Book Description
This definitive work about the Templars and their presumed hidden knowledge addresses many fascinating questions, with rare photos from the Rosslyn Chapel Museum (Scotland) included.
Customer Reviews:
the templars and the grail.......2006-08-03
the book is too especulative not mush scientific information can be obtained.
Interesting Read.......2006-07-02
An Interesting read and a good compliment to
Holy Blood Holy Grail. It could be a bit more
in-depth and a bit less academic.
neat websites.
The dramatic story of the Knights Templar.......2005-06-05
The Knights Templar was a monastic order of Christian warriors that grew out of the medieval campaigns to free Jerusalem and Palestine from the domination of the Muslims in several waves of invasion known collectively as the Crusades. These warrior monks were believed to conduct mystical rites, guard the famed Holy Grail, and possess the lost treasures of Jerusalem. The order's wealth and political activities evolved to provide banking services to kings, act as trusted diplomats, engage in far flung business enterprise, and even work as navigators. The order was ultimately doomed to succumb to political intrigue and the malevolent greed of kings. In The Templars And The Grail: Knights Of The Quest, Oxford-based medieval historian Karen Ralls presents the dramatic story of the Knights Templar, presenting the many beliefs and theories about their presumed powers and arcane knowledge. Drawing upon both popular and academic sources, this impressive, exceptionally well written, and thoroughly accessible history is especially recommended to students of Metaphysical Studies and Medieval History.
A must-have book on the Templars.......2004-08-10
Every now and then a book comes along and you think 'thank God someone has done this!' This book really works on several levels -- firstly, the author is solid and credible, being a professional medieval historian, but also someone who has had previous curator experience at the museum exhibition at Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland --a place now known to many more of us, as it is featured in the last chapter of the Da Vinci Code novel. However, this book is a solidly-researched, nonfiction work and a fascinating read on the history of the medieval Order, the Grail, and Rosslyn Chapel, etc. For those who may already have read a bit about the Templars, it still has a lot of intriguing new stuff, yet it's backed up with solid, factual documentation and good references and footnotes-- again, something you often don't see nearly enough in popular books on the Templars. This is not the usual 'one theory book' on the Templars, which I found refreshing to say the least. But it's easy to read and follow overall, and this author doesn't attempt to 'take sides'. A variety of research and views are presented, and then, we, the readers, can take it from there. What seems to be unique here is that this author takes great care to distinguish between fact and speculation -- something in my opinion that is a problem with many of the existing books on the Knights Templars. But although I'd already read some on the Templars and still learned a lot more, a friend of mine who had read nothing at all about them also found this book really intriguing, which says something, too. The photos of the carvings of Rosslyn Chapel were great, and I especially liked the various intriguing bits here and there in each chapter -- like material on the Black Madonna, geometry, St Bernard's role, the medieval origins of traveller's checks, the Jolly Roger pirate flag and medieval Templar naval warfare, various excavations under the Temple Mount, Templar symbolism, and so on. A good resource to have around, and it's not surprising this book is on its fifth printing in a year...it's also easy to 'dip into' when you like. Definitely worth getting.
Fascinating and evocative yet balanced.......2004-02-11
Written by an academic medieval historian, this is one of the best history books on the Knights Templar to come out for some time -- it is balanced (many academic but also some popular sources used, but carefully) and thoughtful, yet still manages to be readable and very intriguing. An ideal combo. The sources are reliable, so this author simply does not need to resort to mere sensationalism, which is so often the case with books on the Templars. The material on Scotland is great, especially the chapter on the enigmatic carvings of Rosslyn Chapel, a place that was also featured in the novel The Da Vinci Code. I would have liked a bit more on medieval Templar naval strategies and warfare and the Jolly Roger, but overall, if you are looking for a solid, reliable book that still has compelling research, admitting that there are still some important unanswered questions about the 'White knights' of the Crusades -- it's a valuable reference book to have around, plus a great read!
Book Description
The underground has been a dominant image of modern life since the late eighteenth century. A site of crisis, fascination, and hidden truth, the underground is a space at once more immediate and more threatening than the ordinary world above. In Subterranean Cities, David L. Pike explores the representation of underground space in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period during which technology and heavy industry transformed urban life.
