In a marvelous mixture of oral history and subtle theory, the Cowans explain -- illustrated by the stories of first-generation American Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe, or whose parents emigrated from the east -- how and why many of them "made it" in America. The Cowans (Ruth is a distinguished history professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the author of More Work for Mother and A Social History of American Technology; Neil is a public relations consultant) argue that Eastern European Jews in American shtetle answered the question "What is a Jew?" their own way, avoiding the twin pitfalls of total assimilation or clinging to the old ways.

After you've read Our Parents' Lives, go out and rent Barry Levinson's screen gem, Avalon, to see the embodiment of the Cowans' theories, and maybe shed a tear of two.

HAMBURGER HILL is ultra-realistic because it has no plot, no characterization to speak of, and simply depicts the bravery and insanity of warfare. But what puts it over the top in terms of realism is the scene just after the movie is halfway through, with the American soldiers struggling to take the hill against the unseen Vietnamese enemy, and just as they're exhausted, they see US helicopters coming, and they're relieved -- BUT the helicopters start machine-gunning the American soldiers! "No" they wave frantically, but the machine-gunning continues, and you know that the gunners in the helicopters can't tell whether they're shooting at Americans or Vietnamese, because the Vietnamese would be smart enough also to wave their hands and say "no." So the carnage continues. "Friendly fire" occurred very often in World War II, probably far more often than in Vietnam, except it has been kept a dark military secret, and I only found out about it by talking with an ex-Marine colonel, who confirmed my guess that a great many American soldiers were killed by their own side, especially in the South Pacific. This colonel told me that there was such competition between the Army and Navy (and this we all know from the studies of the Second World War) that when marines were sent from ship to shore, they were in a non-jurisdictional place, neither under control of the Navy which had transported them to the island, nor the Army which was already on the beach and awaiting reinforcements. The Army Air Corps was bombing away and killed many of these US marines. After the War, the various services were consolidated into a Department of Defense in order to avoid these inter-service rivalries and wastage, but traditions have remained and there is still a lack of coordination and an inter-service suspicion. But my point here is that you can watch a World War II movie in vain to see even the slightest hint of deaths from friendly fire. So that's what makes the scene in HAMBURGER HILL so revealing. Even SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, with its great opening scene of the landing at Normandy Beach, shies away from the "friendly fire" problem. Unfortunately, HAMBURGER HILL, after depicting it, has an interim scene where everyone is sitting around the camp, and no one mentions the "friendly fire" that has just occurred! It's as if they shot the movie in segments (which is usually the movies are shot), and then spliced them together, without caring about continuity. You can see how this would happen: because there is no plot, no one bothered about continuity. Therefore, while I can recommend HAMBURGER HILL if you want to experience what battles are really like from the soldier's point of view, don't be looking for a story. The absence of a good screenplay is why I think it would be misleading to give this movie any more than three stars. Bottom line: if you are a war-movies fan, the realism of HAMBURGER HILL is nothing short of amazing.

Hamburger Hill is a very good Vietnam movie.It is very graphic and shows just how pointless the Vietnam War could be.It's based on the true story of the 101st Airborne trying to take Hill 937,which was nothing more than a useless piece of ground.Finally after eleven days of terrible fighting,and countless lives lost,(including by friendly fire)they were able to secure the hill.The cast(including Dylan McDermott,Steven Weber,Tim Quill,Michael Boatman,and Don Cheadle,just to name a few) does a good job,for the most part.This movie was overshadowed by Platoon,(which I think is a better movie),and Full Metal Jacket,which were both made by much higher profile directors,but Hamburger Hill can hold it's own as a brutal,honest look at the war in Vietnam.

Director John Irvin has a knack for representing warfare accurately on celluloid (THE DOGS OF WAR). HAMBURGER HILL is, by far, the most realistic Viet Nam war film yet made. It works on two levels.

The battle scenes are superbly rendered. The Viet Cong and NVA are seen crouching safely in well protected bunkers when American airpower is unleasehed upon them. Time and again they are bombed with napalm and white phosphorus, but to no avail. The Americans slog endlessly up the muddy Hill 937 during intense Monsoon conditions. Snipers pop out of tunnels and shoot them from behind.

The film packs an emotional wallop, as well. From the first scene at the mall in Washington, DC where the camera tracks along panels of the Vietnam memorial, where one entire panel is made of the names of those who fell at Hill 937 we disolve to a firefight : a Godforsaken clearing in the A Shau valley, the valley of death...the film seeks to bring the stories of the dead to life. The focus is clearly on the soldiers as we learn of their daily struggles to fight a war in which those on the home front have given up on. Many references are made to their felt anguish, their abandonment by the media and the American public doing nothing to bolster their spirits in this hellacious campaign to take a denuded hill that no one seems to realy care about, except the enemy. Laments of, "It don't mean nothing, not a thing." heard every time a buddy is cut down come off sounding more and more like Vietnamese Buddhist fatalism rather than American nihilism.

