Like one of the other people who wrote in, I too have not yet read Goodnight, Mister Lenin. I have just finished reading A Fortune Teller Told Me and it's been the first book in a long time where I wanted to read every single word rather than just scan through. Tiziano writes as if he is speaking, and this, together with his travels and constant search for answers which lead him on a colourful and fascinating journey, left me looking for more of his books. Mr Terzani you're a gem, thank you for sharing.

OK so I haven't ready the Lenin book, but I just finished, A Fortune-Teller Told Me also by Terzani and I would call it my favorite book! On a recent trip to Singapore and Seoul, I was lucky enough to find the book in a Singapore bookstore. It was quite a wonderful surprise as I had been so deeply saddened by the Westernization of the world. I had practiced many Eastern cultural behaviors only to find them worshipping anything Western. I found myself very aligned with Terzani's thinking and longed to go to the same "fortune tellers" as he did. I traveled to each spot with TT and fell in love with every adventure, even the air-conditioned island he was so happy to leave. This is a must read book and I plan to read everything else I can find by TT. I wonder if he ever thinks of coming to the US, although I don't blame him if he doesn't. Brilliant in every way!!!!

I have never read a book that I have been unable to put down, and upon finishing - picked up a pencil, flipped back to page 1 and started again, underlining as I went. I have read the book 4 times now. Terzani is a brilliant and extreemly knowlegable writer who has embraced his love for SE Asia and put it to words so brilliantly. For me, a young Italian traveller living in Bangkok - this book is unsurpassable for ANYBODY who has visited South East Asia and fallen in love with it's charming and heart-warming character (excluding Singapore - Of course!). PLEASE contact me anybody is able to get copies of China: Behind the Forbidden Door, or Goodnight Mr Lenin.

Shirer's solid narration on the troubled history of the French Third Republic (1870-1940) explains how decades of monarchism, anti-semitism, and bitter divisions weakened France and contributed to the 1940 collapse. When Shirer covers the 1940 debacle in the later chapters, it seems almost pre-destined. I liked the author's strong attention to the 1930's, when weak French governments failed to confront a re-arming Nazi Germany. William L. Shirer (1904-93) was a U.S. journalist in Europe from 1925-40 who later spent years researching the rather baffling subject of the decline of France. This volume doesn't quite match his "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," but Shirer's immense talents are evident, and Charles De Gaulle complimented his objectivity.

In the opinion of this reader, Shirer has coupled his splendid evocative power of language with a subject worthy of it; the fall of France in 1940 remains one of the greatest defeats ever suffered by the champions of liberty. If you wish you understand the Third Republic with all the depth of complexity that Shirer intended, reading the whole of this admittedly corpulent history will be well worth the effort. However, with a familiarity with the history of France, reading the prologue and the last 50 pages or so will transport you to Paris in spring of 1940, as the government split and the Petain decided that this time, unlike Verdun, "they shall... pass." While typing my tenth-grade history report at 4 in the morning, last May, I can still remember being moved to the depths of my soul by Shirer's eloquent and tragically beautiful portrayal of the fall of Liberty. If you love France, the war between freedom and oppression, or simply the erudite potency of Shirer's writing, "The Collapse of the Third Republic" is utterly indispensable.