The metropolis had long been considered a moral underworld of iniquity and dissolution. As the complex drainage systems, underground railways, utility tunnels, and storage vaults of the modern cityscape superseded the countryside of caverns and mines as the principal location of actual subterranean spaces, ancient and modern converged in a mythic space that was nevertheless rooted in the everyday life of the contemporary city. Writers and artists from Felix Nadar and Charles Baudelaire to Charles Dickens and Alice Meynell, Gustave Doré and Victor Hugo, George Gissing and Emile Zola, and Jules Verne and H. G. Wells integrated images of the urban underworld into their portrayals of the anatomy of modern society.
Illustrated with photographs, movie stills, prints, engravings, paintings, cartoons, maps, and drawings of actual and imagined urban spaces, Subterranean Cities documents the emergence of a novel space in the subterranean obsessions and anxieties within nineteenth-century urban culture. Chapters on the subways, sewers, and cemeteries of Paris and London provide a detailed analysis of these competing centers of urban modernity. A concluding chapter considers the enduring influence of these spaces on urban culture at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Book Description
"German Home Towns certainly illuminates habits of life in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which were as distinctively German as the peasant world of Grimm's Fairy Tales."--Times Literary Supplement
Originally published in 1971, German Home Towns has been out of print for many years. Cornell University Press is pleased to make this classic book available again for the first time in a paperback edition.
"[German Home Towns] is a book of the first importance. . . . [It] is a compelling illustration of what can be achieved by historians who abandon over-cropped Prussia and Austria in favor of the still unexploited regions of the 'Third Germany.'"--English Historical Review
"[This book] breaks important new ground. . . . Walker's model . . . provides a useful kind of framework for what should hopefully be the next stage of German urban history: a recognition, through comparison, of urban diversity and an appreciation of this diversity within the broader concept of cultural cohesiveness."--Comparative Studies in Society and History
Amazon.com
The usual tourist group's stay in Florence begins with the Duomo, runs through the paintings in the Uffizi, includes a visit to Michaelangelo's "David" and ends with a parade through a handful of churches. But the visitor who first reads Sir Michael Levey's portrait of the city will find rewards off that well-worn track. The city, a self-styled "new Athens" supported a wealth of artists, sculptors, humanists, and scholars, not to mention more than its share of wealthy individuals, who taken together, helped turn Florence into one of the world's great provincial outposts. Layering telling details, little-known facts and carefully explained social and intellectual history, Levey weaves a dense tale of this charming city, from the Middle Ages to the Quattrocento, through the Renaissance and on up to the early years of this century.
Book Description
Nestled in the Apennines, cradle of the Renaissance, home of Dante, Michelangelo, and the Medici, Florence is unlike any other city in its extraordinary mingling of great art and literature, natural splendor, and remarkable history. Intimate and grand, learned and engaging, Michael Levey's Florence renders the city in all of its madness and magnificence.
Customer Reviews:
A Fascinating Journey.......2006-11-03
It is as though we are moving through the streets of Florence with Mr. Levey at our side telling us fascinating stories about the people and places of the city by the Arno. Anyone with an interest in Florence will find this volume a wonderful companion to the larger histories and art books. We are the beneficiaries of the author's lifetime of experience and understanding in the matters of the Renaissance and its center, Florence. Highly recommended.
Well written and challenging.......2006-07-19
The book is wonderfully written, but reading it presents the same challenges as following a university lecture on the subject. Mr. Levey does not dumb down his subject or choose words he thinks most people will understand. You must keep up with him, and it would be helpful to keep handy a dictionary and a book on art history (or at least be near the internet).
This is a fascinating and insightful work, but not one you'll want to read a couple of pages of while your spouse watches Letterman before bed. You'll want to be paying strict attention as you read. If you do so, you'll find yourself well prepared for a visit to this amazing city. Rather than questioning your tour guide, you may well be able to teach her a thing or two on the subject.
Much More Than a Parlor Table Book.......2005-08-03
This book is a wonderful, "behind-the-scenes" history of Art and Life in Florence during its Golden Period. Levey has synthesized historical and personal accounts of the period and it results in a Historical text which is very readable. He gives life to the great artists of the time and some of the 'dirt' too. Levey not only discusses the achievements of the Masters with authority, but also provides interesting background information, including motives, jealousies, intrigue and favoritism. Despite its weight, this is THE travelogue on Florence I will take with me.
