It is hard to wipe off all the mud while the mudslinging takes place. Mr. Handke should be given a lot of credit for his effort. Although sometimes tiring, his understanding of the Serb, Croat and Muslim actions and american/french/german/british arrogance (or is it ignorance or both?), offers to the reader, specially in countries like united states that have been infected by the CNN/ABC virus, an opportunity to see the other side.

Unfortunately, following some points requires a better knowledge of the events, players, and history -- which is not as common nowdays.

The translation made the ideas a bit confusing at some points, but overall, this is a good book to read.

Handke's small but insightful book has one simple message (amidst many subtle ones): when it comes to Western media coverage of Serbia and the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, "The Emperor Has No Clothes."

Many Croats and their sympathizers have criticized Handke's book sharply for being pro-Serb, but it really can't be reasonably interpreted that way. Rather, the book is an outcry against the wholesale demonization of a people who have been portrayed, wrongly, as ignorant, barbaric, rabid nationalists drunk on historical myths and bent on vengeance, pillage and killing. In fact, all sides in this conflict have manipulated ethnic nationalism for their own ends -- and, among them, the Serbs have been principally distinguished by the relative lack of success in this regard (particularly when compared with Croatia, for example).

Read this book for a wake-up call. Things are not as black and white simple as your newspaper or CNN's clever talking heads (or Messr.s Clinton or Blair) would have you believe.

I know nothing about Serbia beyond what the press commonly reports. This book is the first I have read about that country. It makes no apologies for Serbian atrocities. It does, however, lyrically call journalists and journalism to task.

Written in German in late 1995 for a European audience, this 82-page book applies equally to the U.S. I speak as a former journalist who, during 25 years of largely national U.S. writing, plumbed every side to every question before reaching conclusions--always over-reporting to find nuances, and often reaching conclusions only as I wrote. It was a handicap not easily overcome.

That is not how many, perhaps even most, journalists work. The fault is built into the system. Editors expect reporters to have an angle before they present an idea. Without a hook, assignments are often not made. Editors will deny it, but they expect reporters to have reached some conclusion before they begin reporting, and to report to prove their points. In other words, they routinely ask journalists to put the cart before the horse--an especially troubling phenomenon in this era of political correctness.

Reporters say they are after truth and good. Most are in fact after the big game, the story to make them famous, a kill. Nowadays CNN hires television actors as news anchors. You get the picture. Ironically, on big stories covered by throngs--which I intensely disliked and avoided, and which of course include wars--reporters tend to mimic each other, to sit around after they file, bragging about their prowess. The largest braggarts are also often the least talented.

Institutionalized problems have a depressing effect on journalism. Few stories are black and white. But most present that illusion, although they are products of very little, if any, deductive thought. Certainly, nuances do not surface in short sound bites feeding most news wires. Peter Handke seems to know all this--and a great deal of philosophy.

Serbia aside, this book shows, in near-poetic language, that things are not always as journalists portray them. For that alone, Handke's tiny volume is worth its weight in gold. Alyssa A. Lappen

No one who views this book can any longer doubt the complicity and cooperation of the general German armed forces, or Wehrmacht, in the murderous acts of Germany's ignominious Third Reich. Literally hundreds of graphic and horrific photographs show average German soldiers shooting, hanging, bludgeoning, or otherwise mistreating, torturing, and murdering helpless civilian men, women and children during operations on the eastern front. This is a grim but necessary book.

Most surprising is the fact that the photographs were originally part of a German exhibition held in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War Two, and constitute a damning condemnation of the role of the average German soldier (as opposed to other specialized Waffen SS or Einsatzgruppe SS units) in visiting the whole panoply of horrors of egregious war crimes on the native populations of the subjugated countries during Operation Barbarossa. These were not crimes committed against opposing military forces, but were rather crimes committed against war prisoners, Jews, and other civilian segments of the subjugated regions.

This is, by its very nature, not an easy or pleasant book to view or read. One does so reluctantly and only in an effort to learn more about the demons that ultimately threaten each of us, as we face personal responsibility for all of our acts as individuals. The conclusion one reaches after viewing these photographs and reading the accompanying text is humbling, shocking, and intensely relevant, even though some fifty years have passed. With similar shocking events composing the headlines and bylines of contemporary news casts, the most shocking thing one realizes is that the world evidently has not yet learned from its past, as events in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, and Somalia make perfectly clear. Human life is still held in little regard, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned in the blood and hate of ethnic, tribal, or national pedigrees.

