Catherine Levison finally does a great job. I was very dissappointed with her first book, thinking it lacked information and flow. This one does a much better job, I enjoyed it very much and learned a lot about Charlotte and her methods and how to use them.

After reading both books by this author on the Charlotte Mason methods of teaching, I feel competent and competent to now begin homeschooling. While I have read countless numbers of books on homeschooling and been given lots of advice on different curricula, etc. I never felt quite sure of myself or "what method to use." I first learned about this book in another book called HOMESCHOOLING FOR FREE. I was intrigued by this method of short lessons with lots of subjects. As a former high school teacher all of the advice seemed sound and full of common sense. I now look forward to having the structure and the freedom that was lacking in other methods. The focus on nature, short lessons, and classic literature are what attracted me to this method and I hope to one day read the original books by Charlotte Mason herself. Until then, I thank this author for showing me the way. Since reading about the Charlotte Mason method I have slept soundly knowing that I can school my son at home and do it well.

More Charlotte Mason Education is a fabulous synopsis of what an everyday application of Charlotte Mason's philosophy and methods can look like in the home. This is a great amplification of the preceding title, A Charlotte Mason Education (I inadvertently read them out of order). This is an absolute must read for anyone interested in the practical application of these methods for REAL LIFE.

Charlotte Opfermann was all of seven years old when the Nazis seized power in 1933. The daughter of a Jewish community leader in Wiesbaden, she was an intimate eyewitness to escalating persecution. Petty chicanery, legalized robbery, exclusion, vilification, violence, roundups, deportations, the life of the camps - these were the conditions of her childhood and her coming of age. She has forgotten nothing, forgiven nothing. She writes like an angry teenager and a very knowledgeable adult.
Maybe Anne Frank would have sounded like this, if she had lived...

These essays burn with Opfermann's determination to set the record straight, especially about life and death in the Theresienstadt concentration camp , the so called "model" camp, where her family was sent early in 1943. Recent books and performances have celebrated the permitted activity of Jewish painters, musicians, and actors at Theresienstadt, making the camp sound like an artists' colony - a notion Opfermann passionately refutes. She remembers in harsh detail -- hunger, disease, death and the terror of regular mass deportations from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, where her own father perished in 1944.
Unforgettable anecdotes - five Jewish schoolgirls steal a moment's happiness on a rare Sunday outing to the country in 1939 - and heartbreaking photographs --
Theresienstadt's youngest inmates cleaned and dressed up for the Red Cross inspection in June '44 (these same children would be killed just weeks later) - make this a memoir a dense, almost too dense compendium of fact and memory, statistics and rage.

Suzanne Ruta

The haunting, monstrous image of a smilingly dying Eichmann will keep all righteous people aware of what happened, lest we ever forget.

Thanks Charlotte!

Well-written , truthfully expressed , this book lives up to it's title . Professor Opfermann would know , having lived through it . Her determination to involve the reader is underlying and at the same time , most welcome . Concise , correct and dignified , this piece of literature is exactly that . "The Art of Darkness" shows the path to the very heart of that darkness in a way which will leave you wanting to know more....more of the truth .

the information gained by reading this book is very good, and should be useful for anyone living in or visiting Sweden for a long time. It will be somewhat useful for my proposed short trip this summer, particularly since my partner will be involved in academic issues and a conference during our trip. I suspect there is a better book to prepare for a short visit, but I haven't found it yet.

Some parts of the Swedish character as portrayed ring *very true*, especially the idea that they have the best way figured out. I've seen that my whole life with my relatives who are first generation American from Sweden, and it even persists into the second generation. (but maybe that's me too! :-) )

The writing style strikes me as being written for a simpleton. I can't figure out why, since the vocabulary is not excessively limited. The reading level may be lower than that to which I am accustomed, but I'm not even sure if that's it. Maybe the author is out of practice with English, and she is from Britain, making the style seem stilted to my US ear? I read a lot, so that doesn't seem possible either....

It is, none-the-less, a worthwhile read and is inspiring me to get going on the rest of my Sweden research!

