A friend of mine had been deeply engrossed in a book for a while. She had gotten it as a gift and was unable to put it down. When she finished, I asked her about it.
"It's called Children and Fools, and it's absolutely fantastic!" was the answer I got.
If she had called it "absolutely fantastic", well, that's pretty big! So, I asked if I could read it. She said yes, and I took it home.
Mr. Mirll really has a way of writing. This guy has to be a genius or something! When I finished I didn't want to return it right away. It's terrific.

I enjoyed this book a lot and have already loaned it to a number of friends and relatives. Mirll has a great way with words and takes what may be rather standard situations and creates incredibly funny stories out of them. It's light-hearted for the most part, but you do pick up quite a bit about Austria. Having lived in Austria during the time in which the story is set, it struck me as very accurate and inciteful.

The main thing is that it was wickedly funny - at several parts I was laughing harder than I have in a long time. If you enjoy excellent turns of phrase, absurd situations and have something of a cynical turn, you'll probably enjoy this book. I'll definitely read anything else the author writes.

If you're looking for a good book to read, Children and Fools by Terry Mirll is a terrific one.
Set in Austria, this delightful tale is altogether funny. It's like Animal House, but set in Europe! The embarrassing things that happen to the star of this story, which include an acrobatic turkey and a maniacal soda machine, will make anybody laugh.
The story is set at the time of the Gulf War, and there are serious moments too, adding just a bit of suspense. The history of Austria, its ways and customs, and other details definately make this book a wonderful reading adventure.
Well written and clever, you are sure to enjoy Children and Fools- a Twisted Tale of the Vienna Woods, by Terry Mirll.

Thomas Bernhard must have been the bane of the Austrian cultural world during his lifetime. His favorite style is an endless, run-on paragraph, seething with rage and pain at every turn. If you don't catch that these crabby narrators are constantly undermining their own credibility, you might not see how funny these books are. Old Masters involves an old musicologist, who spends every other day in front of the same painting in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. This 150-page assault on Western art and music (few are spared: Mahler, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and especially Bruckner are given real tongue-lashings, and at one point he implies the painting he always looks at is a forgery) might annoy you, until you realize that, as flawed as these great works might be, they're all we have to keep us going day to day. Life without these Old Masters would be unbearable. The narrator is slow to admit this, but when the admission comes, it's heart-breaking. For someone to complain this vigorously about the limits of Austrian art and culture, he must have loved his homeland very dearly indeed. You won't be disappointed in this one.

This a book about two grumpy old men. " ..he does not like solar radiation. He avoids the sun, there is nothing he shuns more than the sun. 'I hate the sun, you know that I hate the sun more than anything in the world,' he says. What he likes best are foggy days, on foggy days he leaves the house very early in the morning, actually takes a walk, which he does not normally do, for basically he hates walking. I hate walking, he says,it seems so pointless to me. I walk, and while I am walking I keep thinking how I hate walking, I have no other thoughts at the time, I cannot understand that there are people who are able to think of something other than that walking is pointless and useless, he says." If you cannot find this very funny then this book is not for you. In 156 pages there are no paragraphs, or chapters. But there is excellent prose and conversations on philosophy of life, art, suicide, class, Catholicism, nationalism, culture......life. Very funny and perhaps sad too, but in the end strangely exhilarating. A wonderful read.

Yes,it is enjoyable and considering the dark and disturbing contexts of his other novels it is indeed a comedy.Yet it is seriously constructed and top quality novella.

There are many books to be found on clandestine intelligence operations. Most of these focus on the organs of the US State Department, and corresponding agencies in other countries. This book is a rare gem in that it deals with military intelligence operations and techniques, and provides an extremely useful insight into operational procedures used by US military intelligence during and immediately after the Second World War. For this alone it is worth the purchase, but the authors also manage to amaze and intrigue along the way with tales of operations gone wrong as well as the flotsam and jetsom of post war Europe.

