom Aleichem, Yisroel Aksenfeld, Mendele Moykher-Sforim, Yitzik Leyb Peretz, Rabbi Nakhman, and Der Nister, this unique collection includes not only early religious writings and engaging Hasidic yarns but also colorful stories of latter-day realism, fantasy, and satire. Humor and suffering, faith and rationalist parody, romantic love and sordid cruelty-a panorama of shtetl life unfolds before us, conjuring up all the colors of a vanished world.
Translated and Edited by Joachim Neugroschel
Average customer rating:
- A book everyone can relate to
- Delightful
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In the Jaws of Life and Other Stories (Writings from an Unbound Europe)
Dubravka Ugresic
Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0810111004 |
Customer Reviews:
A book everyone can relate to.......1997-09-19
Smart, to the point and funny. Book of life in the sense. My favorite story - "Steffi Speck in The Jaws of Life". Ms. Ugresic's power of the observation is amazing. She has a way of presenting sad and ironic experiences of every day middle class life in hillariosly funny terms. Her "patchwork" (of stories) book is so true, no wonder she can move any reader. I am looking forward to reading her "Fording the Stream of Concioussness" book. Hopefully, there will be more books coming from this talented writer
Delightful.......1997-08-07
What a pity Ms Ugresic is not known in this country - or if she is, as a Yugoslav/Croat, with all the heavy baggage that implies nowadays. These stories are absolutely delightful -- I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud when reading. Nothing escapes her wit and derision -- love affairs, relationships, writers, serious literature -- and we come out of one of her stories (in particular Hot Dog in a Warm Bun, Lend Me Your Character or Kreutzer Sonata -- not to mention the title novella)-- tonified and with our faith in life restored, as after a sauna or a refreshing cold shower. Ms Hawkeworth's translations are excellent too, it's hard to believe this wasn't written in English. Let's hope Ms Ugresic has kept her sense of humour, and that a major publisher will make her prose known to more of us..
Book Description
The Special Boat Service draws its manpower solely from the Marine Commando Units. It was first into battle—a month before the SAS—in the Falklands War, and again in the Gulf War, yet hitherto it is the SAS that has had by far the higher profile. This memoir is written from inside the SBS. The author tells how he trained with the Royal Marines in Deal before being recruited into the SBS at Poole. The regimen of ruthless training is described in detail, and the book also contains accounts of SBS operations in Ulster, Bosnia, and the Gulf War, and of the intense rivalry between the SAS's individualist mentality and the more team-based, marine ethos of the SBS.
Customer Reviews:
Very Entertaining and Informative.......2006-01-26
I've read a lot of these SF books (see my other reviews), and this one is one of the better ones to come around in a long time. He writes about himself, the SBS, and the SAS in a most sincere and humble manner. I will be buying more of Falconer's novels/books. Great book.
Suicidal Boat Service?.......2005-09-12
The SBS (Special Boat Service) is Britain's Special Forces unit that corresponds to the U.S. Navy SEALs. It is not as well known as Britain's SAS (Special Air Service), and I must admit that I had never heard of it until I ran across one of Duncan Falconer's novels half a year ago.
Duncan Falconer was a member of the SBS for a dozen years from around 1975, getting in at age 19, the youngest ever for a new member. "First Into Action" is his personal account of his life in the SBS plus a bit about his childhood and his entering the British Royal Marines.
If you're really keen on books about Special Forces units and the men who serve in them then I can recommend "First Into Action". Duncan Falconer does tell it like it is, and the story is very interesting.
Readers who are not so fascinated with the reality of Special Forces will find this book less appealing.
The most powerful impression I got from reading this book is that the men of the SBS are a bunch of suicidal maniacs! (I exaggerate - please bear with me.)
Duncan Falconer spends most of this book describing three aspects of the SBS: how dangerous it is, how self-motivated and intrepid the members are, and how often things go totally wrong.
The selection procedure is described, and it becomes obvious that in order to become a member of the SBS you have to be willing to push yourself to the point of physical injury. And the instructors come across as sadists.
