5 comments about God Save the Queen?: Monarchy and the Truth About the Windsors.

1. I laughed so hard my gut ached when I read this book. It is a witty, extremely well-researched investigation into the monarchy, both intellectually stimuling and filled with gossip. The reviews were right. This is a must-read.



2. Mr Hari is inded a 'non-journalist', as John Pilger describes him. He is arrogant, ignorant and pompous beyond his years. It's no surprise that the reactionary Trotskyite and Bush-loving fool Christopher Hitchens likes him. This damns them both! Hari hates the British royal family and wants to get rid of them in order to make it easier for Tony Blair to abolish Britain's sovereignty and make us a province of a new undemocratic state called Europe. This would open the door for Blair to become President not just of Britain but of Europe. A new Pope, indeed!



3. Johann Hari is one of Britain's most distinguished journalists and has won loads of awards - all deserved! This book shows why he is so acclaimed. I loved its mix of gossip, political wisdom, and intellect. I cannot imagine anybody but the most crazy monarchist disliking it (and even they would have to admit there's some great anecdotes here...)
   
   (by the way, the other commenters here on this book seem to be slightly insane. An EU coup in Britain? Uh... yeah...)



4. I purchased this book in the hopes that I might learn more about some of the contemporary issues/public opinion surrounding the monarchy of the United Kingdom. I was horribly disappointed. Quotes taken out of context, unattributed quotes, and silly gossip form the basis for a nasty polemic. This is the kind of distortion one probably should expect from an acolyte for republicanism. It is not the kind of book, however, that anyone interested in serious discussion about the monarchy would want to waste his/her money on. It is so unbalanced a perspective, that even those few positive contributions the author feels forced to cite during his diatribe are attributed not to generosity of spirit but to psychological disorder. It is sad that this kind of royal character asassination does not still carry a penalty of some time in the Tower.



5. This book is very well written. It is like he is talking to me in person. He is, I feel, a little bit too harsh on the Queen but right on about Philip, Charles and the Queen Mother and Margaret. A good book.

3 comments about DeLorean.

1. A great book written by a great man! Before you make judgements about John DeLorean...hear it from his side. A MUST READ for any DeLorean enthusiast or if you just want to know more about the man, car and company.



2. After reading "Dream Maker," the DeLorean hatchet job by Ivan Fallon and James Srodes, I had to seek out and read DeLorean's own rebuttal. "Dream Maker" left enough doubt (and displayed so much bias) that it's obvious there are two sides to the story.

   I must say, it confirms more than it denies. Oh, the drug charges and trial were obvious government falsehoods, and John easily demolishes the evidence against him. Recounting the travesty trial takes over half the book, even though "Dream Maker" stops before the trial begins.

   What was more interesting is his recounting of his life before the trial, and his very, very brief touching on the failure of DeLorean Motor Company. In these he reveals himself to be very vain, mean-spirited, self-centered and willing to blame everyone but himself. It is not pretty reading his cruel and tactless dismissals of his ex-wifes or business partners.

   He starts the acknowledgements by saying that writing this book was good therapy. "In the beginning, [co-author] Ted [Schwarz] knew that I was bitter, angry and hostile. But as he and I talked through 1,200 pages of transcript, I slowly healed and developed a more balanced view, just as Ted knew I would."

   Well, a few more months of healing would have been beneficial, because this book blames everybody for the downfall of JZD and DMC except the one person who, clearly, was to blame.

   John's conversion to born-again Christianity, which dominates the last half of the book, is just another case of seeking to escape responsibility. Everything is "God's will."

   In all, a fascinating glimpse into a slimy world of high stakes, high finance and huge egos.




3. This book was wonderful. I had never read any other book on DeLorean so I came to it with an open mind. I was not biased either way on any views regarding his guilt / lack thereof regarding his trial etc.
   
   I came wanting to hear a self-told story of of the maverick engineer I think many of us young professionals dream of being. Someone who challenges convention, shakes things up, and produces enough results to keep those critical at bay. This book is the only way to get his side of it all (With the exception of On a Clear Day You can See General Motors - another great read).
   
   
   I highly recommend it for anyone curious about what happened in general, looking for his side of the story, or just interested in a brilliant man's life.
   
   The book kept me pinned to the text and I got through the book very quickly! Highly recommended.

4 comments about W.B. Yeats: A Life I: The Apprentice Mage, 1865-1914.

1. R.F. Foster's two-volume biography (second volume to come in 2000) is a model of articulate and knowledgable scholarship, arguably comparable to the great biographies of Joyce and Wilde written by Richard Ellman. Foster's work leaves nothing to be desired. It easily excels previous Yeats biographies written by Cootes, Jeffares, etc.



