Average customer rating:
- Not quite what I was expecting
- Shackled City AP HC
- pretty good compilation
- Shackled City worth the investment
- Great value in a great adventure
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The Shackled City Adventure Path (Dungeons & Dragons S.)
Jesse Decker ,
James Jacobs ,
Tito Leati ,
David Noonan ,
Christopher Perkins ,
Chris Thomasson ,
Attila Adorjany ,
Tom Baxa ,
Peter Bergting ,
Matt Cavotta ,
Jeff Carlisle ,
Christine Choi ,
Stephen Daniele ,
Omar Dogon ,
Tom Fowler ,
Andrew Hou ,
Ben Huen ,
Eric Kim ,
Chuck Lukacs , and
Val Mayerick
Manufacturer: Paizo Publishing, LLC.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0977007103 |
Product Description
Evil schemes are afoot in Cauldron, a metropolis of merchants built into the caldera of a long-dormant volcano. To foil the agenda of evil cultists, your band of adventurers must brave haunted jungle ruins, slay mighty dragons, and bind themselves to a layer of the infinite Abyss. Will their swords and spells be enough to save the Shackled City?
Originally published as 11 linked adventures in the award-winning Dungeon magazine, the Shackled City Adventure Path is the most ambitious official Dungeons & Dragons campaign ever created. Now, for the first time ever, everything you need to play the campaign has been compiled into a deluxe 416-page full-color hardcover that also includes an 8-panel fully detailed map of the City of Cauldron, a 16-page full-color map and illustration booklet, and a brand new Shackled City adventure written by fan favorite author Christopher Perkins.
Customer Reviews:
Not quite what I was expecting.......2007-10-03
This seems like a good campaign overall if you are really looking for something to occupy a full level spread from start to end, but I found the presentation to be very linear and somewhat disconnected. It definitely showed its nature of being a rebinding of serialized adventures previously published in a magazine. On the plus side the artwork was generally good, though some of the artists shift throughout. The adventure itself is also a bit odd, involving a somewhat obscure brand of evil outsiders and a strained "big evil-doer conspiracy" somewhat in the vein of the classic Slavelords property, but with an even less plausible mix of conspirators who basically amount to little more than "level bosses".
I was hoping to see more tie ins with the setting of Greyhawk, the rumor of which is why I bought it, and while its kind of cool to have something to represent the little fringe of land south of the Sea Princes and north of the southern jungles, it's such an esoteric place to set an adventure on Oerth -- no one has a really good reason to go there, and there's pretty much nothing of note (from a cannon perspective) nearby. This may have been the point for the developers from the perspective of keeping it generic enough to be printed in Dungeon as a generally useful supplement, but it makes it of limited usefulness to most Greyhawk campaigns.
Finally my major complaint about the product is that the page background is a very drab tannish color that gets very tiresome and murky to look at for long.
Shackled City AP HC.......2007-05-10
I have a subscription to Dungeon and had all of the issues that comprised the SCAP so you would think that I wouldn't want to spend the money to upgrade to the HC. Well for a long time that's what I thought too. Then I got a good look at the HC. It's worth every penny, from the convienence of having the entire AP at your finger tips to the added details about Cauldron itself and the smoother transitions between adventures, Plus it includes an entirely new adventure.
pretty good compilation.......2006-08-12
I was pretty wary at fost when I saw this product, so I actually waited a quite a few months before I got it. Now that I've read through it and am ready to use it for play, I can see where they've tweaked it to flow better than it did during the original monthly release.
I do like the maps made, and the plot option paths are better, more cohesive without being railroading.
I do plan on getting the Age of Worms when it is available
Shackled City worth the investment.......2006-05-15
The Shackled City Adventure Path provides a complete campaign for the Dungeons and Dragons game taking player characters from 1st level through 20th level. This beautiful hard cover book contains 12 adventures that make it possible.
The adventures themselves are fairly strong, though some of the connections are a bit tenuous. Most DMs will want to modify the adventures in some ways, though the product is flexible enough to do that.
