Book Description
Succeeding in World Civilizations class isn't easy. That's why Adler and Pouwels wrote WORLD CIVILIZATIONS: VOLUME II: SINCE 1500 in its trademark, easy-to-read style. Hundreds of illustrations, maps, and documents, overviews, self-tests, and other learning aids make the history of world civilizations easier for students to study and understand. Volume 1 includes thirty concise chapters make content manageable.
Book Description
An astonishing find-the landmark journal of a woman living though the Russian occupation of Berlin-which has already earned comparisons to diaries by Etty Hillesum and Victor Klemperer For six weeks in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russian army, a young woman, alone in the city, kept a daily record of her and her neighbors' experiences, determined to describe the common lot of millions.Purged of all self-pity but with laser-sharp observation and bracing humor, the anonymous author conjures up a ravaged apartment building and its little group of residents struggling to get by in the rubble without food, heat, or water. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, she depicts her fellow Berliners in all their humanity as well as their cravenness, corrupted first by hunger and then by the Russians. And with shocking and vivid detail, she tells of the shameful indignities to which women in a conquered city are always subject: the mass rape suffered by all, regardless of age or infirmity. Through this ordeal, she maintains her resilience, decency, and fierce will to come through her city's trial, until normalcy and safety return.At once an essential record and a work of great literature, A Woman in Berlin not only reveals a true heroine, sure to join other enduring figures of the twentieth century, but also gives voice to the rarely heard victims of war: the women.
Customer Reviews:
History Is Still Going On!.......2007-10-14
A few months ago the city fathers in Talinn, Estonia, moved a World War II era statue of an angry-looking Red Army soldier which had been placed in a military cemetary in the city. The statue was supposed to depict the rage the soldier felt as he contemplated all of his fallen comrades.
Not all Estonians saw it that way. Local wags dubbed the statue the "Monument to the Unknown Rapist" and it was moved to a less prominent location. This outraged the Russians. Their army still wears the Red Star insignia to comemorate their hard won victory in what Soviet authors call "the Great Patriotic War" (World War II to the rest of us.)
Russia lodged official, menacing protests and Lithuania and Latvia responded with official support to Estonia. This diplomatic shoot-out is still percolating along. History isn't over. It's still going on around us.
The conduct of the Red Army toward civilians, especially women, has been a hot button issue since 1944 when Nemmersdorf, East Prussia, was briefly occupied, then abandoned to the Wehrmacht. Goebbels propaganda machine immediately accused the Red Army of spectacular atrocities including mass rape of women and girls and nailing some of them to barn doors and farm wagons as if they'd been crucified. Goebbels' documentary was shown to terrified audiences throughout Germany.
Intended to spur the Volkssturm, and other last-ditch home guards, to fight harder, the films panicked those who realized that they were on the Red Army's line of march into Berlin. They also started a controversy about the cruelties visited upon women by Red Army liberators.
Anonymous' excellent diary, A WOMAN IN BERLIN, gives a balanced insight into their conduct in Berlin when it fell in 1945. Available in several translations and editions, the author is sometimes thought to have been Marta Hiller, a prominent Berlin journalist who passed away in 2001.
Her account avoids melodrama. It is straightforward and describes what she experienced in matter-of-fact tones. She is raped herself. She sees it happen to others.
Yet, some Red Army soldiers are humane and helpful. The Red Army does not try to exterminate the battered population of Berlin as she feared they might in retaliation for Nazi attempts to exterminate the Slavs in some areas they'd occupied.
She learns that the conquerors can be decent, but that Red Army soldiers can also be brutal and dangerous when they are drunk. Nights become times of great danger for her, and other Berlin women.
Her account is one of survival in a time of catastrophic defeat. It is interesting to compare this memoir to Alexandra Orme's COMES THE COMRADE! which was written a few years later and deals with the Red Army's occupation of Hungary, an Axis ally. Orme's treatment of the Red Army strives for humor in the face of unavoidable adversity. Her treatment of the Red Army is much more sympathetic than most other accounts and it shows low long the Red Army's conduct has been an issue.
A WOMAN OF BERLIN is well-written and available in a number of editions and translations. If you're interested in World War II, the Red Army, or accounts of survival in desperate situations, you'll want to read this book. I gave it five stars because of the quality of the author's writing.
A subtle reminder..........2007-10-01
Not just a woman in Berlin at the end of WWII, but in any city, at any time, under armed conflict, this book reminds us of the atrocities derived out of human incomprehension, irracionality, ambition, etc. as anonymous as the author is, the actors are too, given the fact, they're all gone today, but not so their legacy... which has stayed with us (and hopefully with future generations). Interestingly, the way the author describes every infamous episody will make you notice the way things have changed too, for even physical abuse under war circumstances had certain brush of "decency" inexistent among today's savagery.
A just in time wake up call you can't afford to miss...
Powerful but Uplifting.......2007-08-08
I read this book together with An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies) in anticipation of a trip to Berlin. They are both relatively short reads, and the combination of the two seemed especially powerful.
