Historian and academician Piotr Scholz's Eunuchs And Castrati: A Cultural History is a fascinating, informative, insightful study of eunuchs and castrated men throughout human history. Thoroughly researched and wide-ranging, Eunuchs And Castrati covers the role of eunuchs in such diverse lands and eras as Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Byzantine Empire, China, Islam, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and Reformation, and 17th and 18th-century Italian opera. Especially recommended to students of gender studies and cultural history, Eunuchs And Castrati is an impressive book written to dispel commonly held myths and draw readers into a fascinating, if somewhat disturbing human phenomena. The excellent English translation also includes a new epilogue by Shelley L. Frisch about eunuchs in the twentieth century.

"EUNUCHS AND CASTRATI" is a very recommendable book for everyone who is interested in history, religion, ethnologia, sexologia, various cultures of the world, etc. I recommend the translation not only for the English-speaking people but also for the non-English speaking people.

Ingeborg Hecht. Invisible Walls and To Remember is to Heal. Translated from the German by John Brownjohn and by John A. Broadwin. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999.

Most people have heard about Hitler's Nuremberg Laws. But few are aware of their actual significance. Ingeborg Hecht's book Invisible Walls and To Remember is to Heal shows in detail the impact of the laws on the everyday life of her family, her Jewish father who got divorced before the laws were promulgated, her Aryan mother, and her brother and herself, the half-Jews. History comes alive in her book: The exact wording of a legal passage (given with its date) is followed by the descriptions of the results of these orders. But there are also glimpses of human compassion, the revolt against dehumanization. And at the end, she does not shy away from looking critically at the reparation efforts by the new German Federal Republic. The importance of Ingeborg Hecht's book is also shown in its second half which gathers responses to the first half which was published by itself a few years before this new edition.