I have had many Swedish friends during college, and I've been to Sweden twice. This book has proven itself a very good resource book, and an fun read. It helped me a lot to understand the dos and don'ts when interacting with Swedish people. I highly recommend this book : )

A very accurate description of what to expect, what to do (swedish etiquitte), how to act and assimilate gracefuly into a deliteful culture. This book prepares your mind to be watchful of all the intricacies that make Sweden a unique and fascinating place. Without having read this book in advance of my arrival in Sweden, the Swedish details might have escaped my notice. This book is a definite buy - well written and very accurate.

This novel is somewhat slow reading, perhaps because there seems to be an excess of extraneous details, e.g., you may learn more than you want about baking fruitcakes. On the other hand, some details related to the case never seem to be fully explained. The plot is somewhat transparent for a whodunit, i.e., you can guess the identity of villains before they are exposed.

The setting is London in 1889. Five years earlier a brutal murder had outraged the public. Police were previously criticized for not catching Jack the Ripper. Pressures for an arrest in this case led to the conviction and hanging of a Jewish actor. Anti-semitism had run high with attacks on Jews and Jewish owned businesses. Now questions have been raised.

A Justice who had served on the appeals court for the case is looking into it again. When he dies during a theatre performance, Inspector Thomas Pitt is assigned to investigate, and he re-examines the old case the Justice was reviewing. There is strong pressure not to rock the boat. A reversal in the five-year old case would embarass many people from individual policemen to Justices of the appeals court. Some surprising facts are revealed as the case draws to its conclusion. As a sidelight, Charlotte's maid Gracie acquires a young admirer.

Like other novels in this series, we are provided with a picture of Victorian era society in London. The novel has some amount of violence and some references to sexual encounters.

If you are looking for a good book, I suggest getting this book, because I have only read 2 chapters and I am already captivated! I also suggest a book by Jill Jones, Bloodline, WHICH IS THE BEST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ!

The murder of a judge is wittnessed by the Pitts. It leads Thomas to open a five year old case, a murder for which a man was hung. Step by step the author leads us through a 19th century maze of prejudices and social barriers. An additional murder ups the stakes. Charlotte has her own problems. her mother has fallen in love with a Jewish actor fifteen years her junior and to make matters worst he is a suspect in the murders. As always Anne Perry is letter perfect in her depiction of the period. Her plot is particularly puzzling. I enjoyed the twists.I highly recommend this book.

I also had to read this book for school, during summer. I can respect the fact that it was a classic but it just was not a book that I enjoyed. It had many unneeded parts and tended to repeat itself. It was especially boring when Jane landed at Moor House. If you are a hopeless romantic then go for it, but I prefer exciting books. The other book I had to read was Lord of the Flies and I liked it much better. So....there^^;

I became a reader in college. I fell in love with this book during my senior year of High School. My report got a standing ovation and I've yet to recommend it to anyone that did not enjoy it.

Charolette has a refreshing style. She includes just enough scenic and psychological detail. I love it when the author writes to me during parts of the story. The characters are interesting. The plot twists. Good read!

I received this book for a gift when I was twelve and found it incredibly boring. I am now eighteen and for lack of any other books to read picked it up again. To my suprise I could not put it down! The character of Jane Eyre was both inspiring and identifiable. Charlotte Bronte's best novel no doubt, the plot was excellently well crafted. Although a few parts are obvious, this classic romantic novel kept me turning pages furiously!

This is the sixth novel in the series and Inspector Pitt has to deal with the naked body of a young gentleman found in the sewers in a very bad part of town. The trail leads him into a web of deceit involving homosexual prostitution -- quite a different matter among Society than the usual sort of prostitution -- and accusations leveled against the tutor of the deceased, who is tried and condemned to hang. With Charlotte's help in the drawing rooms, Pitt must try to sort out who did what to whom and then overcome the protectiveness of the families involved in order to prove it. As with the others in this series, Perry has a good deal to say about life in Victorian London away from the realm of polite society.

Perry hits another run with this one. I was guessing until the end. Some with more modern day views might find her references to homosexuality offensive, but taken in an historical context they shouldn't be.

According to the list in the book, this book (copyright 1984) is the fifth in the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series. And it's the best so far. BLUEGATE FIELDS is complex in both plot and characterization, with distasteful subjects reminiscent of a "Law & Order: SVU" episode. Set in Victorian London at the time when telephones were just beginning to show up in some of the "better" homes, it presents a very strong sense of place and time. The character of Pitt becomes much more filled-out. I liked the way he and Charlotte worked together this time. The plot has tentacles. Hard to put down! A GREAT read!