It includes some nice features, including a multi-page map book the DM can pull out and refer to conveniently. It also includes a poster map of the city of Cauldron (where most of the adventures occur) suitable for hanging. It has a pre-apocalyptic eruption on one side, and a post-eruption on the other.
The hardcover differs from the adventures published in Dungeon in that James Jacobs (An editor of Dungeon) has tried to rework some of the adventures so that they flow well together.
The only real failing is that the "bad guys" in the adventure are too successful at keeping a low profile. The final arc of the adventure is fighting a number of bad guys individually that the PCs have never even met.
This minor problem can be overcome simply by introducing some of the villians (if not their overall objective) earlier with some foreshadowing.
Great value in a great adventure.......2005-12-17
The price tag may look large for a "book", but only to those who haven't been following Dungeon. This single book (and it's a HUGE book) contains the adventures that were published one-to-an-issue in an 11-issue run of Dungeon magazine. To get those individual issues now would cost quite a bit more, and you would still need to go download plenty of suplemental material from Paizo's site.
The Age of Worms is the current onging path, and now there's talk about the possibility of these mega-adventures being turned into video games. This is probably more exitement than I've seen over "modules" for D&D since the 1980s. For new or returning DMs who are looking to set up a brand new game, this is a great way to go and will take months to complete, even if you game every week. If you're the type of DM who likes to hand-craft your adventures, consider picking this up and using sections or even just ideas. It's great material from some of the best in the business.
Book Description
The first clinical manual to bridge the disciplines of hematology and oncology
Hematology-Oncology Therapy integrates an extensive amount of information ( 67 chapters ) that is critical to both office- and hospital-based clinical practice of hematology and oncology. This comprehensive approach makes the book invaluable to all practitioners involved in the care of patients with cancer or hematologic diseases. The three sections of Hematology-Oncology Therapy are
I. Oncology
II. Supportive Care, Drug Preparation, Complications, and Screening
III. Selected Hematologic Diseases
Section I provides detailed information about the administration, emetogenic potential, toxicity, dose modification, monitoring, and efficacy of commonly used and recently approved chemotherapeutic regimens or drugs and biological agents. In addition, each chapter, focused on a specific cancer, contains information about epidemiology, pathology, work-up, and staging, as well as survival data.
Section II consists of topics commonly encountered in clinical hematology-oncology practice. Section III provides an authoritative guide to therapy for the principal diseases in consultative hematology.
Book Description
Once in a great while, a special person emerges in the history of science and medicine whose unique set of characteristics sheds light on an entire disorder and sometimes even on the mysteries of the human brain.Tito is such a person.Although he is severely autistic and nearly nonverbal, his ability to communicate through his extraordinary writing is astonishing.At the age of three, Tito was diagnosed with severe autism, but his mother, with boundless hope and determination, read to him and taught him to write in English.She also challenged him to write his own stories.The result of their efforts is this remarkable book-written when he was 8 to 11 years old-comprising profound and startling philosophical prose and poetry.His beautifully crafted language reveals how it feels to be locked inside an autistic body and mind.THE MIND TREE is the work of an artist.With each page, Tito bursts through his silence into a world of art, beauty and hope.
Customer Reviews:
Brilliant!.......2007-08-03
I give this book 5 stars!
From the moment that my son was diagnosed as Autistic, I searched for books that are written by Autistic individuals because I wanted better insight and there's no better insight than from the one who walks the path themselves. Tito not only gave great insight, he amazed me with the most beautiful poetry that I have ever had the priviledge of reading.
Truly an amazing book!.......2007-03-03
I have read this book 4 times, bought 7 copies to send to all my family. I have a non-verbal child with autism and this book has given me insights into what his life is like. It is so inspiring you can not put it down! Tito is such an articulate writer that I sometimes need to re-read his book to catch all the different meanings his words have said. Actually some of his poetry reminds me of great prophets in the Bible, that need to be studied, considered at every angle, and deeply absorbed. Thank you Tito for all your inspiration! Keep it up!
