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- The intensity of life in war-time
- "War makes people fearfully randy!"
- Enjoyable
- An Underdeveloped Novel
- Slogging my way through this embarassingly bad novel
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The Camomile Lawn (King Penguin) (King Penguin)
Mary Wesley
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
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The Camomile Lawn
ASIN: 014012392X |
Customer Reviews:
The intensity of life in war-time.......2006-06-21
The book opens on the very eve of the Second World War, with five cousins on holiday at the Cornish home of their Aunt Helena and Uncle Richard (all upper middle class). Four of them (two young women, two young men) are aged 19 or 20, the fifth is Sophy who is just ten. There are also the twin sons of the local rector, who has also taken in a Jewish refugee couple, Max and Monika, from Austria. The novel traces the lives principally of these eleven characters during the war, much of it set in London. Under the intensity of life in war-time, the young people lose any conventional inhibitions they might possibly have had under other circumstances. (I say `possibly', because uninhibited behaviour had been the mark of certain young socialites in the 1920s). One can hardly keep track of the sexual permutations and combinations between them. Even middle-aged Uncle Richard and Aunt Helena have unorthodox liaisons. It is all rather rackety, and in the first half of the novel one feels the characters are driven more by sensuality than by anything deeper, with emotions only superficially engaged. But in the end they do become more deeply involved emotionally; some psychological complexities then emerge (especially for Helena and Calypso) and the reader's sympathies slowly become engaged with them. Most of the story is told as a war-time narrative; but at the end of some chapters we move on forty years or so, when those who are then still alive are converging for Max's funeral and look back on those years; so we learn something about what has happened to them since.
Some of the characters come more alive than others in the book. Especially successful, I think, is the portrait of Uncle Richard, for the most part just avoiding caricature. Calypso, the eldest of the cousins, and Sophy, the youngest, have some personality, as do Max and Monika; several other characters are not rounded out at all. All of them talk in short laconic sentences (the greater part of the book consists of dialogue), and only Richard, Max and Monika have a way of speaking which is in any way distinctive.
There is humour in this book and pathos; it shows that the intensity of war-time life brought its pleasures as well as its sorrows. It is a good read, but I think it lacks the subtlety of a great novel.
"War makes people fearfully randy!".......2006-03-19
Five cousins gather at their Aunt Helena's and Uncle Richard's home on the Cornish coast as they have almost every summer in their relatively short, innocent lives. It is August, 1939, and while war looms, they are very much aware they may never meet again like this, all together, on their aunt's sweet-smelling camomile lawn.
Author Mary Wesley uses the device of two intertwining narratives to tell her tale. The last summer days before WWII merge into life in war torn London and Cornwall, and the plot reflects the changes that take place in all the characters as the conflict and violence impact their lives. This storyline is intertwined with another, set in the mid-1980's, over a period of two days as the surviving members of the group gather for a funeral. The reminiscences of those gathered fill in the interval between the beginning of the war and the present.
"The Camomile Lawn" is a well written, intricate soap opera, of sorts, which illustrates how the uncertainty of war and the heightened sense of one's mortality allow for unconventional behavior and impact the social mores of the times...sort of a "live each day as if it were the last" philosophy. I enjoyed the novel, especially the well drawn characters and highly recommend it.
JANA
Enjoyable.......2003-08-09
My very first Mary Wesley and I enjoyed it very much. The characters are somewhat unorthodox but I feel that it adds to the flavour of the book. It was a fun read and I certainly plan to read more of Mary Wesley. Highly recommended.
An Underdeveloped Novel.......2003-01-24
In August 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, five cousins come to spend the summer holidays with their uncle and aunt in Cornwall. (The title refers to the lawn in front of the house, which later becomes a symbol of their carefree pre-war youth). The novel then follows the changing fortunes of these five, of their Uncle Richard and Aunt Helena, of Max and Monika, an Austrian Jewish refugee couple, of the local Rector and his wife and of their twin sons, through the war. Intercut with the wartime scenes are scenes set in the 1980s, at Max's funeral, when his surviving friends and acquaintances meet to reveal what has happened to them during the intervening years.
The above synopsis might suggest that this is a lengthy novel; in fact, it is quite a short one (in my edition only 330 pages), and in my view it is the shortness of the novel which is its major problem. Miss Wesley has set herself the task of telling the stories of a large group of people, but has not allowed herself adequate space in which to perform that task. As a result, the complex story is told in insufficient detail, which means that the characters fail to come alive.
