This was a successful chronicle of Jefferson's policy and his role in building a new republic. A wonderful read that brings history to life!

Excellent survey of how the founders idealized the future of America as contraposed against the "old world" as well as how, even in the early stages of the Country, the founder's time was idealized as a kind of ever receeding eden to which the country aspires to return to. You can hear the echos of this today in family values rhetoric, the contining (if anachronistic) idealization of the family farm and "main street." McCoy sets up the American experience as a continuing striving to re-create that idealized world of the founders that never really existed. Central that idealized conception was the idea of "virtue" among all of the citizens that the founders saw as a pre-requisite of a lasting republic. That is a republic could only work if its citizens were "masters and slaves of none"--this is where the ideal of the single yoeman farmer of Jefferson comes in. Only with this economic self-sufficiency, the founders thought, could citizens act for the common good. This is why it is often said that the founders didn't like or anticpate poltical parties--they felt that in this ideal republic, the citizens would always abandon their self interest. McCoy also talks about how important it was to inculcate this vision of the way that the repulbic "should be" throough educational exhortation and poltical economics (open land in the west)so that future generations would both understand their vision and be able to take care of it.

In The Elusive Republic, Drew R. McCoy presents a compeling work on the development of America's political economy. After walking away from this book I felt that I had a good grasp on an area of Jeffersonian republicanism that I had not been exposed to. This is a book to hang on to.

So you have already seen the present and former capital, and now you would like to see the "real Russia", or you have adopted a child from Murmansk, or you are meeting a prospective bride from Magadan (don't laugh--whenever I answer questions from people who are traveling to regions outside of Moscow/St. Petersburg, 80% are going for adoption or marriage!). There are almost no current guidebooks to regions such as Perm, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, Volgograd, Crimea, Minsk, and the Far East. The 'Lonely Planet Russia, Ukraine & Belarus (Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, 2Nded)' has the largest area coverage of any guide currently published in English.

It is also ideal for those taking a river cruise between Moscow and St. Petersburg.

The coverage of the famed Trans-Siberian route is ok, although I think the 'Trans-Siberian Handbook' and 'Siberian Bam Guide : Rail, Rivers & Road' do a better job for those particular regions.

The Moscow/St. Petersburg sections are ok as well, although I think anyone spending more than a few days in each of those cities should look into guides that cover only those cities.

Restaurant, hotel and travel information are good, although could use more details. The history sections are adequate considering the scope of the book. Also, the twice-yearly updates at Lonely Planet's web site, although lacking in breadth and depth, provide some more timely information than what appears in the book.

My wife and I will be spending the summer in her home town of Kiev. Since I am an American, I want to go with as much information as possible so that I can get the most out of my time there. To this end, I bought Let's Go Eastern Europe 2000 and Lonely Planet's Russia, Ukraine & Belarus 2000 books. We have reviewed both books and with respect to Ukraine, we find Lonely Planet's travel guide superior. It contains a lot more information about Ukraine than the Let's Go book. Of course the Let's Go book covers many more countries than the Lonely Planet guide so this fact is not surprising.

However, the Lonely Planet book is also more up-to-date. For instance, the Let's Go book makes very wrong predictions about the presidential election that took place last fall. It also contains exchange rates from last summer.

Meanwhile Lonely Planet not only talks about the actual result of last fall's elections, it tells how this set of elections significantly affects the country. My wife's parents generally confirm the observations Lonely Planet offers. Lonely Planet's guidebook also mentions several news events that are only a few months old.

I am very satisfied with the Lonely Planet travel guide and considerably more satisfied than I am with a leading alternative. I am looking forward to using it.

This review is a follow-up to my May 13, 2000 review and only addresses the Ukraine portion of this guidebook. My wife and I did spend our entire summer in Ukraine and used this guidebook as our travel bible. We found the information up-to-date and accurate. We also generally agreed with the advise which I think is remarkable since, with three months there, my wife took me to see just about everything the book suggested doing in Kiev and many things it merely discussed but did not recommend. Additionally we also traveled throughout western Ukraine for two weeks. In fact, we went on a group tour of western Ukraine and our guidebook turned out to be a big hit. Everyone on the bus wanted to read it. A fellow traveler who had brought Let's Go Eastern Europe 2000 with him agreed that Lonely Planet was much better. Until something newer comes out, with respect to Ukraine guidebooks I think Lonely Planet can't be beat.