Although not as famous as Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", this book is just as important. The book gives a survey of the history of the French Third Republic from its founding in the aftermath of the humiliating defeat at the hands of Prussia in 1870, through its crisis in the Dreyfus Affair, victory in World War I and finally to the debacle of 1940. The author has the unique background of being both an accomplished journalist as well as a serious historian which gives the book a very readable style. What particularly appealed to me is his moral passion. He is no "objective, neutral observer". He is a Francophile who is willing to expose the terrible weaknesses that brought down the country he loves so much. The fact that he, as a newspaper correspondent, personally witnessed the horrors of Nazi Germany before the war gives a fervor to his writing that is refreshing in this day and age of viewing history as merely a comparison of the various "narratives" of the different sides in a conflict.
Shirer begins by pointing out the important fact that at the constituent assembly that wrote the constitution for the Third Republic, the majority of the delegates were, in fact, monarchists, but they could not decide if the king should be from the House of Bourbon or Orleans, so a republican form of government was chosen as a compromise. Thus, the new regime started out on the wrong foot as something no one really wanted. Throughout its 70 years history there were always strong anti-republican movements that threatened the very existence of the regime, chronic political instability and resistance to necessary reforms (for example, women were given the vote only after World War 2). In the military realm, the exhaustion resulting from the terrible losses in World War 1 combined with a reluctance to change the strategies that worked then and obliviousness to major technological changes in armored and aerial warfare led to the ossification of the army high command and the development of the "Maginot mentality".
In spite of all the disadvantages, when the German invasion began in 1940, the French stood a good chance of halting the invader. It has been repeatedly demostrated in modern warfare that the defense is very strong and that the attacker usually needs to have a clear superiority in order to prevail. Shirer demolishes the myths propagated by French Commander Weygand and others that the Germans had overwhelming superiority. In numbers of men and tanks the two sides were pretty evenly matched and the French tanks were of superior quality. The French officer corps was also much more experienced than that of the Germans because of the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty. The Germans took unbelievably huge risks in mounting their main attack through the Ardennes where there were few roads and some well-aimed air or artillery attacks could have upset the whole German plan. It is true that the Luftwaffe had aerial superiority but the author shows that large numbers of French aircraft were inexplicably never sent into battle (the French Air Force had more aircraft available at the end of the campaign than at the beginning!) French troops fought valiantly in many engagements, especially in holding the perimeter at Dunkirk allowing many more men to escape back to England. This disproves the claim that all French felt resentment to the British or were not willing to fight to save their country.
So, the question remains, what brought about the sudden collapse? Once Petain started talking about an armistice, resistance collapsed. The military setbacks were exploited by unscrupulous anti-republican leaders like Petain, Laval and Weygand in order to overthrow the hated republican regime.
The disgrace of France in 1940 was not that they were defeated on the battlefield in metropolitan France. The British, Russians and Americans also suffered grievous setbacks early in the war before turning things around. The disgrace is that (1) they refused to continue the war from their colonies in North Africa where they could be protected by their powerful navy, (2) they accepted humiliating, immoral armistice terms that forced 1.5 million French POW's to remain interned for the duration of the war and agreeing to hand over refugees who had found haven from the Nazis in democratic France, many of whom were subsequently murdered and (3) the pro-republican leaders (especially the Socialists) allowed themselves to be meekly stampeded into voting the republican regime out of existence and granted unlimited dictatorial powers to Petain who then set up a new regime called the "French State" (instead of "Republic") which instituted a totalitarian regime that ultimately arrested the former leaders of the republic and other opponents (even murdering some of them like Mandel and Zay), handed Jews over to the Nazis to be annihilated and, finally, openly collaborating with them to the point of even agreeing to supplying the Germans with forced labor. Shirer mentions at the end of the book that many patriotic Frenchmen, years after the war, felt that their leaders were right in capitulating because "it saved another bloodbath like that of 1914-1918". Shirer points out that France's freedom was restored by the sacrifice of millions of Russian, British and American lives (among others). I think this obtuseness, or, alternately, a strong feeling of shame, explains why many Frenchmen have such a prickly attitude to Americans.
The lesson of this book is that a nation can have all the material, technological and military advantages but without internal solidarity, a sense of national dignity and a will to make sacrifices for its freedom, it can fall in an instant. This should serve as a warning for future generations.

...The author's ideas on the origins of the Slovenian people are badly researched, lazy, and basic. Certainly undeserving of any words bigger than 'bad', 'lazy,' and 'basic.'

The rest of it is quite good I guess, noting there's few reasonable attempts in English at a book on Slovenia...

If this third edition of Lonely Planet Slovenia is anything like the first, it warrants a complete overhaul of the section entitled "WW II & the Partisan Struggle." Much misinformation has been disseminated since the end of that war, and only recently has the truth emerged concerning the true patriots of Slovenia. It is obvious that the author was given false and outdated information, and he therefore unwittingly perpetuates the myth of the Slovenian "collaborators."