The major theme of the novel is the challenge posed to conventional ideas of morality by the changed conditions of wartime. (Most of the characters either form adulterous liaisons or indulge in casual promiscuity). This theme could have been an interesting one, but unfortunately the characters are under-developed and lack any sense of an inner life. It is therefore difficult to understand their motivation or the reasons for their behaviour, and the oportunity to develop this major theme is lost. Most of the main characters, in fact, simply come across as self-centred and lacking in feeling. Even those described as being in love are frequently unfaithful to each other. This would not matter if Miss Wesley's aim had been to create a portrait of a cold, selfish group of people, but I was left with the strong impression that she wanted to make many of them sympathetic or attractively unconventional and failed to do so. This is not a book I could recommend.
I noticed a few factual errors in the book. I will not go through them all, but I must say that, contrary to what Miss Wesley states, the conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler was not "very pro-Hitler".
Slogging my way through this embarassingly bad novel.......2002-08-18
I simply cannot finish reading this patronising, overwrought, smarmy (yes, smarmy) bit of prose by a writer I wanted so much to like and admire. I kept going back to it, giving it a fifteenth or sixteenth chance, only to abandon it quickly, in favor of truly brilliant Penelope Lively or even merely skilled Rosamunde Pilcher (other mature, contemporary British female novelists).
The dialogue in the Camomile Lawn is nearly always unrealistic, the characters cartoonish, and the atmosphere / setting overly fussed over. In prewar Britain, the embarassingly good, upper class protagonists go on and on about their simpathy with the Jews (so politically correct now, simply not such an important part of upper crust 1930's Anglo Saxon sensibility), the sexy lovers dish out measured amounts of sauce and swear words... it's just an embarassing mess of an attempt to be raw and real.
I never got past the first hundred pages, and I will not seek out Wesley's other works. I really wasted my time, rolling around in a little bit more than just camomile blossoms.
Amazon.com
It would be a crime to give away even the barest outline of Rebecca West's apparently simple, always agonizing first novel. We shall say only that The Return of the Soldier concerns the title character and three very different women to whom he is linked in very different ways--by blood, by marriage, and by love. It is also an imaginative study (one drenched in realism) of intimacy and illusion, possession and a terrible, destructive snobbery. On one estate outside London, even as the Great War and familial loss are taking their toll, the inhabitants strive for a measured, outwardly exquisite existence. All must remain as it was while their Chris is at war: each person, each object in its proper place. "You probably know the beauty of that view," the narrator buttonholes us, looking out the nursery window:
For when Chris rebuilt Baldry Court after his marriage, he handed it over to architects who had not so much the wild eye of the artist as the knowing wink of the manicurist, and between them they massaged the dear old place into matter for innumerable photos in the illustrated papers.
But of late this universe unto itself cannot quite keep out an England altered by ambition and industry. Only a few miles away a "red suburban stain," Wealdstone, has somehow cropped up. And one day all is permanently altered--or, rather, revealed--when a Wealdstone resident comes bearing news of Captain Baldry. Mrs. William Gray is clearly not of Chris's wife Kitty and his cousin Jenny's class, as Kitty in particular makes her aware. "Again her gray eyes brimmed," Jenny observes. "People are rude to one, she visibly said, but surely not nice people like this." How is it, then, that this dreary, "dingy" woman knows Chris and knows that something has happened to him? And how is it that Jenny soon comes to see her as someone "whose personality was sounding through her squalor like a beautiful voice singing in a darkened room"?
In the remainder of this brief, perfect novel, a vanished (or repressed) past and its lost prospect of happiness comes to the fore. Rebecca West is best remembered for Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia (1941), but she displays the same vision--and a similar degree of realism--in her charged 1916 novel. Many readers will passionately regret the book's last twist, even as they know it to be artistically as well as historically true. --Kerry Fried
Book Description
Set during World War I on an isolated country estate just outside London, Rebecca West’s haunting novel
The Return of the Soldier follows Chris Baldry, a shell-shocked captain suffering from amnesia, as he makes a bittersweet homecoming to the three women who have helped shape his life. Will the devoted wife he can no longer recollect, the favorite cousin he remembers only as a childhood friend, and the poor innkeeper’s daughter he once courted leave Chris to languish in a safe, dreamy past—or will they help him recover his memory so that he can return to the front? The answer is revealed through a heartwrenching, unexpected sacrifice.
The text of this Modern Library Paperback Classic was set from the first American edition, published in 1918, and features original illustrations by Norman Price.
Customer Reviews:
"Return..." A Fine Novella.......2007-06-25
Rebecca West's short novel about the reception of a "shell-shocked" soldier, by his wife and cousin back to his English countryside is a worthy read for several reasons. None of them, however, are related very much to the plot - the story of the soldier's return, his unusual condition and all it entails comprises - is very simple, too simple maybe. This is accentuated by the neat ending, too neat in it's unwrapping, though touching in the last moments.