I thought that "A Woman in Berlin" might be too harrowing to endure (it _is_ a relation of the plight of defenceless women facing a conquering, vengeful, rapacious (yeah, like, RAPE) male army. However the author's determination to survive and to make the best of what quickly becomes her powerfully oppressive circumstances salves the reader. It's an enlightening description of what happens to an advanced western civilization when completely reduced for a time to life and death armed confrontation.
The author has interesting observations on the 'feminization' of Berlin _in extremis_ -- all the able-bodied men were at the fronts. Other than women of all ages, there were only disabled or very old men and children left in Berlin. [Of course there were also a few remaining men of the rapidly crumbling elite ruling class and their camp followers buried in Berlin bunkers who were utterly irrelvant to life in Berlin in April/May 1945.]
A Woman in Berlin confronts female / male sex in the context of armed male oppresssion and a woman's enlightened understanding of how to maximize her limited opportunities under very straightened circumstances.
An Underground Life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin (Living Out: Gay and Lesbian Autobiographies)celebrates male homosexual sex in the context of unimaginable oppression and tragedy. The author's exuberance about his sexual encounters and conquests in the face of this oppression and tragedy lightens what might otherwise be a harrowing read -- this book is part of a series celebrating the lives of gays and lesbians, after all, and so may not have been intended for the general heterosexual reader -- worth it, nevetheless.
I can't put into words the impact on me of reading in close proximity these two stories of "sex in wartime Berlin". I still ponder that impact.
Raw, Ragged Reality.......2007-07-11
Some books appeal to your intellect, others to your heart. This one hits you hard right in the gut. The author's shock, fear, suffering and revulsion are delivered relentlessly through her perceptive eyes, with poetic expressiveness and biting wit.
Along with the horrific experiences she recounts, some of the most searing passages are the reflections of her heart and soul. In the original German, they are particularly touching and thought-provoking. Her character, humanity and indomitable spirit transcend the pages that she wrote.
At the end of the nine-week period covered in the diary, I was struck by this true "Triumph des Willens" - the will to survive.
stepping into her shoes.......2007-07-03
perhaps because this is a diary, it is raw and allows one to step into the shoes of the author. It gives one a first hand look at what life was like for the German citizens living in Berlin immediately prior to and during the Soviet troops occupation. Although hard to read it times, it is as though one is right there. Very true first-hand look. A book one can't put down, and leaves one thinking about the suffering of the masses.
Book Description
During the most terrible years of World War II, when inhumanity and political insanity held most of the world in their grip and the Nazi domination of Europe seemed irrevocable and unchallenged, a miraculous event took place in a small Protestant town in southern France called Le Chambon. There, quietly, peacefully, and in full view of the Vichy government and a nearby division of the Nazi SS, Le Chambon's villagers and their clergy organized to save thousands of Jewish children and adults from certain death.
Customer Reviews:
A Flawed Tale of a Flawed Man.......2006-06-05
It is said that, during World War Two, the village of Le Chambon in southern France was the safest place in Europe. It was this small village where Andre Trocme, a Protestant pastor, charged his church and his entire village with the task of protecting refugees, and primarily the Jewish refugees who were fleeing Nazi oppression. The story of this man and, to a lesser extent this village, is told in Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, written by Philip Hallie, a philosopher and ethicist whose study of the horrors of the Second World War had driven him to near despair.
Across all these studies, the pattern of the strong crushing the weak kept repeating itself and repeating itself, so that when I was not bitterly angry, I was bored at the repetition of the patterns of persecution. When I was not desiring to be cruel with the cruel, I was like a monster--like, perhaps, many others around me--who could look upon torture and death without a shudder, and who therefore looked upon life without a belief in its preciousness. My study of evil incarnate had become a prison whose bars were my bitterness towards the violent, and whose walls were my horrified indifference to slow murder. Between the bars and the walls I revolved like a madman. Reading about the damned I was damned myself, as damned as the murderers, and as damned as their victims. Somehow over the years I had dug myself into Hell, and I had forgotten redemption, had forgotten the possibility of escape.
But in his own search for redemption, Hallie found a story that finally broke through the walls of bitterness and anger. He found the story of Le Chambon and of Andre Trocme. When he found out about this town and this man, he knew he had to write about it, not as an example of goodness or moral nobility; not for an abstract end. Rather, he was going to use "the words of ethics to help me understand my deeply felt ethical praise for the deeds of the people of Le Chambon."
And so Hallie shares the story he discovered. And it is an amazing story, the subject of which is a small village of men and women, the vast majority of whom were of Huguenot stock. Andre Trocme, their pastor and leader, was clearly a strange and unorthodox man. He seems to have been driven primarily by his love for Jesus and his respect for the teachings of Jesus, especially as they related to peace. Trocme was a pacifist whose standards of morality were strict. While he might carry a forged identity card, he would refuse to give a false name for himself. He was morally opposed to the war and to all violent forms of resistance. Yet at the same time he was a man of violent temper who often quarrelled loudly and angrily with his wife. And yet he was a man who was more than willing to lay down his life for those who were in danger.