I had no choice - this was the only guide book on Slovenia in the bookshop last year (1997). But boy, what a guide book! In fact, I would rate it the best guide book I've ever read. It had excellent information, including hotel fax number, which was a great help. We also had two local contacts in Ljubljana who told us where to visit. When they read this book they were impressed by how thorough it was. The route they suggested was exactly the same one written in the book. One of them even asked if he could have the book after we're done with it! (The LP guide book on Austria, which we also used for the same trip, was not nearly as good.) One of the hotels it recommended was the Jadran Hotel in Bled, which was an extention of the Grand Hotel Toplice but cost much less. We had a room whose balcony faces the lake. Oh, what a view! I highly recommend a visit to Slovenia, and this book. Follow whatever is suggested in it, and you are in for a treat! One suggestion: most hotels now have e-mail addresses. It would be great if they were published in the guide book along with the phone and fax numbers. --Leslie Gabriel

William Duiker researched extensively thru all available archives to compile all the information into this book about Ho Chi Minh, the myth and the patriot. If the readers enjoyed every little details about the developments of Uncle Ho, parties that he set up, meetings that he attended, negotiations that took place, etc., you would love this book. But for someone like myself who wanted to learn about Uncle Ho and Vietnam along the way, I find the book to be very time consuming to read and heavy handed to remember all those party names, Vietnamese names, small towns names. But the author did provide the readers with a heavy dose of pictures, maps of Vietnams in different periods, close ups of areas such as Dien Bien Phu which was significant for the creation of the modern Vietnam. In this book, we read about Uncle Ho's humble upbringing; his brief & tragic love life; his capture in Hong Kong which would almost cost him his life; his tireless efforts within the jungles trying to gain local support from small villages for his small but growing fast army; his extensive travel abroad; the exploitation of his own image as a simple person leading a simple life but fighting tireless for the betterment of his people; his assistance of the United States during the World War 2 campaign and along the way, he earned respects of many Americans but working relationships couldn't be carried thru due to the changes of Presidents; his pragmatism in clinging to countries that were willing to help him in attaining independence from France; and later on, his shrewdness in playing off a country with the other to obtain assistance to reunite North & South as one Vietnam entity; his last will to be cremated not adhered to but ended up embalmed in a Mausoleum. Many decisions he had made, some rite & some wrong & towards the end, the author analysed if Uncle Ho is in fact a Communist or a patriot. In the book, it said that despite Uncle Ho is not as revered by the younger Vietnamese generations these days, and that his legacy is not remembered in the South as much as in the North, his contribution towards Vietnam and that region is unmistakable, and the greatness of him doing anything for his country is to be admired and revered of. It also said that his replacements such as Le Duan simply lacked the charisma and the actions taken by him was bordering towards extremes rather than moderation, and therefore, further along, the support for his party seemed to wane, and the impacts caused by Le Duan's actions simply devastated Vietnam, and thus, the exodus of boatpeople, seeking a better life elsewhere. In this biography, readers would also understand why United States wouldn't intervene in France's colonialism of Vietnam after the World War 2 as it required its available force there to prevent the spreading of Communist power along the North, both USSR & China. But later, as the red power is gaining in force along the North, only then, the United States intervened in the South to prevent communism to be spread all around the world. But that was a marriage in hell with the Dien brothers as they supported the Catholics and therefore, they had a bad blood with the Buddhists and corruption was rampant, and that the population there was suffering. Moreover, with Khrushev in power in Russia, with his denouncement of Stalin, he wanted to keep the peace around the region & therefore, refused to endorse Vietnam engaging in war with the United States but China, on the other hand, reckoned a war was imminent and all this while, Uncle Ho, wished to keep concile both countries as inner conflict would give the Communism a bad name. Should readers simply want to learn about Vietnam, I do recommend another great book, which certain parts of the book is used as excerpts in Ho CHi Minh biography anyway: The Sacred Willow written by Duong Van Mai Elliott. It told the story of a Vietnamese family spanning 4 generations and by reading the plights of the family members who comprised of both Northerners and Southerners and the situations happening around them, you would get a feel of the developments of Vietnam towards the end. A superb effort.

This is a thoroughly researched biography of one of the most important figures of our time. It is well balanced and provides insight into Ho's political, psychological and personal life. All other English language books on Ho pale in comparison. Here we learn of Ho's days in Moscow, as a Comintern agent, his life in China, his struggle to free Vietnam from colonialism and his leadership in the wars of Vietnam. It explicitly leaves the reader to make her/his own decision on issues regarding Ho. Nationalist? Vietnamese Patriot? Democratic Socialist? Communist Puppet? You decide. But, YOU must read this book!!

