The color reproductions in this book of the frescoes in the Scrovegni (Arena) Chapel in Padua depicting episodes in the life of Christ (and the Virgin Mary) are among the most, if not the most, beautiful I've ever seen. Printed on textured and translucent paper, the effect is to allow them to glow with astonishing freshness. The more enlarged reproductions not only allow one to examine the artist's technique, but to appreciate the full expressiveness of face and form. Very moving.

I'm aware of only one other book, now decades out of print, that does equivalent justice to Goya's stunning, apocalyptic final visions. Even the current big, ritzy Goya monographs can't touch the top-quality reproductions that this book offers, printed as they are on a curious matt paper, thin and oddly textured, but affording an excellent impression of the painterly quality of these impasto nightmares. The author's text and various 'poetic' contributions are B-grade, but not to worry; this is not a book to read but to LOOK AT and be transported by, into a dream that, while exhilarating, one is releived to wake from. Hang the expense! If you love Goya, you must have this startling book.

Maurice Samuel, the great Romanian-born writer, translator and orator, migrated to England in 1900 and to the U.S. in 1914. He wrote You Gentiles some 20 years after the Protocols of Zion was forged and began to spread its evil; You Gentiles was reprinted five times within eight months, and has now tragically become a cult book for anti-Semites. Such readers would be shocked by what Samuel said here, for he made an assertion no less startling today than it must have been in 1940: "Anti-Semitism is the expression of the concealed hatred of Christ and Christianity, rising to a new and catastrophic level in the western world."

Anti-Semitism, Samuel wrote, cannot be properly understood as a common bigotry. Despite comparisons to racial, religious, economic or political discrimination, it rather "invokes a proliferating diabolism which testifies to a kind of insanity." Other kinds of prejudice involve ordinary statistical inaccuracies and lies, he wrote, but anti-Semitism makes the Jew "the subject of a new and horrible mythology. Therefore, while reminding you that it is sinful and anti-Christian to hate anyone, I charge you to look into the disintegration of the mind which is part of your anti-Semitism and of your anti-Semitism alone, and discover, if it is not too late, what special spiritual disaster it indicates."

Samuel wrote as Hitler launched his diabolical truculence on the world. But he rightly found fault not only with Nazi Germans. Anti-Semitism sprouted in all countries of the world, "the 'haves,' the 'have nots,' the sated and the unsated, those which were victorious in the first world war, those which were vanquished, those which remained neutral and even those which were born of it." Wherever fascist groups arose--and he listed Italy's and England's blackshirts, Germany's brownshirts, Romania's and Hungary's greenshirts, America's silver-shirts and South Africa's greyshirts--they "made the Jew their primary psychic preoccupation, with the same psychic manifestations." Hate literature exemplified by the Protocols of Zion then circulated everywhere. Were Samuel alive today (he died at 77 in 1972) he would undoubtedly have included fascist Islamists as well.

Samuel placed "this lunatic concentration on the Jews" at fascism's core. Wherever fascism emerged, it manifested a fierce, religious anti-Semitic urge. Even in countries with few Jews, anti-Semitism eventually found expression. He cited Spain and Italy as examples, but today Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt would serve as well. Fascism could drop its common bigotries, Samuel posited, but it could never drop its anti-Semitism.

The dehumanization he observed in Hitler's fascism also appeared in the Islamist fascists whose ferocious sense of "rightness" legitimized murdering thousands of civilians on September 11. In 1940, children were seduced into mob moods in kindergarten and school, as they are in fascist states again now. In a "gigantic but fine-woven web" that caught citizens' minds "at every level, building up a world of fantasy incomprehensible to those who live outside the controlled area," Samuel observed darkly that the science of dehumanizing man was still in its infancy.

Samuel identified threads of this anti-Judeo-Christian disease in Friedrich Nietzsche's 1887 Genealogy of Morals, which referred to the Jews' supposedly inferior "terrifying logic" based in what the German philosopher disparagingly labeled "the teeth of the most profound hatred (the hatred of weakness)," namely that the Jewish slaves Moses freed were equal to other men. Samuel found similar anti-Jewish pathology in the work of Augustus Henry Pitt-Rivers, the British Crimean war general and archeologist, who complained that "Jewish mendicants" had extinguished the culture of Rome and "Judaised the whole of Europe."

But Hitler, who condemned the Jews for opposing "the eternal privilege of force and strength," gave the plainest voice to the hatred of Christianity inherent in anti-Semitism. Fascism, Samuel wrote, "says that man exists in and by virtue of the machine; Judeo-Christianity says that a machine must exist for man, or must not exist at all. And everyone who takes this point of view allies himself ultimately with Judeo-Christianity."