Like many biographies of Christians that are written by unbelievers, it is difficult to know just what to believe about the man. Naturally, an author who is not filled with the Holy Spirit cannot fully understand one who is. I know little of Trocme other than what Hallie tells about him, yet if Hallie is to be believed, Trocme rarely preached about anything other than pacifism. He loved Jesus, but rarely seemed to discuss many of the great truths of the Christian faith. Is this the truth or is this merely Hallie's understanding of the truth? Did Trocme understand the gospel or was he merely a "good man?" Were his actions an expression of the Spirit's work in his life? It is difficult to know and this book offers few definitive answers.
What we do know is that Trocme was, in many ways, a tortured individual. Sadly, the death of his eldest son, the one whom he expected to carry on his work, left Trocme deeply suspicious of God so that he lived the last thirty years of his life after the war with a terrible skepticism. "[N]ever again would he believe that God protects precious life. Never again could he pray to a Protector-God. From now on, God and Jesus were to him powerless, suffering, limited. God was still the Father, but He was as powerless as Trocme the father was. God could only join us in our grief, not save us from it. He never recovered from the loss of his son and, tragically, never did his wife who, it seems, never did turn to Christ as her Savior. At this time she "turned her back on all religion, and on her husband as pastor, so that their marriage for a while was very painful, and later her criticisms of religion went back to their old severity."
Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed is a book that is at the same time inspiring and tragic. The hero of the story is courageous, but deeply flawed. Motivated by his desire to emulate Christ, he accomplished much and saved hundreds or even thousands of lives, all the while holding up the strict standards of morality he felt Christ required of him. This book is a study of character and a study of morality and ethics within the context of great tribulation. While it is not a Christian book and is not written by a Christian author, it does show what God can do through flawed, imperfect people. Sadly, the author seems to have missed the power of God displayed in it. He concludes by saying, "For me, that awareness [of the preciousness of human life] is my awareness of God. I live with the same sentence in my mind that many of the victims of the concentration camps uttered as they walked to their deaths: Shema Israel, Adonoi Elohenu, Adonoi Echod (Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One). For me, the word Israel refers to all of us anarchic-hearted human beings, and the word God means the object of our undivided attention to the lucid mystery of being alive for others and for ourselves." Surely Hallie's hero Andre Trocme would disagree.
More powerful than evil.......2005-08-16
Philip Hallie, a Jewish philosopher, had slipped in to a state of depression as a result of his research of human cruelty, especially regarding the Holocaust. He felt as though he was a prisoner in that he wished harm on evil doers and had himself become untouched by suffering. He was doing research when he noticed something unusual, he was weeping. The reason? He had come across a short article about a village in France, which had resisted Hitler during the French Occupation (1940-1944). The village was the pacifistic Le Chambon.
The book at hand is the result of Hallie's research (conducted in mid 1970's) into the events surrounding this village. He visited Le Chambon and interviewed several people. The main character of the resistance was André Trocmé (deceased in 1971), a Protestant pastor, who with help of many-including his wife, Magda-provided a safe haven for Jews (especially Jewish children). The book essentially covers the years 1934-1944, with many anecdotes and observations. The bottom line for Hallie is that `ethics' can only make a difference if action is taken. The people of Le Chambon simply helped the Jews because `it was the right thing to do.'
This book is an easy read yet one that will make the reader think. There is an implicit religious basis for the peoples' ethics but a strength of the book is that there are no saints. Especially prevalent is André Trocmé's humanity; he struggles immensely with death, especially of his mother and one of his sons. If you are looking for a morality based on deep and explicit theology you will not find it here. But everyone should take the following from this book: if your ethical stance is to lessen the evil in this world, then helping those who are in harm's way is as powerful, if not more so, than any show of violence.
inspiring story, but fragmented writing.......2004-12-06
The true story told in this book is amazing, inspiring, and miraculous. More people should know about it!! Pastor Trocme was the leader of the resistance, and much of the book is about him and his family. He was Pastor in a little Protestant town in France, and he and his townspeople saved the lives of hundreds of Jewish children.
However, I think the book could have been better written. I hesitate to recommend the book to others because I think they would have a hard time getting through it. The story is fragmented. It is not really told chronologically. Each chapter tells a different part/aspect of the overall story. By the time you finish reading the book, the different parts of the puzzle have come together...but its telling is not smooth.
To give the author some credit, he did have a challenging job to write this book so long after the fact. He had to piece together many pieces...through research, reading old diaries and letters, interviewing the handful of still-living people involved in the story, etc. But I still think it could have been "put together" in a better way.
Perhaps someone should write a shorter, less-detailed narrative about this town - that way it might have a wider reading audience. Again, it is an incredible and inspiring story that needs to be told!