I particularly enjoyed reading West's insightful descriptions of her characters. Sections which comprise some of the novella's most beautiful prose are the wealthier ladies' (Chris's(the soldier) wife and cousin) trepidation at the lower-class Margaret, from first meeting, to the details sparkled around. As well, the description of Margaret sitting over a sleeping Chris was poignant. Other scenes that come to mind are those that take place in the nursery, from Kitty's despondent stare at the outset, to Margaret's decision towards the end.
Naturally, at this point "The Return of the Soldier" seems dated; our encounters with "shell-shock" since World War I have been a great many and the details of the condition well-documented. Still, West's novella provides some well-written description of class-tension, character and insight to the mood of the time (just around the close of WWI). Though not a page-turner, "Return of the Soldier" was sound enough in it's composition to keep ahold of me for ninety pages. As a quick read, it is recommended. Had it been longer, I would be hesitant.
Middle-class happiness or upper-class wealth? Happiness or truth?.......2006-03-26
This short novel asks the same question as the film The Matrix poses: is it better to be happy or to know the truth? The question is even more complex in this novel since happiness is not aligned with beauty or wealth as it is in The Matrix.
The novel reminds me very much of the 1913 novel by E. Phillips Oppenheim, The Double Life of Mr. Alfred Burton--I wonder if West read that book. Both books contrast middle-class and upper-class life, and although both clearly see the superior beauty and elegance wealth brings, both novels also depict the snobbery, isolation, and selfishness that can come with social status. Oppenheim's book is more concerned with social class than with differences in wealth--new money and old money are contrasted. West's book is more subtle and complex--the complex situation of the returned soldier with amnesia forces the characters to define, rank, and value the relative merits of love, happiness, life, truth, and social position.
(It is fascinating to juxtapose this novel as representing English country life in WWI with the Barchester novels of Angela Thirkell, and with the WWII novel of Mollie Panter-Downes, One Fine Day. The social burden of class in England comes across strongly. Another interesting juxtaposition is with Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway--which also deals with a mentally ill soldier returning from WWI.)
This book poses a true moral dilemma--there is no possible solution that can be happy ever after. This book should make you rethink the choices in your life and inspire you to greater self-knowledge.
Terrible, terrible, terrible.......2006-02-17
The wothless excuse for a novel is based of a soldier returning from war, and has had trama to his brain and does not remember he is married and still thinks he is love with his teenage love. This is a horrific read the descriptions are too long, and it is wrapped up poorly, it's short, but it feels like a long read. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME!!!!!!!!
Heartbreaking.......2005-10-21
The Return of the Soldier is hailed by critics as one of the first books by a woman about the tragedy of the Great War. In this slim volume West expresses the horror of trench warfare by giving a glimpse into the life of a shell-shocked soldier suffering from amnesia. He cannot remember his wife, Kitty, and he thinks himself to be fifteen years younger and yearns for the sweetheart of his youth. Narrated by his sister, Jenny The Return of the Soldier ends with the heartbreaking realization that with a cure to his amnesia the soldier Charles will be sent back to the front lines. Highly recommended.
At Only 90 Pages, A Powerful Bargain of a Novel.......2001-08-16
THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER, published in 1918, may be the most carefully conceived novel I've ever read, and I've read a fair amount of exquisitely executed fiction. Told from the first person perspective of a spinster whose entire life revolves around her cousin, his life and country mansion, it is the story of an English gentleman who goes off to World War I only to be returned not in a body bag or physically injured but with a severe case of amnesia. He does not recognize his pretty, socially correct wife; he has retreated to a hidden youthful romance with a poor woman. The woman, also married now, comes forth in the interest of helping him. The balance of the plot hangs in the implications of recovery. The balance of the full experience of the novel is to watch characters change or not change their class prejudices and worldview in light of their experiences on this country estate. Though only 90 pages long, much is packed into this book, much that is analogous to the English national experience as it moved from the Victorian era into the 20th century.
The critical introduction, which should be read as an afterward so as not to rob you of the surprises in the novel, does a good job of reviewing the analogies between the tightly closed world of the country estate and the national experience. There is much more to be mined from this novel, including a window on the then new science of psychoanalysis and how it was understood. For me, the narration was a particular revelation. At first I thought the voice a bit melodramatic in a 19th century way, but it became clear that the tone was all part of the author's plan, and that it changed as the narrator's vision changed. The specter of spinsterhood hangs thick in the air, itself a comment on the social condition of the era. Here is the perfect selfless, lonely narrator who knows everything about the lives in her tiny circle. The woman who would be ignored becomes the ideal articulator of how England at home received the war.