After you become a member of the SBS you spend a lot of time doing exercises (or "rehearsals", as they call them) to keep your skills up to snuff. High-altitude parachuting, submarine exits, climbing oil rigs during a violent storm, testing new weapons and explosives, diving in freezing water, descending from a helicopter onto a bucking ship, etc., etc. You name it, the SBS can do it, or die trying. And a lot of them do die trying.
In addition to the many deaths there are a large number of injuries, some that heal and some that result in being incapacitated, perhaps even ending up in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.
There are also an incredible number of screw-ups in the missions that the SBS is involved in that can be considered humorous. In fact, large portions of the book are written in a tongue-in-cheek tone that is intended to be a contrast to the serious and heroic books by former members of the SAS and other Special Forces units.
Speaking of the SAS, another theme of "First Into Action" is the rivalry between the SBS and the SAS. The title of the book refers to the claim that the SBS is always (or almost always) the first British military unit sent into any conflict, before the SAS or anyone else.
Duncan Falconer writes with scorn about several SAS missions that went awry, including the famous Bravo Two Zero during the first Iraq war, and the accidental killing of an SBS operative during the Falklands War.
On the back cover of the paperback edition I read it said that Mr. Falconer had a "leading role" in SBS operations in the Falklands. This isn't true. In the text of the book Duncan Falconer writes that he was not involved in the Falklands at all, although he recounts several stories about the SBS teams that were there.
Much of the book describes Mr. Falconer's personal experiences during his time in Northern Ireland combating the IRA. This is fairly interesting, but not the kind of work that most Special Forces fans prefer to read about.
A few final points: The book is too long in my opinion, and it suffers from there being no dates whatsoever for the various events that take place. It's nice that there is a glossary of the military terms and acronyms used - I referred to it fairly often.
In conclusion, this book will appeal to Special Forces fans because it's a very honest look at the SBS, one of the world's best Special Forces units. My three-star rating of "First Into Action" is largely due to it being outside my normal reading preferences. For me it was an OK read, but Mr. Falconer's novels ("The Hostage" and "The Hijack") are more to my taste - I give them both four stars.
Rennie Petersen
Top Special Forces Book.......2004-05-18
Great book, much better than I expected. Some reviewers say they are annoyed with the author's coldness, brevity and lack of detail of certain events but I think that's due in part to the need for confidentiality of those events. I was not bothered by it and did not feel like it detracted from the book. I thought it had a plethora of information and events were explained very thoroughly. If it was too DETAILED or too GENERAL then I would question it's authenticity. I like the anonymity of the SBS, as the author says, it makes their job easier. This is the book to read if you want to read about the SBS or even the SAS. I'm burned-out on all the SAS/SEAL hoopla and wanted something a little different. The SBS are not as well known as the SAS in Britain and even less so here in the US, I only found this book when I was unknowingly transferred to Amazon.uk. Great book.
Average customer rating:
- GREAT BOOK!!
- A war memoir well worth reading
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The Hike into the Sun: Memoir of an American Soldier Captured on Bataan in 1942 and Imprisoned by the Japanese Until 1945
Bernard T. Fitzpatrick , and
John A. Sweetser
Manufacturer: McFarland & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
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ASIN: 0899508502 |
Book Description
Sergeant Bernard T. Fitzpatrick endured the long road to Japanese prisoner of war camps, an event known thereafter as the Bataan Death March. In Japan he was forced to work at the Yawata Steel Works at Kokura-the original target of the Allies' second atomic bomb. Fitzpatrick's service at Clark Field in the Philippines, the brutal fighting on Bataan, and the harrowing details of his time as a Japanese POW are detailed. Interspersed are his thoughts on U.S. preparations for the Pacific war, his Japanese captors, and the American, Filipino and Japanese men and women who risked their lives to ease the harsh conditions in the camps.
Customer Reviews:
GREAT BOOK!!.......2002-11-17
My teacher read this book to me in class. It's excellent! Especially if you're interested in Social Studies!! You have to read this!!
