This is a nice, compact edition of the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran as laid out immediately after the revolution. The translation is very readable, and is a fine piece of scholarship.

There is, though, a very laughable introduction to the constitution written by the translator at the beginning of the text. That introduction should only be considered valuable if one wants to study the "spin" of the revolutionaries.

Nice, simple, exact work. Perfect as a textbook or sourcebook for reference.

Dowling presents a predominately accurate picture of the C/S unions and occupations, along with political commentary and insight. Her fault lies in consistently portraying CS as a bridge between east and west. True they are a 'eastern' people and they maintain 'western' style democracy, but there is no indication, rather a rebuffing of such mediator sentiment (shown in Stein's "Czecho/Slovakia"), that makes Dowling's often invoked theme an ambiguous one. I applaud her for her brief history of the state, but care not for her use of such ideologies which lead the reader on a quest to draw conclusions about intentions of Czechoslovakians based on little proven (almost manufactured) beliefs. The fact that the book does nothing to explain the lives of Czech and Slovak republics after the split is understood due to the title of the book, focusing only on the state of Masaryk's creation, but as a small history under Austria-Hungarian rule was necessary to introduce the nation, a mentioning of the divided republics would send the combined state to the graveyard of memory with some further dignity. All in all, the book definitely presents history for the reader, but the views presented can lead to inaccurate conclusions.

After reading the book "The Last Manchuu" the autobiography of the last emperor of China PuYi, I often wondered about what happened to the remaining cast of the story. This book was able to satisfy some of my curiosity. In contrast to the rather heavy approach taken in 'The Last Manchu' and the epic movie by Bernardo Bertolucci, Tony Scotland has given us a cheerful narrative of his romp through China in search of the 'next' emperor along with his rather interesting sidekick 'loud report'. This is not meant to be a serious book on history although there was enough of it for the reader to sustain his curiosity as it reaches a satisfactory conclusion. I am somewhat surprised that it took a Westerner to write this long overdue followup on the story of the last emperor. For all who had seen the movie, I highly recommend this book.

I think this is a great book

"Fantasies of Salvation" is a study of political mythologies and ideologies in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Tismaneanu takes an integrative approach, rather than engaging in the generally common practice of considering each country separately - something which is quite commendable, and he does a very good job providing an overview of the overall political climate in this region. Even so, he concentrates most of his analysis to the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Romania, while the former Soviet republics and the Balkans are covered less. Generally this book is quite valuable as it covers an area this is not generally dealt with in such a comprehensive manner. Thus, his comparative look at nationalism, anti-communism and the associated political mythologies gives readers an excellent basis for understanding political discourse throughout the region. Tismaneanu correctly points out that mythology is a common aspect of politics anywhere in the world, but his overriding thesis in this work is to show that under the circumstances of rapid transition in the post-socialist countries of Europe, such political mythologies can assume disturbingly paranoid, exclusionary and even violent forms. This is where the term "fantasies of salvation" comes from. Such fantasies are, in the author's words, "an irrational blend but compelling blend" of quasi-religious searches for salvation, egotistic nationalist self-identification and simplified utopian social doctrines. His anaylsis of natonalism in this context is illuminating, and very sobering. He notes that the troubles with economic transition have fanned the flames of xenophobia and racism not only in places like Russia and the Balkans, but even in the more "successful" countries like Hungary or the Czech Republic - although, to be sure, in the latter cases there is less cause for concern than in the former. One can apply the conclusions he draws to other parts of the world as well.

However, the book does have its flaws. One is that Tismaneanu excessively frets over the fate of the former dissidents, like Havel, Konrad or Michnik, who have lost quite a bit of their popularity both in their own countries and abroad. Another (and I believe key) flaw is that while he criticizes many of the political myths or fantasies in the region for, among other things, promoting a simplistic manichean world view, he falls prey to this himself in the sense that he portrays the West, liberalism and the market economy as absolutes which must be attained by all former communist societies. Rarely are the concepts of liberal democracy and capitalism discussed as political myths themselves (regardless of their validity), and Tismaneanu never even entertains the notion that grafting such idealized concepts onto the post-socialist societies may be yet another cause for their often staggering economic and social problems. This really takes away from some of the top-notch analysis in this book, for at times it seems less of a scholarly work than an ideological tract.

You know the world is a funny place, if this guy would have not joined up to help the CIA he would have been in a small prison cell facing a war crimes trial. The book covers the World War 2 German General that was in charge of the Nazi's version of the CIA / OSS. He then "converted" to the allied way of thinking once Hitler was dead and the U.S. and new German government gave him the job of head of the German version of the CIA so he could continue battling the communists. Along the way he also got jobs for all the spies he used to have that were not executed by the Allies during the war.

The book does detail out some of the successes of the World War Two counter intelligence and intelligence gathering operations and the creation of the new German organization. It goes into some detail of the "battles" between the East German intelligence and the West German group, some of which is interesting. We also get some interesting stories about people escaping from East Germany. The down side to the book is that it is dry. You can tell the book was translated because there is a distinct lack of wit or pep. I think the reader of this book really have to be interested in German Cold War intelligence gathering stories, the general read would not get past page 100.

While the subject of German immigration to Canada has been anything but neglected by historians, this book's uniqueness lies in its attention to how the phenomenon was supported or resisted by various parties in both countries. In Canada, the struggle was largely between a strong anti-German sentiment (stemming from WW I and Allied propaganda) and the desire of Canadian transportation companies to improve their revenue intake. In Germany, it was a question of whether the cause of Deutschtum ("Germandom") would be better served by keeping Germans in the homeland to help the economy recover from the War or by allowing some to emigrate and strengthen the Canadian portion of worldwide Deutschtum. Subsidiary to this was the question of whether Germans emigrating to Canada would, in fact, support the cause or would instead assimilate into Canada's English-speaking culture. Concentrating as he does on the DIA and the VDA, two of Germany's major organizations involved in matters of Germans outside of Germany, Grams adopts a wise and useful course.

