5 comments about William Shakespeare & the Globe.

1. This book was the best Shakespeare book i've read. It had great facts and pictures for my Shakespeare roport. Now i read it for great enjoyment. It not only tells the story of Shakespeare but the story of Sam Wanamaker who had a dream to rebuild Shakespeare's Globe Theather. This was the best shakespeare book around, i bet you will enjoy it



2. Book Review: William Shakespeare & the Globe By: Aliki

   This book has been honored with many awards for good reason. With pictures, a sprinkle of quotes from several of Shakespeare's own plays, and many historical references make this book is a very interesting layout of William Shakespeare's life and times. The book chronicles the theatre world in Shakespeare's time and his involvement in it all,and the building and rebuilding of the famous Globe theatre (even up to its rebirth in 1987!). The book shows the various phases of William's life in "Acts" just like his famous plays. The book even discusses the many words and phrases that he invented that we still use today. It ends with a look at Sam Wanamaker and Theo Crosby's vision of recreating The Globe and how they went about creating this wonderful restoration.

   A book that captures the reader's attention visually and with its easily read text. I am, as a teacher of 7th grade English, very impressed by this book, and can't wait to share it with my classes.




3. The presentation is clever. Aliki has organized her information into Acts, Scenes, and Asides, with Act Five being the work of Sam Wanamaker to recreate the Globe Theater. She has also laid out her prose text as if it were lines of poetry, furthering the playbook effect. I often checked the text to see if it was written in iambic pentameter (it isn't). The illustrations are lively and highly detailed.
   
   The pages are very busy. Here are the contents of a typical page, from top to bottom: four lines from As You Like It; a drawing of Christopher Marlowe; an information box about the Rose Playhouse and builder Philip Henslowe's diaries; seven lines of text about the Admiral's Men and Marlowe; a drawing of three actors on a stage, surrounded by groundlings; the titles of sixteen Shakespeare plays superimposed in wavy lines over the drawing of the actors; a caption beneath; and a line from The Merry Wives of Windsor.
   
   Aliki's efforts to squeeze as much as possible into this book sometimes become distracting. All of the illustrations have their own text boxes, with additional information provided in up to five sentences. Readers may have to keep backtracking in order to follow the narrative, and I sometimes wonder if texts like this are the best way to format nonfiction material.



4. Using this pretty children's book about Shakespeare's theater of choice, I will give you some history this author failed in her effort to influence kids of all ages. The Globe Theater was the most famous of Elizabethean age and built on the south bank of the Thames River in 1599 by members of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. The nearby Rose Playhouse built by Philip Henslowe,was not as popular with the populace of London.
   
   The Globe could hold between 2,000 to 3,000 spectators as most would be standing. In an 'aside', the actor would make a brief remark directly to the audience. Plays were performed in the afternoons, requiring no extra lighting. "Hell" was the trapdoor used by the entrances and exits of devils, monsters, or ghosts. "Heavens" were the machinery by which gods and goddesses were lowered to the stage below. There were no women on the Elizabethan stage as boys were used for their roles. In the reverse, we see Peter Pan as always a woman! Strange?
   
   William Shakespeare began as an actor in London in the leading theatrical company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and went on to write thirty-seven plays. He used soliloquy in his plays, which is a single character alone on stage speaking his thoughts in length directly to the spectators. In Drama Class at the old Central High School, we had to perform a soliloquy. I was a shy girl, only 14 then, but the one I chose was a favorite with the other class members. When I finished, they all yelled, "Go on." But, there was nothing else. Needless to say, I did not become an actress. But my husband was a college play director, and we were involved in every phase of putting on dramas of every kind, and sometimes comedies. We also attended plays in Nashville and Huntsville, Alabama. My three boys acted as children in their dad's plays.
   
   Shakespeare's acting company first staged his 'Hamlet' in 1600 or 1601 at the Globe Theatre, when it was relatively new. It was called a "revenge tragedy," which includes a ghost calling for vengeance, and the revenger must always die. They also performed "mystery plays,' "morality plays,' and "miracle plays." Are there such things as real miracles? After the way I was verbally abused by a bus of ghetto people using racial slurs and outright threatening remarks (all the time the driver ignored, saying she could not hear anything!), I have lost my faith in the fellowman and think they should have lived in Shakespeare's time, and they would have been hanged by the tail like donkeys as that is what they were. They should be sent back to Africa.
   
   The art in this little book is fantastic. It is worth the price just to look at the beautiful rendering of the Globe, a unique place to us Twentieth Century Americans.



