This book has a meaningful story to tell and really cool characters. Even the characters' names are full of meaning. It is a great blend of fantasy and reality. I've given it as gifts to many of the people I love and want to have in my life for many years to come.

Very well written and illustrated. Bright primary colors and very good quality. Message excellent and children really get it! We need all the encouragement we can get to help our kids in the battle against substance abuse as early as possible and this book certainly starts the process against smoking with a very interesting approach. Highly recommend it!

What I like about Where Have All The Dragons Gone? is it is a good adventure book for someone to read.

I have not seen a children's book with as detailed and exciting computer illustrations as this.

The guys who make Veggie Tales present Mr. Gruntly Fromage, a mouse, and the Reverend Ignatious O. Bumblesmog a frog who looks something like a snake with long wool knit socks.

In this adventure, Iggy and Gruntly work on their cheese sculptor and stinky socks.

This highly original, delightful tale mixes the gentle friendship of "Frog and Toad Together" with the silliness of Dr. Suess, with a dash of Shel Silverstein tossed in.

I fully recommend "The Great Cheese Squeeze" Bryan Ballinger and Keith Lango.

Anthony Trendl

The story is rich with details. I loved the lighthouse on the prairie. My two boys were constantly quizzing me on the sillyness. The animation is breath taking. I fell in love with Gruntly and anyone who knows me, knows I dislike mice greatly! So, when is the next one?

The illustrations in this book are exceptional. There are so many 3-D details from the life-like expressions on the characters' faces (Iggy's face as he's trying to reinflate hot dogs with a bicycle pump is priceless!)to the crumbs of cheese on Gruntly's workshop floor to the labels on the jars of Iggy's buggy bits. The story line is entertaining and has a good message about the importance of working together to achieve goals, yet it isn't preachy nor does it talk down to kids. And there is just the right amount of grossness to really appeal to kids (stinky toes, bug parts, dirty socks). It's the kind of book you can read over and over and not get tired of, because you find something new each time. I bought one for my neice and my co-worker's son.

I knew about the book from the Oprah show and I ordered straight after the show. It took a while because I live in the UK.

The book speaks to both parents, whether absent or otherwise. Reading through the pages, I realised how certain actions of parents can totally damage a child. Though my kids father never paid any maintenance, I did not stop him from seeing them. Most of my friends and even family thought this was foolish of me. Reading the book has therefore reinforced what I thought all along. I am so glad I bought it and I have since shared it with friends in similar situations. Mark Bryan's book even inspired me to write a song about the relationship between a father and child and how a child truly feels about the absent parent!

I first saw this book in the parenting section of the children's section of the library. The title intrigued me so I decided to skim through it. Besides his own testimony of reuniting with a son after 14 years and of helping others fathers to reunite, I realized this wasn't another book written by someone who wants you easily to do what they've never had to do.

I even skimmed through the section for mothers because I'm the single mother of a 3 year old. I didn't have my usual "Yeah, right" bitter reaction and actually felt like crying and calling my daughter's father right away to start the process.

Without the testimonials in this book, I would have accepted that her father being in her life was not only improbable, but impossible and would have lived my life accordingly. After just reading a few chapters, I really wanted to do all that I could to start a relationship between my daughter and her father. I really began to believe it could happen. After I get the book from the library, I hope to apply its principles. I'm glad all the other reviewers enjoyed it as well.

I recently heard Mark Bryan speak at the NACSDC @ the Univ. Notre Dame. I cried through his entire presentation. There are too many parallels to mention. I bought two copies of his book. One I read. One I gave to my daughter who is a single mom and in reunion (without this book) with her child's father. They now have the book, each has read some of it. They are still talking. My book will remain with me. I will be buying another copy so that I can write a letter to my childrens father. Maybe then they will find thier way back to each other. I never understood until I read about the haunting. Thank you Mark!

The author, Bryan Magee, modestly states in his preface that: "There is never any suggestion that I am giving a full explanation of [Wagner's] works by what I say in these pages: I am merely drawing attention to some of the ideas that went into them." While it is true that is book is focused on Wagner's philosophy (both in the broad and narrower senses of the word) and how this philosophy influenced and affected his works, he also succinctly and brilliantly covers Wagner's biography and personality. If you have never read a book on Wagner, this would be a marvelous place to start.

Magee's basic argument is that to really understand and appreciate Wagner's mature operas you need to understand Schopenhauerian philosophy and Wagner's metaphysical beliefs. He then proceeds to explain Wagner's ideas in a prose style that is straight-forward, extraordinarily lucid and brimming with profound insights. But while the heart of the book is the exposition of Wagner's philosophical beliefs and the affect on his music, there is so much more. As the book jacket blurb says accurately, the book is "at once a biography of the composer, an exploration of the creative process, an account of 19th century opera and an investigation of the intellectual and technical aspects of music". It is really a wonderful addition to Wagner literature.