Grams, a native of Saskatchewan, appears to be a very earnest and meticulous researcher, and the book is valuable for leading the reader, through its nearly 1700 footnotes, to a vast array of archival materials. Its shortcomings, and they are fairly serious, lie in the realm of organization and the use of the English language. It suffers a good deal from repetition, but even more so from grammatical, syntactical and stylistic errors. This may have something to do with its being a dissertation for a German university (Marburg), plus a woeful lack of editing before it went to print. Whatever the cause, keeping one's mind on the subject matter and off the mistakes requires a bit of an effort, reducing it from a four-star book to three stars. All in all, however, the effort is worth it.

This book was written as a companion to an exhibition that opened at the Huntington Library in Los Angeles in October 1998. The illustrations are disappointing, because they are mostly photographs of documents. The text is decent, but provides a very superficial account of Washington's life. A much better general book about Washington's life is James Thomas Flexner's Washington: The Indispensable Man.

Washington's achievements were primarily in three areas: commanding the continental army, being president of the Constitutional Convention, and serving as the country's first President. He practically single-handedly fostered a sense of our being one united country and held it together through the war, the draftig of the Constitution, and the national's early history.

It is difficult to overestimate Washington's contributions. Everything he did set a precedent for the nation. And everything was being done for the first time. There had been no democratic country in the history of the world. No country had had a democratically elected leader; they had all been kings.

Washington was a fascinating man. Unfortunately, this book is not. Still, it is worthwhile as a superficial overview of Washington's life.

Learning isn't always easy or fun. This is an important book and one that people should read if they are seriously interested in the classical Roman world. You need to understand the social aspect of history as well as the fun stuff. Reading about wars, political rivalry, gladiators, legions, emperors, and the adventures of ancient Rome can be a lot of fun and can teach you a lot. However, if you are serious you have to read the boring stuff as well and this book covers that. I needed to know more about the life course of every day Romans and purchased this book to tell me about it. The book does the job, but it is an extremely boring read. The book covers everything from birth to death for both men and women. It covers how women were treated as children, young adults, wives, and finally mothers. The male side is a little more complicated and the book goes into detail of a boy's childhood and then young adult and joining the military, possibly a political career and marrying and divorcing several times for political reasons. There are some good examples of depicting the life course in Roman art that are in the book. Also, the authors have scientifically examined evidence on ageing and at what age they moved from one life course to another (i.e. young adult to senator or praetor). They have graphs explaining probability of survival at birth. There is a useful appendix as well showing the various ages at which different classes of people moved from child, adult, parent, and grandparent. I enjoyed the authors take on being old in Rome. Old people were looked down upon as no longer mattering when it came to politics or a social life. They were expected to just stay home and live out the rest of their years quietly. Cicero married a very young woman at a very old age and this was looked down upon as well. An old man marrying for love was something to be made fun of because people married more for money and political alliances versus love. In this case Cicero did marry for money because he needed to pay debts, but the marriage only lasted a year. As I said earlier the book does a good job of explaining the life course, but falls short of being entertaining, but learning isn't always fun.

With the 150th anniversary of Janacek's birth approaching next year, maybe now is the time for a reinvigoration of a bibliography about this composer. Although many books have appeared in recent times about him, few stay in print for an extended amount of time. Forthcoming publications include John Tyrrell's biography of a composer he has written about more than any other academic (published by Faber in 2004) and this spring a new volume from Yale, called 'Janacek and his World' edited by Michael Beckerman. Mirka Zemanova, a native-Czech, now living in London and regular contributor to many opera programmes, has pipped them to the post with the publication of her Janacek bibliography.

Many rightly raved about Mirka Zemanova's previous contribution to the Janacek bibliography, her edition of the composer's uncollected essays on musicology. The volume included many previously unseen, or at least untranslated pieces of writing by Janacek. Various reviews of performances in Brno for the local journals and newspapers were enlightening when considering the many influences on Janacek's own writing, the Brno premieres of Cavalleria Rusticana or Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades influencing Janacek's Jenufa, for example. Many passages have seeped their way into recent writing about the composer's life and works with the same regularity as quotes from John Tyrrell's many documentary translations, the letters to Kamila Stosslova particularly.

Zemanova has decided to eschew use of Tyrrell's great translations of the letters and various documents, and returned to the original sources, itself not a bad idea. For the English speaking Janacek fan though, perhaps more cross references to those masterly volumes wouldn't have been too bad a thing, and her dismissal of some of Tyrrell's work is misplaced. Zemanova has great command of her material at best, but occasionally she is rather prosaic on a life that was so lacking in humdrum. Her outlining of details of the Vienna premiere of Jenufa, rather than dwelling on the Prague premiere (itself very important, but perhaps a little too glorified in recent literature) is to be commended. Her scatty musical analysis is a disappointment. Although she outlines her concern with focussing less on the 'works' and more on the 'life', her style is not always up to the dramatics of Janacek's life. I would recommend a reading of the composer's wife's memoirs for some of the real drama.

It is a mixed book, fitting for such a mixed man, filled with facts that weren't available to previous biographers, but lacking in the grasp of some other regular contributors to Janacek literature. Hopefully, however, it will be the first of a stream of issues about this fascinating composer in the year leading up to the 150th anniversary of his birth, and the 100th anniversary of the premiere of his first great opera Jenufa.