2. This is loaded with surprise after surprise. Foster's insights into the poetry, through historical and social readings, are often revelatory. My only complaint is that many of the tales he tells tend to have the same emotional architecture due to a descirptive repetition: this makes it a little monotonous at times. But this is a quibble. This book is great. When is Vol. 2 going to be published?



3. For the first 100 pages or so, this book had me completely. Roy Foster writes with elegant brio and has a historian's eye for the wider events and contexts that shaped Yeats's early years. Where previous biographers like Ellman take a sort of lighthouse approach to their subject, treating the passions and conflicts of Yeats's day as fuel for the poetry that was destined to outshine them, Foster is more like an anteater, eagerly snuffling up the everyday bits of information that give the flavor of Yeats's multifaceted life as he actually lived it, before his later fame and incessant revisions smoothed it into a pattern.

   After a while though, the book tends to bury Yeats in a mass of trivia that include everything from the menu at one of his literary dinners to the prices he charged for his lectures. This level of detail could be enlightening if Foster stopped for breath more often to tell us why these things are important. Too often though he keeps his head firmly down with the ants, cataloging the day-to-day intrigues of a very complicated life without linking them to any kind of larger interpretation of Yeats's personality or development. Instead, Foster spends his 500+ pages introducing new names at the rate of one or so per page, most of them disappearing by the end of the chapter never to be heard from again. We get the intrigues of various Irish nationalist factions, potted bios of minor figures on the Dublin and London art scenes, humorous sketches of Yeats's fellow-travellers in his sundry mystical societies. It was hard to see Yeats after a while with all these minor figures crowding the stage.

   If Foster does have an interpretation of his own, as far as I can tell it's a revisionist one. Where Ellman or Jeffaries saw Yeats's life as a drama of painful self-creation, Foster sends to see an ambitious man on the make, an aggressive networker who wasn't beyond bending the truth if it helped his own advancement. Even his life-long passion for Maud Gonne, one of the key sources of his poetry, was, according to Foster, in part a self-conscious realization that a great poet needed a great passion to write about. In trying to bring Yeats back down to earth, I think Foster overcompensates by making him more canny and worldly than the sexual naivete, table rapping, faery talk and aesthetic posturing of these years suggest. Worst of all, Foster shows almost no interest in Yeats's poetry, the reason we're reading the biography in the first place. I put down the book admiring Foster's energy and mastery of such a huge anthill of facts, but I couldn't shake the feeling that a lot less would have told us a lot more.




4. William Butler Yeats offers a life of contradictions. Born in Dublin to a middle-class Protestant family, Yeats went on to become one of the premier poets of the twentieth century. As a writer and member of the Irish literary community, he also helped to forge Irish national identity through his words and his deeds. In this biography, the first of two volumes, Roy Foster offers an account of Yeats' development into one of the leading figures of the Irish literary scene.
   
   This is not an easy book. Foster recounts Yeats' life in what is sometimes excruciating detail, covering every movement and literary battle the poet undertakes. Moreover, as he does so he assumes the reader's familiarity with both the background of late nineteenth century Ireland and the members of the Irish literary community. People appear in his narrative with little introduction, creating a confusing jumble of names that limits the appreciation of their role in Yeats' life.
   
   Such problems aside, this is a first-rate biography. Foster does a great job examining Yeats' life, in a text that while long is never dense. His coverage of Yeats' occult interests is particularly good, as is that of the poet's involvement in nationalist causes - both integral aspects of his poetry. Foster's argument that Yeats' involvement in the mystical was a reaction to the declining position of Protestants in Ireland, an effort to cope with the sense of dislocation by asserting psychic control, is a compelling one that helps to fit more of his poetry into its contemporary context. Foster helps this process; while he asserts that his biography is about what Yeats did rather than what the poet wrote he does offer a perceptive commentary on aspects of Yeats' work, which helps us better appreciate the connection between the man and his writings. Thanks to this, we have a book that is essential for understanding such a complicated literary figure and the role he played in his times.

No comments about Cardinal of Scotland: David Beaton c. 1494-1546.

5 comments about Tom Crean: Unsung Hero of the Scott and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions.

1. A captivating read and even more than a book about Tom Crean.
   Michael Smith assembles a intriguing chronology that reveals
   a compelling perspective of the times and lives of the Polar
   Explorers. An insightful character analysis into the leadership and the crews.
   My only complaint is,after Smith's meticulous documentation of names,dates,latitude/longitude, and geographic locations,
   the book offers only a few rudimentary maps. But you can easily remedy this(inconceivable oversight)by obtaining the USGS Topographic Index Map of Antartica(free)and a beautiful Satellite Image Map($7 US)scale 1:5,000,000 mapI-2560.I plotted as I read and ended up with a great reference souvenir.