5. I bought this book for my 1st grader as an intro to Shakespeare. For my purposes this book contains too much extraneous information about Sam Wanamaker. His accomplishment of having the new Globe theatre built is amazing, but pales in comparison to Shakespeare's accomplishments, which I would rather hear about. We get to know details about "Will," but not anything about his plays except for some excellent representative drawings of representative characters. What my daughter has taken away from this book so far is that London Bridge really did fall down, Shakespeare died at age 52 and Marlowe at age 29, Cleopatra is associated with a snake, London had city walls, and Queen Elizabeth I came before the current queen, Elizabeth II. That's all useful foundation material, but we'll need another book to really sample Shakespeare.

2 comments about Vienna Voices: A Traveler Listens to the City of Dreams (Writing Travel).

1. Weinberger's glimpse into Vienna's rich cultural and historical life serves as a launching point for researching her in-laws' past. Though well-off and industrious throughout the late thirties, the onset of World War II forced them to flee, uprooting their lives and sense of identity like thousands of other Jews in the city.
   
   Weinberger's smooth writing style makes it easy to envision sitting in one of the city's countless coffeehouses on a mild spring day. Yet simultaneously, it is impossible to ignore its undercurrent of war-related anxiety, a constant reminder that a war continues to ravage its victims' lives long after its end.
   
   Although Weinberger's work might be classified as travel writing by some, she encompasses aspects of many other genres -- history, memoir, nonfiction, humor -- creating a memorable read.



2. This is a beautifully and sensitively written collection of personal impressions of Vienna intertwined with flashbacks of personal history of a Viennese Jewish family in the years before and after the Anschluss.
   A very delicate treatment of a highly emotional topic.

1 comments about That Great Lucifer: A Potrait of Sir Walter Raleigh.

1. Everyone knows Sir Walter Ralegh as the gallant courtier who spread his cloak across a puddle so that his queen might pass dry-shod. A commoner who never lost his thick Cornish accent, Ralegh was nevertheless precisely the sort of man likely to catch Elizabeth's eye: handsome, intelligent, witty, well-spoken, and possessed of enough pride and independence to speak his mind, even to his queen. The term "Renaissance man" seems coined with Ralegh in mind: He was a poet, soldier, privateer, explorer, scientist, historian.

   He could also be stunningly naive, and surprisingly inept at the art of courting favor. His first meeting with James I, Elizabeth's successor, was a disaster. Accustomed to priviledge, Ralegh approached James unannounced, even though the king heartily disliked such surprises. When James observed that he might have had to fight for the throne, Ralegh's response was, "Would to God you had! Then Your Majestry would have known your friends from your foes." An honest sentiment and possibly a shrewd one, it not the sort of observation likely to endear him to the new king. James already had reason to be wary of Ralegh, for some of Ralegh's enemies had been plying James for months with negative reports. Ralegh's recent behavior seemed to support these dark hints: he was one of the few dignitaries who did not bother to contact James after Elizabeth's death to assure the new sovereign of his loyalty. Worse, Ralegh presented the peace-loving king with a proposal for seizing the West Indies from Spain. James had been told that Ralegh was a warmonger and possibly a traitor. With his own eyes he perceived another, more subtle threat: this handsome, powerful, and persuasive man was a living reminder of Elizabethan glories.

   Ralegh's fall from power during the reign of James I was as swift and spectacular as his rise under Elizabeth had been. His enemies rejoiced, as did the common folk who then and now love to see the mighty brought low. Ralegh's greatest triumph, perhaps, was the courage and wit he exhibited through his trial, imprisonment, and execution. In a last interview with a friend, he advised him to come to the beheading early if he wished to get a place. "As for me, my place is assured," he quipped. His last words, spoken to the hesitant executioner, were, "What dost fear? Strike, man, strike!"

   Margaret Irwin is a novelist as well as a historian, and this comes through in the tone and quality of her writing. This biography is far more entertaining than most fictorical fiction I've read. It's full of telling anecdotes, vivid descriptions, and dead-on characterizations. Considering the complexity of her subjects and the paradoxical nature of Ralegh himself, this is a remarkable achievement.

   One minor disappointment was the lack of a bioliography; there were several incidents and anecdotes that I would have liked to explore in more depth. Even so, it's an entertaining story, as well as a window into a fascinating time.

No comments about Armoured Cars in Eden - An American President's son serving in Rolls Royce Armoured Cars with the British in Mesopotamia and with the American Artillery in France during the First World War.

5 comments about The Last Days of Henry VIII: Conspiracy, Treason and Heresy at the Court of the Dying Tyrant.