Michal Viewegh has some talent, and that's the best thing you could say about this book. Unfortunately, he is so impressed with his own cleverness that he cannot write a line that isn't somehow about himself (which must be a nuisance; he seems to believe, however, that an honestly confessed narcissism will provide simultaneous absolution). His gleeful use of the meta-narrative is tiresome; the book seems written by an adolescent student in a creative writing program (although one much smarter than Beata, the book's two-dimensional joke of a heroine) who had just read a Kundera book for the first time in his life, and was impressed out of his wits, but hated to admit it at the same time. Of little value as a social document (because most characters are roughly-sketched caricatures of caricatures), this is a mostly forgettable little book.

When the wife of the nameless narrator in BUG nudges him not to forget about his plan to "write a postmodern novel," the reader wonders if Viewegh isn't playing with us outright and letting us know that he plans to do precisely that. He plays with us in just this fashion throughout the entire book, probably snickering to himself, wishing he could see our reaction as we come across an abrupt authorial aside like "Gee, I really like writing on a computer" or "Hey--I really like this new screen saver!" Just the novel's catchy title and pink art-deco cover alone clue us to what lays inside. An opening quote from Czech writer Vera Linhartova claims that a story "can begin anywhere" since past events "...lie all around us in a continuous, formless mass without beginning or end." After this motto, BUG begins conventionally enough with our narrator receiving an unusual job offer to tutor creative writing to a troubled teenage girl which he reluctantly accepts. Starting with page one, we come across Viewegh's first postmodern gimmick in the narrative: seemingly random italicized phrases like "lucrative job" or "certain precautions." And just like in his first novel, Sightseers (very entertaining despite--or because of--its political incorrectness), the author includes meta-fiction elements within the story. Then again, perhaps postmodernism is the best tool to write about post-communist Prague. How else can a native Praguer view the onslaught of contemporary Western "luxury causes" like animal rights or the feminist movement? If BUG isn't exactly realism, perhaps we could also dub it satire, for Viewegh can be devastating when describing the Western onslaught into his native city. He does this mostly through the tutored pupil, Beata, who never really comes alive as a believable character in the story, unrealistically and flightily jumping from one social cause to the next, accompanied by her American boyfriend who works for the Prague Post (do we detect some unspoken scorn for the Post here?). Beata is not the only female character in BUG that comes across as flat and one-dimensional; the narrator's wife plays the part of the suspicious, harried hag and his female teaching peers are plain empty-headed. Just as the plot is improbable, Beata's father (who hires our narrator as her tutor) as a Mafioso figure is just as improbable; ditto her leap from catatonia to hysteria and finally, suicide. The mention of the latter is not a giveaway to the story's ending for Beata's suicide is divulged in the book's jacket copy as well as in the start of the story. Between beginning and end lies not only the account of his tutoring endeavours with Beata but general ongoing commentary about his life and culture in the "new" Czech Republic. We get ample info on the absurdities of the old Socialist school system and even a loyal declaration to Czech President Vaclav Havel. His "I would go through fire and water for our President..." speaks volumes about the author's feelings for his new President. Topical bits and pieces on Prague city life are ongoing with mention of actual places included throughout the story. Towards the end of the story when aspiring-writer Beata confesses "I'm only interested in destroying the traditional narrative form," we are not surprised. Viewegh does just this throughout BUG with all kinds of asides and gimmicks. He shows a delightful inconsistency toward Czech novelist Daniela Hodrova with an early veiled barb: "One day I hope to be able to understand the novels of Daniela Hodrova" but later on in the text incorporates a straightforward quote from Hodrova pertaining to writing in general. BUG is both cute and vacuous. Some critics have mentioned that it is funnier when read in the original Czech.

One may wonder why a reviewer would take the time to write an insightful negative review nearly as long as the book itself. Some people just want an amusing read.

From Chapter X: "Beata was of the opinion that present-day Prague was Paris of the Twenties for the Americans. I would see, she said, that something really great would emerge out of that explosion of creativity (it struck me that it wasn't so much an explosion of creativity as an explosion of private joy at the rate of the crown to the dollar, but I held my tongue)..."

Why would anyone write a biography of a historic figure and use a cartoon of a baboon on the cover? Can that be the face of the author?

I doubt that the greatest general and statesman of ancient times looked like a baboon. More likely it's a leftist biographer.