Magee, it should be noted, is also the author of "Aspects of Wagner", which is a marvelous collection of five short pieces examining, yes, different aspects of Wagner. One of the pieces in that book is about Wagner's anti-Semitism, primarily placing Wagner's views in historical context. In Tristan's Chord, he compliments that earlier essay with an appendix which explores Wagner's anti-Semitism and its ramifications more fully than his earlier piece. It is a balanced and well-supported argument on this most controversial and inflammatory topic.

Most of the major secondary material about the intellectual influences on, and influence of, Wagner, refer to philosophy and Schopenhauer in particular. Magee cogently argues that these ideas were not just influential, but central to, Wagner's art. In particular, Magee shows that all Wagner's work after Tristan is deeply infused with Schopenhauerian epistomology and ethics. No other work that I have read so clearly and completely explains this seminal influence on Wagner.

Magee writes energetic prose without sacrificing any depth of analysis. I cannot recommend this book too highly to the following: 1) Wagner lovers 2) those interested in late 19th century intellectual history 3) those interested in philosophy 4) anyone who wants to know more about one of the most important thinkers of the last hundred and fifty years.

There aren't many composers whose philosophical views are of such crucial, and controversial, importance as Wagner's. But this is not because Wagner was an important philosopher.

As Magee shows, Wagner's thinking should not be too readily dismissed. Wagner was no philosophical dilletante. He was awesomely well-read in the philosophy, philology and linguistics of his day, in addition to his vast reading in literature ancient and "modern", in history, myth, and the history of myth, and much more. And he was an intelligent and sometimes extraordinarily perceptive man, whose erudition was not just for showing off with but of vital importance to his thought and work.

However Wagner believed, wrongly, that his intuition was as sure a guide in the world of ideas as it was in music and drama. So his philosophical writings follow his intuitions, not his reasoning - indeed he seems to avoid reasoning, except in small bursts, out of principle. His writing is therefore irrational and self-contradictory, obscure in the worst German manner: neither original (except accidentally, where he achieves originality by misunderstanding a source, particularly Schopenhauer), nor lucid, nor "true". "True", that is, in the sense of being based on "matters of fact or reason".

So his philosophy is not, despite what Wagner probably thought, of much importance in its own right. It is mainly important because it permeates and influences his major works, which are among the few most endlessly fascinating human creations of any kind. The increasingly Buddhist resignation, withdrawal from the world, of his later works are steeped in Schopenhauerian doctrine, just as the leftist radicalism of the earlier works are steeped in the work of the libertarian democratic-socialist Feuerbach. Magee's book is invaluable in tracing the effect of these and other philosophers on Wagner's work. _Tristan und Isolde_, for example, was indeed written in the white heat of a love affair, but that love was Wagner's love of Schopenhauer, not of Matthilde Wesendonck.

Wagner's philosophical ideas are important to his work in a way that seems true of no other composer. Mozart's use of Masonic symbols in _Zauberflöte_ and elsewhere (eg his "three" chords, three maidens, three boys, etc) has never seemed more than skindeep, almost flippant, references, while in Wagner the philosophical ideas cut deep both with the drama and the characters. Magee shows how the many complex layers and depths of works like the _Ring_, Tristan_, _Parsifal_, and even the earlier Romantic operas like _Lohengrin_ and _Tannhäuser_, can never be fully explored without an understanding of Wagner's key ideas: the futility and evil of power-seeking and conquest, the struggle of the artist to escape from, and yet redeem, the constricting culture in which they operate, the desirability of losing the world by annihilating one's one ego-consciousness, the value of the irrational and of dream, and much else.

There is another, hopefully temporary, reason why it is worth knowing what Wagner's philosophical ideas actually were. Recently there has been a small avalanche of books presenting Wagner as a proto-Nazi, even a serious influence on Hitler, and one who put proto-Nazi ideas into his dramas. Books by Rose, Weiner, Köhler, Zelinsky, Millington and others creak and twang with the sound of long bows stretched past the breaking point, as they try to fit Wagner's operas and his prose works into a Nazi frame.

And "frame" is the word. As Magee shows, Wagner was a radical democrat when young (democracy being a radical idea at that time, in Europe), who drifted as far right as supporting constitutional monarchy, particularly when constitutional monarchs were writing his cheques. And who, after his disillusionment with Bismarckian Germany, lost interest in politics altogether. There were slim pickings for the Nazis, except for the antisemitism that Wagner shared with Hitler's other favourites, particularly Bruckner, also Beethoven, Bach and Brahms and many others, whose antisemitism is as ignored as Wagner's is stressed.

