I have always liked this author; I can always count on him for a good story. I was a little disappointed in this effort. Maybe it is because of the high hopes I had after reading some of his other works, but this book just did not hold my attention. He did a good job with an interesting story, one that I think he had to work more on due to it getting away from his standard fair. The characters drive this book and are done well. I guess I was not looking for a sea story and that is what this book is.

As a fan of naval adventure fiction, I usually follow the Forester, Obrian, Kent novels of nautical derring-do in the Age of Sail. Thus the jacket blurb on this Higgins book attracted me. I was not disappointed. Briefly, the book involves the fates of passengers and crew of a 19th century three-masted barkentine as it tries to return German nationals from Brazil to the homeland as Germany faces certain defeat. It's a five-thousand mile journey to round the Shetlands to enter the Skageraak and head for home. The Atlantic is controlled by the British and American fleets. This danger, however, is not the main enemy, which is the sea and the weather. The amazing seamanship exercised just to hold the creaking 60-year old vessel together in the teeth of terrible storms may stretch credulity; however the nautical exploits are convincingly described and it's obvious that Higgins knows his naval details down to the way in which sails had to be reefed, masts lashed, hulls braced, etc. The passengers include an admirable collection of nuns who must abandon the order in Brazil due to the fact that Brazil has just become a formal ally of the United Nations effort to defeat the Nazi regime. The stifled romance between a wavering novitiate nun and a strongly etched member of the ship's crew is well drawn, not too maudlin and deftly handled. So too are the British and American characters on a remote island in the Hebrides, who are to become entangled in the fate of the imperiled _Deutschland_. Even the captured U-Boat commander Gericke avoids the usual black and white "German = Nazi" stereotyping.

I would have liked to see the subsequent fate of the surviving main characters brought to light. Any screenplay based on this novel (which is a natural for the cinema) should try to tie up these loose ends.

Highly recommended.

This is a reprint of a novel originally published in 1976. The story is set in August-September 1944. A group of German naval officers and seamen, stranded in Brazil, steal the aged 3-masted barkentine "Deutschland" and, using false Swedish papers, set out on a voyage from Belem, Brazil, in an attempt to reach Germany. They have unexpected passengers - a group of five German nuns from a nursing order attempting to return home. Their biggest danger is the weather as storms batter the sailing vessel (they neglected the fact that September is the peak season for Atlantic hurricanes). The voyage becomes an epic battle against the elements, and leads to heroism, sacrifice, tragedy, and unexpected compassion. I personally believe that this is one of Higgin's best novels, if not the best. There are some intertwined plots as events come together to reach a final climax to the story.

This book covers a wide variety of topics. That's good if you want to know a little bit about just about everything, but I would greatly prefer more expansive coverage of some of the more interesting aspects of sexuality. For example, the book covers "opening lines," sperm banks, infidelity, back pain, pillow talk, and several other less-than-riveting topics while giving short shrift to aphrodisiacs, pheromones, and techniques of increasing sexual pleasure. Besides being maddeningly superficial, some of the information is just plain wrong. For example, the authors mention using wild yams as an aphrodisiac. That's ludicrous. Apparently the authors' knowledge on this matter is not up-to-date, because the old supposition that yams contain a chemical (diosgenin) which can be converted into progesterone in the body has been refuted by countless medical doctors and biochemists. Even if such an endogenous transformation could be effected, progesterone is not a hormone that can increase a man's libido! If I want to hear groundless myths, I can speak with my locker room buddies; when I'm paying for a book, I expect facts instead of a rehash of tired old myths.

I first became aware of this book when Tommy Lee, of all people, held it up on MTV and said it was his favorite book. After reading it, I know why! This is a great tome to share with the man you love--perfect Christmas stocking fodder! It will provoke endless discussions and endless ... experimentations. I cannot recommend it highly enough!

So I thought that I knew enough about sex. Wrong! This book contains everything about sex that a man should have learned about sex during his life. If a man want to understand more about sex in term of loving and caring toward the partner, rather than just 15 minutes lust, read this book. This book will certainly broaden a Man's knowledge about everthing about sex.

I am reading this book for a religion class and we are half way through with it. Cardinal Wyszynski writes in a captivating and refreshing manner. It's actually an enjoyable read. Would highly recommend it for those who are trying to connect work & religion. The cover art work is great; Diego Velazquez "Forge of Vulcan".