Don Norton

What's wrong with the Education of Julius Caesar? In a word, Arthur Kahn can't seem to keep his Leftist political biases from coloring his evaluation of the Late Republic. His prejudices seep in on virutally every page in which the Senate is discussed. This is not to say that the Senators where saints; far from it. But they were men of their time, who had been raised in a political community that indoctrinated them into it's beliefs just as every other society does. Kahn seems to ignore this in his zeal to paint the "oligarchs", as he calls them, in a bad light. This is illegitimate, as anyone who understands the structure of the Roman state in that era must know. The Romans had a nomialist theory of the state. Rather than thinking that Rome as a poltical community was some kind of larger whole, over and above it's citizens, the Romans believed that Rome was nothing but the assembly of the Roman people as private persons. This is the reason they based citizenship and voting rights on wealth. Since they did not have a very sharp and differentiated notion of political as opposed to private life, they could not find a basis for evaluating one apart from the other. Thus, a rich man was literally more of a citizen than a poor one, because he had more of the Republic than the poor man did, due to his extensive property. We regard this as bizarre, but no one in Rome seems to have thought twice about it. A result of this identification of the personal and the political is the radical fusion of the personal interests of the rulers with those of the state. That is why the Senators reacted so violently to reform attempts - they knew no vision of politics that would enable them to see any degradation of their posiiton as anything other than an attack of Roman society itself. They simply could not differentiate their own positions of power from the State. This is what Kahn ignores. In page after page, he portrays the Senate as a gang of cynical, ruthless misers out to strip everyone else to the bone while hiding their crimes under the name of patriotism. In truth, these sad little men just didn't know any better. Kahn ignores this, and thus projects his own class-warfare ridden politics onto men who lived two millenia ago.

If you want a good biography of Caesar, try Christian Meier's "Caesar", availble at Amazon.com, instead.

I found Kahn's book fascinating, although I agree with an earlier reviewer that I regret he could not keep his personal politics more out of his book - irritating, but a small caveat when there is so much of use here. It's as if Kahn is too prone to project Rome in 60 BC onto the U.S. in, say, 1935. I've read many books on Caesar (including C. Meier's rather romantic German version) and in many ways, I enjoyed Kahn's more than any except Gelzer (who is still the best). Kahn has his finger on almost every significant event in Caesar's (and the late Republic's) life and is able to work through the facts both thoroughly and logically. In fact, the book is almost overwhelming in its detail. Agreed, he is one of the "pro-Caesar" faction - which seems almost by definition to mean, he's anti-Optimate. Well, it's the rare historian of Caesar who can manage not to take sides on this subject, the very issue that tore the Republic apart. Read the book with the realization that you have a fine bio of Caesar here, accurate and thorough, but more than slightly prejudiced against the Roman Senate that so thoroughly detested and tried to destroy Caesar and you will do very well.

This is a abridged version dumbed down for what the editor calls "The General Reader" . Technical details and footnotes are omitted, and a 3 volume report has been edited into 370 some pages. It is good enough for the Readers Digest crowd, but this is NOT a copy of the real declassified Cox Report.

After reading the book, I was dissapointed to find too many vague references to espionage activities, presidential censoring, and congressional rewriting of the report. I do understand that the classified version would contain more information, but, it seems that if the censoring was not as drastic as it is, the book would be much more informative.

The book rating is 3 star (neutral) until I am able to read it, in contrast to my 0-1 star rating for the american public.

I would advise to read this book to noone, maybe only to knowledgeable people, who know the real situation and won't be misled by the tricky description of the author. Why? Just to see the real face of Armenian nationalism in its veil of "national democracy".

The problem with ethnic issues is that often the only people that care about them are people of that ethnicity -- therefore, this author is going to be called biased and unbiased by the 2 sides. I found this book an interesting account of how the issue of Karabagh was used by the National Democratic Movement (a loaded term -- basically, the people who were pro-democracy in the end of the USSR who also happened to all be of the ethnicity) in promoting their own goals. I read this book twice in an academic setting and found it to be one of the best on the subject.

The conflict over the Armenian territory of Artsakh, also known as Garapakh (hence the title of the book), has been intractable since the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet few today remember how the conflict originated, how Joseph Stalin's purges and ethnic engineering shaped the region, and how the Mountain Turks (called "Azeris" since WWI), the Armenians, and indeed most of the Soviet Union's subjects were used in the often arbitrary Stalinist decisions. In this mostly objective work, the origins of the conflict are traced in such a way as to explain why feelings in that region of the world are so strong, why the Mountain Turks want Artsakh from the Armenians, and the relation between the Genocide of the innocent Armenians in 1915 by murderous Turkey itself still has ramifications in the present.