Florence at its best.......1999-03-10
This book gives the reader a history of Florence through its art. Naturally, the Florence in the time of the Renaissance is covered at length, but Levey doesn't stop there. He gives lots of insight into the patronage of art in succeeding periods. Levey's portrait of Florence is also a portrait of the Medici family and their artistic legacy to the city.
While this book might be too hefty and too heady for the casual italophile, it should be in the library of every hard-core Italy lover.
Book Description
This study is the first of its kind: a street-level inside account of what Stalinism meant to the masses of ordinary people who lived it. Stephen Kotkin was the first American in 45 years to be allowed into Magnitogorsk, a city built in response to Stalin's decision to transform the predominantly agricultural nation into a "country of metal." With unique access to previously untapped archives and interviews, Kotkin forges a vivid and compelling account of the impact of industrialization on a single urban community.
Kotkin argues that Stalinism offered itself as an opportunity for enlightenment. The utopia it proffered, socialism, would be a new civilization based on the repudiation of capitalism. The extent to which the citizenry participated in this scheme and the relationship of the state's ambitions to the dreams of ordinary people form the substance of this fascinating story. Kotkin tells it deftly, with a remarkable understanding of the social and political system, as well as a keen instinct for the details of everyday life.
Kotkin depicts a whole range of life: from the blast furnace workers who labored in the enormous iron and steel plant, to the families who struggled with the shortage of housing and services. Thematically organized and closely focused, Magnetic Mountain signals the beginning of a new stage in the writing of Soviet social history.
Customer Reviews:
Stalinism as a civilization?.......2007-04-07
Stephen Kotkin's "Magnetic Mountain" is a Foucault-inspired attempt at describing the civilization known as Stalinism from the 'bottom up', and to give expression to the language, experience and ideology of the common people living in that society. At the same time, the book, his PhD work, criticizes a lot of prior historical theory on the USSR in general and the Stalinist period in particular. This forms a significant part of the book, but is relegated entirely to the footnotes, making it particularly worthwhile in this case to pay attention to those.
Kotkin's description of the creation of the enormous steel plant and factory city of Magnitogorsk, his pars pro toto for the period, is extremely extensive, even including a host of technical details and a history of the factory itself. This is interesting enough at first, but the depth to which he analyzes it does not really match the novelty of the subject, so that it easily gets boring after a while.
The second part of the book is much more interesting, and is Kotkin's description of the city Magnitogorsk. He writes about the enormous efforts expended to create a somewhat viable city in barren and inhospitable terrain, and the constant lack of supplies, personnel and training that hampers every effort at improvement. Recreation, the housing situation, medical facilities, cultural development: every aspect of life in the city is chronicled. Because of the Foucaultian approach, his emphasis is in particular on the way that the people regarded themselves and the society around them, and the Stalinist project of 'building socialism' they were a part of. The last two chapters are devoted to describing the political situation, including of course an extensive account of the Great Purges of 1937-1939.
Even aside from the ineffectual first half, the book has some serious flaws though. Kotkin spends a lot of time analyzing the effects and meaning of the shortage-based planned economy of the period, and while his demonstration of how this shortage was fundamental to keeping the regime in power and keeping ideological control is excellent, his understanding of economics is much less so. He is also quite strongly pro-capitalist, and regularly approaches the subject in the condescending tone of one who knew all along that socialism must fail. What makes this even more dubious is that he takes over without criticism Stalin's definition of socialism as state property of everything but personal assets, which is controversial to say the least.
Equally, despite a lot of heavy-handed criticism for Lewin, Fitzpatrick and Getty on the point of their analysis of the Purges and its cause (as well as the general causes of Stalinism), he does not really present an alternative explanation of the Great Purges either. He spends a lot of words showing the way the Purges took place, but there is no real theory of its underlying causes, except tentatively noting that it might be construed as a Party backlash against the technical bureaucracy which increasingly made it obsolete. But this does not account for why the Purges mainly took place within Party ranks.
Kotkin must be commended for putting Stalinism as such a bit more in an international perspective, which has rarely been done, emphasizing the degree to which Stalin could use (or believe himself) the idea of the USSR as a completely surrounded and constantly beleaguered state. Yet at the same time Kotkin seems to draw the conclusion from the general period of economic planning in the major world nations of those days that such interventionism must necessarily lead to a totalitarian mindset. This, at least, is strongly the tendency of his afterword to the Purges chapter.