Magee adds an appendix on Wagner's antisemitism, putting it back in context as a disgraceful form of bigotry, just like the ignorant bigotry of today's taxi-driver who sounds off about Vietnamese, or Afghan, or African immigrants. Wagner, like many a talk radio jock, populist politician and barroom loudmouth of our own day, called for Jews to lose their separate culture and identity and assimilate into German culture. This is contemptibly racist, but the diametric opposite of the Nazi program of racial segregation followed by genocide. I might add, as Magee does not, that Wagner was an ardent abolitionist, passionately opposing slavery in the US. On some racial issues Wagner was more progressive and less racist than many Europeans and Americans of his day. But we seldom hear about this from those who prefer a simple caricature to a complicated human being.

And of course the Nazis banned _Parsifal_ for its pacifist content, as well as banning complete cycles of the _Ring_, which charts Wotan's moral degradation and downfall in pointing out its message of the futility of power and conquest. Magee notes that Wagner performances actually became much less frequent under the Nazis than before the takeover. The soundtrack of the Third Reich was not Wagner, as today's filmmakers think; in reality the opera houses played Auber, Lortzing and Lehar (Hitler never attended a Wagner opera after 1942). When classical music was played at the rallies, it was Bruckner and Liszt as much as, or more than, Wagner, but mainly the music played was "cholly Cherman" brass band music. Magee makes these points clearly and elegantly.

My main criticism of the book is that Magee clearly loves Schopenhauer almost as much as does Wagner. As a result I think he grossly underestimates the influence of the left-wing Feuerbach not only on the early works but on the later works: even _Parsifal_ ends with a political revolution, the peaceful overthrow of a hereditary monarchy. And the _Ring_ ends with us, the vassals and working women, alive after the fire and flood, facing the future with all heroes and gods swept away. I believe there is at least as much Feuerbach and Schopenhauer in the mature operas, and Magee tends to skimp on the continued radicalism of Wagner's Feuerbachian leanings and borrowings.

But this is a minor criticism of a splendid book. It is an invaluable guide to Wagner's philosophy, as well as being a remarkably clear exposition of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Highly recommended.

Cheers!

Laon

I very, very highly recommend this book.It is filled with wonderful recipes. The special tips offered by Stew Leonard are an excellent addition. I very much enjoyed seeing the photos of the store and how food is prepared . It was also very interesting to see how the store developed from its humble beginnings to one of the country's most amazing culinary shopping experience. This is a must buy for anyone interested in cooking, or a really fun look at Stew Leonards!

THIS BOOK ANSWERS MANY QUESTIONS THAT MOST COOKBOOKS DO NOT ADDRESS.THE FORMAT IS EASY TO FOLLOW. THE SIMPLICITY OF THE RECIPES FOR THE 2 PERSON WORKING FAMILIES ADDS TO ITS APPEAL.RECIPES TAKE A MINIMUM AMOUNT OF TIME. MANY CAN BE DONE AHEAD OF TIME,AND FINISHED AT MEAL TIME. ALL INGREDIENTS ARE EASILY AVAILABLE. IT'S A FUN AND INSPIRING LOW PRICED COOKBOOK.

This is an unusual cookbook. Filled with 300 recipes and great tips about cooking. Lots of pictures and a tour of the World famous food store, Stew Leonard's. Easy to read and a definate for your library.

Arthur Schopenhauer, the son of a German merchant family, is perhaps one of the most neglected philosophers in Western Philosophy. Because of this, his influence on many key thinkers (such as Wittgenstein, Nietzsche and Popper) had gone unnoticed. Bryan Magee, in 'The Philosophy of Schopenhauer', redresses this oversight and indeed, travels way beyond it, restoring this deep and misunderstood thinker to his rightful place in the pantheon of Great Philosophers.

Although this text is not as approachable as Magee's other works, it does give the best overview and the most thorough English-language discussion and explanation of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Magee is meticulous and painstaking in his scholarship, yet at the same time explains the philosopher's ideas in his wonderfully crafted prose. Magee begins by explaining how Schopenhaur, as an undergraduate student, absorbed the ideas of Plato and Kant, and built his own remarkable philosophy from these. From there he works through the most dense and difficult of Schopenhauer's works, 'The World as Will and Representation', as well as Schopenhauer's shorter works, such as his doctoral thesis and his essays on ethics, free will and other matters. Magee also carefully explains the reasons why Schopenhauer hated Hegel with such vehemence, and concludes with several appendices about Schopenhauer's influence on later thinkers, such as Wagner, Freud, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche.

