Customer Reviews:
An Impressive Tour.......2005-06-14
This is a fascinating and most curious work, a kind of time-capsule for the study of the period. It is a journal-like report of Hale's travels in 1989 taking him from Vienna to Hungary, south through Yugoslavia, into Greece and then Turkey, and then back to Greece. I read it with great interest as I lived in this part of the world for about 5 years. It was a pleasure to see it again from the eyes of another. But at the same time, we realize that a lot of what he saw and recorded is now no longer; with the collapse of the Soviet system and the renewed independence of the Balkans and Turkey it has all changed. In the 1980's, for example, it was often not easy to cash a traveler's check; now credit cards abound both here and in Greece. So the book has an added attraction as a reminder of where they all were in 1989 and how far they have come.
And in addition, Hale has done his homework and checked the sources so provides a helpful bibliography. He has, I thought curiously, an unusually long section on Rupert Brooke, the Engish poet who died en route to Gallipoli. I later learned that this preceded further scholarly work Hale did in preparing for the publishing of a long-neglected correspondance between Brooke and
J. Strachey. The only caveat I might mention, and it is not a major one, is Hale's seeming hostility to Christianity (at least the Greek Orthodox expression); at one point he calls a religious ceremony "silly" but does not tell us why he felt that. And his editor should blush allowing the rash statement that Hippocrates the famous ancient physician, lived 25,000 years ago (p. 237)! Surely not! But these small points aside, it is a delightful piece of work and a glimpse at a past era so near us.
unique.......2000-11-28
I've never seen a travel book quite like this one. I enjoyed the adventures and the writer's voice.
Customer Reviews:
The best introduction to the forgotten Balkan campaign of 1941.......2006-07-17
The German campaing in the Balkans in the spring of 1941 is a little mentioned episode in the history of World War II but it is really very interesting not only for its strategic consequences but also of its operational aspect. This excellent Time-Life book gives first the political and diplomatic background to the campaign, explaining how Hitler forged his alliance with countries like Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, and how the coup in Belgrade changed the whole nature and scope of the operation. The analysis of the war against Yugoslavia and Greece is very well presented with many nice photographs and maps and the final chpater deals with the airborne assault on Crete, a real historical first. This is a very well made volume and a valuable addition to the library of every WW II buff.
Product Description
Prince Nicholas of Greece was a talented, well-respectd old-school royal. The son of a king, he was raised in austere circumstances, his parents believing this to be the best environment in which to educate one's children.
Among his royals relations and friends, Prince Nicholas enjoyed an excellent reputation. He was a first cousin of an astonishing group of monarchs, among them: Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, King George V of Great Britain, King Christian X of Denmark and King Haakon VII of Norway. Everywhere he visited, Prince Nicholas was received with open arms.
He had a unique insight into the Russian imperial court and the lost world of the Romanovs, being the son of a Grand Duchess, and as well as the husband of another. In fact, in his memoirs he gives detailed accounts of the deaths of Tsars Alexander II and Alexander III, as well as of the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II.
Prince Nicholas' memoirs are a must-read for anyone interested in European royalty!
Customer Reviews:
Royalty - insider.......2007-03-26
This is a very well written book, updated with new information. Details the trails of the greek royal family since the start of the 20th century
Average customer rating:
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Notes from the Balkans: Locating Marginality and Ambiguity on the Greek-Albanian Border (Princeton Modern Greek Studies)
Sarah F. Green
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0691121990 |
Book Description
Maps and borders notwithstanding, some places are best described as "gaps"--places with repeatedly contested boundaries that are wedged in between other places that have clear boundaries. This book explores an iconic example of this in the contemporary Western imagination: the Balkans. Drawing on richly detailed ethnographic research around the Greek-Albanian border, Sarah Green focuses her groundbreaking analysis on the ambiguities of never quite resolving where or what places are. One consequence for some Greek peoples in this border area is a seeming lack of distinction--but in a distinctly "Balkan" way. In gaps (which are never empty), marginality is, in contrast with conventional understandings, not a matter of difference and separation--it is a lack thereof.
Notes from the Balkans represents the first ethnographic approach to exploring "the Balkans" as an ideological concept. Green argues that, rather than representing a tension between "West" and "East," the Balkans makes such oppositions ambiguous. This kind of marginality means that such places and peoples can hardly engage with "multiculturalism." Moreover, the region's ambiguity threatens clear, modernist distinctions. The violence so closely associated with the region can therefore be seen as part of continual attempts to resolve the ambiguities by imposing fixed separations. And every time this fails, the region is once again defined as a place that will continually proliferate such dangerous ambiguity, and could spread it somewhere else.