Book Description
In 1994 up to one million people were killed in Rwanda in a deliberate, public and political campaign. For five years, Linda Melvern has worked on the story of this great crime, and this book, a classic piece of investigative journalism, is the result. The new and startling information this book contains has the making of an international scandal. Melvern reveals how the great powers failed to heed the warnings of the coming catastrophe, andrefused to recognize the genocide when it began, ignoring obligations under international law, specifically the genocide convention. A set of secret documents leaked to the author from within the Security Council proves that the circumstances of the genocide were suppressed or ignored.
Customer Reviews:
Fine words that counted for nothing.......2003-07-25
After all the fine words and 'never agains' the truth is out. Genocide will slip right in front of major organs of news and nothing happens to stop it.
This short but detailed account of the Rwanda genocide 1994 is both low-key and shocking and needs examination.
Is anyone interested in Rwanda?.......2002-01-22
Probably, the story of Rwandan genocide is the most shocking international scandal of the post World War II era. The book is a brilliant reconstruction of that time, written with amazing clarity and based on well established facts.
In three months of 1994 about one million people was killed in organised genocide. The killing rate was five times faster than that achieved by the Nazis during WWII holocaust. But on the contrary to the Nazis, the Rwandan genocide happened in the full light of the international media, with the full knowledge of the UN Security Council and the Western governments.
Linda Melvern describes and documents in detail the role of the West in the genocide.
The story is so bad that almost all of the publishers in the UK refused to publish this book with comments like "the story is really too awful" or "I cannot see people forking out money to read about such an unspeakable subject..."
Do you think you can fork out some money for the truth? I think this book is certainly worth any money.
A People Betrayed.......2000-11-14
`Quite extraordinary: precise, and yet overwhelming; a fine balance in the face of depravity... Linda Melvern has written an extraordinary account of the Rwanda genocide, and the shocking failure of the West to lift a finger... What Melvern demonstrates so powerfully is that where Western geopolitical interests are absent, Western morality and `civilised' concerns are nowhere to be found ... A brave and compelling book.' - Professor Richard Falk, Center of International Studies, Princeton University
`This is a devastating account of lies, deceit, complacency and tragic neglect.... All we can hope is that this fine book will provide lessons for the future, because it provides all of us who lobby and campaign for early warning systems and conflict prevention with invaluable evidence. Looking around the world, you wonder what has been learnt since 1994. Linda Melvern deserves our thanks for investing so much in breaking the silence and revealing the truth.' - Glenys Kinnock, MEP; Chair, Forum on Early Warning And Early Response (FEWER)
'What happened in Rwanda is one of the most appalling, heartbreaking tragedies that the world has known. Why did it occur? And what more could have been done to prevent it? This serious, very thorough attempt to answer those questions will be essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand what happened. This is a powerful and important book.' - The Right Reverend Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford
`A riveting and well-researched account of the horrendous crimes committed in Rwanda while an indifferent world, to its shame, looked the other way. There are grim lessons here for everyone, from international statesmen and politicians to responsible citizens and decent human beings everywhere' - Dame Margaret Anstee
'This is a very important book. It is a book that a large number of people should read....what is good about the book is that it shows the big picture. It shows the failure that actually took place. It tells the story of what really happened. An outstandingly good book... ...compelling.....its content is exceptional.' - Colin Keating, Secretary for Justice, New Zealand Ministry of Justice, and former New Zealand Ambassador to the UN
Book Description
In 1874 the "Hoo Doo" War erupted in the Texas Hill Country of Mason County. The feud began with the rise of the mob under Sheriff John Clark, but it was not until the premeditated murder of rancher Timothy Williamson in 1875, a murder orchestrated by Sheriff Clark, that the violence escalated out of control. His death drew former Texas Ranger Scott Cooley to the region seeking justice, and when the courts failed, he began a vendetta to avenge his friend.
In the ensuing months, Sheriff Clark's mob ambushed ranchers George Gladden and Moses Baird, which drew gunfighters such as John Ringo into the violence. Local and state officials proved powerless, and it was not until the early 1900s that the feud burned itself out.
David Johnson analyzes the myths and legends surrounding the feud and presents the first definitive account of what happened in Mason County-a case study in frontier violence of the bloodiest kind.
Customer Reviews:
No proof of the Sheriff's identity.......2006-05-06
I took the bait and bought this book but there is certainly nothing in it that I have not seen in free "Hoo Doo War" stories all over the internet or heard through the grapevine. I must say that I was very disappointed that I paid the 30% reduced rate of $17.61 for it. I suppose a refund is out of the question?