Although Magee's work is no substitute to reading the works of Schopenhauer himself, this guide is an invaluable 'roadmap' for any serious student of Schopenhauer's philosophy, or for anyone who wishes to understand the ideas of this important thinker without having to plunge into the dense texts themselves.

"What about myself in relation to Schopenhauer's philosophy - when I was completely Greek, an optimist? But I made the difficult admission, and from this act of resignation emerged ten times stronger."

The sentiment expressed by Wagner in the previous quotation articulates how I felt when I had discovered Schopenhauer and that is probably true for most readers of these philosophers. There is something in his ontological and aesthetic conclusions that induce a feeling of nausea and repellence and yet they are filled with much liberation. It's sort of like the feeling a prophet gets when he receives a divine revelation.
Magee does a magnificant job in making Schopenahuars ideas accessible to the public. The final chapter added to this 2nd edition dispels the popular misconceptions (misconceptions that I have run across) concerning Schopenhauers treatment of the will. What S really says is that we have direct phenomenal knowledge of the noumena but that 'phenomenal' knowledge is still nevertheless a representation. I don't think to S, the representation of an perceptual object is an illusion but merely that in order to perceive things, the brain develops a conceptual framework so that objects in the external world can be apprehended. Many people who object to his uses of representation often assume that he is saying that what we perceive is something completely different than what it is in itself. What Schopenhauer really saying is that we shouldn't ascribe too much importance, regarding our knowledge, to the object and ignore the perceiving subject as this would greatly retard our quest for understanding.
Magee also points out how avant-garde Schopenhauer was for his time because of his anticipation of Freud's unconscious, Einstein's relativity, and Schrodinger's Quantum Mechanics. One can conclude that Scopenhauer would have not at all have been surprised by these breakthroughs in modern science since he enunciated philosophical ideas that were very similar.
I must say that I find Schopenhaurs treatment of music flawed in that he seems to believe "that in aesthetic contemplation, the individual is no longer an individual but the pure, will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge." In this respect I might think Nietzsche was right in the Gay Science when he pointed out how typical it was for many followers of Schopenhauer to adopt the erroneous metaphysical aspects of his philosophy. Music, as with everything, is a manifestation of the phenomenal world. Interaction with music is not will-less if Scophenhauer really thinks everything to be a result of the will. In that sense we see his pessimism getting into the way of his philosophical doctrine. Magee was right when he pointed out the impossibility of renunciating the Will.

In further regard of S's treatment of music, I prefer Wagners theory of Art to be by far much superior to that of Schopenhauers.

"Wagner saw art as a celebtration of the purely human, of this life of ours in the world of experience, whereas Scheopnhauer saw this life as a burden and this world as a vale of tears, and regarded art as concerned with Platonic Ideas and the noumenal; Wagner's theories were historicist, which Schopenhauer would have despised; Wagner believed that the creative artists should address himself to 'the people', whereas Schopenhaur considered only a minority capable of being interested in great art; Wagner considered the main function of art as expressive, whereas Schopenhauer saw it as cognitive."

Even though he was overlooked by many, Schopenhauer was definitely the pinnacle of empirical epistemology. Magee interestingly emphasizes that Scopehnhauers philosophy, much like Wittgenstein's, is in some sense mystical because it doesn't imply that the empirical world is all there is. Unfortunately, we see that because of the limits of human understanding, many post-posivist philosophers have jumped on the religious band wagon. Clearly though, Scophenhauer would have thought it ridiculous to claim to know what the noumenal world (and I do not think he thought of it as separate from the phenomenal world) is as the religions of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism claim to do (Nietzsche would later show how little 'faith' in these ascetic religions is worth). Regarding the similarities to Scophenhauer's philosophy and Buddhism, I would not find it unreasonable to conclude that Schopenhauer's philosophy is a more sophisticated and more reasonable form of Buddhism insofar that Buddhism takes a metaphysical approach to life but does not apply phenomenal concepts to the metaphysical world.

I HIGHLY recommend buying this book. Magee has done a tremendous service to the revival of Schopenhauer.

Bryan Magee has the marvellous power to arouse the interest of the reader in his books. He does it again in this one on Schopenhauer.

He explains clearly the place and the importance of Schopenhauer in the history of philosophy, the strenght and modernity of his ideas, and his deep influence on later philosophers and artists. He also criticizes vigorously some aspects of his work and life.

Magee shows that Schopenhauer built his worldview on the transcendental idealism of Kant. But he went further by describing the real nature of Kant's 'thing in itself' (the noumenon), which he called rather unfortunately the 'will'. For Schopenhauer, the entire world of phenomena in time and space, internally connected by causality, is the self-objectivation of an impersonal, timelessly active will. It is an unassuageable striving, which means continued dissatisfaction for the individual.
Schopenhauer noticed a flaw in Kant's reasoning that we could only access to the 'thing in itself' through our sensory and intellectual apparatus. We know one material 'thing in itself' subjectively: our own body.