One problem with the book is that many of the photographs are small and difficult to appreciate in their full impact without a magnifying device. This, however, is a small quibble with a brave, terrible, and significant book such as this one. This is a book we should share with all those cynics who doubt that the Holocaust happened. Perhaps they can explain the hundreds of photos of ordinary German soldiers committing mayhem and murder in some clever fashion. Of course, the debate over what happened is not over. But this book and the documentation it constitutes makes understanding of the Holocaust and how it happened more possible.

Through declassification of wartime documents and research into archives newly made available after the dismemberment of the Soviet bloc, far more detailed analysis of German war crimes and genocide is possible, indeed is necessary. Most studies of mobile extermination squads, the Einsatzgruppen, and the death camps emphasize the principal role of various branches of the SS in mass murder. Studies of the war on the Eastern Front have tended to focus on the herculean battles waged and the stratregy and tactics employed from the inception of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 to the 1945 fall of Berlin to the Red Army.

Generally, the German Army, the Wehrmacht, has escaped censure for the Holocaust in its earliest improvisational form and its later administratively controlled manifestation (the German Army wins no plaudits for treating Red Army prisoners according to the Geneva Convention but this seems to have greatly bothered relatively few Western historians).

This book explodes the myth that the German Army was not complicit in wholesale murder of Jews, Gypsies and anyone else targeted by the Nazi state. Comprised of very many damning photographs from a controversial exhibit in Germany and supplmented by an expert historian's analysis, "The German Army and Genocide" is not the last word on the subject but it will spur new research and force needed reappraisal of the conventional wisdom.

The controversy over the exhibit, and this book, is not over. Presentation of the exhibit in New York City has been delayed because of claims about the authenticitiy of some of the photographs and the accompanying legends. Nonetheless an increasing coterie of Holocaust and World War II scholars are finding ample evidence that the Wehrmacht not only aided the SS and the many reserve police battalions engaged in rounding up Jews and others for murder, its top field commanders knew full well what they were enabling and, in some cases, were enthusiastic albeit not very loud supporters.

The photos in this book are not easy to view. With their penchant for documentation, the Wehrmacht captured the sometimes agonised, occasionally amazed expressions of their victims just before they were murdered. This is, however, a chronicle that should be viewed by all interested in the reality of the Final Solution and the barbarity of the German onslaught into the East.

A good mystery of homeland. Ben Abbott takes on a moonlighting role into solving the murder of Reg Hopkins and is faced with questioning everyone in his hometown friends, family, and foes.

A good mystery that keeps you guessing but does not hold up to the first in the series Hardscape. However, it is a good mystery and I recomend it.

I liked the second book in this series as much as the first. Justin Scott is a very accomplished writer and puts together a terrific story. Unlike some amateur sleuth mysteries, Scott is able to give depth of character while weaving in humor.

The Great Gatsby is one of the best novels I have ever read. The story centers on Jay Gatsby, a millionaire, whose past is a mystery, but with his tremendous wealth, he is able to attract everyone into his life circle. Nevertheless, his entire motive is to win back his old lover, Daisy. His loyalty for love eventually paved the road toward his tragic ending.

This book was excellent in my opinion. It contained love, lust, undying devotion, betrayal, and every other element that makes for a good love story. But it was more than that, meaning can be found in each and every character. Some characters such as Daisy represented the times (the 20's), as she was dependent upon her husband and was nothing more than the vision her husband held in his eyes. While a character such as Gatsby represented the struggle that we shall face until the end of time. The struggle I speak of is one of the heart. If you are at all romantic, I suggest this book to you, and if you are not I suggest it to you because of its intrigue and content.

I really enjoyed this book. I admit, I was surprised. I went into reading this book as a big task, something to be avoided at all costs. But when I really got down to reading it, I realized how interesting the book actually was. The first chapter or so was a bit slow, but after that the storyline just kept gaining momentum. I strongly believe that F. Scott Fitzgerald was the premier writer of the "Jazz Age." "The Great Gatsby" is often referred to as the quintessential novel of the "Jazz Age" and I believe that this is very true! Although he was a great writer, I think he was a little politically incorrect. He also used a lot of plays on words, which made reading the novel a little more confusing. The notes in the back of the book did help a little but it was more confusing then it needed to be. I did like how Fitzgerald used the first person. It lets us get really close inside the narrator's head and that's nice to be able to do. Overall I really enjoyed reading this book and I can't wait to read other books by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Thank you for listening and V.A. rules.