More than a history of arranging Soviet defectors to escape, this gives an intense perspective from time and age. It would make a wonderful screenplay for a Spielberg adoptation. As an American Jew I am proud to know that James Milano performed like Oskar Schindler when he learned firsthand of the German policy of extermination. The gripping chapter on the Mauthausen concentration camp describes Milano's feelings: "Now, after the war, the nightmare stories were proved true- and short of the truth." Milano's moto of making the damn decision after an intelligent manipulation of risk descibes why his operations were so successful. Because we know that Milano himself is the primary source, it fortifies the accuracy of the amazingly clandestine rat line. I highly commend this exciting book.

This is a first hand account of CIC operations in the cockpit of the Cold War-Austria. It is now little remembered that Austria was the only European country occupied by the Soviets to be evacuated during the Cold War. (Although in Asia, they did leave Iran and North Korea.)Both sides' focus was on the North German plain, the traditional invasion route between East and West, and vice versa. Not the southern route from the Adriatic through the Ukraine. Thus the major Allied intelligence effort was was in Germany. Most of the activities described herein are the usual tradecraft--doubling agents, honey traps, sneak and peek, etc. This would be just another tale and not of great importance, except for the Rat Line. This was a clandestine evacuation operation run for persons escaping from the Soviet-controlled areas. Because the occupation of Austria ended in 1955, and Austria was then neutralized, it was easier to run penetration and escape operations from there than through the hard border further north. Actually, there were more than one Rat Line. It is said that Martin Bormann, Adolf Eichman, and other top Nazis escaped via Italy. Be that at it may, Klaus Barbee did get out in a U.S. sponsored operation. But the U.S. Rat Line was more important for getting out persons of intelligence value, who once debriefed, had to be put under deep cover in a safe place. (Imagine a witness protection program, but with the whole USSR intellops looking for you, instead of a few mobsters.)This is probably the last first-hand account of CI field ops we will get of those days. After all, all of the vets are well over 70 and most were middle aged then. I also recommend Ib Melchior's book on his service as a CI agent. (cf)

Images such as those found in "Viennese Types" render words superfluous. Capturing a time long past, a serene turn-of-the-century Vienna, Dr. Emil Mayer has preserved street scenes perfectly representing individuals often seen, such as sidewalk vendors, window shoppers, a scissors grinder, a carriage driver, and more. All of these photographs are artfully composed, beautifully rendered. Most amazing, perhaps, is the intimacy and sympathy these images convey. It is almost impossible to view them without being moved.

Born in 1871 in Bohemia, Dr. Mayer was a Jew who was the victim of Nazi oppression. Following his suicide at the age of 66, his possessions, including his photography collection, were lost. Thus, regrettably, little is left of his great work.

Nonetheless, "Viennese Types" is mute testimony to his photographic artistry. This is a rare volume, one to be treasured.

In photography when things turn out well it's often because there's been an especially graceful coalescence of art and science. The photography of Dr. Emil Mayer (the "Dr." was an honorary title in common use by lawyers in Austria) is a sublime example of that happy merging. Mayer was an enthusiastic practitioner, teacher, and proponent of bromoil process photography - a method that allows for a freedom of expression via a series of laborious chemical manipulations of the negative, and produces a monochrome print that has a softly grainy appearance, and a sort of quietude, in addition to effective, evocative painterly depth. From this collection and the essays that accompany it one comes to understand Mayer had the soul (and the eye) of an artist, and the patience and skill of a scientist. The results are terrific.

Rudolf Arnheim's Foreword offers an elegant preview of these atmospheric documentary photographs of a vanished time and place: turn-of-the-century Vienna, a city and a culture that has been called a "uniquely civilized world."

Edward Rosser's sensitive accompanying biographical essay, "The Life and Art of Dr. Emil Mayer," is both an appreciation and a fine critical piece. Mayer, a Jew, was born in 1871 in Bohemia. His family moved to prosperous, bourgeois Vienna when he was a child. He was well-educated, and became a lawyer and a passionate hobbyist photographer, leading a large Viennese amateur photography club for 20 years, from 1907 to 1927. Mayer published numerous monographs (some in the US) on bromoil process.