Inside the mind of autism.......2006-05-14
My son has autism and uses a high-tech communication device. This book challenged me to look at the world from my son's perspective and helped me better understand this disorder. It also proves that individuals without verbal communication can still have a lot "to say".
Interesting insight into Autism.......2005-05-12
I've only read one other book about Autism. That was "Speed of Dark", which was fiction from the point of view of an autistic. It provided fascinating insight into the viewpoint of an autistic, but again it was fiction. It is worth noting that the author was the mother of an Autistic.
I digress. Onto the book "The Mind Tree". I feel I should tell people what this book is actually going to be like. I would have liked to give the book 3.5 stars, but alas there is no option for it. So, I gave it the benefit of the doubt with 4 stars. This is because I know how remarkable it is for someone with such severe Autism as Tito to have written the way he wrote so articulately. That having said, the reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because Tito's prose can be hard to read. Not that it isn't readable--he's actually quite articulate at times--I just found myself doing a LOT of double-takes on certain sentences that I had trouble reading.
The "story" (for lack of a better term) is basically a description of the events of Tito's life as he remembers them. He remembers a great deal, which is impressive. He also does a pretty good job of explaining why he couldn't do things like converse or focus, as well as explained some of his behavioral oddities. For instance, he describes his nervous rocking and/or movement of his arms as "flapping" and explains that he did this because if he wasn't moving, he lost "track" of his body and couldn't "feel" his hands, arms, etc.
This could actually be a good book to read if you have a severely autistic child, or otherwise have a severely autistic person in your life. I think it would help to better understand the world through their eyes and why they behave the way they do. I found the book, overall, a bit dull and I found myself spacing out at times. It really is more or less just an account of how he went from doctor to doctor, from city to city, with his mother in an effort to find him some help. I've always felt that autists really were "normal" people deep down, but that something prevented them from communicating, behaving correctly or properly dealing with social situations, and Tito's words are a fascinating look into exactly how that feels.
Extremly touching.......2004-07-06
I loved Tito every moment I read the book and have immense respect for the dedication, persistence and effort of his mother Soma. She seems to be a very strong woman to handle it all alone. But I have to mention this that I hated the part where Tito writes he was hit hard until he paid attention. I have seen and heard of many successful people who cannot ever forget their childhood abuse by their parents even though they were for good reasons.This is a very wrong concept used earlier and is not encouraged any more by many many people these days. Even though hitting might prove right for some reason it does a permanent damage to one's inner self.
Customer Reviews:
entertaining diversions.......2006-03-15
I was actually looking for a book on how to be a better writer. My eyes scanned one shelf down, and there was this book, with its crazy, comic-book style cover. I picked it up, and scanned only a few pages when I immediately recognized that I couldn't leave the book store without Outposts. I wasn't even fully aware of what it was I had purchased, and yet my satisfaction with my purchase is unabated. For the past two days I have been putting off all my more important reading (I did also buy a book on how to be a better writer, but I have barely cracked it open) and "wasting" my time reading Outposts. When I am done writing this review, guess what I'll be doing?
Even though my copy was written in 1995, there is something all the more interesting about it, and its relevence continues. For example, what may seem like a dated section on religious extremism, is profoundly prophetic. The editor, Russ Kick, mentions in one of his reviews the bombing of the World Trade Center as an example of radical Muslim violence. Little did he know what was coming down the road six years after his book was published, and yet that section is not obsolete. Neither are the sections on drugs, sex, or other bizarre but interesting fringe culture interests. Kick tapped into 'zines, but he was ahead of the internet by about one year, or right on the cusp of the internet, and so you won't find any references to web sites or URLs. This is a catalog of printed material, only.
What makes this book even more relevent is that we are living in an age of government wire taps, government spying on our Google search queries, the whole war in the name of religion phenomenon, and just about everything else the book has to offer. Lucky for me, I bought this used at a book store, where paying cash for the book would not arouse the Fed's "book purchase keyword scrutinizer program". I just made that up, but you know it's coming down the pike!