1. This book does a remarkably good job of presenting the facts about the final years of Henry VIII, a time when political and religious factions were vying for control over the course England would take after Henry's imminent death. I've read a lot about Henry over the years but this book taught me many things about him that I never knew before. This book contains an overview of the political and religious situation towards the end of Henry's time and also presents many interesting new findings and details you probably won't read anywhere else. It's written in an erudite yet relaxed style that is easy, even entertaining to read, and feels like listening to a lecture by a skilled history professor with a sense of humor. This book is a valuable and very welcome recent addition to the world's historical knowledge of Henry's time. I heartily recommend it to anyone who shares my fascination with Henry VIII or English history in general.



2. In response to the fellow that gave this book a 1-star, one cannot possibly understand the important political maneuverings in the final days of Henry without explaining details of his reign, of which I feel was the point of the book. I also did not mind the review of other parts of his reign because it included interesting primary sources.
   
   This book is a good starting point to understanding the Tudor political atmosphere and why it is how it is in the wake of Henry's death, backed with good solid sources of letters and financial records. It is also remarkably readable and interesting.
   
   The only thing I didn't prefer are the conjectures of Henry's ailments. At this point it's just a guess - and I'd prefer to just have the symptoms stated instead of a guess stated like a fact.



3. I found this book was not very reader-friendly. It was interesting, but not interesting enough for me to finish...



4. This book is a great comprehensive look at the last few years of Henry VIII's life, which is often overlooked due to the scandals of his earlier years. It explores in depth his last three marriages, the conspiracies and rivalries abounding in his inner circle, the religious climate, his volatile temper, his waning heath and final illness, and his majestic funeral. We see some familiar characters like Cromwell exit the scene in Henry's familiar tyrant fashion, and we become more familiar with others who filled large rolls behind the scene. I would recommend this as a great supplement to the collection of any Tudor enthusiast as a readable and straightforward account of Henry's final, tumultuous years.



5. Henry VIII's story does not end with the beheading of Anne Boleyn. Hutchinson pulls from many sources of Henry VIII's contemporaries to tell the most interesting bits of Henry's last few years as King of England. The chapters do not follow a consecutive timeline, but rather skip around and focus on a single theme such as reforming the church, the ordeal surrounding the king's marriage to Anne of Cleves, the war waged with France, Henry's health, etc.
   
   I found this book very easy to read for a number of reasons. Hutchinson continually reminds the reader of certain characters and their relations/roles to King Henry VIII. If you still can't figure out who someone is, simply flip to the back of the book and there's a whole list of names and a short one or two line "biography" on each person. There's also a timeline in case the flipping back and forth between years gets confusing. I didn't have any problems following along and I'm not well versed on Tudor history! In fact, this is the first historical biography I have ever read! And I read it for pure enjoyment!
   
   So, if you're looking for an interesting book on one of the more interesting characters of the English monarchy, I highly recommend you consider this book!

3 comments about The Voice of Destruction.

1. These supposed recollections of private conversations with Hitler were shown in the 1980's (see Der Spiegel 37:92-99, 1985), after investigation by a Swiss schoolteacher (Wolfgang Haenel), to be fraudulent. The book was used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials and also cited in postwar histories (e.g., Rise and Fall of the Third Reich), some still in print.
   Richard Pipes, otherwise a splendid historian of the Russian tragedy, also quotes this book.
   Hermann Rauschning met Hitler twice, in public forums, and had no private conversations with him. He had a falling out with the regime and then concocted this "memoir." In 1943 he gave a presentation at my alma mater (Wartburg College, Iowa), no doubt to many a reverent ear.
   The danger of making Hitler or any other tyrant into such a cartoonish figure is that subsequent generations are lulled into thinking that a potential dictator would present himself as an obvious neurotic. Quite the contrary.
   Four stars for historical importance, despite its blatant falsity.



2. To understand why, read my related essay at: http://www.hashkafah.com/index.php?showtopic=22001



3. This book has also been published in the English language under the title: HITLER SPEAKS.
   
   Covering events mostly from the early to the middle 1930's, this book fills an important gap in the development of Hitler's thinking. It comes after MEIN KAMPF (1923-1925) and the then-unpublished HITLER'S SECOND BOOK (1928), but before HITLER'S TABLE TALK.
   
   Rauschning elaborates on Hitler's attitudes towards Poland. It becomes obvious that the Fuhrer never saw the 1934 Polish-German Nonaggression Pact as anything more than a temporary expedient, and that he never seriously considered accepting Poland as an ally against the Soviet Union (p. 119). This adds refutation against the claim that WWII had been triggered, in part, by "Polish intransigence".
   
   A common Nazi anti-Semitic theme is the one about Jews being vermin (presumably fit for nothing other than extermination). Interestingly, Nazis also thought that way of Poles. Albert Forster, the Gauleiter of Danzig (Gdansk), referred to Poles as lice (p. 110). (So did Joseph Goebbels, in his diaries).
   