A poor look at ethical wealth.......2002-10-08
I was asked to contrast this book to Christopher Browning's _Ordinary Men_ for a class in Comparative Religious Ethics. While this proved to be an intresting exercise, Philip Hallie's unpolished tale of Le Chambon, a stop on France's "Underground Railroad" for WWII refugees, suffers in the comparison.
Hallie makes tentative steps towards a biography of Andre Trocme (the town's pastor), a specific and narrow history of a French town in WWII, a case study in ethics, and a testimony of praise for people he grew to admire in his research. None of these directions arrive at any satisfying destination, leaving the narrative feeling disorganized and lacking the import the story might have held.
In spite of the ways Hallie's approach disappointed me, I would still recommend this book to those people who enjoy reading simple modern morality tales told in terms of "good vs. evil", or those who want some rather saccharine optimism about human nature in their histories of WWII.
Moving, challenging, insightful.......2000-06-26
Hallie is a brilliant writer and researcher who tells an amazing story of courage and faith. In it he demonstrates how "decent" people who stay inactive out of cowardice and indifference--when around them human beings are humiliated and destroyed--are the most dangerous people in the world. I didn't need his closing thoughts on ethics, and I would like to have learned more about what the villagers themselves did to protect the refugees. But the parts the author did well were so astonishing, it still gets five stars. It left me asking myself, "What exploited people groups can I help and how?"
Average customer rating:
- Magnificent!
- Something of a let down
- POORLY WRITTEN AND ABSOLUTELY NOT FOR CHILDREN
- Fabulous Science fiction read
- WHAM! Here come the heavy hitters
|
His Dark Materials, Book II: The Subtle Knife
Philip Pullman
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Similar Items:
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The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, Book 3)
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The Golden Compass, Deluxe 10th Anniversary Edition (His Dark Materials, Book 1)
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Lyra's Oxford
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The Ruby in the Smoke (Sally Lockhart Trilogy, Book 1)
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Shadow in the North (Sally Lockhart Trilogy, Book 2)
ASIN: 0807204722
Release Date: 2004-09-28 |
Amazon.com
With The Golden Compass Philip Pullman garnered every accolade under the sun. Critics lobbed around such superlatives as "elegant," "awe-inspiring," "grand," and "glittering," and used "magnificent" with gay abandon. Each reader had a favorite chapter--or, more likely, several--from the opening tour de force to Lyra's close call at Bolvangar to the great armored-bear battle. And Pullman was no less profligate when it came to intellectual firepower or singular characters. The dæmons alone grant him a place in world literature. Could the second installment of his trilogy keep up this pitch, or had his heroine and her too, too sullied parents consumed him? And what of the belief system that pervaded his alternate universe, not to mention the mystery of Dust? More revelations and an equal number of wonders and new players were definitely in order.
The Subtle Knife offers everything we could have wished for, and more. For a start, there's a young hero--from our world--who is a match for Lyra Silvertongue and whose destiny is every bit as shattering. Like Lyra, Will Parry has spent his childhood playing games. Unlike hers, though, his have been deadly serious. This 12-year-old long ago learned the art of invisibility: if he could erase himself, no one would discover his mother's increasing instability and separate them.
As the novel opens, Will's enemies will do anything for information about his missing father, a soldier and Arctic explorer who has been very much airbrushed from the official picture. Now Will must get his mother into safe seclusion and make his way toward Oxford, which may hold the key to John Parry's disappearance. But en route and on the lam from both the police and his family's tormentors, he comes upon a cat with more than a mouse on her mind: "She reached out a paw to pat something in the air in front of her, something quite invisible to Will." What seems to him a patch of everyday Oxford conceals far more: "The cat stepped forward and vanished." Will, too, scrambles through and into another oddly deserted landscape--one in which children rule and adults (and felines) are very much at risk. Here in this deathly silent city by the sea, he will soon have a dustup with a fierce, flinty little girl: "Her expression was a mixture of the very young--when she first tasted the cola--and a kind of deep, sad wariness." Soon Will and Lyra (and, of course, her dæmon, Pantalaimon) uneasily embark on a great adventure and head into greater tragedy.
As Pullman moves between his young warriors and the witch Serafina Pekkala, the magnetic, ever-manipulative Mrs. Coulter, and Lee Scoresby and his hare dæmon, Hester, there are clear signs of approaching war and earthly chaos. There are new faces as well. The author introduces Oxford dark-matter researcher Mary Malone; the Latvian witch queen Ruta Skadi, who "had trafficked with spirits, and it showed"; Stanislaus Grumman, a shaman in search of a weapon crucial to the cause of Lord Asriel, Lyra's father; and a serpentine old man whom Lyra and Pan can't quite place. Also on hand are the Specters, beings that make cliff-ghasts look like rank amateurs.