This book is a great help to anyone who is frustrated with their job -- inside or outside the home. It helps change your attitude about work through scriptural insights. Foreward by Lech Walesa, the great Polish labor leader, is moving and insightful.

This is a wonderful book for anyone who is discouraged about their employment (inside the home or outside.) It gives great, practical, Biblical advice on changing your attitude toward work and seeing work as a ministry. I only wish they'd kept the original title, "All You Who Labor", as the current title sounds a little Calvinist and can be misleading. The foreward by Lech Walesa, the 1980s icon of work and leader of the Polish Solidarity movement, is moving and greatly enhances the text.

It's true that this is a very, very thorough account of the B-M Group's activities. Sometimes the details are a little much (like a breakdown of Baader and Ensslin's monthly spending in early '71) and yet their accumulation provides for a fascinating glimpse inside the lives of the Group. Since this is a translation, it is difficult to say if it is the writing or the translation that is so wooden and choppy.

I have two major criticisms of the book: the first is its leaps in chronology. Sometimes Aust skips months and years to follow a thread through to its end, and this often creates confusion as to what happened when. While it's clear that he does this to illustrate a point or follow someone's involvement, it was confusing as often as not.

The second criticism, and a major failing for me, is that Aust fails to provide much of any kind of context for the time. We are given next to no background on the social or political or economic climate in which the Group operated. At first this seems to tilt the book in the Group's favor (as does the choice of photographs, all of which are of members of the Group or their supporters and none of which feature their victims), since everyting is told from their viewpoint. But this lapse shifts towards condemning the Group, since we never get a feel for what they were fighting against and why or how it could have seemed so important to commit themselves to violence. Aust ends the book with: "They were seven years that changed West Germany." But you would never know that from the book, as there is virtually no account of how the public at large responded to the Group.

A minor note is how startling it is to find out for the first time, on page 100, that Aust knew some of the Group and that he assisted in the kidnapping/rescue of Meinhoff's children. A little disclosure at the beginning seems only fair.

.... ....

STEFAN AUST's 1985 meisterwerk is the only truly accurate account of the activities of Germany's Red Army Faction, the ultra-lefist terrorist group which was the cause of much murder and mayhem in the 1970s. Aust knew many members of the gang personally, and this knowledge, backed by extensive interviews with former RAF members and prisoners, only makes an already comprehensive work stronger. There really isn't a single fault with this book: it's well-written, clearly presented, accurate and unbiased. Unlike other works on the RAF Aust neither glamourises or demonises his subjects. He gives you the facts and lets you make your own conclusions. Nowhere is this more so than the chapters on 'the German Autumn', the chaotic 43 days that saw the kidnapping of a leading industrialist and the hijacking of a Lufthansa jet airliner in order to get the RAF high command out of jail; both attempts failed and the gang's leaders - Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe - all died in suspicious circumstances at the prison of Stuttgart-Stammheim. Aust, through superb documentary evidence, proves that the gang did indeed kill themselves. That is the major triumph of this book - it lays to rest the myth that the trio were murdered by the state. This book is superb.

The existence of this slim volume baffles me. Alright, it is certainly true that Zweig's stories, many of which are absolutely marvelous, are in dire need of a re-release that would hopefully do something to alleviate their obscurity. Very well; perhaps the editors were operating out of this noble idea. Why, then, did they release only two Zweig stories, out of about twenty? And why did they make those two "Invisible Collection" and "Buchmendel"? Granted, both of them are good; the first is even great, certainly one of the man's best. But why only them? And furthermore, why charge the price of a full-length book for such an obviously sparse selection? I don't get it at all.

Bad judgment, certainly. However, it must be noted that neither of these two stories is included in the _other_ incomplete compilation, The Royal Game And Other Stories. Thus, if you liked those (and I don't see how you couldn't have), this book will make a good complement. However, even so, there are _still_ others that are in need of reprint but are included neither here nor there. Argh!