The idea of the 'will' is very modern, because it anticipated Darwin's evolutionism, Freud's unconsciousness and Einstein's holism (everything is energy).

Magee explains magisterially all aspects of Schopenhauer's penetrating worldview, like the defective intellect of mankind, because intelligence is only a late and superficial evolutionary differentiation, developed for the promotion of animal survival.
His investigation of human behaviour is based on what people do in fact, not on what they 'ought to do'. His conclusion was that what traditionally had been considered moral behaviour turned out to be self-interest.
For Schopenhauer, art is not an expression of emotion, but an attempt to convey an insight into the true nature of things. It must have its origin in direct perception, not in concepts.
Magee stresses rightly that Schopenhauer was one of the few philosophers who integrated sex in his speculations. For him, sex is the 'very process whereby the will to live achieves life. The urge towards it is the most powerful of the will's demands, next only to the brute survival of what already exists'.
He shows also his virulent atheism ('As ultima ratio theologorum we find among many nations the stake'), his misogyny and his interest in Buddhism.

His criticism of Schopenhauer is also very important and to the point.
Schopenhauer denies mankind free will. But if there is no free will, there is no morality.
More importantly, he notices that Schopenhauer didn't live a life of someone who believed in a world of only unrelieved pessimism, dominated by the inherently evil metaphysical will. His life contradicted a part of his philosophy!

This very rich book contains also excellent explanations of the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling, Vaihinger and Frege, as well as brilliant demonstrations of the influence of Schopenhauer on Nietzsche and Wittgenstein (the Tractatus).
Magee gives us also a very stark argument against solipsism.

The one point on which I disagree with Magee is the following comment: 'This is not the same as to say that these material objects are fully and completely us: that is another matter.' (p. 121)

This sometimes ferociously driven apologia pro Schopenhauer (and Kant) is the best possible presentation of a philosopher. Magee convinced me to read Schopenhauer's main work. I didn't do it until now, because I was influenced by G. Lukacs.
A book not to be missed.

"Hitler's Jewish Soldiers" by Bryan Mark Rigg, is a unique World War II history. He has had access to government archives, private records, and personal interviews that most history buffs only dream about. Indeed, one must have a thorough background in the German National Socialist years and modern military history just to begin to appreciate the level of the research that went into the book.

Apart from the unique breadth and focus of Mr. Rigg's research, his book stands out for its fresh and intriguing perspective. The author explores the various reasons why men who appear to have nothing to gain and everything to lose might find themselves in the German military. Their reasons often included elements of patriotism, considerations of personal safety by hiding in plain sight, desire for personal or career advancement, the hope that a soldier's family might benefit from his loyal service, and a sense of duty instilled by previous military training before the Nazis came to power.

The Nazi German racial laws focused more on ancestry than choice of religion. There were significant numbers of Jews, half-Jews, and quarter-Jews in the German military. Although there were few Jews of pure ancestry, there were substantial numbers of the so-called mischlinge, or people of mixed heritage. Hitler's Jewish Soldiers analyzes the actions and motivations of people who could possess one of two extremely different points of view to explain what really went on in Germany in the Nazi era.

A truly unique case history that Mr. Rigg references in his book is Bernhard Rogge. Rogge began his naval career in the Kaiser's navy, served the Reichsmarine of the post WW1 republic, then Hitler's navy to reach the rank of vice admiral, after Germany fell Rogge worked managing with a shipping company, and finally he retired in the 1960's after serving as a vice admiral in the Bundesmarine. Rogge, as a quarter Jew married to a Jew was considered a full Jew under Nazi pronouncements. In 1939, his wife and mother in law, also Jewish, killed themselves to escape the persecution. Hitler gave Rogge an exemption from the Nazi racial laws. Hitler later personally awarded the Knights Cross with Oak Leaves to Rogge for his military accomplishments. Rogge served with humanitarian distinction in command of the auxiliary cruiser Atlantis, sinking or capturing 22 ships and remaining away from port for 655 days without any serious morale or discipline problems. Later in the war, his task group built around the Prinz Eugen supported the epic German evacuation in the Baltic Sea away from the Russian invasion in the east. Nobody will ever know how many German lives were saved. Certainly no Nazi, Rogge is just one example of a man of possessed of two heritages who is remembered for serving his country loyally and decently.

