No comments about Lenin and Gorky: Letters - Reminiscences - Articles.

No comments about Guillaume D'Orange: Four Twelfth-Century Epics (Records of Western Civilization).

3 comments about Healing the Heart of Croatia.

1. You feel a part of each patients family, their sorrows and their joys. You see the inside of each sternum.



2. This book is marvellous diary about people who help to childrens all over the world. Also have a good descriptions of my state: (general situation, war, cities, people...). I hope that next edition will have more successful stories. Thanks! :-)



3. This is a great book about people who help childrens in countries which dont have possibilities for high-tech medicine. Also this book have a wonderful descriptions of my country (people, situation, cities...).

No comments about A Viceroy's Vindication: Sir Henry Sidney's Memoir, 1583 (Irish Narrative Series).

1 comments about Mathematics With Love: The Courtship Correspondence of Barnes Wallis, Inventor of the Bouncing Bomb.

1. If you watch the History Channel very much you will inevitably see a film clip of a rotating, garbage can looking, device being dropped from an airplane and see it skipping across the water. This was the bomb invented by Barnes Wallis to take out the Ruhr dams in Germany.
   
   On April 23rd, 1922 Barnes met Molly. They began to write to each other, at her father's insistence they could only correspond if he used the letters to teach her mathematics. So he taught her calculus.
   
   He proposed on Thursday December 21st 1922. She accepted on Friday September 12th 1924. They married April 23rd 1925. They were married for fifty years.
   
   This is an absolutely delightful book from a time long past. I can only imagine if I told my daughter that her boyfriend could only correspond with her if he were using the letters to teach mathematics.

No comments about The Emperor's Last Island.

1 comments about The Fun Palace: An Autobiography.

1. Agnes Bernelle didn't have an easy life, but I think we can safely assume that she was never bored. Some people have the unique quality of remaining young, at heart, untill the day they die because they keep discovering new things, they keep looking with an open mind. I think actess and singer Agnes Bernelle, born Bernauer, was such a person. Her biography the Fun Palace is not a unique story. In some ways it compares with that of Claire Goll: Growing up in a privileged mixed Jewish family, fleeing abroad after the shattering impact of Hitler coming to power, marrying a adventurising womaniser and finally rising to own acclaim. But Agnes Bernelle lacks the viciousness and bitterness of Yvan Goll's widow in her discription of others, she doesn't put herself on a pedestal. She has written a book simply because she had her story to tell.Some of her pain remains understated, you have to read between the lines. The title The Fun Palace is derived from her discription of a 'Scherzenpalast' she visited long ago, a fairground attraction were you enter a house which constantly change, where the rooms shrink and expand, and the floors move. Agnes Bernelle was constant in her political beliefs (pacifist) but remained unhampered by dogma. Her life was too varied for that. The Fun Palace is a good read for anyone who is interested in recent European history, in theatre, in feminism, in life. I wish I'd met her when she was alive.

2 comments about Dead Ground: Infiltrating the IRA.

1. Dead ground: Infiltrating the IRA by Raymond Gilmore is written based on his own experiences. As the title of the book implies, it is about Gilmour himself infiltrating the IRA. This book shows just how ruthless and inconsiderate the IRA is to both its members and to its communities. This book is a must for those who would want to learn more about what life is like in the IRA and what peace means to IRA members.



2. Gilmour's ignorance regarding his own country's history and the lure of money led him to betray the Irish people who still live in occupied Ireland. Gilmour mentions how he saved the lives of a number of policemen and security force members by touting on his IRA comrades, but fails to recognize how he helped to maintain British domination over his own people. He was exploited by the British who took advantage of his social and economic predicament which, Gilmour fails to realize, was created by the people he was working for. It is shocking to think that Gilmour's own cousin was murdered by British paratroops on Bloody Sunday and he still became a traitor. I only hope that Gilmour has become educated in his country's history and learned of the attrocities done to Ireland by the British. The RUC only wanted Gilmour to be an obedient little Brit in order to control the Irish who resisted their foreign oppressors. Also, learning some Irish Republican ideology and strategy might help him to understand why the IRA operated the way it did. It is fitting that Gilmour is still hiding from the IRA and seperated from his family and homeland. The punishment he would have recieved from the IRA would have been too light of a sentence. The book is an entertaining read, but also disturbing when you consider Gilmour is betraying his people the whole time.