A war memoir well worth reading.......2001-02-25
Bernard Fitpatrick is a Minnesota man and was drafted in April 1941. He left for the Phillipines in September of 1941. He was captured when Bataan fell and eventually ended up in Japan. This is a good book, and is not unreservedly horrible. He tells of Japanese atrocities but also of human and good Japanese. The story is artlessly but engagingly told, and is a war memoir I am glad I had a chance to read.
Book Description
In Barcelona, an aging Brazilian prostitute trains her dog to weep at the grave she has chosen for herself. In Vienna, a woman parlays her gift for seeing the future into a fortunetelling position with a wealthy family. In Geneva, an ambulance driver and his wife take in the lonely, apparently dying ex-President of a Caribbean country, only to discover that his political ambition is very much intact.
In these twelve masterly stories about the lives of Latin Americans in Europe, García Márquez conveys the peculiar amalgam of melancholy, tenacity, sorrow, and aspiration that is the émigré experience.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Customer Reviews:
Literary Magic from a Literary Master.......2007-10-17
The author Gabriel Garcia Marquez is well known as a master of the novel, something which the current movie adaptation of his LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA confirms very well. The twelve stories that comprise his STRANGE PILGRIMS demonstrate he's also something of a magician when it comes to shorter fiction as well.
On one level, these are tales of fantastic adventures and encounters experienced by Latin Americans both in their native lands and as they make their way around the world. On a wholly different level, the stories address the more universal and sometimes disturbing question of individual human identity and destiny. On whatever level a reader engages them, they provide first-rate provocative entertainment as well as ample evidence of why Garcia Marquez won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981.
Marquez is celebrated worldwide for his skillful use of magical realism but in these stories moves beyond the formula to create some of the best work from one of the best writers in the business. Inhabiting these tales are saints, clairvoyants, ex-presidents, and specters. Rounding out this already compelling cast are mesmerizing portraits of such famous individuals as the poets Pablo Neruda and Aime' Cesaire. This book dazzles and satisfies in ways that few books can.
by Author-Poet Aberjhani
author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File Library of American History)
and founder of Creative Thinkers International
Reviw of Strange Pilgrams.......2007-03-09
More examples of great story telling by the master. I don't believe anyone has put down one of his stories without finishing it. It is difficult not to read the whole book at one sitting. Add it to the Garcia Marquez shelf and enjoy it again and again with the others.
Magical.......2006-07-08
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a gift to the world. He produces stories that are full of mystery and magic. My favorite in this collection: an old prostitute who trains her dog to walk to the cemetery and cry over her grave. A good introduction to the master, Strange Pilgrims will keep you to the end.
A wonderful collection.......2006-05-19
"Strange Pilgrims" is a wonderful, but sometimes overlooked, collection of 12 short stories from the Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The stories that compose the collection vary in length and quality, but even the less successful among them are worthy of the reader's attention. The stand-out stories include "The Saint", "Maria dos Prazeres", "Miss Forbes's Summer of Happiness" and "I Only Came to Use the Phone" -- a bizarre and haunting tale of a young woman whose car breaks down in a Spanish desert, on a rainy afternoon. She is unwittingly picked up as a hitchhiker and mistaken for a mental patient who is taken to an asylum. This theme, of the familiar merging with the nightmarish is explored again in "The Trail of Your Blood in the Snow."
In "I Sell My Dreams", the protagonist meets Pablo Neruda ("He moved through the crowd like an invalid elephant, with a child's curiosity in the inner workings of each thing he saw, for the world appeared to him as an immense wind-up toy with which life invented itself") and discusses the labyrinths of Borges, among other things. "Light is Like Water", a charming ode to the power of a child's imagination, is a story brimming with surreal imagery.
These 12 tales perfectly define the genre of 'magical realism'. The collection also seems like a fine place to start for those seeking to familiarize themselves with the work of Garcia Marquez, before tackling epic novels like "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera". These are the kinds of stories that seem to stick in the reader's memory and welcome repeated readings.