Fascists, Samuel concluded, must "spit on the Jews as 'the Christ-killers' because they long to spit on the Jews as the Christ-givers." He saw their belief in Jewish ritual murder as a resurrection of old stories of Christians eating human babies at secret feasts and their mad belief in terrific Jewish power as a mirror of Him whose name caused the ancient Pagan world to collapse. Thus does Judeo-Christian tradition continue to threaten fascists. And in an accidental way, he wrote, fascists rightly feared the Jewish capacity to produce anti-fascist types and philosophies, for the Jewish people had learned Christian doctrines and practices from the same sources as Jesus, though by different channels.

The struggle between fascism's ethic of force and Judeo-Christian ethics of man-to-man relationships countenanced no neutrality. In the former, Samuel believed words took the blunt form of weapons and ultimately lost all meaning. In the latter, words served as peaceful instruments, ultimately providing a path to sanctity.

Samuel wrote that the fact that the Judeo-Christian non-force philosophy possesses mythological power over the souls of men--an omnipresence that pursues and persecutes worshippers of force, constituting a sort of universal anti-fascist conspiracy--renders the world ever-susceptible to diabolising the Jewish people.

Fascists transfer to living Jews "all the attributes of the Judeo-Christian episode in human history," concealing from themselves the fact of this transference. Christ and Christianity cannot be attacked by name. But, by adopting anti-Semitism as an ideal, the force philosophy can, and still does, assume the objective of destroying Christ and Christianity's significance and values, via those identified as their creators and representatives.

In 1939, a leading American liberal writer, who repented a year later, wrote that Britain's non-aggression pacts had caused "denial of legitimate German aspirations" and spoke of the German Reich's right to "self-determination" and the need to "rectify injustice." Samuel attributed this grotesque confusion with the liberal world's inability to denounce the dread purpose behind German's ostensible demands. Sound familiar?

It would be funny, if it were not so tragic, how history repeats. Alyssa A. Lappen

I've lived in New Zealand and after coming back to the U.S. I've had the privledge of taking groups back and I highly recomend this book for anyone traveling in NZ. It is better than most guide books although a little large as a guide book. I'd gladly take it because this books gives in detail information about almost every town in NZ from historical information to economic background. Gives places to see and where to see them. Now if they could shrink it you could through away the Lonely Plant book and Fodor's. For a photographer it is a must to read before traveling there. Both great writing and photography.

A writer's trip to Alaska for inspiration turns out to be more inspiring than he'd bargained for. Colorful locals, a girl , a wolf and the magnificent scenery are just the beginning. If you only read one book this year, make it this one!

This is an amazing book. I assign it to my Sociology of Religion classes. It is a powerful, critical look at Mary. Hamington takes us through the social construction of Mary and exposes the ways in which her image has affected our own understandings of gender and sexuality. It is scholarly and yet accessible. Hamington looks at the patriarchal underpinnings of Mary's image and how this image has been used against women over the centuries, stigmatizing their natural sexuality and mothering capabilities. Read this book! Assign it to your students! It is the best on the subject!

A true conservation classic. Anyone who has visited Hawk Mountain will appreciate this book. The wholesale slaughter of the 20's and 30's of hawks passing over the Pennsylvania mountain is vividly described and will outrage any nature lover. Broun also poetically describes the beauty and solitude of life on the mountain in all seasons. Highly recommended! Stephen Rees. Abington, Pa.

This book happens to be my favorite Sendak. Taking two rather obscure Mother Goose rhymes, Sendak creates compelling stories purely through his illustrations. One could read the book entirely through his drawings, without making any reference to the texts. A very imaginative book, particularly as the child who is reading it has to make an effort to look at the pictures to follow the narrative.

I was the editor of this book, which for various reasons was never published. Thus, an out-of-print search will be of no avail.

This book is short but dense, and was adapted from lectures made by Wallerstein, who is arguably one of the most influential social science theorists (in our generation) about global and historical issues.
Here, he outlines global inequality and describes how the world nations can be considered part of a global system of social stratification. Some background is given on how these inequalities are rooted in half a millenium of colonialism and (now) neocolonialism. For readers new to Wallerstein's thinking, this book will require quite a bit of study but many pages are just overflowing with profound insights. The result will be an understanding that will provide intelligent and studious readers with a framework that can be used to interpret modern history and current international events, as well as inequalities and issues within most countries around the world.

Highly recommended reading for advanced undergraduates, grad students, and professionals. Only 110 pages, but can easily fill an entire weekend for the studious reader.
An outstanding work that should be read before Wallerstein's more detailed analyses, such as "The Modern World-System" series.