Throughout, Pullman is in absolute control of his several worlds, his plot and pace equal to his inspiration. Any number of astonishing scenes--small- and large-scale--will have readers on edge, and many are cause for tears. "You think things have to be possible," Will demands. "Things have to be true!" It is Philip Pullman's gift to turn what quotidian minds would term the impossible into a reality that is both heartbreaking and beautiful. --Kerry Fried
Book Description
Read by the author and a full cast
8 hours 55 minutes, 8 CDs
The universe has broken wide, and Lyra's friend lies dead. Desperate for answers and set on revenge, Lyra bursts into a new world in pursuit of his killer. Instead, she finds Will, just twelve years old and already a murderer himself. He's on a quest as fierce as Lyra's, and together they strike out into this sunlit otherworld.
On this journey marked by danger, Will and Lyra forge ahead. But with every step and each new horror, they move closer to the greatest threat of all—and the shattering truth of their own destiny.
In this stunning sequel to The Golden Compas, Philip Pullman continues His Dark Materials trilogy and confirms it as an undoubted and enduring classic.
AWARDS AND HONORS
ALA Best Books for Young Adults
Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
Horn Book Fanfare Honor Book
Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
Blue Ribbon Book
Book Links Best Book of the Year
Parents' Choice Gold Book Award
American Bookseller "Pick of the Lists"
Download Description
The second book of Philip Pullman's epic fantasy trilogy brings Lyra and her daemon and a cast of characters both familiar and new into whole new worlds. Lyra and 12-year-old Will Parry, in a desperate flight for his life, are drawn closer to Will's father and closer to the Subtle Knife, a deadly, magical, ancient tool that cuts windows between worlds. Through it all, the pair are drawn deeper and deeper into a fierce battle that they may not survive.
Customer Reviews:
Magnificent!.......2007-10-09
This book is an amazing follow up for the first book. With brave heroes, truly evil villains, and magic objects, it wonderfully fills the second book of this great trilogy. The plot-twists and the fantastic imaginative settings make Pullman's work a rollercoaster for the imagination.
A complaint I have is that our heroine, Lyra, has lost some of her initial personality and lust for adventure she built up in the first book. When we first run into her, she appears to have unexplainably lost interest in the quest she was so bound to in the first book. Also, her new sidekick, Will, sometimes feels a bit unoriginal and recycled. I mean, how many fiction novels are out there where a young boy finds he has a destiny thrust upon him far greater the he imagined? But the whole of it is great and almost completely drowns out the flaws.
Parents be warned, this book has a few mature and potentially offensive concepts. Read-a-loud sessions should maybe include a follow-up talk for young children.
Sam (age 12)
Something of a let down.......2007-09-22
After speeding through the Golden Compass, one of the best fantasy books I had read in years at the very least, I could barely wait to start on the sequel. Unfortunately, it did very little to live up to my expectations.
Nearly all of the charms of the first book--a unique and well realized alternate reality, an interesting and masterful reshaping of "real world" institutions into this alternate reality, intriguing technologies--were lost in the sequel. However, the biggest disappointment had to be what I consider the near character assassination of Lyra. Lyra, I thought, was one of the primary strengths of the first book. In the Golden Compass, we had that rarest of all things, a female protagonist in a fantasy novel who isn't some kind of patient saint or super warrior. She was selfish, brave, ungrateful, loyal, resourceful and something of a brat. In short, she felt very much like a real girl who found herself swept up in horrible events far beyond what any 12-year-old child should have to face and, while she had her failures, faced those challenges with resourcefulness and sometimes terrible courage. At the end, we had Lyra, betrayed by her own parents, her dearest friend dead, about to leave behind the sole protector she'd found--but who was facing this unknown new world and a war against her giant of a father because she felt it was right. It was a powerful image.
So I excitedly opened The Subtle Knife only to find Lyra's quest nigh well abandoned. Will is a decent if underdeveloped character, but he's tremendously common. In how many fantasy novels is the chief protagonist a boy with a mysterious father who ends up having a destiny well beyond his expectations? Will as sidekick I could have born. Will as primary hero with Lyra abandoning all self-agency in order to play hand-maiden to the male protagonist I found trite and somewhat insulting. And the one time where Lyra dares to remember her own quest after the Dust she is immediately chastised for not making everything about her new man. And then Will's destiny wasn't even that interesting. Boy with magical bond with weapon discovers he's the center of the universe--it's been done dozens of times before. Lyra's interactions with her daemon and the entire plot of what Dust is was new. And why did Lyra have to become so dumb and horridly insipid? Where was the Lyra who led her group of Oxford children in successful wars against other children back at Oxford? Where was the Lyra who earned the title Silvertongue? Where was her rage at her father and her grief for her friend?
For a series which prides itself at rejecting the dangerous suffocation of ideas by the establishment, it surely does prop up more than a few patriarchal ideas.
There were a few grace notes. I liked Mary tremendously and Lee Scoresby's plot had some of the best and most heartbreaking writing of the series. Just after The Golden Compass I felt Pullman had lost the plot a bit and picked up too many cliched threads that ended up diluting what had been a creative series.
