I really liked this book. It is a dark drama, one that is frightening to hear. I acted in this play and I decided to pick up the book since I liked it so much. It's about a man named Biederman. Despite the warnings of "firebugs," or what we would call more-commonly arsonists, he invited a man into his house. A large, burly man that he couldn't say no to. He gave him home in the attic of his own house. His wife objected, of course, because she didn't want anyone who may be a pyromaniac living in her home. In the morning she promised herself she would get rid of the man in a perfectly polite manner. Instead, the man gave her the sad story of his youth and Frau Biederman allowed him into her house because she felt sorry for the man. So, the man invited a friend of his, without consulting Herr Biederman, by the name of Eisenring. Together they collected sawdust and oil barrels in the attic, and even promised Herr Biederman that they were the firebugs of the city and that they were going to burn the house down. But because it is his house, Gottlieb Biederman does not dismiss the two from his house. This is the story of a man who refuses to believe, and then blames all his mistakes on fate. I really enjoyed this creepy book. I think people who respect a drama such as his will, too.

I received this as a present, waited a few months, and then read it in the course of a single day. This short play is about a middle-class businessman whose biggest anxiety revolves around the Firebugs, men in the city who are responsible for a recent rash of arsons. They enter homes as guests and, after staying the night or dining, take advantage of their hosts' hospitality and trust and burn down their homes. The protagonist, at the height of such crimes, allows a couple of young men to spend the night at his house and refuses to believe (because of pride or trust or some other variable) that the sawdust, matches, and gasoline that they bring into his attic could have anything to do with malicious intents. Frisch prevents the reader from really feeling sorry for the protagonist, who is humorously pathetic. The most interesting part, to me, is that what seems at first glance to be a caricature of human nature is, in fact, so close to reality.

Walter Benjamin has progressed over the years from an obscure lesser member of the Frankfurt School to a widely read leading member of that obscure school. Aided by such as Hannah Arendt, who introduced him to a wider audience in her writings (and also to me), readers have come to appreciate Benjamin for the beauty of his writing as well as his sharp insight.

This volume, along with its companion, is an excellent introduction to the style and thought of this man who, while out of step with his times, possessed the insight to give those times an original critique.

Possessed of a lively style and free from the Marxist bagge that weighs down his Frankfurt School colleagues such as Adorno and Horkheimer (I think Benjamin owes much more to Heidegger than Marx), Benjamin will hook any reader who takes the time to spend an hour or two with this book. From here it's an easy step to purchase other Benjamin writings, a step I can almost guarantee.

While his work is as important as Barthes, Foucault, or Derrida, or any other critic of the 20th Century, Benjamin's work has a mystical quality, a kind of enchantment, that resonates much more than any other critic I have read. It is always human and sensitive, even despite his determinedly impersonal tone.

When I think of Benjamin, I think of Emerson's famous line about Hawthorne - that he was a greater man than any of his works betray. The integrity and character of Walter Benjamin shines through his works, and is an inspiration to anyone who takes literature seriously.

This first volume of Bejamin's complete works is very attractive and welcome. Some of my favorite essays are present, such as his essays on children's literature, and the nature of language. I eagerly await the other two volumes.

DEAL is a highly entertaining, action-packed thriller which hurls the reader at warp speed towards an inevitable collision between Roy Santana, Air Traffic Controller in the LAX cab, and the Airline Captains in the cockpits of two passenger jets. This is a story about stress - personal and professional - and its consequences.

From the beginning we know that something horrible will happen, and, as the countdown continues, the story line becomes increasingly charged and foreboding. The characters and their problems are palpable. We are allowed to feel compassion for the protagonist, recognizing some of his foibles in our own lives. We don't want to condem Roy, we want to save him, along with the 250 people whose lives rely on his quick, professional judgment.

This drama requires aviation knowledge which the author - pilot and air traffic controller - has mastered, but he includes many friendly explanations. This is a story for all of us. Next time you look up and see an aircraft, understand this: it flies due to pilot expertise and airworthiness; its position and safety rest with ATC (Air Traffic Control).

Michael Masotto has done a superlative job in executing this drama!

An excellent book, finally Banjamin on photography and cinema is available in english. Reading his essay on Chaplin is extremely illuminating concerning the question of the passage from silent film to sound film. His concept of critique, as well as his concept of "making history" lies in this text.

"A man has been through an experience, now he is looking for the story of his experience"

That is the starting point of this breathtaking pseudo novel. And here I am not trying to debase the book by using the word pseudo: it is just that I have the sensation that Frisch has been writing down notes aimed at something else that is supposed to be a novel. He's got the man; he's got the experiences; now he must build the story. And with this purpose, he explores every feasible event that may occur to the character.

He proposes for example: "Let's say my name is Gantenbein." and goes on, "Let's pretend I am blind". And he deals with all the possible consequences that may be derived from his assumption. What does it entail to fake blindness in the realm of everyday life, love, and friendship? Is there any room for jealousy when blindness prevents us from seeing the evidence? Now let's call the man Enderlin, let's suppose he's about to die, and let's give him a lover. And let's his lover be Gantenbein's wife. Furthermore, let's Gantenbein even be Enderlin; assume his wife is an actress, and allow her cheating blind-faked Gantenbein, and so on.

The result is a beautiful mosaic of characters that makes up the draft for the two main characters, Gantenbein and Lila, just a man and a woman, a modern couple. And of course, there is also "the situation", plotted in all imaginable ways, which may make the reader recognize him or herself sooner or later along the book.