Still Relevent in 2004.......2004-03-02
I have purchased a total of five copies of this book over the years. Everytime I let it out of my hands it never returned. I always wished for an updated and revised version but now I see that it's out-of -print which is a shame because even though the internet has given us a wealth of information on everything sometimes you just don't know what to look for. Simply put this book made me interested in things I never knew I was interested in. Even today it is still the perfect leaping point into the strange and alternative. And NOT for the faint. The alternative sex section really does give you information on books and such dealing with alternative sex and I'm talking Law & Order:SVU stuff. THere was even a book written that should become the Roman Catholics church "unofficial Bible." Disturbing but facinating. I've actually read this thing cover to cover like a novel.
amazing source for "out-of-bound"/subversive information.......1998-05-17
its an incredible resource guide for people looking for almost any kind of fringe information. i always thought i was pretty much ahead of the curve when it came to hidden or bizarre material, but i grossly overestimated my breadth of knowledge after reading Outposts. everything from sex art fringe politics drugs--its not only a great sourcebook but many of the publishers listed have EVEN more great books...amazing
Great Catalogue.......1998-02-11
This is a great catalogue for those seeking info not accessible by the normal public, like how to be your own mortician.
http://home.earthlink.net/~izone/outposts.htm.......1996-05-28
Review w/cover scan is located at the above URL
Book Description
Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders is the only full-length interpretive study on Machiavelli's controversial and ambiguous work, Discourses on Livy. These discourses, considered by some to be Machiavelli's most important work, are thoroughly explained in a chapter-by-chapter commentary by Harvey C. Mansfield, one of the world's foremost interpreters of this remarkable philosopher.
Mansfield's aim is to discern Machiavelli's intention in writing the book: he argues that Machiavelli wanted to introduce new modes and orders in political philosophy in order to make himself the founder of modern politics. Mansfield maintains that Machiavelli deliberately concealed part of his intentions so that only the most perceptive reader could see beneath the surface of the text and understand the whole of his book. Previously out of print, Mansfield's penetrating study brings to light the hidden thoughts lurking in the details of the Discourses on Livy to inform and challenge its readers at every step along the way.
Customer Reviews:
Unique and invaluable.......2001-07-14
The return of this book to print is a great boon to anyone interested in Machiavelli, or who has ever struggled through the Discourses wondering just what Old Nick is getting at.
Originally published more than 20 years ago, "New Modes and Orders" remains the only full length commentary on the Discourses ever published in English. As such, it is indespensible, for the Discourses is at once Machiavelli's most difficult and most important book. Those of us who until now have had to rest content with rumaging through library copies dreading the due date will gladly shell out...to have a copy on our own shelves.
"New Modes" has often been critized for its reserve bordering on circumspection. There is justice in this criticism. This book is not an easy read, and it does not "explain" the difficulties of the Discourses in a way that readers who are not willing to work will find helpful.
But despite his overall reserve, Mansfield is surprisingly candid on a few points of extreme importance. My own impression is that his method is to state baldly a handful of broad but essential points, and then elusivley wade through a host of details the understanding of which allows us to fill in the gaps between the broad points.
One example will suffice. You don't need to be well versed in military affairs to realize that practically none of Machiavelli's arguments in Book II of the Discourses makes any sense. Mansfield helps us resolve this difficulty, right at the outset of his treatment of that Book, by plainly stating that Book II is an argument not about physical warfare but about spiritual warfare. It is in fact a long, sustained metaphor in which certain topics and terms serve as stand-ins for Machiavelli's real subjects. Then, having drawn the curtain completely open, just for a second, Mansfield lets it close, and proceeds to his line-by-line discussion of Book II--but only after he has let us know what is really going on, thereby giving us the tools to understand for ourselves what will be discussed in this all-important section.
I wish also to note that Mansfield is a masterful writer, and that few books--and almost no scholarly books--can claim to be this well done. He is also a very funny man. Machiavelli is lucky to have found a commentator who not only appreciates his sublte jokes but contributes some delightful jokes of his own that are worthy of the master.