POORLY WRITTEN AND ABSOLUTELY NOT FOR CHILDREN.......2007-09-05
Having enjoyed The Golden Compass to the point of calling it the single greatest adventure story I've ever read, I was severely disappointed by The Subtle Knife. While I am from the generation that was supposedly desensitized to violence, I found the depictions of violence and sexual innuendo to be in poor taste and unnecessary to the plot, which was almost nonexistent. This book is completely inappropriate for children (and some squeamish adults) and parents should be aware of the content before handing it to anyone under 17. The richness and wonder of the first novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy was not present here, and even favorite characters became annoying and one-dimensional. The entire book was just poorly written. I found myself reading the plot summary on Wikipedia just so I could avoid wasting any more time reading The Subtle Knife and move on to The Amber Spyglass. At this point, I do not trust Mr. Pullman with his own characters and am hopeful that Book 3 redeems him.
Fabulous Science fiction read.......2007-08-30
I just ate up this book yesterday. I found that I couldn't put this book done. I actually think that I enjoyed this book more than Northern Lights (the "real" name of the first book). I look forward to getting my hands on a copy of the Amber Spyglass.
This book takes off quickly from the first book and we find that Lyra is still on her quest, but where will it take her? She meets her match in Will Parry. There are lots of twists and turns in this book and just when you think she's safe...something happens. I don't want to spoil anything here.
This is another engaging read into the fantastic with the critical analysis of the importance of thinking and questioning authority.
WHAM! Here come the heavy hitters.......2007-08-08
And it is just so great to read a book and know, deep down, that it will be read again, and read to one's children and cherished. The first book opened the door and the second invited all the guests, so the third book is the party. But wow, what a richer, more nuanced world we have after the ~300 pages of The Subtle Knife. We find evil in children, Dust as dark matter and all of the lovely complexity that makes reading such a wonder and joy. And now we really know what Lord Asriel is up to, although Mrs. Coulter is still revealing surprises of her own. I should probably stop writing and start reading. One of the best fantasy series' ever, in the second rank under Tolkien and George R.R. Martin's Fire and Ice series.
Book Description
The last three titles in the New York Times best-selling series!
This striking new boxed set contains the last three titles from R.A. Salvatore’s War of the Spider Queen six-book series: Extinction, Annihilation, and Resurrection. All three titles hit the New York Times best-seller list upon hardcover release. Each author is a veteran writer who is well-known to Forgotten Realms fans, and multiple-time best-selling author R.A. Salvatore consulted on the entire series of titles.
Customer Reviews:
Don't bother.......2007-10-14
The first three books in the series are fairly well written - especially the first book, Dissolution (Forgotten Realms: R.A. Salvatore's War of the Spider Queen, Book 1).
The last three, however are a giant letdown. Smedman's book lacks imagination and skill. Instead of helping a character through a clever turn in the story; she relies on merely allowing a character suddenly remember some fantastic item s/he had previously worn for the first three books but never used.
The fifth and sixth books are better, however the story does not improve. It culminates with a rather weak climax. I'm sorry I wasted my time with this series. The first book started off so well, but that got my hopes up - only to have them dashed.
great books finnaly in one volume!.......2007-03-09
these books comprising of some of the best dnd authors are finnaly together for teh conclussion to the much awaited war of the spider queen novels
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Cat's Revenge II: More Uses for Dead People
Philip Lief
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0671448056 |
Book Description
'A Bloodline of Kings' is a historical novel set in Macedonia between 383 and 356 b.c. The protagonist is Philippos (Philip of Macedon) who achieves security for Macedonia, which his father, King Amuntas, and his brothers failed to do. The family saga is complicated by the mother who was the lover and later the wife of a rival for the kingdom. Philippos is the father of Alexander the Great. He surpassed his son in his ability to rule the land he conquered, and set the stage for his son's conquests.
Customer Reviews:
Stunning !.......2005-09-02
An absolutely stunning book, extremely well written and researched about a man who's fame would be obscured by his more famous son.
The detail is impressive but never bogs the story down:the characters are well developed and the whole story is like an amazingly well woven and rich tapestry.
If you like historical fiction and/or ancient history, you'll love this book.
I really hope Mr. Sundell will someday continue the story with another book !
magnificent.......2003-04-07
So rare to see in historical fiction a work that gets the things right: the historical facts, the social atmosphere, and the characters. But this book achieved in all three...
My original decision to buy the hardcover copy of a previously unknown author was mainly because I am fascinated by Philip and Alexander of Macedon, while there are so many books about the son; the father has been relatively ignored by fiction writers.
This book turned out to be one of the best historical novels I have read (if not THE best). Because of the author's expertise in ancient warfare, I am not surprised to find the vivid account of battles and the military genius of Philip of Macedon. Beyond the military stuff, the book gives excellent description of the geological, religious, economical, and social realities of that era. This book brings me back in time more than 2,000 years ago, among the Macedonians and Greeks, I can feel and understand their environment, their beliefs, their everyday life, and their struggles; each men and women are creatures of their own time but have meanings for eternity. Among them the most vivid character of all is Philip of Macedon. This is the way a historical fiction should be: as accurate as historical textbook while at the same time vivid and fascinating as telling a great story. You feel you are there, as the history unfolds itself...