At times while tracing the life of Ho Chi Minh, William Duiker must have felt like the French security service in the 1930's. Even as a biographical subject, Ho remains elusive, difficult to grasp and hard to capture. Yet, this biography goes a long and powerful way in demystifying an extraordinarily complex figure.

Duiker makes a cogent case for Ho as a genuine revolutionary bent essentially on the independence of Vietnam. His contention that Ho was not simply a nationalist pragmatically using Marxist-Leninism is persuasive. Yet, it also appears tragically clear that Ho was willing to put his enormous influence behind a rapprochment with the U.S. in the late 40's. An opportunity to avoid the subsequent catastrophe for both sides was lost.

Perhaps the strongest portions of the book deal with Duiker's explication of Ho's extraordinary ability to perceive the consequences of the global political scene; his ability to divine both the long-term and short-term consequences to Vietnam of the actions of the major powers. Additionally, Duiker's book is very insightful regarding Ho's position within his own party. He was essentially a moderate who had to negotiate with radical hard-liner's. One could see him as a victim of the success of his own party.

If the book has a failing, that failing cannot be laid at the feet of the author. In reading about Ho, one cannot help but feel that an enormous amount of information will never be available--either because it no longer exists, because it does not serve the purposes of those with the information to release it or that, in the case of China for instance, it will never allow access to significant archival material. Consequently, in reading about Ho I had the sense that I would never know his complete story. (Virtually nothing exists apparently about his personal life in this book. I am sure that is partially related to the fact that Ho's life was the movement he created, but some of it is undoubtedly because that part of his life was intentionally kept out of view). Nonetheless, the book is painstakingly annotated and detailed, and Duiker undoubtedly knows his subject.

The final quibble I have with the book is that it seemed oddly sanitized of violence. After all, Ho's actions led to conflicts over 30 years leading to millions of deaths. No doubt the book could not dwell on the destructiveness of the two Indochinese wars. Nonetheless, the book should have given more time to the consequences of the sacrifices Ho seemed to eternally preach. (Coincidentally, on the evening I finished the book, I read an article in the New Yorker regarding the longest held American POW. It was a good reminder of the horror of the conflict.)

This book deserves the highest compliment: it raises so many more fascinating questions about Ho and Vietnam, not because they were not adequately addressed, but rather because a great subject well-documented is endlessly fascinating. Its too bad Mr. Duiker is not available for Q & A.

This is an excellent book about what took place in Russia during the 1990s. It is perhaps a bit too detailed and focused on personalities a bit too much. But overall, it is an informative read. I particularly enjoyed the chapter about Russian writers. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know more about the characters who shaped the post-Soviet Russia, and about the character of Russia itself.

With the release of Resurrection: The Struggle for a New Russia, David Remnick further strengthens his reputation as one of America's premier journalists. The book is the sequel to Lenin's Tomb, Remnick's superbly written Pulitzer Prize winning account of the fall of the Soviet Union. Resurrection continues where Lenin's Tomb left off, brilliantly chronicling Russia's painful effort to emerge from under the rubble of a collapsed system and recreate itself.

Remnick lived and worked in Moscow between 1988 and 1991 as a Washington Post correspondent, witnessing and writing about the last days of the Soviet Empire. During his tenure at the Post and in more recent years, Remnick has traveled extensively throughout Russia and the former Soviet Republics, conducting countless interviews with key Russian political figures, businessmen, cultural icons, and ordinary citizens. Fluent in Russian, he possesses an impressive depth and breadth of knowledge of Russian and Soviet history, politics, and culture--tools he effectively employs to enhance the reader's understanding of events and personalities in modern-day Russia. In Resurrection, history, politics, and biography are skillfully woven together to create a beautiful, tightly knit journalistic tapestry.

Not merely content with recounting events, Remnick probes the deeper currents that underlie these events and give them their meaning. His writing is vivid and passionate, and his sharp journalistic instincts and keen understanding of human nature enable him to perceive and analyze crucial details.

Penetrating, insightful, and tragic, his account of the war in Chechnya is Remnick at his best. He traces the Chechen struggle with Russia from the nineteenth century to the present, a legacy of Czarist and Soviet brutality and domination culminating in Stalin's 1944 mass expulsion of the Chechen population to the wastelands of Kazakstan. He further describes the influence the Chechens have had on the Russian psyche, as depicted in the literature of Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, and others. "In verse and prose, the Chechen becomes more of a trope than a man; he is nature itself--untamable, wild, raw" (267). Or, as Remnick also writes, "In the Russian imagination... Chechnya is an obsession, an image of Islamic defiance, an embodiment of the primitive, the devious, the elusive" (266).