For the most part, I found this account beyond boring but mainly confusing as to why there was not an objective approach to the identity of the Sheriff of Mason. Everyone knows his identity has never been proven and still has not with this book. Don't waste your money if you think you will find the answer here. What is worse than no proof? An assumption presented as proof for our grandchildren to believe and take as fact. I can see valid research on the background of the German community around Mason but I see no documented proof,
whatsoever, that John E. Clark, from Missouri, was the sheriff of Mason County Texas. I was really disappointed. Any beginner genealogist can tell you that there were many men in that area of Texas at that time, in that age bracket, named John Clark.
Good luck with credibility issues in the future!
A true life story that rivals any fiction account of lawless times in the Old West.......2006-05-03
The Mason County "Hoo Doo" War, 1874-1902 by biographer and historian David Johnson is an informed and informative history based upon extensive research of the Post-Reconstruction age in Texas around the mid 1870s, when the "Hoo Doo War" broke out in the Texas hill country of Mason County. Introducing the reader to a genuine Texas frontier story of the fight against an element of criminal intent, The Mason County "Hoo Doo" War, 1874-1902 delves deeply into a heretofore obscure bit of Texas history, exposing a graphic and sinister criminal activity culminating in the death of Sheriff John Clark. The Mason County "Hoo Doo" War, 1874-1902 is very strongly recommended to all students of American Western History in a true life story that rivals any fiction account of lawless times in the Old West.
A true life story that rivals any fiction account of lawless times in the Old West.......2006-05-03
The Mason County "Hoo Doo" War, 1874-1902 by biographer and historian David Johnson is an informed and informative history based upon extensive research of the Post-Reconstruction age in Texas around the mid 1870s, when the "Hoo Doo War" broke out in the Texas hill country of Mason County. Introducing the reader to a genuine Texas frontier story of the fight against an element of criminal intent, The Mason County "Hoo Doo" War, 1874-1902 delves deeply into a heretofore obscure bit of Texas history, exposing a graphic and sinister criminal activity culminating in the death of Sheriff John Clark. The Mason County "Hoo Doo" War, 1874-1902 is very strongly recommended to all students of American Western History in a true life story that rivals any fiction account of lawless times in the Old West.
Book Description
A forested borderland dominated by American Indians in 1780, Ohio was a landscape of farms and towns inhabited by people from all over the world in 1830. The Center of a Great Empire: The Ohio Country in the Early Republic chronicles this dramatic and all-encompassing change. Editors Andrew R.L. Cayton and Stuart D. Hobbs have assembled a focused collection of articles by established and rising scholars that address the conquest of Native Americans, the emergence of a democratic political culture, the origins of capitalism, the formation of public culture, the growth of evangelical Protestantism, the ambiguous status of African Americans, and social life in a place that most contemporaries saw as on the cutting edge of human history. Indeed, to understand what was happening in the Ohio country in the decades after the American Revolution is to go a long way toward understanding what was happening in the United States and the Atlantic world as a whole. For The Center of a Great Empire, distinguished historians of the American nation in its first decades question conventional wisdom. Downplaying the frontier character of Ohio, they offer new answers and open new paths of inquiry through investigations of race, education, politics, religion, family, commerce, colonialism, and conquest. As it underscores key themes in the history of the United States,The Center of a Great Empire pursues issues that have fascinated people for two centuries. ****ABOUT THE AUTHORS----Andrew R. L. Cayton, distinguished professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, is the author of several books, including Ohio: The History of a People and, with Fred Anderson, The Dominion of War: Liberty and Empire in North America, 1500-2000 . Stuart D. Hobbs is program director for History in the Heartland, a professional development program for middle and high school teachers of history. Hobbs is the author of The End of the American Avant Garde.
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Coal, Steel, and the Rebirth of Europe, 19451955: The Germans and French from Ruhr Conflict to Economic Community
John Gillingham
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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ASIN: 052152430X |
Book Description
This is the first large-scale historical investigation of the critical first stage of European integration, the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). John Gillingham discusses the thirty year Franco-German struggle for heavy industry mastery in Western Europe, describes the dreams and schemes of Jean Monnet, who designed the heavy industry pool, reveals the American vision that inspired his work, and discloses how his transatlantic partners used their great authority to assure its completion. Gillingham also lays bare the operating mechanisms of the coal-steel pool, showing that contrary to the hopes of Monnet and his supporters, the ECSC restored rather than reformed the European economy, leaving as a legacy not a detrustified industry, but one still dominated by the giant producers of the Ruhr.
Book Description
The high point of medieval Islamic expansion was the 700-year presence of the 'Moors' in Spain and Portugal. The Arab and Berber conquest was followed by the establishment of a richly distinct culture in Andalusia, where for a while Muslim and Christian co-operated as often as they fought. The rise and fall of successive Islamic dynasties brought new invaders, fragmentation and disunity; and the growing Christian kingdoms to the north eventually doomed the amirate of Granada, the last Moorish bastion, which fell to the Castilians in 1492. The colourful armies of Western Islam are described and illustrated here in fascinating detail.