I
drove a car around three-quarters of the DR, using this book every
step of the way for nearly the entire trip. But many times the author
just wrote a lot of nonsense. Places he describes aren't anything like
they really are, like he just asked other people to describe them and
wrote what he heard from people who forgot a lot and gave him bad
information. This book is no good.

I'm sorry to say that after a month-long travel through the Dominican Republic, I have to agree with the previous negative reviewer, in that the book is full of inaccuracies and it seems obvious that the author didn't travel to many of the places he writes about. Also, the book seems to derive an awful lot of its material from another book on the Dominican Republic called Adventure Guide. Also, the author seemed overly scared of remote areas, especially around Haiti. It's more a book for older folk who are into golf courses and cigars, not for someone who wants to experience the country and really wander around and meet people. I usually do like the Moon series, though. Don't let this book dissuade you from the usually very competent Moon books.

Thank you for a great guidebook. I have traveled to the Dominican Republic a few times and am now planning another trip for next year, so I just bought the new version of this book. When I was in the Dominican before, this was the best guide I used--it's more than just basic information plugged into a guidebook format. It's kind of like reading a novel. I really liked his essay on "The Essence of the Dominican Republic" before the introduction--it gives you a real sense of what you will experience when you get there. Gaylord Dold obviously knows a great deal about the Dominican--he spends a lot of time on things like history and people, which is good if you have never been there and are interested in getting familiar with the culture instead of just traveling around. And he's really thorough with the practical stuff too and there are tons of choices of places to eat and sleep. I always use this book when deciding where to stay on my trips and have found the hotel info to be dependable. That said, I've used other books from the Moon series (Costa Rica, Ecuador) and I really like them. They're all really big on background info but also they give you a good variety of choices--not just backpacker stuff or places that are too expensive.

This excerpted work is a light summary of American History from the perspective of a good friend and ally. It is not, however, a book that would have been taken seriously had it not been written by Churchill. To students of U.S. history, it will seem too superficial in most places (eg. Industrialization), too romantic in others (eg. the Civil War), and downright misleading in still others (imagine anyone describing Jefferson as 'frugal'!!). Having said all that, I enjoyed it precisely because it is our cousin's celebration of his own American roots.

A nice overview of American history written with wit and obvious pleasure in the subject. As a collection of essays it is not comprehensive and many details are left out, but the Civil War is dealt with in some depth. I especially enjoyed the 20th century essays from his visits to America and speeches to our Congress. If you're serious about studying American history this book should be supplemented with others (try "A History Of The American People" by Paul Johnson, also British, also very readable, but much more detailed), but this book is certainly a pleasant place to start.

The Great Republic is essentially Churchill's historical overview of America contained within his History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Normally acknowledged as one of the great political statesman of his, perhaps any, age, Churchill was also quite the historian. His complete works span over 50 volumes of material. These excerpts of his larger work provide us with a unique perspective on American history from an alternative vantage point, although not entirely foreign. Churchill was, in fact, intimately connected with Amercia. As the introduction provided by his grandson (appropriately named) Winston S. Churchill reveals, three of Churchill's ancestors were actually passengers on the Mayflower. He had even more recent connections through his mother who was an American. Churchill was a great admirer of what he affectionately called 'the Great Republic' (thus, the title), and so his endearment of our country is also the result of embracing his own heritage.

Only half of this edition is taken from Churchill's original history. Obviously, the work has a Euro-centrist perspective of America and its events. But this is part of its unique charm, added with the fact of the man who had written it is highly regarded world-wide. The span of history covered begins with the Europlean effort to find alternative routes to the East Indies, resulting in America's discovery. It ends at the beginning of the twentieth century having little to say of these times. Because American history was not the focus of the original work, much history must be expected by the reader to be left out. The themes discussed are almost entirely political, as one would expect. The central focus of our history it turns out is our Civil War. It seems that it is not only historians in America who have such a fascination with this epic. More emphasis is given this historic confrontation than that of our Revolutionary War (after all, what Englishman would glory in that story). Nevertheless, the greatness of Churchill as an historian is fully evident here.