Boring, funny or difficult to read are definetely neither accurate, nor scientifically adequate adjectives one should use to describe and classify a novel (not a book, but a novel). Frisch's Gantenbein is not to be evaluated emotionally, but rationnally. It should therefore not be grasped as a love story, or one about (so-called) human feelings, but as a text mainly dealing with the problem of identity, about a decentered I. Frisch manages to create not only an excellent experimentalist piece of art, but aswell a representation of the internal tension of personality, including extremely insightful auto-reflexive passages on Art and Literature. Definetely one of the finest writers of German language of all times.

Gantenbein tells the story of a man who sees his love and marriage falling apart. In his attempt to look for a rescue, he envisions different scenarios (which may, to the superficial reader, appear to be inconsistencies) that would help him to find a way around the unavoidable. The different scenarios are both, very funny and also insightful. This is an outstanding novel.

This book provides excellent outline, but lacks practice questions. The book only have limited questions at the end of the Unit, and even then, the questions are sparce (~35 per unit of 5 or 6 chapters), instead of questions PER chapter.

This book has just the right amount of detail for course review, and it has a good, logically arranged layout. It's like an ideal set of class notes.

Breaking man's urge to create down to the point of a dialectic battle between his level of comfort with the surrounding environment, Worringer outlines the historical balance between our urge to make what we perceive concrete (through abstraction) or organic (through empathy). This classic dissertation argues it is only by finding a state of equipoise between these two urges that art can make a lasting connection with any generation.

Recommended for all those interested in advancing art and design evaluation beyond mere opinion.

Andorra is a great theatric work. From the first page you'll recognize the obvious WWII undertones of the Nazi terror against the Jews. This work is powerful, because, even as just the Reader, you feel like you're being dragged along with the events of the story - they are looming, unescapable, irresistable. You know what the end of the story will be long before you get there, but you keep dreading it, hoping that something will intervene to stave off the impending disaster. Reading this drama will give you a stark picture of the inevitability of events, which, once set into motion, become incapable of being stopped by anyone.

This book was poorly translated and even in the original German, Fest is a heavy writer, turgid and hardly scintillating. This compilation is laden with errors, some major, some not, but the ultimate effect compromises the integrity of this book. It's absurd, for example, to make the statement that Hermann Goering's Nuremberg defense was anything but brilliant. One can loathe what Goering stood for and decry Nazism and its atrocities, but to deny that Goering stole the show at Nuremberg is historically inaccurate.

There are many better summations of the Nazi leadership than here. This is as dry as timber and about as edifying.

What you get in this book is pretty much what the title promises you. The author (J.Fest) plunges into a psycho-social analysis of the Nazi elite and attempts (succesufully) to shed some light on the people who moved the strings of Nazism in Germany.
Admittedly, the author's heavy writting style will turn off a certain group of viewers. While his intentions on decoding the personas that played key roles of Nazism are honest and straightforward, the atmosphere of the book is rather characterised by abusing descriptions and verbal exagerations.
Short biographies and psychological profiles are on offer here: Hitler, Goering, Hoess, Himmler, Hess, Ribbentrop, to name but a few.
However, you'd be mistaken (in my view anyway) to assume that this book will help you understand what brought this fascistic movement to power. Before even deciding whether you should read this or not, start by reading "The rise and fall of the third Reich" or other books pertaining on fascism and the masses. What is absent here are the german people themselves. Fascism does not rise because of a few psychotic personalities , and, as was proven in Germany's example, it very often complicits the people themselves to grab the power mechanisms.
But, if you are interested in blitz-biographies, and short "explanations" then the "Face of the third reich" will be a good choice. Then again, when it comes to the major players of Nazism there are far better individual biographies and character accounts out there (one of them by the author himself on Hitler).

Michael Burleigh's recent work "The Third Reich - A New History" was widely praised for its novel explanation of Nazism in the context of religion. Anyone who has read Joachim Fest's excellent book however will, among other things, know that this particular analysis was hardly new or innovative.
In form, The Face of the Third Reich is a psychological profile of both individual Nazi leaders and various sections of German society at the time. Through this approach though, the main causes of the rise of Hitler and the Nazis are explained.
Among other things, Fest lucidly illustrates the essential nihilism of the Nazi movement, whose ideology as such was based on the acquisition of power as as end rather than a means.
The vacuous adoration of and devotion to Hitler was in itself a cornerstone of Nazi philosophy, the Fuhrer cult providing the basis for Fest's religious analogies. He also discusses how initially vague assertions of Aryan superiority and Semitic evil were later focused after the seizure of power and developed and expanded on by Himmler and the SS.
The portraits of the main personalities are fascinating. Fest is invariably amazed by how such unremarkable individuals were able to attain such immense power and commit such extravagent atrocities. He shows how almost all were linked by a moral corruption and a cynical lust for power. The chapter on Rudolf Hoss, the commandant of Auschwitz is particularly arresting. Reading this, one is reminded of Orwell's 1984 and the ability of man to subjugate himself to authority and in turn to deceive himself into committing the most unfathomable crimes.
Fest is one of the foremost German authorities on Nazism and the book throughout is filled with an intellectual disgust and contempt of the regime. For anyone trying to make sense of that period, this book must be read.

I was disappointed with this book since it is written in a style that is extremely difficult to read. There are too many commas and semi-colons to provide any kind of continuity. I own over 20 Titanic books, most purchased before the movie, and this is one of the worst.

Alittle hard to follow. For anyone interested in a book about Thomas Andrews or the Titanic I recommend the book "I Built The Titanic".

This book was originally written in 1912, right after the Titanic sank, so it is invaluable when you consider that this is the way people thought of Thomas Andrews in the year of his death. I only wish it was longer!