...The only problem? The book stopped at Alexander's birth. There are twenty more years of great battle and conquering that follows before Philip's death; I really hope this book has a sequel.
Absorbs the reader into the clash of culture past.......2002-04-12
Thomas Sundell's A Bloodline Of Kings is a superbly crafted historical fiction novel set in the fourth century B.C., and is the story of Philip of Macedon, who in many ways forever altered the world of the Greeks and set the stage for his legendary son Alexander. A riveting book of rivalry and kingship vs. Athenian democracy, A Bloodline Of Kings is filled with conflict from between two men to between disparate ways of life. A fascinating and involving novel that absorbs the reader into the clash of culture past, A Bloodline Of Kings is highly recommended reading from beginning to end!
History Comes Alive!.......2002-02-21
While Alexander the Great is widely known as a general and conqueror, his father, Philip, has remained a footnote. This novel takes that footnote and brings him to life. Philip is presented to us as an intelligent, thoughtful boy who grows to young manhood. But, more importantly, the entire spectrum of life in ancient Greece, the world of Macedonia and the tribulations and ambitions of those who ruled or wished to rule, are brought vividly to life.
These are more than history book characters. That's why I liked the book so much. They spoke and acted like real people. They loved and hated with an intensity that stayed with me.
Historical novels such as this one take history and present it with all the relevance of today, the panaromic view of a movie, and the incisiveness of cafe table gossip.
I highly recommend Bloodlines to anyone who likes history and wants to know more about what came before Alexander's greatness.
Book Description
The focus of Fernand Braudel's great work is the Mediterranean world in the second half of the sixteenth century, but Braudel ranges back in history to the world of Odysseus and forward to our time, moving out from the Mediterranean area to the New World and other destinations of Mediterranean traders. Braudel's scope embraces the natural world and material life, economics, demography, politics, and diplomacy.
Customer Reviews:
Still the Undisputed Masterpiece.......2007-07-16
You need to have been an apprentice historian in the mid-sixties to appreciate the impact this book had on Europeanists. I was thirty-one years old in 1967. I had taught history in high school for eight years and picked up a master's in history at NYU, and I was starting my Ph. D. program in history at Yale, concentrating on early modern European history, and within that specialty, on medieval and early modern political theory. (Later, when I taught college, my specialty course was on Machiavelli, More, Erasmus and Guicciardini.)
Braudel had just published the second edition of his masterpiece. The book had been significantly rewritten and was about a third longer than the original edition. But it was available only in French, which I read well but exceedingly slowly. The first edition --but not the second-- had been translated into Spanish, my preferred second language, so I swotted the Spanish first edition for orals. Reading it in a foreign language, it was too much in a limited amount of time to absorb and integrate with what I already knew about the times. I more or less flubbed the Braudel question in my orals. (In contrast, I did a killer job responding to a question about Ernst Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Liturgy.)
Later, teaching a winter term course in college, I assigned the by-then-published English translation of Braudel's second edition to my students, giving myself --at long last-- an opportunity to read it in my native tongue. I was floored! The masterful use of maps and graphs to show hitherto unnoticed trends in history, the wealth of illustrative detail, the scope of his view! Of all the masterworks of the first two generations of Annales historians --Bloch and Febvre, Braudel's other works, Le Roy Ladurie, Aries, Duby, etc.-- Mediterranean is still the undisputed masterpiece on early modern European economic and social history.
Well Balanced........2006-02-24
This book is a very detailed starting point for Renaisance fans. At its heart this is a socio-economic history. The clever inclusion of climate and geographic conditions presuasively explained why prosperous Capitalism grew in some regions while others remained stagnant. Chapter 5-"The Human Unit" was the most informative. Most facets of history are here for the reader to absorb. This is the type of book we all wished we had in school.
An education..............2004-04-07
I have been keenly interested in world history for nearly 20 years. I read, on average, 30 non-fiction historical accounts per annum. With rare exception, I have always felt up to the task of both completion and comprehension. Braudel is an entirely different animal. What Braudel has presented in the form of 16th-century Mediterranean history is formidable, innovative, and exhausting.
Braudel's narrative weaves itself through overlays of historical strata that demand as much from the reader as any contemporary written history available. His is not a mere linear schedule of cause and effect, but a finely crafted history of regional parallels which render the methodology as thought provoking as the content.
Fully one-fourth of the book is devoted to economics in such painstaking detail that, while the specialist may revel, the layman may grow foggy, uninterested, and, unfortunately, bored. But, this does not detract from the overall value of Braudel's effort. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World is a singular achievement in written history which offers the reader a vantage point that I have yet to find elsewhere. 5 stars.
A Fitting Finish to an Astounding Work.......2003-08-16
I have written a review of the first volume of Braudel's history of the Mediterranean, and here will only say that it is necessary to read this second volume in order to appreciate what Braudel began in the first volume. The second volume is the more typical "history of events", but as Braudel concludes -- and correctly so in my opinion -- the history of events is founded on geography, demographics, and social and economic history. Braudel builds this foundation in the first volume, and the two volumes must be read jointly in order to fully appreciate Braudel's astounding accomplishment.