   Rauschning elaborates on Hitler's obsession with Jews. He believed that it was driven in part by Hitler's fear of his partial Jewish ancestry (p. 235).
   
   In his MEIN KAMPF and SECOND BOOK, Hitler had vilified the Jews, and presented Slavic lands as ones to be conquered for lebensraum purposes and filled with German settlers. But what exactly was to be done with the Jews and the Slavs was left to the imagination of the listener. Not so here! Hitler makes direct threats against both Jews and Slavs as biological entities. He speaks of using both Jewish property and Jewish lives as hostages in response to the anti-German actions of other nations (pp. 88-89). (This foreshadows his infamous January 1939 statement, in which he said that, if "international Jewry" caused another war, he would destroy Europe's Jews in response.) He first speaks of resettling Czechs in Siberia (p. 38) and then, repeatedly complaining about the great fecundity of the Slavic peoples (p. 33, 137), proposes to solve this problem through such measures as keeping men and women separated for years (p. 137). He quips: "There are many ways, systematical and comparatively painless, or at any rate bloodless, of causing undesirable races to die out." (p. 138). (In time, the Nazis did implement both active and passive genocidal techniques against the conquered Slavs, as discussed by Raphael Lemkin. The Nazis also worked to develop mass-sterilization methods, preferably ones that could be used covertly against the intended victims).
   
   In this book, Hitler develops his anti-Christian themes, but not as strongly as in the later HITLER'S TABLE TALK. In this work, Hitler refers to Christianity as an effeminate, Jewish invention (p. 49, 235). He trusts that the dogma of the Vicarious Suffering of Christ will give way to acceptance of the new Leader-legislator, who will liberate the faithful from the burden of free will (p. 225). Hitler also clearly exhibits the views of a moral relativist: "There is no such thing as truth, either in the moral or in the scientific sense." (p. 223).
   
   Nazism is often misrepresented as a form of extreme nationalism. In fact, Hitler believed that the concept of the nation was a political expedient of democracy and Liberalism (p. 232), and was just as outdated as the concept of the dynastic feudal state that it had replaced. He wanted the concept of the nation replaced by "purely biological values". (p. 233).
   
   Nazism is also commonly misrepresented as a form of capitalism. In actuality, Hitler scorned both Communism and capitalism, just as he had done earlier in MEIN KAMPF and the SECOND BOOK. In the present work, he commented: "The classless society of the Marxists, he [Hitler] contended, was madness. Order always meant class order. But the democratic notion of a class order based on the moneybag was equally mad. A genuine aristocracy was not born out of the accidentally successful speculations of bright businessmen." (p. 39).

4 comments about White Goats and Black Bees (Classics from the Southwest Ireland Series).

1. Donald and Mary Grant, two well paid journalists living in New York City, decide to do a career change in their late 50's. They purchase a cottage sitting on three or four acres, later to become 11 acres, and live off the land. They visit the local Irish Pub on Saturday nights, chat about farm animals, and throughout the year entertain friends from their previous life who thought them totally "bunkers". Donald for added income writes a column for an American newspaper describing their new life. At a time when Americans have had to make career changes late in life, I would highly recommend this book. I think they added to the success of their endeavor by choosing Ireland, for it is definitely a country where nature has it's way. Untamed, perhaps, but also unspoiled. I believe in my heart that the troubles in Ireland should not be and Great Britian should give Northern Ireland it's freedom just as Donald Grant felt after living there. The Irish are unique, pleasantly unique, and should remain so



2. I may be guilty of a little bit of nepetism (Mary Grant being an aunt, a bit removed and seldom seen), but this book has been a family treasure around the house for years. Anyone looking for an inspiring story about a simpler life should look into this one for sure.



3. If you loved Under the Tuscan Sun than you will find a great book here! Donald Grant's book will make you reexamine your life and reorganize your priorities all while providing good reading pleasure. A bit dated as it was written in the 70's, but it is more about finding yourself and the cultural life in rural Ireland.



4. Donald Grant and his wife, NY journalists, retire and move to a cottage in Ireland. Their experiences and adjustments to their neighbors, to small scale farming, and to the culture of Ireland makes entertaining reading.
   They learn goat keeping, rabbit raising, and the ways of bees and geese. The evenings chatting in the pub, the village interactions, the local customs and other trivia of daily life make you feel a part of their Irish experience.

No comments about Charles D'Orleans in England, 1415 1440.

No comments about Test of Greatness: Britain's Struggle for the Atom Bomb.

No comments about Andrew Bryson's Ordeal: An Epiloque to the 1798 Rebellion. (Irish Narrative Series).