During his lifetime (1881-1942) Stefan Zweig was one of the most celebrated authors in Europe, and anyone who ventures into his writings will understand why. Zweig's insights into and compassion for his fellow human beings is both astonishing and deeply moving. These two tales are among his most beautiful. "The Invisible Collection" is told by an art dealer, who sets out to purchase a print collection from an old man, only to find himself coerced by the man's family into complicity in a heart-breaking game of deception. (The story is more poignant if you know that Zweig himself was an avid collector of autographs and manuscripts.) "Buchmandel" is an equally wrenching tale of a old Jewish man who has a faultless memory for books, who's life falls apart with the advent of World War I. (Imagine a kind of East-European version of Borges' "Funes the Memorious.") These two tales take the art of story-telling to its most refined state, and you'll understand why Zweig's work was considered some of the greatest writing of its time.

You know, I'm quite fond of this book, and it isn't because the instructions in this book are greatly better than any of the others in the marketplace, although I would certainly recommend this book before, say, "The Creative Calligraphy Sourcebook," "The Calligrapher's Project Book," or "Illumination for Calligraphers: The Complete Guide for the Ambitious Calligrapher" to someone looking for information on painting medieval-style illuminated letters.

Like Seligman and Noad's "The Illuminated Alphabet," this book is concerned with teaching you how to draw and paint illuminated letters based primarily on pre-1600 examples, and it offers 25 projects towards that end--more than almost any other such book. Its materials and methods are modern rather than pre-1600, unfortunately, so the emphasis here is not on reproductions but bringing the style of the past into the modern world. Materials lists and step-by-step instructions are provided for each project.

However, what I really love about this book is Mr. Oliver's skill level. I do not mean that he is exceptionally wonderful. Mr. Oliver is indeed good at what he does (otherwise, why would anyone publish him, right?), but what is exceptional here is that Mr. Oliver allows himself to be imperfect. Man, that takes confidence. It also allows the illuminated letters to be beautiful as handcrafted works of art. I'm actually kind of tired of instructional manuals that feature art works that seem to be so precise that the work could have been painted by a computer-guided robot arm rather than a real human being.

Excellent for those who want to paint their own medieval-style illuminated letters. The shading of the paiting leaves a little to be desired, but the book is overall informative on the techniques and styles of manuscript illumination.

This book tells great ways to take care of frogs and tadpoles. It shows all the life stages from tadpoles to frogs. This book shows amazing photographs of these creatures. I would recommend this book to anyone that likes tadpoles or that plans to have one.
Thomas M.

This was a great book! I am a teacher at Winnwood Elementary in Kansas City, MO and my class was studying tadpoles. This was a great information book for them as well as for me. Wonderful close-up pictures. Everything you want to know about tadpoles and more!

This is the story of the 1994 season in the minor league independent Northern League. 94 of course was the infamous year of the strike and World Series cancellation. Thus it is hardly surprising that Fatsis' most prominent theme, shared by those involved at all levels -- but particularly ownership/management -- of the Northern League, is that MLB and its minors have become hidebound, soulless businesses. This is absolutely true naturally, but all that is required to confirm it is a couple of examples to hammer that point home, not the drumbeat reiteration that Fatsis provided throughout the book. When he concentrates on the personalities, fans, cities, and -- most particularly -- ballpark atmospherics of the Northern League, Wild and Outside gets much more entertaining. My personal favorite was Ted Cushmore, the put-upon owner of the hapless Duluth franchise. Fatsis had lots of access to many participants in the league and, not surprisingly, those who talked most freely to him tend to get the most sympathetic treatment, a bias which colors the history to an extent the reader can only guess at. As baseball reads go, however, this one ranks in the upper middle of the crowded pack.

Well written and packed with information. Excellent read.

Este libro es una buena revisión de la poesía latinoamericana, tiene una gran calidad de impresión, por lo que su precio no es tan accesible, pero vale la pena pagar el dinero que cuesta, puesto que su selección poética es excelente, diversa, ilustrativa y constructiva.

This is probably the most important work of an important English social critic. Cambridge University does an admirable job with the text. Arnold lives today as a grotesque caricature. He is the bone-headed Neanderthal Terry Eagleton digs up just to bury again for a generation of English majors. This image could not possibly be more wrong. In his day, Arnold was known almost as well for his good-humor as for the critical phrases he coined. Arnold was a three dimensional human being, deeply afraid that materialism was breeding crassness, and that crassness would destroy the best in everything worth being and knowing in every culture in the world. Unlike Ruskin and Morris and Swinburne and others of the Victorian world, Arnold worked hard for a living, and yet still cared deeply for things beyond his daily bread. Students assigned this text shouldn't grumble. They might learn something very close to their own hearts.