The latter half is a collection of Churchill's writings and speeches regarding America covering a span of over 50 years. Here we find how America was viewed by the prominent politian. He is certainly credible enough to have formed an opinion of our American customs and habits considering his background and his numerous trips to the New World. The topics vary covering our eating habits and social customs to our landscapes to our common language and heritage to opinoins on Prohibition and War. These, or course, act as a history of America in the first half of this last century. On the whole, The Great Republic is an exceptional and brief read in American history.

I heard about this book from friends and fellow professors (although no one really recommended it). It was supposed to have made waves when it was first published. It is, indeed, a very difficult book to read. A general reader will need a good background on American history and political theory. Also, it is not very well-written. If anyone can write a concise summary of what the author is trying to say, I would appreciate it.

I should confess that I was surprised when I happened to see that the reviewers have expressed some critical concerns about the writing style of Lowi and the core message the author attempts to convey in the book. First, I would like to say that the book generally, although difficult to follow in some pages, bears a very clear message and hypothesis that provide the basic conceptual and mental framework if one reads through the first chapter carefully. I will try to summarize the leading argument of Lowi within some lines.

Lowi is primarily concerned with political transformation in the United States, which his analysis demonstrates has started in the 1930s and had been continuing through the time in which the book was published. What Lowi calls interest group liberalism (IGL) refers to an offshoot of a new public philosophy called pluralism. Pluralist ideology favors a dispersion of power centers so that no group can control governmental power totally in order to impose authoritative decisions on others. In order not to let any group to dominate the public realm, the pluralist ideology emphasizes broad and extensive public participation to determine what kind of public policies will be crafted and pursued rather than granting entire authority of policy making to central government (say, the Congress). According to Lowi, this strong belief encourages devolution of public authority (the authority to make laws and designate specific standards), in a broad and unguided manner, to public bureaucracies in order for a broad number of participants can partake in the process of policy making, for the sake of flexibility. In a nutshell, the new public philosophy is "process" oriented, not goal or substance-oriented. According to Lowi, there is not even space for law that supporters of new public philosophy argue is so authoritative. However, Lowi's meticulous analysis of political development of the United States shows the reader that this process-oriented public philosophy led the way for public bureaucracies to be captured by organized and strong interest groups.

According to Lowi, the pluralist conception and practice of government does great harm, when one considers its far-reaching consequences. "Flexibility and legitimacy could only have been reduced by building representation upon the oligopolistic character of interest groups, reducing the number of competitors, favoring the best organized competitors, specializing politics around agencies, ultimately limiting participation to channels provided by pre-existing groups" (p. 63). One needs to focus on this sentence carefully just to understand why Lowi expresses a very critical concern about interest group liberalism (IGL). IGL breaks the essential tie between government and politics, and reduces politics into a very narrow space populated and dominated by interest groups around agencies (public or not, the distinction doesn't have much meaning in IGL) that are given authority to implement (or make) policies.

Providing too many a convincing example, Lowi demonstrates that this pluralist process has taken momentum in the 1930s, which manifested itself in the changing "language" of laws (social security is a good example). Since then, the laws have begun to be imbued with ambiguous language that provides no specific standard that would guide the administration to make consistent decisions. According to Lowi, the move from concreteness to abstractness in the definition of public policy represents a watershed in the political development of the United States: interest group liberalism is substituted for the rule of law. Thus, laws lose their unique character as instruments for public control: what is practiced is policy without law, according to Lowi. From social policy, to urban policy, and even to foreign policy, Lowi provides an impressive analysis to illustrate the unceasing impact of new public philosophy. In his cases, what is seen, by and large, are policies, implementation of which are devolved to a great number of agencies, without having any concern to develop a consistent and purposeful policy based on the supremacy of law. The most interesting claim is that this broad and unguided delegation of public authority showed a continuity regardless of who comes to power, Republicans or Democrats, according to Lowi. At the very least, his analysis attests to this continuity.

Finally, Lowi offers some cures in order to improve the current situation. First, the author urges a comprehensive codification in order to reassure legal integrity. Second, Lowi recommends a return to a strong juridicial democracy within which legal formality and administrative procedures take a strong hold.