Colombian Magical Realism Hits Europe.......2004-10-28
I wonder if Garcia-Marquez is capable of writing a bad story. Certainly this selection of twelve are like polished gemstones. They might not be shiny or scintillating, but they are so solid, so satisfying. Each of them centers around Latin Americans, mostly Colombians, and their strange experiences in Europe. Back in South America, they move in familiar patterns, they feel at home, but in Europe, unknown and unseen forces affect them, they are prey to the pitfalls of strangeness, they can't see anything coming until it runs them over. While the gigantic geography, turbulent history, and luxuriant and untamed nature of South America fosters magical realism in authors, at least in Garcia-Marquez and some of the other greats, they also produce characters very much larger than life. Europe has always seemed to me a much tamer place, having reduced uncertainty over centuries--- more set in its ways, with fewer surprises, established, sedate. Garcia-Marquez perhaps sees it in a similar way and it unnerves his Latin American protagonists. An ex-dictator lives in a student garret, sells his jewels, and undergoes a useless operation. A woman disappears "by accident" into a mental institution and a playboy dithers in a cheap Paris hotel, not knowing a word of French, while his young wife dies in a hospital. A postal clerk spends years trying to see the Pope to convince him of his daughter's saintly qualities. He lugs the deceased but uncorrupted daughter around in a huge case. An aged ex-prostitute feels death is at her door, but actually it is something else. Nobody really feels at home, nobody can trust their feelings, because everything works differently. Europe isn't exactly an alien place for them, but they are, each time, unwitting victims of the unexpected.
Garcia-Marquez is one of those authors who seem to write about ordinary people whose lives take strange twists. But the worlds they inhabit, the people around them, the very fabric of their existence seem to me utterly fantastic. His talent lies not in presenting ordinary life, but extraordinary life. You accept a little more, a little more until suddenly you find yourself believing in the unbelievable. In the great warrens of Western civilization, but also in the daily grinds of Asia, Africa, or Latin America, life may take interesting paths, or curious twists, but for the most part, it is very predictable. These stories all have only the veneer of predictability; underneath the realism is full of spooky holes. Yet, that is not only due to a magical tone as in novels like "The Autumn of the Patriarch" or "One Hundred Years of Misunderstanding", it is due to the author's constant combination of known daily life with near-fantasy. You can hardly draw the line between them, so closely does he knit. Great stories by a truly great talent. Read them.
Book Description
From the bestselling author of American Tragedy and Perfect Murder, Perfect Town comes an even more stunning portrayal of America's dark side. Into the Mirror is the shocking story of FBI Special Agent Robert P. Hanssen, the master spy who single-handedly created the greatest breach of security in the history of our country.
On February 18, 2001, the FBI finally arrested Hanssen and charged him with selling -- over a period of more than twenty years -- top-secret, classified information to the Russians. Nothing that has been reported to date about this ordinary-looking but tormented man has revealed the astonishing facts that Lawrence Schiller and Norman Mailer -- collaborators on the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Executioner's Song and Oswald's Tale -- uncovered during their nine-month investigation into the life of this complex man.
Into the Mirror gets inside the mind of a devious and dangerously brilliant man and creates an unforgettable portrait of someone so caught up in the struggle with his own personal demons that he would betray everything he holds sacred -- his wife, his family, his religion, and his country.
Read by Sam Tsoustouvas
Download Description
From the bestselling author of American Tragedy and Perfect Murder, Perfect Town comes an even more stunning portrayal of America's dark side. Into the Mirror is the shocking story of FBI Special Agent Robert P. Hanssen, the master spy who singlehandedly created the greatest breach of security in the history of our country. Written in compelling, novelistic prose, Schiller re-creates a gripping portrait of Hanssen, who for twenty-two years was a loving husband, a devoted father of six, a deeply devout Catholic and member of Opus Dei, a passionate anticommunist, a dedicated FBI agent -- and a traitor the likes of which the United States has never before seen. On February 18, 2001, the FBI finally arrested Hanssen and charged him with selling to the Russians -- over a period of more than twenty years -- top-secret, classified information. Nothing that has been reported to date about this ordinary-looking but tormented man has revealed the astonishing facts that Lawrence Schiller and Norman Mailer -- collaborators on the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Executioner's Song and Oswald's Tale -- uncovered during their nine-month investigation into the life of this complex man. In seeking to solve this almost impenetrable mystery, Schiller and Mailer spent hundreds of hours interviewing members of Hanssen's family as well as his closest friends, colleagues, and fellow church members. They traveled to Moscow to interview a key member of the KGB who had handled the spy they knew only as "Ramon Garcia." Into the Mirror gets inside the mind of a devious and dangerously brilliant man and creates an unforgettable portrait of someone so caught up in the struggle with his own personal demons that he would betray everything he holds sacred-his wife, his family, his religion, and his country.