In sum: this book will frustrate you. It will make you sweat and curse and fume. But it rewards the patient.
Book Description
The classical and most accurate guide on Argentine birds.
Customer Reviews:
Hopelessly amateuristic.......2007-08-02
This book is depressingly poor, especially considering its price. Some are touting it because the descriptions, images (paintings) and range maps for each species appear together. Bravo! That would be lovely if they were useful, but the maps are too small, the descriptions too brief and vague, and the paintings are (I'm tempted to say "hopelessly") amateuristic. Quality of the illustrations not withstanding, all good modern field guides depict similar (e.g., congenric) species in the same pose so key differences are conspicuous. This field guide seems to go out of its way to do the opposite, featuring as many poses as species, making it essentially impossible to determine essential field marks. There must be something better. If not, avoid Argentina and bird Afghanistan! The result is bound to be more positive.
"THE" Field Guide.......2001-08-05
It's an excellent field guide. The little maps with each bird showing the distribution area makes the identification fast and easy. Drawings are very good and so are id clues. I think that due to printing problems sometimes the colors are not so accurate (few cases). If you are coming to Argentina to watch birds, is a must (I'm not the author cousin).
Book Description
Eloquent. Philosophical. Introspective. These are not the words usually associated with an autistic child. But in a remarkable display of courage and creativity, a boy named Tito has shattered stereotypes, and in The Mind Tree makes us question all of our previous assumptions about autism. For Tito is severely autistic and nearly nonverbal, and this is his story.
Customer Reviews:
A must read.......2007-07-07
The Mind Tree is the best book I have ever read on Autism. For the first time I was able to understand what goes inside the mind of an autistic child. I first bought the book for myself, and subsequently have bought 5 copies for friends or aquaintances who have a loved one with Autism.
Amazing read!.......2007-05-07
I have a 14 year old non-verbal autistic son and each time I picked up the book I was moved to tears. Reading Tito's book was, for me, like getting some insight into my son's thoughts. Tito's behaviors and fears matched so perfectly with some of my sons. Tito seems to be a very insightful young man. I found the book interesting, moving, even humorous at some points. I would definitely recommend that anyone who has a child who is autistic, or knows someone who does, read this book.
Average customer rating:
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Way of the Ascetics
Colliander Tito
Manufacturer: Harpercollins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
| Christian Living
| Christianity
| Religion & Spirituality
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0060615265 |
Customer Reviews:
Almost comically misguided and pro-Serbian.......2004-07-03
The reader from Zagreb already pointed out some of the many factual errors and erroneous conclusions which this book is rife with. The author seems especially error-prone when straying away from Tito himself to attempt making larger conclusions about the events in the region and their sources and consequences.
Instead of picking on little details, I'll just make some helpful recommendations.
If you want insight into Tito and the wartime Partisans, read Milovan Djilas's "Wartime" and Fitzroy McLean's "Eastern Approaches".
For some further (less flattering) insight into Tito postwar, read Ion Mihai Pacepa's "Red Horizons", which is mostly about Rumania and Causescu, but mentions Tito several times, speaking in some detail about the relationship between the two dictators.
If you want insight into the true Serbian role in WW2, read the excellent "Sebia's secret war" by Philip J. Cohen. The facts are readily available, they've just been obscured by the long-discredited postwar propaganda that the author chooses to repeat in this book, for reasons known only to him.
If you want to know about the massive bloody payback that was extracted right after WW2 for the crimes the Ustasha commited during the war, against both them and anyone else implicated by proxy (and just for not being zealous enough politically), read "Operation Slaughterhouse" by Guldescu and Prcela. It's difficult to find, and is a large volume, but if you really want to know, try to find a copy.
If you want to really know how the wars in the former Yugoslavia started, read Laura Silber and Allan Little's excellent "Yugoslavia: Death of a nation". And no, you won't find old-fashioned platitudes about religion and "all of them being savages, so what can we do?" in there.