An Amazing and Exhausting Opus.......2003-08-16
Braudel's text on the Mediterranean is considered one of the contemporary classics of historical writing, and I can see why. It sets out to convey a total history of the Mediterranean world in the latter half of the 16th century, but ranges over so much more territory in order to achieve this objective. Just as Jared Diamond builds a foundation on geography, climate, and local flora and fauna in _Guns, Germs , and Steel_, so does Braudel begin his history. However, he does not stop there, and moves on to cover social and economic history, and, in the second volume, deals with the more standard "history of events" typical of most historical literature. Do not skip the second volume, as the tapestry Braudel weaves is not complete without it. The text is very detailed, too detailed at points, but I believe this gives the reader confidence in the authority of the writer. Clearly Braudel has done exhaustive research. You, too, will be exhausted by the time you finish this magnum opus.
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History of the Reign of Philip II (Notable American Authors)
William H. Prescott
Manufacturer: Reprint Services Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
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ASIN: 0781287723 |
Book Description
In August 1942, Hitler directed all German state institutions to assist Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS and the German police, in eradicating armed resistance in the newly occupied territories of Eastern Europe and Russia. The directive for “combating banditry” (Bandenbekämpfung), became the third component of the Nazi regime’s three-part strategy for German national security, with genocide (Endlösung der Judenfrage, or “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question”) and slave labor (Erfassung, or “Registration of Persons to Hard Labor”) being the better-known others.
An original and thought-provoking work grounded in extensive research in German archives, Hitler’s Bandit Hunters focuses on this counterinsurgency campaign, the anvil of Hitler’s crusade for empire. Bandenbekämpfung portrayed insurgents as political and racial bandits, criminalized to a greater degree than enemies of the state; moreover, violence against them was not constrained by the prevailing laws of warfare.
Philip Blood explains how German forces embraced the Bandenbekämpfung doctrine, demonstrating the equal culpability of both the SS police forces and the “heroic” Waffen-SS combat arm and shattering the contrived postwar distinctions between them. He challenges the traditional view of Himmler as an armchair general and bureaucrat, exposing him as the driving force behind one of the most successful security campaigns in history, and delves into the contentious issue of the complicity of ordinary German police, soldiers, and citizens, as well as the citizens of occupied territories, in these state-sponsored manhunts. This book provokes new debates on the Nazi terrorization of Europe, the blind acquiescence of many, and the courageous resistance of the few.
Customer Reviews:
Dry Reading.......2007-08-22
This is a well researched book. If you desire information on the connection between ideologue and practice within the demented regime of Hitler's Third Reich, this work certainly fills the bill. It is rather dry reading. By that I mean, the flow of the information is sometimes overwhelming in detail and difficult to comprehend especially since the book lacks maps to show where the actions are taking place. The author includes a nice reference list of terms used and personalities involved. I found myself constantly checking these reference to ensure understanding. It is a labor to read and it took me well beyond the normal time I spend on a book to complete. It remains, however, the best book available on the brutality of Hitler and his followers. I left with a better appreciation of the planning and control the Germans employed to rid the conquered areas of those they considered hinderances to their dream of a new Germania. The cold blooded manner in which people and their possessions are handled brings a chill to your spine. How can human beings be so insensitive? Read the book to appreciate how man can inflict untold suffering on his fellow man without so much as a sigh of regret.
Analyzing German anti-guerilla campaigns in Poland/Russia.......2006-12-19
One of the longstanding beliefs of World War II has been the separation between the Waffen-SS, an elite combat arm, and the SS Police Forces who are blamed for deliberate killings, concentration camps, etc. In this book the author examines the actions of the two SS groups in fighting the guerilla forces left behind as the Soviet armies retreated into the Soviet Union.
His conclusion is that the two forces were not nearly so separate as the post war stories would have you believe. He points out that 'across all the years of research, no examples were found of SS officers refusing to participate in crimes, or to refuse medals for having so participated.
As an secondary point, this book discusses the techniques used in fighting irregular forces. As the US is now involved in such a campaign in Iraq, there is perhaps a lesson to be learned. On the other hand, it is not clear that the American forces could act in the way of the SS. This leaves the question open as to what to do in Iraq.
Books:
- You Are My I Love You
- A Thousand Splendid Suns
- A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge
- A Treasury of Royal Scandals: The Shocking True Stories History's Wickedest, Weirdest, Most Wanton Kings, Queens, Tsars, Popes, and Emperors
- A Year In the Life of an ESL (English Second Language) Student: Idioms and Vocabulary You Can't Live Without
- Against All Odds: My Story
- Anesthesiologist's Manual of Surgical Procedures
- Braveheart
- Charles Faudree's French Country Signatu
- Coming Home to Myself
Books Index
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- Norman Foster Works 4
Primary Source Reader for World History, Volume II: Since 1500
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