It is this defiant, mafia-ridden tiny republic that Russian President Boris Yeltsin sought to tame in November 1994, an enterprise that was to take no more than two hours, according to then Defense Minister Pavel Grachev. In the weeks before the conflict, conservatives in the Kremlin elite--including Grachev, Yeltsin's bodyguard Alexander Korzakhov, and Deputy Prime-Minister Oleg Soskovets--convinced Yeltsin to go ahead with plans to bomb the republic into submission. Yeltsin decided that he needed a short, victorious war to boost popular morale, and regain the support of a constituency that expressed disappointment with his policies at the ballot box in November 1993, when Vladimir Zhironovsky's virulently nationalistic Liberal Democratic party won more seats in the Duma than any other. But as has been the case before in Russian history, short, victorious wars are usually neither short nor victorious.

Yeltsin's complex character is explored at length in Resurrection. His drinking problem, bouts with depression, boorish behavior, and failing health are common knowledge to most Russians. On a deeper level, Remnick analyzes the dual nature of Yeltsin's personality. His authoritarian impulses--instilled in him by decades of serving the Soviet state and most evident by his actions in Chechnya--are at constant war with the more recently developed reformist, market-oriented Yeltsin who helped topple the Soviet regime in 1991.

Indeed, the book abounds with colorful, substantive portraits of many of Russia's well-known contemporary figures: the blunt but honest General Lebed, who brokered the peace in Chechnya but was fired from Yeltsin's staff for insubordination; the theater choreographer turned wealthy businessman Vladimir Gusinsky; the great Slavophile author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who condemned the cruelty and hypocrisy of the Soviet government in his books but now is nothing more than an anachronism to most Russians; and the vociferously anti-Semitic, nationalistic buffoon Vladimir Zhironovsky.

Through brief biographies of these and other contemporary figures, Remnick paints a vivid picture of current political, social, and economic conditions in Russia.

His diagnosis of Russia's present state is understandably cynical. The transition to a parliamentary democracy with a market economy has been painfully uneven and slow. Corrupt oligarchies rule the nation's economy; social and economic inequalities abound; the rule of law--or what exists of it--is openly flouted; and the war in Chechnya has claimed 80,000 lives. Russia is in crisis, adrift in a sea of uncertainty and despair.

Can Russia change? Remnick is cautiously optimistic. He points to Russia's potential and the progress that has already been made since the deep historical rupture of 1991. The Russian population is 99% literate, and although the economy is still in shambles, inflation has steadily decreased, while privatization continues. Only a few years after the fall of Communism, political parties vie with one another for constituents, and a relatively free press is thriving.

Only time and the further suffering of the Russian people will verify Mr. Remnick's prognosis.

This book bills itself as a history of the past 10 years after the fall of the Soviet Empire, and it does just that. There is no denying that the author, David Remnick is the king of current Russian society structure. The book not only focuses on who has power and what hey are doing with it, but it digs deeper down to the Joe everybody and what it is like to live in a country that continues to fall into lower and lower standards of living. As far as who has the power now, that is a mix of old political cronies and new upstart organized crime figures with a few brave capitalists thrown into the mix.

This is a well thought out and constructed book and keeps you interested. Just when you have had a good dose of heavy economic issues we go to the war in Chechnya, which keeps the pace up. He has peppered the book with interesting interviews and massive dose of good old fashion reporting. You can tell he worked very hard on this book, there is nothing left in the air. Each conclusion or statement is backed up in the writing. You also get the true love he has for the country and the people, the emotion comes through the writing and makes the book more then just a historical report. The writing is very good and challenging, this is not a book you can read and watch TV at the same time, you really need to and want to sink your teeth into it. If you are looking to learn something and enjoy it at the same time then this would be a very good buy.