My title is not supposed to be in praise of this book. No doubt that is my intellectual snobbery that this book, produced by a journalist on the distinctly academic and professional (though, as Allen shows, not always so professional) study of Jesus as an historical person, rubs shoulders, and criticises, many books produced by those with years of experience in this field. Allen has an eye for the headline ("Avant-Garde Fashions" and "Sex and death for the cinema" being two of her chapter headings) which is not meant to be praise either. For newspaper headlines, like their stories, are meant to be here today, making their impact, and then gone tomorrow. In this respect they are very like this book.

But this book deserves better than a negative review. Allen gives us reason to praise her book too. Primarily this is in her research which is thorough. General readers will learn much from this book for it offers a wide and varied catalogue of attempts to picture Jesus in a historically relevant way. I fear, however, that the student, academic or professional reader will see in what she has written what amounts to an overly-long newspaper article; thorough and interesting but lacking depth and critical appreciation of the subject matter.

And thats what this book lacks, depth, historical context, critical appreciation. Sure, the opening chapter gives us a chapter on "Jesus' Jewish world" but whole books are written on that alone. Scholars, and more enlightened readers in general, might also see in this chapter that Allen takes sides in an academic debate she is not formally part of, prefering "Jewish Jesus" to "Meditteranean Jesus" (a preference she keeps throughout the book). In that she needs to give a lot more documentation then she is doing here. But I'm being unfair for this book is a journalistic account of "the search for the historical Jesus" and thats exactly what it comes across as. Its all jolly stuff but it doesn't exactly stay with you for very long and it won't jump up and grab you and make you think for very long either.

This book was wonderful. I could not put it down. It is fascinating how we tend to form our opinions of historical figures around what we picture the "perfect being" to be. To little is known of Jesus to speculate on his historicity. We have a choice to either believe the supposed eyewitnesses or look to other forms of history. In other words, we will never know.

The book brings together an enormous amount of material as it describes the search for the historical Jesus, not only in serious scholarship, but in novels, and films. It is a marvelous bibliographical resource. And it traces certain fashions in perception of Jesus rather ruthlessly and deservedly. I discovered the great scholar John A.T. Robinson through this book and will always be grateful for that and much more. I very much enjoyed the discussion of the fiction writers Renan, Flaubert, and the author of Quo Vadis, whose name I can't spell, and the further discussion of Hollywood Christians versus lions movies. Excellent and very thought provoking. This is an invaluable survey for its depth and breadth. We must be reminded over and over again that what we think is brand new in Jesus research isn't new at all. It's been done and done. High recommended. Anne Rice, New Orleans, La.

In the story of Puss In Boots, a miller dies and leaves one of his sons nothing but the cat. This cat turns out to be quite clever and earns the favor of the King for his master. The cat also obtains land and a castle for his master and gives him the title of the Marquis of Carabas. The King becomes so impressed by the Marquis that he offers his daughter's hand in marriage, and the simple miller's son becomes a prince. The use of clever illustration makes this book an effective piece of folk lore. "Narrative Expectations: The Folklore Connection" discusses the basic pattern of a folktale. The article states that every folktale begins with the main character of the story being no different from or more special than any other character. Then, out of nowhere, the character is boosted into a "supernatural world" and all of a sudden he is moved up to higher society and viewed as a hero (67). This resembles the plot pattern of Puss In Boots, with the Marquis being the average character who becomes a hero. This jump to a higher level of society out of luck is strangely enough realistic in the twenty-first century. With things like inheritance, lotteries, and the stock market, a person of today could easily go from the poor miller's son to a "prince." However, this is not a common occurrence. The article also states that folklore "functions in part as an informal system for learning the daily logic and worldview of the people around us (71)." The author chooses not to use human characters to represent Master Slyboots and the rich ogre. He could have done this easily with illustration by making Master Slyboots a servant boy and the ogre a Marquis. Instead, he uses an informal style, placing animal characters in the book. This represents a higher level: Using animals in contrast to humans in order to show the differences in people as a whole.

This new translation of the "fairy" story first presented by Charles Perrault (1628-1703) in his Tales of Mother Goose in 1697 was illustrated by Fred Marcellino and translated by Malcolm Arthur. It was a 1991 Caldecott Honor book (that is, a runner-up to the Medal winner) for best illustrations in a book for children. The youngest son of a recently deceased miller receives a cat as his inheritance. He feels that he will soon die of starvation (after he has eaten the cat) since he has no other possessions. But, the cat convinces him to get him boots. The cat proceeds to find a fortune and a position for his young master.