The most common analytical shortcut taken by modern historians is to write of groups of people. Since it requires the collective efforts of thousands, and perhaps millions, of people to wage a modern war, it seems quite reasonable to assume that groups of people acted in accordance with a common goal and a unanimous conviction in their ideals. Although it may make perfectly good sense to approach the history of war and politics as a study of the conflicts among races, religions, and nations, the resulting oversimplification dilutes and obscures the real lessons of history. By exploring the individual motivations of men whose backgrounds fit neatly into neither of two competing groups, Mr. Rigg actually examines the whole concept of why men participate in war.

It should be obvious that neither army in a conflict, and certainly no individual soldier, goes into battle with the intention of being remembered as the 'bad guy' in history. Unfortunately, modern writers frequently assume too many things and attribute commonly misunderstood purposes to the German soldiers, and such errors are the result of stereotyping. Many soldiers of Jewish heritage served with valor and were awarded Iron Crosses and Knights Crosses. Individual commanders often shielded Jews in their units. The political and military motivations of leaders and the men who followed them should be revealed so that future generations will actually learn from history. Mr. Rigg's book is a significant contribution to the analysis of an obscure and misunderstood issue.

Bryan Mark Rigg's book 'Hitler's Jewish soldiers' is a fascinating read from both a Political Science and a military history view point. Since 1945 the history of the Third Reich has been portrayed as in a manner that served the political views of the historian. Dr. Rigg avoids this pitfall by not attempting to explain away the bloodiest war in history, he instead take the stories of German veterans of that war and puts their experience into the well documented context of the time. What you end up with is a tragic yet riveting view of people whose lives, careers, and very sense of self are shattered by the racial laws of Hitler's Germany. Though even Hitler could not commit to his narrow racial views as he assigned 'honorary Aryan' status to some, while leaving others to die.
The Zionist view of the Third Reich has been of demonic fascists monolith responsible for the attempted annihilation of an entire race of people. As convenient as this view is for the modern state of Israel, Dr. clearly documents that the truth was far more complex than that. There was not agreed upon 'race' of Jews in Europe. Dr. Rigg documents the shock of people across German society from when the Nazi racial laws when an acted when people who had never even considered then selves Jews where informed at they where by law. Soldier, Officers, Admirals, sailors, decorated war heroes, many of whom went to church ever Sunday, where informed by their government that somewhere in their family tree there was an 'impurity'.
This is not the story of Jews in the death camps who became 'capos' and assisted the Nazis in the Holocaust. This is the story of regular Germans who went off to fight for their country. Some hid their 'racial' background, but many did not. At the onset of the war soldiers with one Jewish parent could serve in the Wheremacht. By the time they where at the gates of Moscow, the bar moved a tens of thousands of the 'Jews' where discharged, only '¼' Jews could then serve.
In reading this book you can not help but develop sympathy for these 'marginal men' not accepted by Jewish community or by the Nazi Government, many found the only place they could be treated as equals was among their comrades in arms, in the Wehrmacht, where they fought and died for a government that hated them and was abusing their families while the one some of their nation's highest awards for bravery.
The Orwellian nightmare where a few fanatics blinded a Christian nation to their diabolical racist schemes that was so essential in the early re-armament of Germany does not find a great deal of factual support in this book either. The facts that Dr. Rigg has uncovered clear show that when Hitler railed against the 'Jews' many heads in Germany bobbed in agreement look to the sprawling ghettos of the East. Centuries on inter-marriage and assimilation lead to fully Germanized, cosmopolitan Germans agreeing in principle to parts, or even, as they understood it, all of the Nazi program, never dreaming that the wrath would be turned upon them.
Anyone who has any interest in the true nature of world war two needs to read this book. It is meticulously documented and thoroughly researched. I don't believe that anyone can read this book and not be profoundly effected.

This is truly a landmark book and an amazing achievement both in scholarship and in humane sensitivity to an excruciatingly difficult subject. The title of the book, while seemingly gratuitously sensational, does sum up the subject of the study: those serving in the various armed forces of the Third Reich, as officers and as ordinary soldiers and sailors, who happened to be of Jewish descent. The chapter titles show how Rigg examines the various facets of the matter:

Who Is a Jew?
Who Is a "Mischling" ['partial Jew']
Assimilation and the Jewish Experience in the German Armed Forces
Racial Policy and the Nuremberg Laws, 1933-1939
The Policy toward "Mischlinge" Tightens, 1940-1943
Turning Point and Forced Labor, 1943-1944
Exemptions from the Racial Laws Granted by Hitler
The Process of Obtaining an Exemption
What Did "Mischlinge" Know about the Holocaust?

Interspersed among the chapters are four collections of (usually personal) photographs of Jewish and 'partially Jewish' officers and men of the Wehrmacht, SS, and Waffen SS, among others.