Roaming the Internet a couple of months ago I stumbled across "The House of the Vestals", a new title by Steven Saylor. Ordering the book via Amazon.com was a new experience and proved to be both simple and efficient. During my holidays in Italy - where else - I found the time to read this collection of short stories that provides us with some answers as to how Gordianus, the main character in Saylor's "Roma Sub Rosa" sequel, got his nickname "the Finder". "Roma Sub Rosa" is set in the period in Western history wherein ancient Rome was getting ready to change its government from a tormented republic to an long-lasting empire. Saylor has a broad knowledge of the era and has the ability to remodel hints in history, mostly concerning events on the byways of time, to breath-taking mysteries. Saylor's books are interesting in that they provide the reader with more than just a whodunit plot. They alo give a lot of insight in both the po! litics and everyday life in Rome around 50 B.C. Saylor evidently needs all the pages of a novel to elaborate both a gripping plot and the historical setting. He isn't able to do this within the confines of a short story. Sure, it's all there: the humor, sex and violence that the cover promises. But each plot of "House of the Vestals" is so thin that it left me with a feeling of "is that all there is?". Still, I am looking forward to his next novel.

I can't get enough of Steven Saylor's Gordianus the Finder, and this marvelous collection of short stories was like opening a box of Godiva chocolates - each one is delicious! I have read nearly all of the Roma Sub Rosa series featuring the wonderfully human, intelligent, and dedicated Gordianus, and come to think of him almost as an extended family member. For other Gordianus-aholics, this collection of stories nicely fills in the gaps left in the longer novels - finally we find out all about the night Catilina raped a Vestal...or did he? We hear Gordianus' sexy, sassy slave (now wife) tell tales of her native Alexandria, and we learn all about Lucius. But the best part of this collection is you need no previous experience with Gordianus to have a rollicking good time. As Gordianus winds through the streets of ancient Rome, exposing frauds, murderers, and thieves, you will be caught up in the spell Saylor's crisp writing always weaves. Warning: clear some shelf space. Once you're hooked on Gordianus, you'll want to read them all.

I've loved Steven W. Saylor's work even before he published under this name and his Gordianus series is better by far. This is actually a collection of 9 short stories, all of which were previously published in mystery magazines. All of the stories are good solid character pieces with mysterious happenings and detective work that makes sense for the time period involved (90-73 BCE). Several of the stories are told as stories by one character to another though several are also the ongoing investigations of the finder himself. Historians may cringe a bit but frankly, in this ancient historian's opinion, Saylor's series is about the best I have ever read particularly his portrayal of slavery, a human institution often misunderstood and misrepresented by modern Americans.

I never learned about the Armenian Genocide in school. I'd never heard about it until I read a book which mentioned it, sparking my curiosity enough to read this book. It's another tragic story of man's inhumanity to man. Very much like the Holocaust of WW II. The Armenians believed they were being relocated, but instead found themselves being forced to travel without food, water and sanitation. Along the way they were robbed of what few possessions they were allowed to take with them. They were tortured, raped, shot, tossed over cliffs and hurled down mountainsides. They were stripped of their clothing and forced to walk for days on end until they died from exposure to the elements. Men, women, children and the elderly were all subjected to the same obscene cruelties. The few bright spots in the book included Turks and Kurds who protected Armenians at their own expense, and Armenians who managed to survive terrible tragedies and come through it all still believing in a just God and in the essential goodness of their fellow man.

This book is an amazing compilation of first-hand accounts of the Armenian Genocide and other sources. The survivors interviewed, scattered all over and with such different paths all tell the same powerful events in which an innocent nation, an innocent minority, is led by the Ottoman Turkish government to its death. The poor, destitute survivors, many orphans, scattered around the world to this day, must live with their nightmares and the continued denial of the Turkish government. Well for all the millions the Turkish government has spent denying that the genocide ever happened, they can NEVER explain away the coinciding stories, the absolute truth of these 100 survivors. Thank you to the authors for bring this to us!

If you could give six stars, this book would get it. It should be required reading for high school or college students. It should be required reading for revisionist historians like Stanford Shaw, Bernard Lewis, Justin McCarthy, and Heath Lowry--or any other Turkish "historian". Putting aside all the politics and theories, this book simply focuses on the suffering of the Armenians who went through the Genocide of 1915. It is as much a sociology book as a historical one. The parallels between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust become obvious as one reads the accounts. It is an invaluable primary source for further study of the Armenian Genocide, as most of the survivors are dying off. It is an easy read, but you will probably find yourself disgusted or teary-eyed during much of it. It is objective, simply telling the facts, including descriptions of good, helpful Turks. If you know little about the subject, this is a great place to start. For those who get to caught up in the politics of events, this is a great book to remember the horrific suffering of these human beings. And for those revisionists and neo-Young Turks who still deny the wholesale extermination of the Armenians, I can't think of a better book to force someone to start accepting the truth.