I regularly visit school classrooms and read aloud to children from Kindergarten through eighth grade. Finding books that appeal to more than one grade level is a challenge.

I have found that the pictures in this version of 'Puss' appeal immensely to kindergartners through third graders. (Fourth and Fifth grade children also like it, but are often embarassed to say so in a classroom setting!). Children who often have a hard time sitting still for a story have sat transfixed as I read this book, holding the pictures in front of them all the time and giving them lots of opportunities to check out the wonderful use of light and color. The illustrator uses a lot of wonderful yellow that is very appealing to young children and seems to draw them into the book. I love reading this book out loud both to see children's reaction and also because I love the detail and color in the pictures.

Reading this book aloud has also sparked some beautiful art work from young children.

This is the fourth novel in the Charlotte and Inspector Thomas Pitt series of high Victorian mysteries, though I've read several others out of order. All of them seem to be a mix of police procedural and social commentary, in which Pitt has to delve into the depths of London's underclass while Charlotte wades through the unpleasantnesses of Society's drawing rooms. Sometimes the latter is better written and more interesting than the former, but in this case the mystery is interesting and also funny in an oddball way. The recently buried keep turning up out of their coffins -- sitting in hansom cabs, or in church pews, or leaning against their own tombstones. All were apparently natural deaths, so Thomas isn't even quite sure for much of the book whether any serious crime actually has been committed. Meanwhile, Mr. Carlisle, an avid and politically astute social reformer, is making converts to his cause of reforming the workhouses by dragooning his social acquaintances into visiting the slums and rookeries. Charlotte (who married down) is a likeable enough character, and her sister, Lady Ashworth (who married up), is well done, but Thomas himself seems to emote too much. Aunt Vespasia, on the other hand, is a marvelous depiction of a grand and starchy old lady who's smarter and more socially aware than most of her contemporaries. Although Perry repeats her bad habit of nearly blowing off the solution to the mystery in favor of sociological commentary, this is a pretty good read.

RESURRECTION ROW is the fourth in the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt series that begins with "The Cater Street Hangman." Once again, Perry creates a fairly strong sense of place with very few details. She uses interesting twists and turns and colorful characters, and once again there's a certain amount of -- let's call it "unpleasantness." Her books aren't pretty. This time we get more insight into Thomas's character, because Charlotte isn't involved as much in this one. And, as with Perry's others, we get a good look at all levels of the class system in place in London at the time. The plot is fascinating and the conclusion is very satisfying.

Exceptional. All of the Pitt series is good, but this may be one of the best. As an avid reader of mysteries, I found it wonderfully frustrating to get into the last chapter without actually knowing who the killer was. Better, Perry did it without cheating. Once you get to the solution, you realize that ever clue you needed was right there all along, and each false trail was masterfully done.

My only complaint in this book is that Perry padded large sections with irrelevant musings, and several were actually out of character for the person musing. There is a section with Thomas mulling all of the dead ends in a dispassionate mental voice that is completely different than in any other part of the series, and another with Charlotte using the same cadence, rehashing discarded leads. It feels as if her publisher came back and demanded about twenty more pages, and she scrambled to cram them into an otherwise tight and well-crafted book.

On the other hand, her mastery of the period is incomparable, tossing the assumptions and mundane details of the day into the story in a way that draws you fully into a remarkable and fascinating point in history. The characters are perfect and well-realized, as always, and this book introduces one of my favourite bit players--Aunt Vespasia, the Lady Cumming-Gould. Delightful, insightful, intriguing and unconventional, just like this book.

I enjoyed the author's sense of humor, but found it grating after a while. The characters did not seem real to me. Instead, they were overdone and somewhat stereotypical. It felt like the main character was trying too hard to amuse us with her witty take on everything. I hate not to finish a book that I have purchased, but I gave up on it. The storyline definitely had potential, but I wouldn't recommend this for people who prefer more serious suspense novels.

I loved this! This has my vote for one of the best books of the year

I loved it! After reading two other books by Charlotte Hughes, I picked this one up and didn't want to put it down until the story ended!