This socio-economic blindness on his part, whether it is dismissing class analysis, positing capitalism as natural and inescapable, or critiquing interventionism is what seriously flaws his otherwise strong contribution to the historiography of the USSR.
Great history.......2005-09-21
This is an incredible work of scholarship that is also incredibly entertaining. Kotkin paints a detailed portrait of life in the Soviet Union's steel city under Stalin and places it in a challenging and profound theoretical framework. Maybe a bit heavy on Foucault, but stunning nonetheless.
Very important!!.......2003-07-11
That's an important book on Stalinism and Soviet Union. It presents new extremely interesting and well documented information about key aspects of life and politics mainly during the Stalinist period. What makes this book really important though is that this information is used in a structured way to substantiate a well-defined interpretation of Stalinism as civilization. Kotkin is not the first researcher to analyze USSR in these terms (many people see the Soviet regime as a peculiar type of theocracy), but it is one of the first attempts to study the civilizational aspect in such depth.
Another achievement of the author is he manages to transcend the ideological commitments and polarizations that are connected with his broader theme. "The Magnetic Mountain" is a sober, academic study of Stalinism and therefore, it is bound to displease those who are looking for excuses for the Soviet regime or those who looking for stongly worded condemnations and connections with present enemies.
My only criticism is that, unless I missed the references to it, Kotkin does not mention E. Wallerstein's essay "Capitalist civilization". I believe that the approaches of the two authors have many parallels and it would have been interesting to compare them.
Narrow and Illuminating Study.......2002-09-28
Kotkin has done excellent work here in Magnetic Mountain. This is a landmark study on the building of an industrial city in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era. It's extremely bizarre that some have taken the view that it is a pro-Stalin work. I can only conclude that they haven't read Magnetic Mountain but only certain reviews or are so head-in-the-sand dogmatic that they render any view outside of cold war totalitarian model as pro-Stalinist.
Especially ironic is the Stalinist tone of many who oppose any view outside this strict cold war construction. Like it or not the facts are many who lived in the Soviet Union during that era believed in communism as their salvation and future. I've lived in Russia and have seen the older generation protesting in pro-Stalin demonstrations in St Petersburg's Palace Square. Stating this doesn't make Kotkin pro anything. It makes him a historian.
Kotkin's rendering of Magnitogorsk is great history. From the initial idealistic workers that established the city, he quickly shows the disillusionment that occurred when theory and practical organization clashed. Labor shortages abound in this workers paradise ironically because workers couldn't stand the conditions. Kotkin shows how internal passports and party cards gradually began to be used to make sure workers could not move freely or that party members could be monitored.
Not that all was oppression. He correctly describes how many used the opportunities that were available to proceed with gaining an education in the evening technical programs that proliferated in the Magnitogorsk community.
Kotkin does not shy away from the effects of the purges, but he does describe them as being focused particularly on party members. With the benefits of communist party membership came the dangerously increased odds of being targeted in the purges. He's especially effective in his description of how the balance of power was structured between the technical experts running the factories, the local communist organization and the NKVD.
This is good history. It may ruffle feathers, but more importantly it illuminates the complexity of life in the Soviet Union. Citizens in the SU were much more involved, benefited from and bought into the dogma of Soviet marxism much more than the Conquest cold war scholarship of that era showed. Having spoken to many of the older Russian generation myself I've seen the confirmation in the discussions.
Ignore the lock-step cold warriors; if you are a historian of left, middle or right wing views you'll find this is history well worth reading.
Fascinating Book, But Limited Conclusion.......2001-12-15
At several points in Magnetic Mountain, the Stalinist state appears like "Bizarro" world, where up is down, people permanently dwell in "temporary" cities, and claims of exceeding expectations really meant falling far short of the goal. Yet, according to Stephen Kotkin, all of these apparent contradictions were perfectly sensible and functional within Stalinist civilization. Kotkin, in his analysis of Magnitogorsk --the industrial centerpiece of Stalin's five-year plans-- demonstrates how and why society functioned, treating Stalinism in an analytical style not unlike those employed by anthropologist observing and explaining the bizarre behavior of non-western "others". Kotkin considers Stalinism as civilization rather than solely a political ideology because it provided unique ways of thinking, speaking, living, organizing, and constructing.