I read the Soong Dynasty and found that the author was not very objective in presenting the facts. He is more suited to a fiction novel writer rather than a history non-fiction novelist. He includes his judgment on the Chinese practices and uses adjectives and verbs that incite emotion rather than an objective account. This is not something in which a non-fiction writer should be indulging. This novel has been listed as a bestseller and I believe that it is only because there is no other book that has attempted to tell the story in a more objective light. I do not think that this novel gives the reader an objective view of the events of Chinese History during a difficult time for China. If any reader uses this as a base to understand Chinese people or Chinese politics, then they are going to be sorely misled. Plus politics in every country is the same. You can read about US politics or UK politics and understand that it works the same way in every other country. Maybe some countries do things with more finesse, but the individual greed and selfishness is the same.

Fiction novelists such as Pearl Buck and James Clavell do a far better job of showing in an objective light of the Chinese lifestyle, practices, and politics. I wish that there were some other account written by Chinese people actually close to the family translated for the English reader to give them a better understanding of the Soong Family. When reading US History, we read it from a US Historian perspective. I believe that a country's history is best understood if written by their own country's historian. When a historian from a different culture writes about another country's history, they do not get the real essence of the events or the reason for such behavior as they do not have an understanding of the culture and pass judgment on the culture based on their own framework which is not objective either.

If you consider reading this book, I would think twice before wasting my time in reading something that gives no objective view on the matter. It would be better not to be biased by this novel and have an incorrect view. As it will color, your perspective on Chinese people and a part of their history

...about the powerful Soong family. It's so easy to fall under the spell of this seemingly untouchable family who appeared to have it all--wealth, power, education, etc.--but we are reminded of the shady dealings and deeds that catapulted the family to its near-invincible status and its iconic place in world history.

If this book sparks your interest, definitely try out an even better read--George Kerr's Formosa Betrayed. Kerr's book focuses on the early history of the Taiwan-China conflict: the turnover from Japanese Imperial rule, the subsequent and tumultuous Nationalist/KMT government, the 2-28 Incident and March Massacre, and the U.S.'s part throughout it all. Kerr's book is all-encompassing, but as regards the Soongs, it reminds you that beneath the glamour and wealth of people like the Soongs was the unscrupulous trading that bankrupted millions while feeding personal family fortunes. (Specifically look for allusions to T.V. Soong's influence on the then-impending economic collapse of Taiwan, and you'll never again be dazzled by the Soongs' bright lights and propaganda show.) Read it, not because you dare, but because you CAN.

Controversial as the subject matter may be, Sterling Seagrave's 1982 book, "The Soong Dynasty" certainly is an interesting and behind-the-scenes view of the gangs and warlords that Chiang Kai-shek relied on to attain power and to stay in power in Nationalist China before the Revolution of 1949.

Sterling Seagrave rightly comes by his ability to dig behind the scenes on the subject matter of the book. He is an investigative journalist and was raised in the Orient. All of his books deal with oriental subjects and are written in an attractive manner which keeps the reader anxious to read more.

Today there are few travelers to the Island of Hispaniola compared to other Caribbean Islands. For those of you looking for a travel log you would be better served with Bradt's "Haiti & the Dominican Republic". If your are looking for information on the history, culture and politicts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic then this is the most complete and accurate book I have found.

I'm a frequent traveler to Hispaniola and specifically to Haiti where I lead several missionary trips a year. People who go on these trips always have a lot of questions and my most FAQ's are; "Why are they so poor? Why doesn't their Government help? What is the US doing?", etc. Michele Wucker takes all this dirty laundry out and waves it for everyone to see. She offers objective comparison of the cultures and why there is so much strife. The book is a compassionate dialog of history, fact and folklore that I couldn't put down. She spares no one and provides an honest and (I think) accurate review of all three countries involved (Haiti, The Dominican Republic, and The United States).