Customer Reviews:
A novelisation for mass consumption.......2007-05-20
This is simply not a serious piece of work. It tries to be non-fiction while writing it within the style of fiction.
It reminded me of those books that come out with a film saying "Based on the screenplay of the film."
The Bureau and the Mole by David Vise was far better and revealed the same information.
Excellent choice of overall theme.......2007-03-27
Every page of this book is surprising and thought provoking. You gotta' read it. Lawrence Schiller's outstanding and concise writing is greatly aided by his research collaboration with Norman Mailer. They found a theme despite the fact that the deepest motivations of Robert P. Hanssen's behavior while turning himself into the spy who created the greatest breach of security in U.S. history--remain buried within himself. Critics of the movie of this book, cry out for a better peek into Hanssen's psyche, but it is unattainable. The book's theme had to be what it is, describe the observable conflict between Hanssen's psychosexual,religious, and political views, match them to chronological events, then put it all in such a way as to invite readers to pick up from there. I guessed that the doors to the Opus Dei group, to which Hanssen and his family were devoted, were barred to Schiller and Mailer. The most that could be written about it was written. (Opus Dei is also a subject of "Godfather III"). Schiller captures Hanssen's Moscow handlers, themselves conflicted between operating procedure and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The book left me thinking and imagining what Hanssen still keeps a secret, or maybe doesn't understand himself.
Good story. Shame it was written so badly.......2006-07-18
The newspaper and television reports of Robert Hanssen -- the FBI agent who spied for the Soviets in a frightening breach of national security -- were fascinating. But this book by Lawrence Schiller is silly.
Schiller has borrowed heavily from Norman Mailer's screenplay. And this is what spoils it. In a screenplay, you have to invent dialogue for the characters, and you can get away with invented dialogue if people know it is based on a true story. But in a book that is supposed to be factual, such as this one, invented dialogue becomes a barrier to credibility if it is used frequently in private situations.
In The Author's Note at the front of the book, readers are told that neither Hanssen nor his wife could be interviewed for the book because of a plea-bargain agreement they made with the Justice Department. So how the blazes can the author give Hanssen's conversations with himself in his bathroom, private conversations with his wife, and even how Hanssen's dog behaved when Hanssen took it for a walk?
Every few pages of this book talk about things that happened in private -- in Hanssen's office, at his home, in the park. Hanssen is quoted in all these places, even though the author wasn't there, and neither was anyone else who was interviewed for the book. I found this distracting and very unbelievable. Even worse was the author's obsession with sex -- even making up details of what Hanssen allegedly thought and did when no one but Hanssen could possibly know these things.
I rated this book as two stars because I didn't find any spelling mistakes or typographical errors. But as for the believability of the dialogue and private incidents, it doesn't even rate one star.
I really know what to make of this book........2006-03-01
Certainly Robert P. Hanssen was a difficult man to understand but the main problem that I have with this book it is impossible to determine whether you are reading real facts or fiction.
After reading the book, I am not sure whether it was the excitement or the money that was the major cause.
Anyway I was hoping for a study of what Robert P. Hanssen gave away. The effect on security etc. There is little of this.
Pure Fiction.......2005-11-20
Where did the author get the dialogue? - seems to have a fixation on masturbation - was he peeping on Hanssen and watching him masturbate all over the place? Awful! This thing goes into my "unfinished books" stack.
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Austriaca and Judaica: Essays and Translations (Austrian Culture)
Harry Zohn
Manufacturer: Peter Lang Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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