Customer Reviews:
Typical Osprey book.......2007-03-29
How could you go wrong with a men-at-arms book like this one, with the concise but comprehensive text by David Nicolle with the addition of Angus McBride's excellent artwork? I appreciate how Nicolle portrays the Moors as not a bunch of almost naked barbarians, but as materially scarcely different from their foes. The early Arabs and north Africans have often suffered from the 'barbarian' and 'noble savage' stereotypes as much as the Gauls, Germans, and Spaniards in Roman days.
Amazon.com
Jihad is back, says Paul Fregosi, but this current incarnation has a long history behind it. From the start, Islamic fundamentalism has intended to expand the Muslim religion to encompass the entire world through conversion, or, in many instances, violence. Yet until now it has lacked a general historical narrative: "The jihad has been the most unrecorded and disregarded major event of history," writes Fregosi. Jihad in the West attempts to describe the history of Islamic and European conflict over 1,500 years, including moments such as the climactic battle at Tours (if the Moors had won it in 732, much of Europe might be Muslim today), the sieges of Vienna, and the Barbary Corsairs (the battle U.S. Marines refer to when they sing about "the shores of Tripoli"). Such a sweep necessarily sacrifices detail for breadth, yet it still provides a helpful backdrop to understanding a religious movement that has played a prominent role in late-20th-century terrorism. Many Muslims will quarrel with Fregosi when he compares jihad to a Christian sacrament, and the book would benefit from footnotes. Jihad in the West nevertheless is a good introduction to an often-ignored topic. --John J. Miller
Customer Reviews:
Important but Unbalanced.......2007-06-15
In scanning the reviews it is obvious that people love the book or hate.
it. While I agree with the view that jihad has had, and is having, a pernicious effect on civilization, and it is important to include chapter and verse thereon, Mr. Fergosi's comparison of 1300 years of jihad with "less than 200 years" of the Crusades is specious and superficial. I suspect the reason to be that Mr. Fregosi is telling about jihad from a Christian viewpoint.
It is not merely the Crusades but the conquests of the post-Constantine Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire and the Christian spread throughout the Middle East, Europe and Asia, including the Inquisition, that should be compared with Jihad for a balanced view.
I am no expert on Christian "jihad" but it obviously should have been addressed more accurately in all fairness. Even so I imagine that Jihad would win in ruthlessness and brutality hands down even for Jews who suffered from the Crusades (and Inquisition) probably more than Muslims did.
Name your poison; beheading or being burned at the stake.
UNDER ATTACK FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS.......2007-04-20
In the introduction, the author says that this book is the first to examine the history of European-Muslim conflict in its entirety. Three stars should be given for that alone. It begins with a brief description of Muhammad and then covers the conflicts and strugges that have been going on for over a thousand years. The rivalry did not start with the crusades, Fregosi points out, but in Islam's early years of conquest. He also argues that while Christians have committed many atrocities, these are inconsistent with the faith. The same is often not the case in Islam.
I wish more of this book had been devoted to Christian life under Muslim rule. How, for instance, did Christianity fare in this environment? What were relations between the faiths like? As it is the book concentrates almost solely on battles and campaigns.
I also take issue with Fregosi's claim that the Jihad was in fact a fraud, because soldiers and rulers frequently sought gold and loot more than conversion. After all, if the Jihad was a fraud, why be so afraid? All armies and rulers, like the rest of us, want money. What makes the Jihad so scary is that so many were willing to die for it, believing they would be whisked to paradise. That many looked for worldy wealth in conquest says little.
I was also a bit disturbed by the language used throughout. Some books come off as too verbose and intellectual, and suffer for it, but this one had the opposite problem. It is filled with words and phrases that don't belong in a serious work, giving the text the feel of a college bull session at times, and giving some the impression it is not to be taken seriously.
An excellent history of European Jihad.......2006-06-21
Fregosi undertakes what turns out to be a prodigious task, describing jihad by the Muslims against Europe since the inception of Islam. He confines himself exclusively to Europe, but due to the relentless and unrelenting nature of jihad this book ends up being a rather superficial treatment of European jihad. This book was written before 9-11 and its politically correct perspective reflects that pre-911 mentality. Fregosi bends over backwards to treat both sides even-handedly at times even going so far as to draw a moral equivalency between the two. This despite the fact, in his own words, "Muslims who kill are following the commands of Muhammad, but Christians who kill - and there are many - are ignoring the words of Christ. Therein perhaps lies one of the basic philosophical differences, as well as one of the basic ethical differences, between Islam and Christianity." Perhaps?! Just perhaps this is one of the basic philosophical differences?!
