An incredible story about German resistence to British invasion in East Africa during the 1st world war. What started as a beach landing calculated to force the German to surrender overnight, ended four years later with an undefeated German army surrendering to a British army that had not defeated them! This book is full of hard-to-believe stories. Once you start reading you will not put it down.

This book studies the historical context of the life of Charles of Anjou : Economics, Geography, Warfare, the different provinces of the Angevin Empire... This is not a biography of Charles of Anjou, since different point of views are adopted in each chapter, not necessarily in chronological order. For the story of his life go for Runciman's Sicilian Vespers. Read this book if you want a more detailed description of the Mediterranean in the 13th Century.

Marie Duell is a marvelous writer of historical fiction. She portrays each and every character so vividly that you begin to love every one as your own. From the very start of the novel, I was hooked. I simply could not put it down. I only got this book in the first place so I wouldn't be bored on my plane trip. What I thought would be a semi-interesting book to occupy my interests momentarily, ended up being an obsession. Even when I reached my destination, and my boyfriend, I had to read this book to the very end. To the very end of the book I was guessing at the twists and turns the plot would take. Not once did I guess right (and I read a lot of these books). I was thoroughly impressed by Ms. Duell.

I bought the Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa for my High Middle Ages class, and the text offers an interesting slice of history of the reign of Frederick Barbarossa. Begun by FB's uncle, Bishop Otto of Freising, it was completed by Otto's assistant, who arguably offers a more solid history than his more skilled and sophisticated predecessor.

As a student of history with a keen interest in England, the Netherlands and France, I found reference after reference to the Habsburgs. Philip II kept popping up. First he would be invading the Netherlands, then he would be married to Queen Mary, then he would be pursuing Elizabeth I, then he launched an armada.

Phillip II and the Tudor girls, Mary and Elizabeth were descendents of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III, brother of the Black Prince, and grandfather of Henry V, who died in 1399 at the beginning of the Wars of the Roses. John's progeny descended through 1) Blanche of Lancaster (Henry V), 2) Isabel a Portuguese princess (Charles V, Phillip II, Mary Tudor) and 3) his mistress and third wife Katherine Swynford (Tudors).

The book begins with Charles V, known for sacking Rome in 1525. The German Habsburgs have intermarried with the royal family of Spain. Charles the V is the first Habsburg and Holy Roman Emperor to be raised in Spain, even though he was born in Ghent in the Netherlands--the birthplace of John of Gaunt his ancestor. From this time forward, Spain has a claim on the Netherlands.

Under Philip II, Charle V's son, some of the provinces of the Netherlands rebel, and gain a freedom of sorts though they are threatened by the Spanish occupiers of Catholic Flanders. In the background Philip marries four times, and Mary Tudor is one of his wives.

The book is informative, covers a dynamic period in the history of Europe and fills in many blanks for those interested in the history of the Netherlands and England. To it's credit, the Inquisition is treated without sensationalism. It is a synopsis covering an almost hundred year period. Iwould have liked less about the Spanish colonies overseas and a better index, but the bibliography is comprehensive.

The first volume of the Essential Jazz Records (I'm not sure if the second volume ever appeared) is a very strong guide to early jazz on a number of accounts. Perhaps the most important reason for its succes is the fact that the three authors are sufficiently alike in their predilections for the book to be cohesive, but are sufficiently particular in their passions for their to be a wide net as they attempt to gather in "the essential jazz recordings." There are enough recordings here to support the title, and they are spread over a wide enough stylistic range (from African music, to field recordings of African American performers, to blues to the earliest jazz through swing to Charlie Parker's earliest recordings) so that no one will find any gaping holes. These three reviewers together probably present a better feel for the breadth and beauty of early jazz than any of the dozens of guides I have read. Anyone possessing all of these records would certainly feel satisfied they had captured the essence of early jazz. Another fine thing about this collection of reviews is the keen insights they offer into the recodings themselves. I have often found myself returning to recordings on my shelf and listening to them with new ears in response to something written in this book. I do not always share the views of these British jazz experts, but they do certainly inspire reevaluation. The fault that many will find with the book is that the particular recordings listed here are all long-since-disappeared LPs. Many of the major label recordings have reappeared in pretty much the same form on CD, but some have not. Nevertheless, almost all the music here is available somewhere. By using this book as a guide to the music one should be looking for, and another guide to help decide which reissue might have the best remastering, etc., the explorer of early jazz won't go wrong.

First, let's correct an error. The 3rd edition was published in 1982 by John Wiley & Sons so the date of "February 1993" is not when the edition came out (maybe its when Krieger Publ. took over).

This is a classic text dealing with all aspects of forest measurements - from individual trees to rather sophisticated forest inventory techniques. It is the ONLY text that contains associated mathematics beyond the basics. It is the ONLY text that deals with metric scale of measurements, especially with point sampling.