Book Description
In 1990, teacher Les Horn had a brainstorm: why not navigate Europe's inland waterways, from England to Greece, in a small sailboat? Much to his surprise, he sold his wife and preteen son and daughter on the idea, and the following summer, installed in their 24-foot fixer-upper, Alea, the Horns set sail on the family odyssey chronicled in this amusing, satisfying tale.
Traveling at a snail's pace, foraging for provisions, and propelled more by British pluck than by their temperamental outboard motor, the Horns eventually made it to the Aegean, but not without their share of uproarious misadventures in France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Turkey.
Combining a wry sense of humor with a journalist's eye for the telling detail, Les Horn weaves a shrewdly funny family farce within a delightfully engaging travelogue packed with vivid observations of Europe's variegated landscape, history, and people. A rousing good read for both actual and armchair sailors, travelers, and adventurers.
Customer Reviews:
Snail's pace sailboat trip from England to Greece.......2003-08-29
Sweet little travel adventure tale. Les Horn navigates Europe's inland waterways from England to Greece on a 24-foot sailboat. He manages to show us this family farce (his wife and 2 preteen kids come along for the ride) at the same time he shares his vivid observations of central and Eastern Europe's varied landscape, history, and people.
Good armchair traveler material.
Delightful Family Adventure.......2002-04-19
An avid armchair traveller, I am always on the lookout for books of travel adventure. This book was a delightful addition to my library. The book chronicles the Horn families' voyage by boat from the North Sea through the canals of Europe to the Black Sea and the Agean.
The author is adept at chronicalling the interesting details and amusing incidents that allow the reader to feel if s/he is along for the voyage. Rather than just writing a travelogue, Horn records the trials and tribulations of daily family life in a small boat, their tears and their triumphs. Their adventures are sometimes amusing, sometimes hair-raising, but always interesting. This is a book that I will read again.
Delightful Family Adventure.......2002-04-19
An avid armchair traveller, I am always on the lookout for books of travel adventure. This book was a delightful addition to my library. The book chronicles the Horn families' voyage by boat from the North Sea through the canals of Europe to the Black Sea and the Agean.
The author is adept at chronicalling the interesting details and amusing incidents that allow the reader to feel if s/he is along for the voyage. Rather than just writing a travelogue, Horn records the trials and tribulations of daily family life in a small boat, their tears and their triumphs. Their adventures are sometimes amusing, sometimes hair-raising, but always interesting. This is a book that I will read again.
Egads, this is not a nautical adventure at all!.......2001-08-29
Having recently been bitten by the sailing bug, I looked forward to reading this novel as I thought it would offer insights into how to travel self-contained and afloat, but I was sorely disappointed. All this book did was convince me that the author was a selfish man who dragged his wife and children through eastern Europe, complaining about the treatment he received from his host countries the whole time. The cheeky manner in which it is written is like a very bad attempt at British humor (which is usually very funny when it is spot-on). I only read it to the end to see if his wife would end up divorcing him. She did not. There, I spoiled it for you. You have no need to read it now.
Average customer rating:
- Excellent Book
- Greek society: a rebel without a cause?
- Excellent book of selfhate
- Great Reading
- This is the real face of "modern" Greece
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Unholy Alliance: Greece and Serbia in the Nineties (Eastern European Studies (College Station, Tex.), No. 15.)
Takis Michas
Manufacturer: Texas A&M University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 158544183X |
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Book.......2007-08-30
This book is the evidence of Greek government complicity in war crimes committed against Bosnian civillians.
Great reading and historic value.
Greek society: a rebel without a cause?.......2003-11-22
"Unholy Alliance" is a fascinating journey through the popular Greek worldview. It accurately portrays the Greek public as a tormented teenager, ready to rebel against the "adults" (the big countries that control the world) at every opportunity, and preferably without a cause. Michas expounds on the populist anti-American, anti-Western, anti-Muslim, pro-Orthodox rhetoric that thrives on the "Greek street" (or rather, in the Greek coffeeshop), its monopoly on mass media coverage, and its pervasive influence on Greek foreign policy.
The book urges the reader to steer clear of simplistic explanations. Religious ties and anti-Muslim feelings certainly played a decisive role in the overwhelming popular support of the Milosevic regime in Greece. However, such ties can only be part of the explanation: the Greeks never harbored similar warm feelings for their Orthodox brethern in Macedonia, or even in Bulgaria. Anti-Muslim feelings never prevented Greeks from aiding and abetting the terrorist Kurdish organization PKK whose leader, Abdullah Öcalan, has earned the status of a hero among the Greek public. Similarly, support for the plight of the (predominantly Muslim) Palestinians runs high among the Greeks. Recent Eurobarometer polls show that among all Europeans, Greeks are by far the least critical towards the (deposed) regime of Saddam Hussein, as well as the remaining regimes in Muslim countries such as Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, or Iran.