It seems to me a measure of the scrupulous, indeed rigorous fairness of Rigg's treatment of this most painful subject that the reader (well, I at any rate) was struck again and again by the unfamiliar sensation of, among other high officials of the Third Reich, even Hitler sometimes actually coming across as human, showing what seems--against that ghastly backdrop, of course--to be real decency and compassion for (partial) Jewish veterans, and indeed others whose special circumstances recommended them to his attention. The easy and in fact almost inescapable thing is to simply demonize Hitler et al. and be done with it. Rigg has given the devil his due.

Not everyone is going to be delighted with the book, but there it is. Pace Keats, Beauty is not Truth, and Truth is not Beauty.
Rigg's examination of the central question of who knew how much when about what is, again, scrupulously yet sensitively handled.

A personal note: Thirty-some years ago, I was studying at a Goethe-Institut in Germany. One of my instructors mentioned one day that his father, whose mother was Jewish, received a phone call one evening in the late '30s from a friend at the local police station, who told him his file had come through for "processing." The friend told him that in a few minutes he would go down cellar to stoke his furnace, and with permission that file--and the man--would cease to exist officially. My instructor's father thanked his friend, and the family hid him in the attic throughout the war. His father's physical and mental health were shattered by the experience.

My instructor (telling his class this in 1969) remarked that when he received his draft notice he could easily have evaded conscription, but in fact he served with Rommel in North Africa. He witnessed a ceremony in which Rommel himself decorated a subordinate who had been in charge of capturing some town and afterward had turned his men loose, allowing them to behave as they pleased for a few days. After pinning the medal on this general, he said, Rommel then made a brief speech about how atrocities reflected on the German Army, the German People, and the German Reich, then he drew the general's sidearm from his holster and executed him, just like that. My instructor remarked, "Unter Rommel gab es keine Schweinerei."

Until reading Rigg's book, I had assumed that my instructor's experience as a Jewish soldier of the Third Reich was very unusual, if not unique. As Rigg makes clear, this misperception was common, even among these soldiers themselves, even well after the war was over.

If you read only one serious nonfiction book this year, this should be the one.

This book is a collection of theoretical summaries, reports, analyses, and strategies all quite useful to anyone interested in generating some thinking and action around change. The team of five writers (Peter Senge, Richard Ross, Bryan Smith, Charlotte Roberts, and Art Kleiner) provide some original work, but also serve as editors to a vast quantity of material drawn from practitioners, theorists, and writers in the field of organizational improvement. According to Senge, "great teams are learning organizations - groups of people who, over time, enhance their capacity to create what they truly desire to create." (p.18) This book is really about creating and building great teams. The learning organization develops its ability to reflect on, discuss, question, and change its current and past practices. To do this, people and groups in the organization need to meaningfully pursue the study and practice of the five disciplines - personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking.

The learning organization - Senge's vision for the productive, competitive, and efficient institutions of the future - is in a continuous state of change. Four fundamental questions continuously serve to check and guide a group's learning and improvement (see page 49): (1) Do you continuously test your experiences? ("Are you willing to examine and challenge your sacred cows - not just during crises, but in good times?") (2) Are you producing knowledge? ("Knowledge, in this case, means the capacity for effective action.") (3) Is knowledge shared? ("Is it accessible to all of the organization's members?") (4) Is the learning relevant? ("Is this learning aimed at the organization's core purpose?") If these questions represent the organization's compass, the five disciplines are its map.

Each of the five disciplines is explained, and elaborated in its own lengthy section of the book. In the section on "Systems Thinking" (a set of practices and perspectives, which views all aspects of life as inter-related and playing a role in some larger system), the authors build on the idea of feedback loops (reinforcing and balancing) and introduce five systems archetypes. They are: "fixes that backfire", "limits to growth", "shifting the burden", "tragedy of the commons", and "accidental adversaries". In the section on "Personal Mastery", the authors argue that learning starts with each person. For organizations to learn and improve, people within the organization (perhaps starting with its core leadership) must learn to reflect on and become aware of their own core beliefs and visions. In "Mental Models", the authors argue that learning organizations need to explore the assumptions and attitudes, which guide their institutional directions, practices, and strategies. Articles on scenario planning, the ladder of inference, the left-hand column, and balancing inquiry and advocacy offer practical strategies to investigate our personal mental models as well as those of others in the organization. In "Shared Vision", the authors make the case for the stakeholders of an organization to continually adapt their vision ("an image of a desired future"), values ("how we get to travel to where we want to go"), purpose ("what the organization is here to do"), and goals ("milestones we expect to reach before too long"). The section offers many strategies and perspectives on how to move an organization toward continuous reflection. In "Team Learning", the authors rely mostly on the work of William Isaacs and others, and make a case for educating organization members in the processes and skills of dialogue and skillful discussion.