Kotkin's work is an excellent blend of theoretical models and empirical evidence. The book, dedicated to Michel Foucault, embraces many of the suggestions proffered by the late theoretician, such as the definition of "power" as a defining rather than an oppressing "force" and the need to explore power on the micro-level. And true to form, Kotkin locates power in a wide variety of domains- from the divide between the imagined and real layout of Socialist City to a list of names and profession tacked onto the front of a workers' barrack. Kotkin convincingly demonstrates that while party ideology and administrative policy was imposed from above, it was by no means absolute. Realities within and without the "official" system created spaces that shaped resistance and defined the ways in which the individuals could utilize the to accommodate their needs/interest. For example, Kotkin argues that policies that outlawed rent and obligated the state to house and employ gave individuals considerable justification for acting against and successfully resisting the efforts of "officials" trying to enforce decisions on housing and work allocation determined by the State apparatus. True to his Foucauldian sympathies, Kotkin maintains that Stalinism defined what it meant to be a good Soviet citizen and, unwittingly, the legitimate ways in which the good citizen could contest the unpopular policies.
Kotkin's micro-level archaeology of power in Magnitogorsk upsets the totalizing reputation of totalitarianism. Stalinism offered ample ideology but skimped on the details of just how Marxist/Leninist analysis related to developing a real industrial community. Rather than dictating and imposing the minutiae of everyday life, Kotkin claims that it was the incessant disharmony between ideology and practicality, as manifested in the institutional split between the Party and Administration, that created the contradictory atmosphere within Magnitogorsk, and, paradoxically, permitted resistance but also facilitated repression. Overlapping and unspecified jurisdictions made it difficult to determine who was in charge of what, but the rivalries generated by this discontinuity of policy and practice ultimately fueled the purges. Ironically, the many ways in which Stalinism empowered the worker, by allowing worker-run newspapers, elevating the worker as a mythical hero, and iterating the Marxist/Leninist values of equality, brotherhood, and collective ownership, the Stalinist state promulgated the language that allowed individuals to contest the State's designs. The nature of criticism was tailored to the system. In newspapers, local officials in the party or Soviet could be legitimately critiqued within the bounds of acceptable discourse-- what Kotkin terms, "Speaking Bolshevik". By claiming that all aspects of Soviet society were controlled by workers, Stalinist Russia may have unwittingly achieved this goal. Contrary to the totalitarian myth, Stalinism did not transform the Soviet population into inert slaves of the State.
In Kotkin's estimation, Magnitogorsk in the 1930's is indicative of the general social dynamics that defined the Stalinist State. Magnitogorsk was undoubtedly important in terms of its economic output and as a symbol of Soviet progress under Stalin; the city itself, was clearly saturated by the strange interaction of myth and reality, ideology and novelty, that made Stalin and his Soviet Union into international enigmas. However, Kotkin's claims that Magnitogorsk was a representative microcosm are questionable. A major component of Kotkin's narrative is Magnitogorsk's fundamental "newness". According to Kotkin, Magnitogorsk was a region with little historical baggage, devoid of local power dynamics, large populations, or interests that could obstruct Stalin's grand design. Moreover, on the sparsely populate plains east of the Urals, Marxist/Leninist ideologues had the rare "clean slate" from which to imagine their ideal city. Magnitogorsk's unique characteristics raise the questions: Did Stalinism function comparably in Kiev, Moscow, or Leningrad? What Kotkin generally describes as resistance and his numerous examples of unclear and ill-planned State policies may have been primarily the products of Magnitogorsk's lack of precedence and not something inherent to Stalinism. While an excellent regional study, Kotkin's work needs to be considered in a comparison to other sites of heavy Stalinist intervention and to cities/regions that existed long before the Bolshevik revolution.
For both the theoretically and empirically minded, Kotkin's work is rewarding. Strict Foucauldians may bristle at the degree of "agency" Kotkin allows his subjects and empiricists will undoubtedly raise the issue of Magnitogorsk's, but it is a engaging book that effectively explains why people not only tolerated, but embraced Stalinism. Magnetic Mountain is by no means the definitive book on the first decades of the USSR but it is an important historiographical contribution to the still woefully under-researched Soviet Union.