Michas points out that what is most puzzling in the case of Serbia is not the Greeks' support of their "Orthodox brothers" per se, -- but the fact that the Greeks actively supported the oppressive regime of Slobodan Milosevic while turning a blind eye to the desperate calls for help by the Serbian opposition. Remarkably, this attitude comes from a people which had itself suffered for years under a military dictatorship, and which still has a grudge against the United States for supporting it! "Hypocrisy" is a Greek word, after all ...
My conclusion after reading this book, is that in their majority, Greeks subscribe to an extremist form of ethno-religious nationalism that is often inconsistent, and almost always borders on paranoia. For example, Macedonia, a dirt-poor, helpless country torn by ethnic strife, with a population of only 2 million, has successfully been demonized as a threat to the territorial integrity of Greece, a much richer country, with a much larger population, a member of the EU and NATO, and armed to the teeth. As another example, the Greek public reacted with extreme suspicion, if not outright hostility, to Pope Jean-Paul II's recent visit to Greece, partly because of visceral fears that the Vatican is still trying to "Latinize" the Greeks, and that the Pope's visit would be a first step in that direction. What's more , despite Greece's being one of the most homogeneous countries in the world (98% of the population are Orthodox Greeks), the public views the tiny Muslim, Catholic, Jewish or Slavic minorities as a serious threat to national security. Partly for this reason, until recently, religious affiliation appeared on national IDs, and recent efforts to abolish this invasive practice in the name of privacy rights were met with staunch opposition from the Orthodox church, which convinced at least half the population that doing so would be detrimental to Orthodoxy and that it was part of a sinister plan to de-christianize of the country. Huge rallies and signature-gathering campaigns ensued..
Maybe it is indeed the case that the Greeks, despite their long and glorious history, still behave like an unruly teenager, a rebel without a cause.
Excellent book of selfhate.......2003-11-02
One sided preconceived notions and innuendos His material conditions of existence determined what is going on in the realm of consciousness and has decided to become a pseudointellectual pop shlockmeister looking for a quick buck.
Pernicious understanding of international law and relations which coincide with those of the American government. The strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must.
Too simplistic and sadly inaccurate if he has the answers to a world more complex that was known to man please offer them up for debate. Standing on a soapbox and woxing fondly over events gone by is neither helpful nor wanted meaning that history is always written by the winners. When two-culture clash, the loser is obliterated and the winner writes the history books- books which glorify rheir own cause and disparage the conquered foe.
The Greeks paid a high price in blood and destructions the last 60 years fighting side by side with the American people for freedom and democracy to let any obscure individual, driven by self hate, to distort the facts and present them in a way to satisfy those who atavistically hate everything Greek
When he speaks about human rights needs to remember that they are a universal good for everybody on the earth to enjoy and not to be considered as a tool to exercise foreign policy
The several human rights outfits and the sorry groups of human right activists which sprang from nowhere after the end of Cold War remind the Congress for Cultural Freedom and the CIA connection, and the International Rescue Committee, which had been absorbed into the American foreign policy establishment and thus evolved to a global operation functioning as the link in the CIA's covert network.
The Serbs victims of the Anglo-Saxon weapons of mass murder (WMM) were blocked out from the space of global representation that defined the moral perceptions of the largest segment of world opinion
Great Reading.......2003-08-04
A great intellectual reading, even thoug it might not appeal to the taste of nationalists in the balkans. As a Greek-American living in Greece during the Kosovo war, I was appalled at the huge pro-bias of the greek media toward Milosevic's regime and its crimes. This books goes along away to answer a lot of questions.
This is the real face of "modern" Greece.......2003-07-29
I witnessed even worse things during my 20 years in that country. Greece started moving into the area of political schizophrenia, business anarchy, and educational apathy when the former ideological supporters of Stalin and the USSR took over the media. How many people know that in the Greek media, the FED (Federal Reserve) of the U.S. was mentioned as "a group of Jewish banks"? How many people know that in the junior class of high-school back in 1985, students were taught in Greece that "Albania is an industrial country with mechanized agriculture"?. How many people know that Greeks propagate the strongest anti-American slogans in Europe? How many people know that Greeks were saying "they deserved it" for the Americans after Sep 11? How many people know that Greeks "boooed" the victims of Sep 11 in public stadiums the weekend after the attack? How many people know that Greeks, even in these days, write in their forums on the internet that "we wish that all Americans die like in Sep 11"? How many people know that the Greek singer Dalaras comes to the US giving concerts and at the end, each time, he mocks the US government and back in Greee he states that "Americans have murder in their DNAs", and then the Greek media supports his statements with journalists writing in major newspapers articles like "I hate America"? How many people know that Greek journalists stated during the war in Iraq that "Sadam Husein's mistake was that he didn't have any weapons of mass destruction to throw to the Americans"?