4 comments about CHURCHILL'S GENERALS (Cassell Military Paperbacks).

1. This collection of essays, edited by Keegan, provides a good introduction to most of the generals who made it to the top of the British Army in WW2. The essays are of varying standard and some require a knowledge of the subject and their place in the world. Each article has a bibliography and a career time line. Keegan provides an introduction as to each generals place in the scheme of things and his relationship with Curchill. Generally a good book with some outstanding essays.



2. Churchill's Generals proves to be just that, basic introduction to the British generals who fought under Winston Churchill during the Second World War. Its an interesting collection of soldiers, some which every students of military history knows while others were folks no one never heard off until they read this book. These biographical essays proves to be a mixed bunch. Some are better then others. Some essays proves to be quite insightful and able to give an personal understanding of their subject. Others seem to be written by a clerk copying off some dossier file.
   
   The book is a companion to its sister volumes, Hitler's Generals and Stalin's Generals. I would put this book above Stalin's Generals but its definitely inferior to Hitler's Generals. I haven't seen titles for Roosevelt's Generals or Hirohito's Generals so I guess we are stuck with these three books.
   
   Overall, a pretty basic introduction essays. It should be enough to arouse your curiousity and hopefully you will read more on the subject. Some of the British generals like Slim really do need greater attention.



3. This is another of the biography collections covering World War II generals that was done in the early 90s by a British publisher. In this book we get an introductory essay by editor John Keegan that puts the rest of the book in context, describing how Churchill dealt with generals, what he thought of them, and how he related to them, briefly. After that, we have a series of short (each about 20-30 pages) biographies of various commanders from the British Army in World War II. The editor chose to restrict himself to officers from Britain itself, so no Guy Simonds or Bernard Freyburg. He chose commanders who had some influence on the outcome of the war, or who were somehow outstanding or memorable, so no Miles Dempsey. Instead, the editor chose those soldiers who stood out in some way, or were somehow instrumental in the victory in a fashion that can't be ignored.
   
   Within this, as is usually the case in such a volume, the individual biographies are somewhat uneven. Some are written as if you know everything already about World War II, and others are written in a very elementary style, as if you know nothing. Some are also more editorial or review of the individual's character and actions (the essay on Montgomery is the most obvious one in this category) while other seek merely to inform you about the person involved. There are two combination biographies, one covering the "Desert Generals" (Cunningham, Ritchie, and Leese) and another covering two generals who were more involved in diplomacy during the war, Adrian Carton de Wiart and Edward Spears. These tend to do little more than recount the facts of these men's careers: there's no space for anything else.
   
   I think the general researcher who's looking for a reference work covering this topic will find this book useful, if only in a limited fashion. Since the coverage is rather limited, you're going to be disappointed if a particular soldier isn't covered here and he's the one you're trying to research. On the other hand, if you are looking for information on someone who *is* here, then you're going to get more data here than you would from the Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography, for instance. So it depends on whom you're researching.



4. This book is an interesting and exceptionally well-done introduction to the British perspective of World War II. Each of the seventeen chapter is a biography of a key British general during this conflict. Some are well-known (Montgomery), while others have largely been forgotten (Sir Henry Wilson). Five generals end up having to share two chapters. Each and every one, though, gets a good biography. There are differences in focus, emphasis, and interpretation, which is to be expected, but none of these entries is weak. This fact in and of itself makes this book unique among in its genre.
   
   The authors come from a number of backgrounds: academia, journalism, and the military, including a general and a field marshal. One of the contributors is Australian, another is American and the rest are British. The reader is getting a good cross sampling of the British perspective.
   
   The main theme that emerges from these essays is the importance of interpersonal relationships with both Churchill but also other generals. The chapters also do a good job of introducing the reader to issues in the literature without getting bogged down in the details. Each chapter concludes with a chronology of the general's life and career.
   
   A reader unfamiliar with British military culture will stumble on some issues: the acronyms are completely different: GOC and KCB to give only two examples. (General Officer Commanding and Knight Commander of the Bath---a knighthood that gives the individual the title of "Sir.") The practice of keeping generals on half-pay is another practice that is often referenced but never explained. (A general without an assignment received only half his pay. If he did not receive an assignment after two years, he was retired.)
   
   Nonetheless, this book is easy to read and is recommended without reservation.

No comments about The Kirwans of Castlehacket, Co. Galway: History, Folklore and Mythology in an Irish Horseracing Family.