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Britain For and Against Europe: British Politics and the Question of European Integration
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0198280785 |
Book Description
This study, by a host of leading experts, provides the most up-to-date analysis of the often problematic relationship between various elements of British political culture and the developing European Union. The book opens with a general review of the history of this relationship since 1950, by Andrew Gamble. This is followed by ten chapters by other leading researchers, each examining a particular aspect of the relationship, including the view of Britain from Europe, the attitudes of Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democratic parties, the Scottish and Welsh Nationalist parties, the Trade Unions, Business, the Civil Service, and the media. The study concludes with a review of the findings of these chapters, and a discussion of their implications for future relations between Britain and her European partners.
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An Awkward Partner: Britain in the European Community
Stephen George
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0198782241 |
Book Description
This is the third edition of an established textbook on Britain's role in the European Community. Britain joined the EC in 1973, over twenty years after the first of the European Communities was formed. Within a year, she had established a reputation for being at odds with major Community initiatives and for taking an independent point of view.This reputation was consolidated over the next twenty-four years. In An Awkward Partner Stephen George surveys the policies that earned Britain this reputation, recording the role successive British governments have played in the European Community. He stresses the influence both of external circumstances and domestic political considerations in shaping these policies and analyses some of the underlying political reasons for Britain's perceived awkwardness. The first edition was the first book-length survey to appear in English of British policy toward the European Community, and rapidly became established as the leading book in the field for students. In this third edition, Stephen George brings his analysis up to date, taking the story of the Major Government through to its end in the 1997 general election. This new edition will continue to be invaluable to students taking courses on the European Community, comparative European politics, and public policy.
Book Description
Fifth Edition. The full and fascinating history of this remarkable community, from its beginnings in the early part of the 14th century until its virtual destruction during the Holocaust. The book deals with the movements and personalities that played a role in the formation of the community.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting but Not Compelling.......2002-03-15
THE JEWS OF LITHUANIA serves well as a general introduction to one of the most diverse, vibrant Jewish communities to have flourished anywhere at any time.
Unfortunately, the book is superficial, giving only a summary view of the 700 year history of Lithuanian Jewry. It fails to provide much in the way of depth or "color" in regard to the Jews who were such a vital part of Lithuanian history from it's beginnings.
Of particular note are the facts that Lithuanian Jewry had its roots in the slow dispersion of the Sephardim during the Reconquista of Iberia. It is instructive that in only two countries---Spain and Lithuania---were Jews permitted to be titled landholders. The author, Masha Greenbaum, fails to analyze these fascinating facts, or draw historical conclusions, of these, and many other elements, (though they are reported in passing), and thus fails to make an account of the earliest underpinnings of the community, or speak on its shared values as they developed.
There are better books on Lithuanian Jewish history, though this one is generally available, and is certainly readable. There are some historical errors which detract from the book's value as source material, but as a "starting point" for the investigation of Lithuanian Jewry, the book most definitely suffices.
For Jews tracing their families in Lithuania, the large number of localities named will be helpful, as will the discussion of the liquidation of those communities.
Given the vast scope of the subject, it is to be hoped that a better, more in-depth, and sensitive and sympathetic volume is in preparation somewhere.
This is a general History with a lot of errors........2000-03-28
This is a poorly written general History. The title of the book is misleading. The book concentrates on the modern era. There is alot of imformation on the old Kehilla era of Jewish History. This is a period from 1400 - 1700 at least. This book gives only the minimal description of this era. The authors idea of Jewish History in that pre-modern era, which in Lithuania extended until the mid 1800's was to tell about the relationship that the ruler of that area had with the Jews. The reason that I gave this book such a low rating is that it is full of Historical errors. For example she writes that the Decembrist revolution happened in 1827, it really happened in 1825. While many of her Historical errors are minor, like saying that the infamous, 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion', was written in 1928. When it comes to the History of the Orthodox and the Yeshivot, the book is full of gross errors and misunderstandings. As an exampe, her attempts to explain the reason why there was a rebellion in Slobodka against the 'Alter' and his form of Mussar is so wrong that it is comical. The 'Alter' had no official position in his own Yeshiva. A part of his form of Musar was allowing each student to develop on his own. Tight control was not part of this system. Saul Liberman, who later became the head of JTS - the Conservitive Seminary in the USA, learnt in Slobodka. Even though it was already known at that time that he had some liberal ideas. One of the Alter's most promenant students, R. Avrohom Elya Kaplen, later became head of the Rabbinical School in Berlin and was one the Rabbinical leaders of the Mizrachi movement. Another one of the Alter's students was R. Aharon Kotler who founded the most promenant 'Torah' only Yeshiva in the USA in Lakewood NJ. This is not the only gross error in the book. Another example is that she only gives the last un-official chief Rabbi of Vilna, Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinsky only one comment, and it isn't a positive one. R. Chiam Ozer was once offered the official title, but turned it down. He was one of the leaders of Lithuanian Jewry for over 40 years, and a fascinating and brilliant man. You would think that he deserves more than one negitive comment.