Despite Fregosi's reluctance to call a spade a spade this remains an excellent catalog of Islam's ruthless supremacist imperialistic ideology. For at its heart Islam is an ideology rather than a religion. In assessing the nature of Islam William Gladstone put it best: "They [Muslims] were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity. Wherever they went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and, as far as their dominion reached, civilization disappeared from view. They represented everywhere government by forces opposed to government by law."
Winston Churchill said, "The influence of the religion paralyzes the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome."
William Durant in his "The Story of Civilization" succinctly stated, [Islam is] "probably the bloodiest story in history." He called it a "discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precious good, whose delicate complex order and freedom can at any moment be overthrown by barbarians invading from without and multiplying from within." The bitter lesson, Durant concluded, was that "eternal vigilance is the price of civilization. A nation must love peace, but keep its powder dry."
Despite the bleakness of his topic Fregosi manages to be funny at times and at others waxes poetic. Though Fregosi refuses to draw undeniable conclusions from his own material this is an exceptional book and an excellent description of Durant's "bloodies story in history," Gladstone's "broad line of blood," and Churchill's "militant and proselytizing faith." I strongly recommend this book.
Good read - important read.......2006-04-19
For an ordinary history of wars, rulers and kingdoms, this
book is a remarkably good read. It's fun and easy reading,
that's hard to put down. I found myself thumbing through
the book when I had finished, disappointed that there was
no more, looking for perhaps some part of a chapter that
I had missed. The author has wonderful sense of humour.
At the same time, he's presenting the 1300 years of history
of almost unrelenting war, driven by Islam's efforts to
conquer and convert Europe and Chistianity. The war has
ebbed and flowed over the centuries, and is ebbing again,
funded by oil. This is history we must know, to understand
where we are now, and how brutal we will need to become,
before we push back this latest onslaught.
The death toll for this latest round in a war of civilizations
lasting over a millenium has hardly begun to be taken. Islam
is a cancer on human civilization. We might have thought we
were in remission, but oil money has reinvigorated the cancer,
and a shrinking world means that no place is a far away place
anymore.
The best about Jihad against Christianity.......2006-02-21
I bought this book from Amazon.Even having take a look inside it,I bought it and I read, here in Brazil.
From the beginning, until almost our times, Paul Fregosi, tells the battles and facts between Islam and freedom.Jihad victory is also victory of tirany, poverty, ignorance and Dark age's law.
Having beeing published about 8 years ago, this book is becaming outdated, and about XX Century's jihad, it's a little weak.
Here in Brazil, any publishing house, have ever published any book even similar to this book.All brazilians book about Jihad are weak, compared to this book.Fregosi wrote what was ned to write.
Book Description
One of the Washington Post's Top Nonfiction Titles of 2001
In the spring of 1942, the federal government forced West Coast Japanese Americans into detainment camps on suspicion of disloyalty. Two years later, the government demanded even more, drafting them into the same military that had been guarding them as subversives. Most of these Americans complied, but Free to Die for Their Country is the first book to tell the powerful story of those who refused. Based on years of research and personal interviews, Eric L. Muller re-creates the emotions and events that followed the arrival of those draft notices, revealing a dark and complex chapter of America's history.
Customer Reviews:
Loyalty and patrotism redefined.......2007-04-14
This book is typical of the many modern historical re-interpretations of the evacuation and relocation of the people of Japanese ancestry during WWII.
Prominent features among these writers is that the centers were prisons, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards with guns pointed at the inhabitants who were living under horrendously grim conditions of "incarceration" only because they happened to be of the Japanese race. Muller states their plight "among this country's most shameful and egregious human rights violations."
The main premises of the book are as follows:
1. The Nisei draft resisters were just as "patriotic and courageous" as their fellow Nisei among the 100th and 442nd who died or were wounded.
2. The Japanese American Citizens League was against these resisters when they should have supported them. The JACL has since supposedly accepted them.
3. The resisters proved the inconsistency -- indeed, the injustice -- of the US Government's policy regarding their evacuation and relocation.
4. The loyalty questionnaire was unnecessary and therefore harmed relationships and caused divisions.
5. The US Govt. and WRA were wrong to draft the Nisei who were "imprisoned" in "internment camps."
6. The resisters may have been right, they may have been wrong. At any rate, everyone needs to be OK about it and no more hard feelings, please.
If you are a member of or a veteran of the US armed forces, this book will definitely anger you. No doubt it has angered many Japanese Americans.