This book is enlightening and informative. It has already found a place on my shelf for essential reference books.

Bridging the gap between text and context, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook offers everyone a deep and refreshing look at what work can be and should be. The authors ground their stories, examples, exercises in five conceptual touchstones--personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking. And these disciplines accurately reveal three core tasks in leadership: looking at self, developing others, and seeing the larger picture in order to chart a meaningful course. Stories enliven the ideas while examples and exercises offer practical models to use in any organization. Generous side margins, different colored ink, and graphic icons are visual treats as well as immediate graphic guides. And the narrative references to related issues make reading the book more intuitive, more interesting.

In fact, these physical details model the whole point of the book--that learning is essential for sustainable growth, for organizational and personal development.

Senge's second serving of the Learning Organization is filled with practical tips and real-life examples from companies and organizations that have embraced the teachings of the Learning Organization successfully.

The Book is a collaboration of several writers who do a superb job of unraveling the web that is the learning organization. At times, it may seem to the reader that the book is a labyrinth of disjointed concepts and ideas. However, if you have read 'The Fifth Discipline' you will find no problems following the concepts introduced. In fact, you will even understand why the writers have chosen to introduce them in that fashion. If you have not read "The Fifth Discipline', do not despair, it will take a little longer to get 'the whole picture'.
The Book is divided into 8 main sections:

1) Getting Started addresses the basic concepts and ideas of the Learning Organization.
2) Systems Thinking (the fifth discipline) - Many people have argued that Senge should have delegated the fifth discipline until the end, however, without Systems Thinking, your vision is disjointed and incomplete.
3) Personal Mastery covers the area of individual development and learning. The chapters here are among the most valuable in the area of self-growth and self-improvement.
4) Mental Models - These are the pictures that you have in your head which represent reality.
5) Shared Vision - You've seen the whole picture, you've developed and you understand how you see the world. Now you need to find a common cause with the rest of the people in your organization, something that you all work for.
6) Team Learning - As you work with other people in teams or groups, you need to pass the stuff that you have learnt and the wisdom you've acquired to others. At this stage, the learning is no longer that of the individual, but the group.
7) Arenas of Practice - (Self explanatory)
8) Frontiers - Where do we go from here.

If you are interested in development, learning, growth, leadership, gaining a competitive edge whether at an organizational or personal level, then this book is for you. In fact, I'd venture to say that this is book is for everyone.

This book is not for people in the business of developing web sites for a living. The table of contents looks to be so promising with things like emotionally designed interface, etc. In the book, most concepts are not described well at all or they are described seemingly by someone who's just getting their feet wet in the biz. I hardly ever find a web book that I don't glean a couple interesting tidbits from but this is my first one.

It's great if you're getting your feet wet, not so great if they're already wet.

The web is a constantly evolving metaphor for electronic, people-less commerce. As the recent dot com bomb has illustrated, there's nothing magic about a web site. You have to treat customers like customers and provide a service. Customers don't care if you have trouble setting up a database or links between your phone lines and your ecommerce site. What they expect, they get -- or they go away, never to return. The Eternal Ecustomer does a masterful job at peeling through the layers of jargon and hype that cover the web and exposes the bare nerves of the business-customer relationship. After reading this book, you can't help but "get" why the latest downturn in web stocks was inevitable. IT also illustrates why the winners will be playing by the rules defined here.

Emotionally Intelligent Interfaces are definitely the next face of the Web. It's just a shame that it's been so long in coming. Eternal Ecustomer does a fine job of introducting the concepts involved in creating and usine intelligent interfaces, synthetic people, and intelligent data warehouses,in a way that is very easy to digest, even by computer novices. I've used the book to help my customer "get" what internet-based service is all about. I recommend the book highly.

This book is fantastic. It gives an inside look at each player to pass through the National team program for an extended period of time. Includes player interviews and a sort of "rap"sheet for each player, like their most embaressing soccer moment, their favorite number, and other interesting facts. I would recommend this to anyone who is interested in learning more about the Womens National team. Don't Miss it!!

If you are a fan of any player on the US womens team and wonder what they do in there life (Yes they do have a life out side of soccer)this is the book for you. Your brothers picking on you saing girls cant play sports. Will now you can prove him wrong. Hand him this book tell him to read the first page, it will make him think twice before he makes fun of womens soccer again. This book has each player tell about there life in and out of soccer. They tell of all the interesting hobbies they have and some of am even rat on there team mates. If you buy this book and dont enjoy reading it you are not a true womens soccer fan.

If u don't have this book, u must buy it because i never liked soccer untill my friend bought me it. I was hooked. I read it 5 times that is how good it was. Please buy the book. If u don't, you are missing out....... BIG time.