A good introduction into the history of the Jews in Lithuani.......1999-11-24
I found this book to be a very good introduction into the history of the Jews in Lithuania. I would recommend it to anybody who is interested in the subject.
In addition to that this book represents a good example of the History of Lithuania through the Jewish eyes. I believe that the Jews have the same rights on Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Russia and some other countries to name a few, as the non-Jews do. Therefore, the books like this one have to be written about each and every country where the Jews used to live for any extended period of time, regardless of the fact if they are still living there today. That would allow the next generations of the Jews to clearly see that some of the local `heroes', whose statures are still standing tall in the main squares of some of the European cities and who themselves are considered to be the liberators of the local peoples, were in fact thugs and anti-Semitic pigs who slaughtered thousands of Jews during their reins in power (Bogdan Hmelnitskij -- the hero of the Ukrainian people whose name was mentioned by Masha Greenbaum in her book was one of them). That would clearly show to the Jews that some of the events in local history of those countries, that are considered to be good and progressive for the countries and the people that they affected, in fact adversely affected the Jewish population of those countries. The most recent example of them all would be "The Perestroika" and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Although considered to be a very positive development by a lot of people, both Jews and non-Jews alike, it brought to the surface a rapid activation of the anti-Semitism all over the former Soviet Union that made the lives of the hundreds of thousands of the Jews there completely unbearable.
The conventionally written (mostly by the non-Jews) history books at best either do not usually pay much attention to the lives of the Jews in those countries, or at worst they paint the Jews of those countries in an untruthful and negative way. From my point of view, that not only represents an incorrect and incomplete approach to history, but also denies the Jews of a big part of their cultural and historical heritage. The books like The Jews of Lithuania: a history of a remarkable community, 1316-1945, if written about other countries, would highlight the truth about the Jews and their contribution to the countries they were living in.
Comprehensive research on the history of Lithuanian Jewry.......1999-04-12
This book is an amazing resource for anyone wanting to learn about the history of Lithuanian Jewry. It was fascinating reading, although not light reading. Greenbaum covers the rise of the various political, religous and zionist movements within the Jewish community, and most importantly, puts them within their historical context. The depth of her research is outstanding. I strongly recommend this book.
Must reading........1999-01-20
This book is must reading for any Jew,like myself, who had relatives that lived in one of the many small towns in Lithuania and are no more. The only thing we have to give our children that reminds them of their relatives is this book.
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Coal, Steel, and the Rebirth of Europe, 19451955: The Germans and French from Ruhr Conflict to Economic Community
John Gillingham
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 052152430X |
Book Description
This is the first large-scale historical investigation of the critical first stage of European integration, the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). John Gillingham discusses the thirty year Franco-German struggle for heavy industry mastery in Western Europe, describes the dreams and schemes of Jean Monnet, who designed the heavy industry pool, reveals the American vision that inspired his work, and discloses how his transatlantic partners used their great authority to assure its completion. Gillingham also lays bare the operating mechanisms of the coal-steel pool, showing that contrary to the hopes of Monnet and his supporters, the ECSC restored rather than reformed the European economy, leaving as a legacy not a detrustified industry, but one still dominated by the giant producers of the Ruhr.
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Region and Place: A Study of English Rural Settlement
Brian K. Roberts , and
Stuart Wrathmell
Manufacturer: David Brown Book Company
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ASIN: 185074775X |
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- Who Gains From Free Trade: Export-Led Growth, Inequality and Poverty in Latin America (Routledge Studies in Development Economics)
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