I can see from some of the other reviews here that this book has already done damage. But if you are really curious about the region and it's history, read the above volumes, and you'll certainly be far better informed than this sadly deficient volume can provide.
Sadly, the author seems keen on repeating old and tired cliches about the region, dating from WW1 (and that weren't particularly true even then), and his thin attempts at excusing the role of the Serbs in the recent wars with moral relativism are almost upsetting (knowing less informed readers might believe such conclusions). After all, if everyone started extracting payback for historical wrongs, we'd be left with a planet of blind people. Such arguments are no excuse, even with the over-inflated claims the author makes about WW2 war crimes, while ignoring the true extent of the crimes of the Chetniks (and their habitual and consistent cooperation with Nazis and Italian Fascists).
As for his claims about Bosnian "fundamentalism", well, he's clearly never actually met a Bosnian Muslim. Or at least, not before the wars, which understandably somewhat tipped people there in a unfortunate direction. Without a shadow of a doubt, no Bosnian would have tolerated Wahhabi vermin among their midst before the horrors of the recent war there. Trying to project minority postwar attitudes backwards is very ill-informed, and just plain wrong.
The author also mentions postwar Ustasha terrorist acts, however, he absurdly seems to think that problem was not dealt with in-country. In fact, it's well known (among those of us with a clue, at any rate), that all Ustasha attempts at postwar infiltration were met with failure and shooting deaths of the participants. Also, agents of the infamous UDBA (Yugoslav secret police) were famous for hunting down both Ustashe and other dissidents worldwide and assasinating them. This is well known. It puzzles me how the author was unaware of the extent of such activities by Tito's secret police.
All that said, I can agree with the conclusion that Tito was the most benevolent of the recent dictators, and he truly did make Yugoslavia a world player while he was in charge. No small achievement, there. Also, the standard of living and personal freedoms (while certainly not maching, say, those of the United States), were better than in all other communist countries. Then again, that was at the expense of massive debts, that had to be paid eventually. But, it was fun while it lasted.
Either way, don't waste time with this volume. Read the others I mentioned if you want true insight.
3.5 Stars.......2004-07-01
Richard West's book on Tito is more than anything, a study of the relationships among the inhabitants of eastern europe rather than a biography. Nevertheless, the book is well written, informative and at many times entertaining. It is crucial to understand the history of the area known to many as the powder keg of europe in order to learn about Tito. West does a good job of depicting the complicated relation between not only Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, etc. but even more importantly - the Muslims, Catholics, Christians, etc. I am glad that West was so staunch in his disapproval of the Ustasha - whose methods repulsed even the Nazis. However, he seems to be one-sided in the sense that Serb extremist atrocities are rarely mentioned and not as detailed. The struggles of Eastern Europes does not have good or bad guys. Both Serb and Croat extremists have performed horrendous acts on their own people and will have to look back on their history with deep sorrow and regret. To be fair, both sides have also had many strong character leaders attempt to end the violence. Many of which paid with their lives. Tito was the only person to unite the region. I wish West had even more access to Tito to provide a better picture but I guess there are other books that are more precise. In the end, the first 3/4 of the book are solid but the last section regarding the state of the Balkans after Tito seems rushed and is rather forgetable.
Great history of the Balkins.......2003-06-12
This book is very well researched and is one of the only books not to carry any ethnic bias. It is a history review rather than a documentation of Tito the man. It starts just after the Toman Empire collapsed and ends just weeks before the recent fighting of the 1990s.
I have been living in Slovenia for the last 3 years and made some travels into Serbia and Croatia. I learned more from this book that the 3 years living here. It is long and somewhat academic but a reasonably easy recreational read.
Do NOT get the other book about Tito (by Djlias)-- this was written for an audience who is interesting in debating Markist philosophy.
Readable bio on the world's only benevolent dictator.......2002-12-27
I've racked my brains and the only benevolent dictator I could come up with was Yugoslavia's Marshal Josip Broz Tito. Richard West writes a favourable, even-handed, and comprehensible account of Tito, who ruled Yugoslavia from 1945 to 1980. He even provides a background to the South Slavs before talking about Tito, because it is important to understand the dynamics going on under the Ottoman Empire and later the Balkan absorption by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1878.