There are at most a few people that could have written a book with the multiple and distinct perspectives required to cover the topics addressed in The Irritable Heart of Soldiers and the Origins of Anglo-American Cardiology: the US Civil War (1861) to World War I (1918). Imagine searching for someone with a record of clinical investigation in cardiovascular disease, particularly the symptom complex and differential diagnoses involved in irritable heart. Require also a military background to understand irritable heart and its implications in determining a given soldier's battle readiness. Finally, this author must have the skills of a medical historian to reveal how evolution in the practice and infrastructure of medicine itself over time influenced the interpretation and management of a particular constellation of symptoms and disease entities. In this book, Dr. Charles F. Wooley draws on his experience in all of these disciplines to lead the reader through a fascinating composite of political, scientific, and personal narratives.

The book begins in the United States with the Civil War perspective. The author aptly quotes T.S. Eliot in surveying the surfeit of statistical analyses generated from Civil War records: "Where is the knowledge we have lost in the information?" [Eliot, 'The Rock' 1934] One might argue that this question merits consideration by the clinical researchers of any era. We are led through a lifetime of influences leading to Jacob Mendez da Costa's landmark 1862 War Department communication entitled 'On irritable heart' which served as an invaluable reference for successive generations of clinicians in the U.S. and abroad faced with caring for soldiers with similar history and physical examination findings. The author also retraces the mercurial career of William A. Hammond, from assistant surgeon to US Surgeon General to ignominious court marshall and finally to lasting success as an academician with a successful clinical practice; it is no surprise that his combination of insouciance and naivety continues to produce similar trajectories in medical careers today.

Dr. Wooley then takes the reader overseas to understand the 19th and early 20th century British soldier, with a treatise on the importance of the patient history. We learn how Sir Clifford Albutt played a pivotal role in the transition from reliance on pathology to justify a disease entity to a broader understanding of disease in terms of familial, temporal, as well as spatial perspectives. His under-recognized contributions are further highlighted in later chapters, including his observation that irritable heart of soldiers consists of a "group of symptoms [that] is too uniform to be fictitious or fantastic" [Albutt 1917].

We are led through a wonderful illustration of how technology initially developed for research finds its way into the clinical realm. The author deftly establishes how imperfect data coupled with inappropriate confidence in that data can lead to years of misdirected efforts; the French school of auscultatory misclassification of valvular disease "[inhibited] critical thinking about these physical diagnostic phenomena...for the next six decades" (Wooley p.123). Technologies that we now consider routine, the electrocardiogram and chest x-ray, revolutionized the diagnostic process; as the author observes, "cardiology can be divided into two major developmental period: before Einthoven and Roentgen and after Einthoven and Roentgen." Sir James Mackenzie's concerns that technology would erode practitioners' clinical skills have echoes in recent investigations; one hopes that he would find reassurance for his apprehensions in today's cardiovascular practice that still begins and ends at the bedside despite exponentially greater use of technology.

Early 20th century forays into the brain's connection to the cardiovascular system are retraced, including Weir Mitchell's stinging critique of his neurological and psychiatric colleagues of the late 1890s. With advances such as functional and molecular neuroimaging, 21st century practitioners in these fields are just beginning to gain the mechanistic understanding required to implement appropriate diagnostic and therapeutic strategies as Mitchell implored over 100 years ago.

No book covering any aspect of the medical history would be complete without reference to Sir William Osler. He linked what we would today call "lifestyle" changes with control of palpitations in an era that lacked fundamental knowledge of arrhythmias by advising "dietetic management with abstinence from stimulants, moderate exercise and cessation of smoking." (Wooley) Mackenzie resurfaces with the wisdom ensuing from the earliest specialty heart hospitals: "Exercise proved to be the only sound clinical test of the heart's ability to perform its work." [Mackenzie 1924] The book also offers detailed histories of World War I-era giants such as Clifford Albutt, Samuel Levine and Lewis Conner portrayed against the backdrop of unprecedented carnage from both battle and disease in a "pre-therapy war." (Wooley p. 264)

The final chapter brings together a vast array of seemingly disparate individual experiences and historical events in a construct that is surprisingly coherent to even the author: "what emerges is more of a medical continuum than the author expected when initiating the search." (Wooley p. 261) In this book, clinicians and clinical researchers at any stage of their careers will recognize elements of their own explorations in medicine, replete with discovery and confusion, tectonic shifts in practice and the individual practitioner's epiphanies that emerge only from careful analysis of individual patients.

For anyone interested in the history of the English monarchy and the Civil War, this is a great book. It is well researched, elegantly written, and provides a fascinating insight into this melancholy, intellectual and kind-hearted man who proved himself, in many ways, spectacularly ill-suited for kingship. This book deserves to have a place in every history lover's shelf!

This book is essential reading for a balanced understanding of Pacific Northwest Catholic missionary history. The subject of the book, Fr. Charles Pandosy, O.M.I. is a hero, a true pioneer and a witness to many of the events that shaped the present Pacific Northwest experience. The author provides good translations of early letters and documents related to the subject of his study. Although the footnotes are disorganized, the reflections upon the meaning of Father Pandosy's missionary life are apt. Father Pandosy was a Missionary Oblate of Mary Immaculate of the first generation of his missionary congregation and of the first magnitude. French by birth, he loved God, the Native Peoples with whom he worked, music and singing. Kowrach conveys all the elements of this complex and interesting person. As very little is written about Father Pandosy, Kowrach breaks new ground with this effort.