Rosser explains that Hitler's annexation of Austria intervened, however. In June 1938 Mayer and his wife committed suicide. Their possessions, including of course most of his photographs, were confiscated, lost, or destroyed. Rosser's essay elaborates: Many if not all of the Europeans who would have remembered him after the war fell victim to the Holocaust themselves. Mayer's disappearance, then, was nearly assured in a scenario replicated - unthinkably and by the millions - in our time.

But in fact Mayer's photographs were rediscovered, and the facts of his life reconstructed by the hard work and efforts of several people (credited in Rosser's essay).

The complete portfolio of the 51 photographs in this collection reside in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. They are of everyday street life - a sort that vanished with the coming of the First World War. They are portraits: at least one interesting person is in each. People conduct all sorts of business on the streets. Horses pull wagons and coaches. (Most everyone wears a hat, a cap, or a kerchief - and aside from a group of men in bowlers, the hats are quite thrilling - to this modern eye). The cobblestone streets are for people, goods, and horses - and there are many. The profusion of things to buy and to sell, so emblematic of the bourgeois ideal that was Vienna, caught Mayer's eye - and caught mine, too.

This book engaged, challenged, and delighted me. Anyone with an interest in European street life at the turn of the century, in the deep and absorbing technique known as bromoil process, and the sensitive, artful, and deeply humane photography of a man who very nearly disappeared - will appreciate this fine book.

Viennese Types :: Wiener Typen is a remarkable compilation of the photographs taken by the late Dr. Emil Mayer in Vienna around 1910. A lawyer and photographer active around the turn of the century, Mayer's photographs are exceedingly rare because most of his prints were destroyed by the Gestapo after his death (Mayer and his wife, both Jews, committed suicide in June 1938, soon after the Anschluss). But two copies of a remarkable portfolio of his original prints survived the Holocausts, and it is this portfolio which has now been published by Blind River Editions, augmented with an informative essay by Edward Rosser and a foreword by Rudolf Arnheim. Viennese Types :: Wiener Typen is a unique and outstanding contribution to the history of photography in general, and the memorable, impressive, beautifully executed work of Emil Mayer in particular.

I am a professional staffer and discovered this book when I was doing research to put together my party's platform for the upcoming election. The Treaty addressed in this book is one that goes beyond the policy realm, especially in view of our growing reliance on the oceans. I read this as a layman, but soon found that it was easily understandable and gave me a good grasp of a key issue. As we approach ratification of this Treaty this book should serve as a valuable primer.

This book has provided valuable insight into the modern, complex world of maritime law. Vienna's achievement is a boon to readers. This book should be required reading for legal students, naval officers, and anyone else with an interest with th e legal line between land and sea. Congratulations, Mr. Vienna, on a job well done and a book well written.

If this is the Eva Ibbotson book, then it is my favorite of her books. She is a favorite author, but on this book, everything seems to have came together perfctly. During Hitler's annexation of Austria, Ruth Berger is not able to escape to join her parents which had separetely travelled to London. Quin Sommerville, a British friend and colleague of her father, a professor of Paleonthology, tries to help her leave, but the only solution seems to be a marriage of convenience which would make Ruth a British Citizen, to be dissolved later. Ruth is in love with her cousin Heini, a talented musician, but it seems to be the only way to save her and she gratefully accepts. But the divorce can not be instantaneous, and Ruth and Quin are thrown together, while they try to keep their marriage a secret.

Ruth is as charming an heroine as Anna Grazinsky, Quin is a delicious hero. The supporting characters, Ruth's family, Ruth's fellow students, the ladies and customers at the tea-shop, have a life of their own and would steal any book with less compelling main characters.

A sweet, funny, moving, charming novel, and my favorite of all Ibbotson' s novels.