Within the book's conceptual framework, the arguments sound persuasive. There is one point that I would like to question. Lowi argues that IGL is a product of pluralist ideology and manifests itself in the ambigous language of laws. However, it is certainly possible that we left behind the age in which we had certain questions, and to which we had certain answers. In an age in which there is a high degree of ambiguity, it is extremely difficult to enact very unambiguous laws. In sum, the change in the language of laws may be a natural and direct consequence of what has been changing in the larger environment. Also, the fact that the move from concreteness to abstractness in the definition of public policy occurs in many countries spanning many continents reinforces the conviction that IGL may not peculiarly be a problem for the United States. Lowi makes no visible reference to this alternative rationale of why laws began to be very ambiguous.

To be honest, the book is more comprehensive than what I tried to recap here. Although I am not primarily engaged in political science, I always need a political source that would help me make sense with what is happening or not happening in the contemporaneous American "public administration", and Lowi's book provides a great help for me. I read this book some time ago with primary intention of enlarging my perspective with regard to legitimacy issue in public administration. I can say that this book provides good insights about legitimacy of public administration and should make a great contribution to understanding of public administration students.

Overall, this book is a very illuminating source on American politics and I highly recommend. Also, to those who complain of writing style of Lowi, I recommend "The Human Condition" by Hannah Arendt (1958/1998) and "The Postmodern Condition" (1979) by Lyotard, in order for them to be fair about The End of Liberalism by Lowi!

It appalls me that three individuals could draw such amateurish and anti-intellectual conclusions based upon half-witted attempts at understanding Lowi's text.

Our first reviewer, Ms. Ferris, in a drivel of grammatical missteps that miserably try to expose her motivations for reading Professor Lowi's book, brooks a flimsy argument against this seminal work. If interested in reading Lowi's work, I certainly agree with Ms. Ferris on one count--learn to read before tackling a definitive treatise on the development of the American political system.

I found M. Lautenberg's critique equally amusing, especially his decree that Lowi's writing is terrible. I find this interesting coming from an individual who fails to understand the correct usage of the em-dash.

Our reviewer from New York, though familiar with E.B. White, seems as unfamiliar with the elements of style as she charges Lowi to be. Perhaps, my Manhattanite friend, you would find more irony in Lowi and White's affiliation with Cornell University if you received an education at an equally reputable institution.

Lowi's book stands as one of the finest examples of politial writing in the second half of the twentieth century. I recommend it to anyone with a strong interest in public policy and a literacy level to match.

The first reviewer got it right -- this is an artless and boring book. It totally fails to capture the excitement of the time it's purported to cover -- and contains a great many inaccuracies. The first "half" (I think it's actually less than half) of the book consists of entries from the author's own journal, which he obviously stopped keeping after a very brief period. The second part of the book picks up, chronologically, where the author's meagerly journal left off -- by summarizing the news and events of the period -- in rapid succession and without background information, personal or otherwise. As the author had ceased to keep his journal, this part of the book is sourced from archival stories from the Prague Post. Whether it is from that newspaper or from the author's own misperceptions that the numerous factual errors arise, it makes for a boring and inaccurate read overall.

I lived in CZ for four years (outside of Prague, a mysterious wilderness to this writer), where a lot of Americans have aspirations to write. Horribly enough, this book was the "first" to describe that whole Prague scene. I say horribly, because this book is likable -- but the narrator does nothing unusual, thinks nothing daring -- he more or less transcribes banal journal entries into a long artless book. I could go on about the amatuerish writing style (a good editor would have cut the book to about the length of a Lonely Planet review) -- or about the lazy typesetting (full of typos), and the benefit a little fact checking would've had (it's "Havlova" not "Havelova", "vul" is "ox" not "bull", and so on....). It seems this book is the kind that would make a mother proud, but would be met with sneers and jeers by all other "expats." A lot of them held off writing this kind of book because they were waiting to synthesize and compose artfully from their Czech experience. What we have here, for all its description, is a "nice" American doing "exciting" things in a foreign country. I thought it was hard to get travel writing published, but now I see it doesn't take a hell of a lot of work. The author does nothing original, thinks no original thoughts, and pretty much stole the fire from anyone else who might put out a "real" chronicle of the Prague experience. Too bad.

Mr. Lytle's experiences roughly paralleled mine though I spent a year teaching in the less trendy Slovak half of Czecho-Slovakia.His experience of a society in transition and attitudes toward the West are especially resonant. He was right about the beer; it's great and the women are beautiful (the best kept secret of the Cold War) I should know, I met my wife in Banska Bystrica, Slovakia.