2. Having read about Amundsun,Scott and Shackleton,this entry on Crean[and the Biography on Worsley],complete the elusive details on a host of characters who chose to go where no others had gone before. Isolated and at the unrelenting mercy of the elements,these thoroughly detailed accounts evoke the best of the human spirit.



3. May I state from the outset that I am Irish, so my opinion is probably biased. I was enthralled by the book, and this unsung hero (what a title, given that he never spoke about his exploits). Smith did a remarkable job given that Crean left so little written material behind. I am dissapointed with earlier remarks about "Not much new here folks", they obviously missed the point. This book is about Crean and his part in the well documented events of thos days. Crean is my hero, I would have loved to have known him.



4. Tom Crean is a true hero of the age of exploration. He was a man of great courage, strength and conviction. He was a member of two South Pole voyages with Scott and one with Shackelton. One could argue that had Scott chosed Crean over P.O. Evans to represent the "lower decks" on the last push to the pole, Scott may have survived to tell the tale. As it was, Crean is credited with saving the life of Lt. Evans as they struggled back after being the last support group to leave Scott and his party of five on the polar plateau and thus were the last to see them alive. Additionally, Shackelton credits Crean with, if not saving his life, being integral to the success of the Endurance expetdition by playing a central role in Shackelton's escape from Elephant Island and hike to eventual safety. Michael Smith tells an exciting, compelling story of the stark realities of the age of exploration in the early 1900's. This book is a factual story, expertly told about the "follower" Crean, a quiet man with strength and character that are so remarkable it is difficult to comprehend. Everyone of us can learn something from his example. This is a story about human endurance and will.



5. One night last week I watched "Scott of the Antarctic." Being very impressed with the realistic nature of this 1960 production and, always impressed with the stalwart, intrepid, and frankly at times, insane daring of the British Explorers, I picked up this volume from my shelf and read the whole thing in a single night!! It had actually been given to me by an Irish friend about two years ago.
   
   I am grateful to that friend. Here in one book is more adventure than several explorers can pack into many lives - all accomplished by a single man - Tom Crean -- backbone of the Expedition: stalwart working-class hero and embodiment of everything that made both Ireland and Britain great nations.
   
   Tom was the non-com backbone of the operation. Someone capable with his hands, able, trustworthy and dependable in the extreme, men like Crean built the Empire and made feats of arctic exploration possible. From an adventure reader's point of view Crean was part of the last accompanying party with Scott, before Scott's choice to proceed onwards with 5 men deemed fittest. Of course Capt. Scott assured his posterity by dying along with 4 of his men. What I did not really know was the epic adventure Crean and his remaining companions endured in their eventual return.
   
   I will spare the details, but this book is packed with non-stop action (one thing that sticks out in my mind is the wild and very imprudent sled ride down the glacier -- it has to be read to be believed -- especially by anyone with actual glacier travel experience). Crean's last solitary walk of 32 kilomentres to gain help for his starving and badly scurvied companions is at once a stroke of genius, courage and luck -- he would not have survived if he had arrived 30 minutes later, by that time a wild storm pummelled the camp and Crean would have died if he had not made the hut).
   
   Crean also was a part of the Shakleton expedition and was again selected as one of the most dependable, and physically strong people to undertake the long journey to South Georgia and the also epic traverse of South Georgia ( a 34 mile trek across an island mountain range that had never been explored before). The adventure is unrelenting -- even the last kilometre before reaching the Whaling Station involves them on an abseil down a 20 metre waterfall.
   
   This book should be read for the sheer joy of understanding what gives all people strength when all else seems lost... it would have been easy to give up, but Tom Crean and his ilk never did.
   
   There is one point I should raise with this book that is a little annoying. It is the prediliction to interpret people as the embodiment of their race and nationality. Of course the Irish do this much more and perhaps better than most... but the idea that figures such as Crean are some sort of Zeitgeist representative of their country is misleading and wholly beside the point. There are points in the narrative where the author postulates what would have happenned had Crean be choosen to accompany Scott...there is also the attempt to make the obligatory genuflections to Irish Nationalism -- how does one square the circle of him being the right hand of Empire but at the same time significantly nationalist enough for the Irish (as if loyalty to the British made a person any less Irish).
   
   In simple terms Tom has little time for politics -- he evaluated people individually. It wasn't like him to judge. He was in many ways the strong and silent type. As such he offers us a template for a very fulfilled, dependable and just human being This is the story of this remarkable man.

5 comments about Queen Elizabeth II: A Woman Who Is Not Amused.