When your country asks too much of you:.......2004-10-22
I heard about this book in a seminar in Seattle on Japanese-American internees during WWII. I immediately wanted to get it. Some hint about Japanese-American CO's, who were imprisoned just near Seattle, along with Quakers? I had to find out!
This is a well researched book, copious footnotes, with extensive primary and secondary sources. Better yet, Muller is a good author. Don't always get that with a good research non-fiction work. He had me interested, wanting to find out more, hating to put the book down. Muller doesn't simply come off as a bleeding-heart- he dispassionately relates the experiences of the Japanese-Americans, and critiques their actions, with both positive and negative assessments. Yet he manages to bring out in the end how atrocious the actions were of our government- to take people, strip them of their rights, deny them their basic rights as citizens, and then call them to kill others, on the basis that they *are* citizens. He tells the story of how they came to be in the camps, how the decisions were made to put them in the draft (assisted greatly by the JACO, 2nd generation Japanese who were willing to sell out their own people in order to gain more respect from the American government), how and why some chose to resist, and the long struggle that came from the results of those actions, leading up to the present day.
There was one most excellent quote in the book. One judge, after the internment camps are disbanded, writes how the constitution should guarantee basic rights to everyone in our land- regardless of if they are citizens or not. The parallels between the experiences of the Japanese-Americans in WWII and those of another ethnicity today are chilling.
Honoring their resistance preserves our freedoms.......2002-12-07
The Japanese American draft resisters responded to Pearl Harbor not with an ultra-nationalism for the America that had treated them and their families so unjustly, but with a principled insistence on America's higher ideals. By vindicating that choice, Professor Muller's work helps to preserve for all of us the same choice of responses in the wake of 9/11. For many Americans, especially Asian Americans and Arab Americans, waving the flag today combines and conflates a message of patriotism with a historically well-founded fear that we will be counted as less than fully American when America, the one and only nation we love and call home, faces a time of crisis. In the face of these conflated meanings, it is only with a free conscience that an American can ever hope to invest a choice to dedicate his life to his country with the meaning he intends. The resisters remind us that in a time of national crisis, the freedom of conscience is the most precious freedom of all.
Excellent contrib to Amer. history and profiles of courage.......2002-03-24
We know about the 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage who were imprisoned and interned in ten concentration camps in the USA during WWII "By Order of President" Roosevelt and the Army, in places like Tule Lake, Heart Mountain, and Minidoka. We know about the young men, the Nisei, who served their country with distinction in the 100th Battalion and 442nd regimental combat team in Italy and Europe, while their families were stripped of their civil rights and property. But what about those young men who resisted their draft order since they had no civil rights? What of those who were imprisoned and never pardoned after the war? In hindsight, weren't they just as courageous? What about the courage of Federal Judge Louis Goodman? The author of this book, himself the son of a refugee, the grandson of a man who was sent briefly to Buchenwald from Frankfurt, and was tagged an enemy alien in the USA, has written this excellent, well researched book that will be an excellent resource to students of U.S. history and the fight for civil liberties.
Beautiful, untold story.......2002-03-01
This is a group our history books will never cover: Interned Japanese-American citizens who resisted the draft. This book also covers details like their interactions with Black folks and Conscientious Objectors (mostly Quakers) once they were imprisoned.
The chapter on continuing tension within the Japanese community relating to how to treat the resisters is also valuable. It's no exaggeration to say this book contains information the average person will find nowhere else.
Average customer rating:
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The West European Allies, The Third World, and U.S. Foreign Policy: Post-Cold War Challenges (Contributions in Political Science)
Richard J. Payne
Manufacturer: Praeger Paperback
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0275936260 |
Book Description
The recent and ongoing crises in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central America, and southern Africa have been and continue to be approached in very different ways by the United States and its West European allies. Richard J. Payne shows how the many future challenges to the strategic alliance of the U.S. and the NATO countries will have to be adapted to a new and less confrontational world, emphasizing the international economic situation over political or ideological factors. Payne maintains that despite years of divergent views on how to handle Third World trouble spots, strains within the Western Alliance can be alleviated in the future by diplomatic and cooperative means. This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the underlying tensions, and cooperation, between the United States and Western Europe in their approaches to the Soviet Union, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Iran-Iraq War and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, and the struggle for ideological and political control of southwestern Africa. American and European strategies and interests in the Third World greatly affected the broader issues of detente, Eastern-Western European relations, America's leadership abilities, and ultimately NATO itself. The lessening of ideological confrontations between Moscow and Washington, Payne affirms, was followed by the revolutionary changes in Eastern Europe. This volume will be used in courses on international relations, American foreign policy, world politics, Third World politics, global issues, and West European politics. It will also be of great value to political scientists and policymakers.
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