Things like that... and even worse...Takis Mihas is a very brave soul, and a cream of the crop journalist. His place should be near the top executives of World class media. In Greece, talented researchers and journalists' like Takis Mihas barely have the means to live comfortably, going AGAINST the general trend, speaking tghe truth, instead of chosing easy topics to make money... Takis Mihas describes a country which is exactly like the one I lived in for 22 years... and it's still going down. His writing follows the general writing trend in "modern" Greece, which is tense, highly argumentative, but he escapes controversies by remaining truthful and by insisting on the facts.
I would also highly recommend "The Black Book of Communism", a book that has been badly critisized only in Greece, a country which remains the last castle of fascist media and journalists who adore Stalin -- of course, a tourist would never even realize that, in the same way in which the ample sunshine covers mizery in Cuba. The beautiful landscape in Greece serves wonderfully as an excellent cover-up for the socio-political misery... the land of the "family values" (so the Americans believe) is the country that holds the No.1 position in illegal prostitution in the European Union... today's Parthenon is filled up with prostitutes from the former socialist countries, with drugs, thieves, political, economical and social anarchy.
History will soon be forgotten... however, books like these should be kept, so that our children know what happened, who caused it, and who supported it.
Thank God I'm not there anymore... there hasn't been a day ever since I left that I'm not grateful for all the freedoms, opportunities and mainly common sense (yes, compared to Greece even Afghanistan have more common sense and basic respect) that I enjoy in the U.S. ever since I came here.
PS. The head of the Greek church Christodoulos, supported indirectly the terrorists of Sep 11, by endorsing their geopolitical views... more on the internet.
Average customer rating:
- An excellent guide to air war over the Balkans during 1940-1
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Air War for Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete 1940-41
Christopher Shores ,
Brian Cull , and
Nicola Malizia
Manufacturer: Grub Street
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0948817070 |
Book Description
The air battle for Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete began in June 1940 with the Italian declaration of war. In the past, there has been much controversy amongst air historians on many of the details of the operations. It was here, for example, that "Pat" Pattie believed by many to be the Royal Air Force's "unknown" top-scoring fighter pilot of the whole war, saw most of his action.
Just how many kills did he achieve and how?
Taken from extensive research into available British, Italian and German records, and interviews and correspondence with survivors or relatives of those present, this book seeks to provide an accurate portrait of the air war for Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete from 1940-41.
Customer Reviews:
An excellent guide to air war over the Balkans during 1940-1.......1999-09-04
Air War for Yugoslavia,Greece and Crete is a very accurate record of the the air operations over the Balkans from the initial attack of Italy against Greece until the fall of Crete to the German Fallschirmjaeger.It covers all the actions of the RAF and the Hellenic Air Force against the Regia Aeronautica and the later operations of the Luftwaffe and the Yugoslavian Air Force.After research of the records of all the combattants the writers were able to present a complete picture of their subject.Even though I managed to find some errors(for example,the second line figthers of the Hellenic Air Force were actually 2 Gladiators,2 Avia B-534s and some left over Avia BH33s and not the number of B-534s claimed by the writers)I think that this book is very accurate and an excellent choise to whomever wants to study this front of WWII(altough fairly expensive)
Average customer rating:
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The Alps, the Danube and the Near East;: Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Italy, Greece, Turkey, (Carpenter's world travels)
Frank G Carpenter
Manufacturer: Doubleday, Page & Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: B00085VMO0 |
Average customer rating:
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The Alps, The Danube, and the Near East: Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungry, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Italy, Greece, Turkey [Carpenter's World Travels]
Frank G. Carpenter
Manufacturer: Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. 1925
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: B000NZN9X2 |
Customer Reviews:
Very happy.......2007-02-21
My Aunt has every state and country cookbook this was the only one missing made her chritmas. hard to find
Books:
- Introduction to the Foundations of American Education (13th Edition)
- Macroeconomics: Principles and Policy (with InfoTrac®)
- Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change
- Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (Wiley Investment Classics)
- Miracle's Boys
- Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics
- Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (California Series in Public Anthropology, 4)
- Quicken Willmaker Plus 2007 Edition: Estate Planning Essentials (Book with CD-ROM)
- Regional Landscapes of the United States and Canada
- Review Questions and Answers for Veterinary Technicians (3rd Edition, Book & CD-ROM)
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