If this is the book by Eva Ibbotson, then it is definitely worth 5 stars. It may sound cheesy, the idea of two people, already married to each other, falling in love. But it's not. The book is really romantic and yet not harlequin. Other authors try to make their book seem more cultured by references to famous authors or musicians and fail. Eva Ibbotson manages to pull this off effortlessly. I never wanted to put this book down, and it seemed to end too soon.

A wonderfully put together book! The word "architecture" is fully described with all the details, while the author "brings" you to Vienna. I have never been there, but I completely forgot that after reading this book. It immerses you into the Austrian culture, while letting you take your time to filter thoughts.

The book is a meaning of architecture wrapped up into a city-Vienna. The photos describe the city in a way I've never seen it. It shows the meekest of corner streets that have so much life and dignity, while protraying a life of design.

I spent a week in Vienna this summer. Being that I did the whole backpacking thing- bringing back books was not an option. Last week I was in an art museum and came across this incredible book.

What initially attracted me to Vienna- was not its art, nor its architecture, it was its place in the history of music, and what a place that was. However, Vienna, along with Berlin and Prague, opened my eyes to the timeless beauty of both art and architecture of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Vienna is a true gem of this world, and this book illustrates that perfectly. This is truly a wonderful find.

Vienna: Art and Architecture is packed to the hilt with beautiful photos. As well, it is packed to the hilt with informational text, which is equally important. This book is informative and educational, but in written text and photos.

The book focuses on the beautiful buildings that fill the streets of Vienna, as well as the public places, and the art housed within these buildings and on Vienna's streets. It covers from the Renaissance to the present.

This book really takes you on a trip through Vienna's history, going beyond art and architecture. It's an amazing history from the height of Hapsburg power through its demise and beyond.

Furthermore, there are tons of photographs within this book that the public otherwise doesn't get to see, such as the great collection in the gallery of the Belvedere Palace- which wasn't open to the public when I was there - to the wonderful art attached to the walls of Schonbrunn Palace. Much of which is not open to the public.

If you're looking for historical books on Vienna, you can find better. However, if you are looking for pictorial books on Vienna- you aren't likely to find much on this level. It is beautifully done.

A well mix of beauty and information.

FIVE STARS!

Vienna Art and Architecture ed. by Rolf Toman is a beautiful coffee table book but it is much more than that thanks to the excellent articles accompanying the illustrations. All the articles haved been translated from the German. The seven chapters deal, in some detail, with art and architecture from antiquity to the present.

The photographs throughout are beautiful. There are the ususal pictures to be found in all art books on Vienna but there are also quite a few instances of photographs of lesser known buidings and/or palais not open to the public. Many books exist on baroque art of Vienna and there are countless books on fin de siecle art and architecture but this is the first all inclusive book beginning with Roman artifacts and continuing to Sculptures of 1996. It is ideal for the novice but even the expert will find some new material. The only caveat is the sheer weight but the number and quality of the photographs makes it all worth the while.

Provides pertinent, discursive information that includes information on how the choir subsisted during World War 2. It'll appeal to both history (i.e. as an introduction to the role of music in war) and (choral) music buffs... Highly recommended although, perhaps, it would be more effective if more improvement could be made to the pictorial section.

I am a Vienna boys choir fan since 15 years but i had never read a book about their history, in fact I have no seen any other in english,now I get one and I can say is very interesting how the author describes the places, situations, dificulties, great moments, disadvantages, the war period, and how they obtained the coats of arms of the republic in their tunics, it's a very good job, maybe you have to wait two months, depends on your area, but if you really want to know about them, you have to obtain one.

I've been a fan of the Vienna Boys Choir for many years. I have over fifty of their recordings. But before I purchased this book, the only thing I knew of them was what I read on the LP's & CD's that I own. This is the only book I've seen, written in English, that tells of their history. I never knew the difficulties that they've endured throughout their hstory, especially during world war two. If You're a fan of the Vienna Boys Choir, as I am, then I think this book will help You know more about them. I believe You will enjoy ths book very much.