After living for almost 28 years in the Dominican Republic, I thought there was not much I could learn about the culture and peoples of Hispaniola, but Michele Wucker's Why the Cocks Fight has opened up a whole new chapter in my knowledge of this enchanting island. Her choice of the cockfights as a metaphore to illustrate the island's struggle through its five centuries of history, is a brilliant way to describe the complex dynamics at work in the two societies trapped within it.

For some of my fellow Dominicans, this book will be a tough drink to swallow, because Michele, in this well researched work, has confronted the ghosts that have haunted Hispaniola for 500 years of history, and that have bound together the paths of these two nations. In the early 1900's, Dominican poet Juan Antonio Alix, in his work "El Negro detrás de la Oreja" (The Black Behind your Ear) joked about how every Dominican, no matter how white the color of his skin, could find a black ancestor in his family. That is a truth that Dominicans do not want to face, and something that Michele has shown in her book.

Michele's accounts of the treatment of Haitian workers by the Dominican Sugar Cane Establishement is an accurate portrail of a situation which unfortunately roams over the heads of an otherwise friendly and sometimes naive Dominican population. But, as she well points out, the Haitians keep on crossing the frontier with the Dominican Republic, regardless of the abuses, because the alternative is the shark infested waters of the Atlantic ocean.

Why the Cocks Fight is a must read for anybody interested in Hispaniola, but also for those interested on the effects of immigration in the United States and the transformation of societies and cultures whose inhabitants have been exposed to the "american way".

I can't wait for her next book.

If you happen to be like me, you know far less about Haiti and the Dominican Republic than you know about, say, Italy and Greece -- even though the island of Hispaniola lies just a short flight from American shores. This book educated me, and entertained me as well. In the human tone of a journalist rather than the pedantic language of a historian, the book uses the island's popular sport -- cockfighting -- as a metaphor for the two nations and their bloody political history. This book is a model of how to introduce someone to another culture. I recommend it if you have any interest in these nations.

I was lucky enough to be introduced to this book by attending one of Frances Sherwood's readings. So I can hear the whole story in her voice, which is an added pleasure for me.

This book is a great read, whether you generally go for historical fiction or not. It will keep you in your chair turning pages until long after your hot tea goes cold. The characters are engaging, wonderfully strange at times, and their lives are moving. Sherwood captures the intensity of life in the threatened Jewish community of Prague. The suspense created by their uncertain fate keeps the story rolling. Emperor Rudolph II is one of the most memorable quirky characters you're likely to encounter. He's both an historical personage and a freshly realized person. The colorful historical detail is balanced by a powerful story that has the authority and charm of a folk tale (for adults). The book has received endless praise in the major reviews. Richard Eder in the NY Times makes the point that the book is wise as well as fun. That's true. On the other hand, don't let the fact that the book is a brilliant piece of "literature" scare you away from the pure reading pleasure. There's plenty of fantasy and drama in this book, too.

To be sure, tourism in Prague must have increased after publication of this book. As a result of Ms. Sherwood's vivid descriptions, Prague becomes the main character in this story.

In the acknowledgements (how many novels have you read that have acknowledgments?), Ms. Sherwood calls this a historical fantasy -- a perfect description. As she explains, some of the characters and events are historical, some fictional, some historical who have been somewhat fictionalized. Which parts are historical and which fictionalized is not really important, the engrossing story stands on its own merits.

The Book of Splendor -- even the title evokes a sense of mystery -- has all the elements of a great movie: engrossing plot, detailed and sympathetic characters, colorful, even exotic location, and more than a little mystery. Not mystery as in Perry Mason, but mystery as in an exploration of the complexity of human relationships, the wonder of self-sacrifice and (not to be flippant) the meaning of life. All of this is overlaid with the uneasy co-existence of Christianity and Judaism in turn-of-the-17th Century Prague.

And, then, there is the Golem, a mythical creature brought into being where the land and water come together, by means of spell and incantation. That he isn't a man is clear, but, is that because he is less than a man -- or more?

Fluid prose, subtle symbolism and well-balanced, intertwining story-lines: Ms. Sherwood handles it all, and beautifully.

Book of Splendor transports the reader to a different time and place. The historical and magical details are precisely drawn and you are swept into the court and ghetto of Prague in 1601. The love story between the Golem and the heroine is bewitching balanced by the threat of extinction of the Jewish community. For those who love historical fiction, magic, and romance, this is a must read.