Tito, a Croat, was indeed born during an interesting period, when tensions were growing in Europe between the two alliance blocs, the Entente and Central Powers. He had his brush with Pan-Slavism, as he went to help the Czechs and Slovaks during his military service.
West also takes time to talk about the Independent State of Croatia, the fascist puppet state under Ante Pavelic, the mastermind of Yugoslavian King Alexander's assassination in 1934. That regime was brutal, as Serbs were butchered, bombed while in worship, and hurled off cliffs. Even the Franciscan priests participated in the killing.
Tito's wartime exploits make interesting reading, as he was besieged from all sides, by Germans, Italians, the Ustasha (Croatian fascists), and monarchist Serbs under Draza Mihailovic. It didn't help matters that the Allies saw Mihailovic as the more viable threat against the Germans. Only when Churchill got information from the code-breaking Ultra did he realize that Tito was the greater danger against the Nazis and hence recognized that they had better give Tito higher priority.
His own brand of Communism, Titoism, was freer than Soviet Russia, Maoist China, or Hoxha's Albania, but also tried to make the various nationalities live together in collective brotherhood. That hope would turn out to be unrealistic, but he did try to clamp down on nationalism. True, he did jail some opponents and nationalists, such as future Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, but he didn't carry out large scale massacres like Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. He was one of two "good Communists" in the eyes of the West, the other one being Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania.
His role as one of the leaders of the non-aligned third bloc, along with India's Jawaharlal Nehru and Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser holds relevance today. 11 Sept has made non-alignment a non-option. Unfortunately I haven't seen any countries who have made a firm stance of neutrality.
This book was written before the outbreak of the war in Bosnia despite its publication in 1994. In light of what happened in Bosnia and Kosovo, critics might tear into Tito for keeping the genie of nationalism firmly stoppered. It was a little after a decade when Yugoslavia disintegrated. Like leaders such as Charlemagne and Louis XIV, his death left a leadership vacuum that led to political fragmentation.
A Rational Yugoslav.......2001-10-01
Mr. West depicts the legendary marshall in a powerful and distinct manner, pointing out throughout most of his book that the unity and stability of Yugoslavia after WWII stemmed from Tito's forward-looking political philosophy, putting aside the wanton carnage of Ustasha and Cetnik militias and focusing in the rebuilding of a nation surrounded by suspicion and devastation.
By overcoming Churchill's Machiavelian realpolitik and Stalin's carnivorous vacuum filler, Tito galvanized a Communist nation into unparalleled prosperity and experimented on a system without precedents. Truly, his death catapulted the land of Southern Slavs into the demise and bloodshed of the 1990s, Yugoslavia lacking leaders with character, vision and charisma to resume his political -if not economic - masterpiece. A book well-written and well-researched recommended for the historian and current affairs hound alike.
Books:
- The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness (Newly Expanded Paperback Edition)
- The Women Who Raised Me: A Memoir
- The Year with Grandma Moses
- "This one's for you": Poems for the Bar/Bat Mitzvah Candle Lighting Ceremony
- This Year I Will...: How to Finally Change a Habit, Keep a Resolution, or Make a Dream Come True
- Those Who Save Us
- Three from Galilee
- Throw Me a Bone: 50 Healthy, Canine Taste-Tested Recipes for Snacks, Meals, and Treats
- Unbroken Curses
- Washington, D.C., Then and Now (Then & Now)
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Recommended Books
- Bedside Manners: One Doctor's Reflections on the Oddly Intimate Encounters Between Patient and Heale
- She Went All the Way
- Honor without Integrity
- History: Fiction or Science
- Mafalda 2
- Pattern Classification
- Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action
- Empire: A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon
- Issues Related to Article 14 of the Oecd Model Tax Convention
- Weiss Ratings' Guide to Banks and Thrifts: A Quarterly Compilation of Financial Institution Ratings