1. Ever since I can remember I have been fascinated by the British Royal family; watching the weddings of both the Waleses and the Yorks, reading Majesty magazine each month, etc. I bought this book to find out more about the Queen and Prince Phillip. I finished this book within two days and still find myself drawn to it. The depth that the author reaches, describing the Queen's marriage, family, responsibilities, daily life - it is all covered with a thoroughness that makes the reader feel as though they knew Her Majesty personally. Undoubtedly there are other books available that detail Queen Elizabeth II's life, but this one will stand out due to it's ability to draw the reader into the world of this remarkable monarch.



2. One of the best books on the British Royal Family and on Queen Elizabeth in particular.

   Reading this book one can see that Mr. Davies is quite knowledgeable and has done his homework where researching the subject is concerned.

   Queen Elizabeth may not be easily amused - and she has every right not to be - but I certainly was highly amused and entertained.




3. Three years ago, I added this book to my too-large collection of books about the Royal Family. I started re-reading it this week when looking up something about her disinterest in clothes while reading the reports of her visit to Australia. Whoever is doing her hats now should be drawn and quartered!

   This is an enjoyable book and I can only feel a bit sorry for the Queen. For all of her worldly possessions, she leads a rather dreadful life. Smiling, looking interested, holding flowers, etc. must almost drive her out of her mind! She does a good job of it, though, and for that I give her credit. It's a good show. I've been watching it for over 40 years!




4. A great book about the Queen. Lots of information, but not too over the top with details and hard-to-understand writing.



5. I was most touched by Queen Elizabeth, seeing that all her life she has had to put country and duty first. I felt heart broken for her with her treatment from her husband and his bad behavior, but at the same time could understand that it was most difficult for him as well, having to give up all his hopes and dreams. I also learned how Diana threatened the monarch with her behavoir, something I never understood until now and I felt differently about the whole thing, and understood both sides. I learned a lot about how royals raise their children and was shocked, but understood that it is how they are raised, and they know no other way. I also learned what the Queen does in official business and just how influential she is. She has earned my deepest respect and I have watched her intereact and must say that when she smiles it is truly captivating because it radiates from her heart. Great book! I highly recommend it.
   
   Sufani Garza
   Author

1 comments about Phoenix: Robert, Earl of Essex: An Elizabethan Icarus.

1. First, there is much about this book to commend it. As noted above, it contains some interesting and insightful comments by Essex's contemporaries. The writing is clear and occasionally rather musical. The life of Robert, Earl of Essex and the last of Elizabeth's favorites, is described in considerable detail. The image of a man of great charm but stunningly bad judgement emerges, sometimes in spite of all this detail.

   What I found off-putting was the tone of some of the writing -- a sort of headline hyperboly. And characterizations tend to become caricatures: at one point, the author evokes the image of Elizabeth's successor as "young King James cavorting with his boyfriends." The Scottish king was in his late thirties when he succeeded to the English throne -- hardly young in the Renaissance world. And the author misses a potent parallel: according to many historians, it is likely that James Stuart's physical relationships with his male favorites were not much different from those of the late queen with hers. James VI and I was undoubtedly attracted to handsome young men, and certainly carried on passionate friendships, but it is by no means certain that physical liasons developed.

   Nor is this the only personal judgement offered up. Elizabeth is "nasty, vicious and self-centered." This snapshot opinion is bolstered with documented events and considerable speculation. The author repeatedly and matter-of-factly informs us of this complicated monarch's motives and feelings and thoughts. Sometimes her mood is not difficult to discern; Elizabeth had a famous temper and wasn't above shrieking at a courtier or boxing a lady's ears. These moments are described with relish, and they do indeed flesh out the author's portrait of an aging, difficult woman. The author's depiction of the internal Elizabeth, however, can be exasperating. Most jarring perhaps was the assertion that Elizabeth took up with Essex because "she had nothing to lose." This, when the cover's subtitle breathlessly promises that her "affair" with this young man "nearly dethroned her," is not only presumptous, but contradictory.

   On the other hand, readers whose primary interest is political intrigue are likely find this book of value. If its goal was to show the uncertainties of fortune and the odd machinations of Elizabethan society, it succeeded admirably. There are few books available on the life of Essex, and this one is worth a look.

1 comments about Florence And Josephine O'donoghue's War of Independence: A Destiny That Shapes Our Ends.

1. I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book. It really gives you a sense of time, place, and characters, which is the key to all good history. There is the standard Irish revolutionary backdrop, which is compelling, but its core is this very cool love story. My girlfriend isn't interested in Irish history, but I gave it to her and she loved it. And there is a bunch of material and perspectives about the Irish War of Independence that I had never heard of before. It is fascinating.

No comments about Beau Brummell: The Ultimate Dandy.

No comments about Duke Richard of York 1411-1460 (Oxford Historical Monographs).