This is supposed to be a revisionist book about World War I. Around page 1 the author, Niall Ferguson, announces that he is going to correct 10 major myths about the war. (Or, at least, provide a final refutation of those myths.) Although the book is well written, and the arguments clear, I am not certain that the goal of the author is obtained. First, scholars have recognized some of those myths as myths for decades. These certainly include the first two: The myth that war was inevitable due to economic rivalries, imperialism, secret military alliances, or an arms race; and the myth that Germany started the war because the German government felt strong relative to other European powers.

Second, while his attack on some other myths are analytically convincing, Mr. Ferguson fails to provide convincing non-analytical explanations for why his numbers come out the way they do. For example, he argues that contrary to the standard myth, the German army was tactically and operationally superior to the armies of Britain, France and the United States clear through to the end of the war in 1918. His evidence essentially is that - ignoring surrender - the average German soldier killed or wounded more than 1 enemy soldier before he himself was killed or wounded. I believe the authors numbers, but I really didn't learn why they turned out the way they did. Yes, the German's developed better tactics for both attack and defense in trench warfare than their enemies, but why? Certainly their enemies tried hard to come up with good answers to those same problems, but failed. Again, why? Class structure is one reason on the part of the British is one reason cited, but I suspect that there must be more to it than that.

Third, at least the one myth I completely believe Mr. Ferguson demolished, is sort of a "so what?" While not one of his ten big myths, the author proves through quotes from letters, memoirs, and from other sources, that many soldiers from both sides who tried to surrender were killed (read "murdered") after surrendering. This really should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the military history of this century. There are many documented cases of how dangerous surrender could be during World War II and the Anglo-Boer war. (Try Paul Fussells' Doing Battle, or one of Stephen Ambrose's books about World War II for example, or any first-person account of the World War II eastern front. Or, just talk to a Vietnam era veteran who was in the infantry.)

Actually, there is a 11th myth that Dr. Ferguson attacks in "The Pity of War" that has received the most attention from other historians and reviewers. That "myth" is that Great Britain had to participate in the war to prevent Germany from dominating continental Europe, and thereby destroying its role as a great power. Ferguson argues that the original war aims of Germany in the west were relatively benign, and that after quickly defeating a France unaided by Great Britain, the Germans would have imposed heavy monetary reparations of France, and then restored independence to both Belgium and France. At worst, Germany would have forced both countries, along with much of central Europe into an economic union, not much different and not much more dangerous to Britain than the German-centered European Union that exists today.

In defense of this 11th myth, Ferguson points out that German plans for serious annexations of territory, such as all of Belgium and the Northwest of France, were not formulated until the war was a couple of months old. There are problems with this argument. The most obvious to me, is that although France would have lost the war without the aid of Great Britain, the logistic problems encountered by the German army during the opening phase of the war meant it would have taken France several months to lose. Those several months would have given the Germans plenty of time to decide that they deserved both territorial and political rewards for their war against France. So, even a short war won by Germany would have left them as the type of people you don't want as neighbors. Especially if you are the center of an empire based on sea power, and your new neighbors are going to control ports just on the other side of the English Channel.

This book is not a history of World War I but rather a series of essays on certain aspects of the conflict. Ferguson likes to deal in counterfactuals and here he takes issue with much of the conventional wisdom surrounding the war. For example, he argues that Germany was not a militaristic nation, contrary to almost universal belief. He also attempts to refute the common perception that the nations of Europe went to war enthusiastically. These chapters were somewhat persuasive. The chapters dealing with prisoner taking and the cost of killing enemy soldiers were quite interesting and were issues I'd not seen discussed in other histories. The essays on war finance and postwar economics were rather rambling and unfocused, however.

The most controversial conclusion was that the world would have been better off if Germany had won the war. He argues that a German-dominated Europe would be similar to the EU of today and no more threatening. Thus, the defining catastrophic event of the 20th century was Britain's decision to enter the war, thus thwarting the German victory. Therefore, the great Nemesis of modern civilization was not Hitler or Lenin but Sir Edward Gray!

On this point he was less than persuasive. I would have liked to read more details about the German war aims and less about John Maynard Keynes.

In 'The Pity of War' Niall Ferguson attempts to correct the traditional view that militaristic Germany dragged the rest of Europe into the First World War. The power of Ferguson's argumentation is the scope of the material he uses. Deftly he switches from pre-war children's books that speculate about a German invasion in Britain to an overview of the military strength of the different European nations at the eve of the war. Whatever aspect of the war he discusses, he is always authoritative. (At times even too much so. Ferguson's speciality is financial and economical analysis. In the chapter on the aftermath of the Versailles treaty, Ferguson arrogantly pretends to know how Germany could have prevented the hyperinflation of the 1920's. Niall Ferguson as the backseat driver to history.). The book is so full of nuance and so well-researched that I was shocked when I arrived at the final chapter 'What if?' Ferguson describes what would have happened, had Britain not sent its expeditionary force to aid the french. According to Ferguson, Germany would then have been satisfied with creating a European customs union (the EU avant la lettre), Britain would have continued to rule the waves and Adolf Hitler would never have risen to power. This ill-founded speculation may have helped to get the author media attention, but it certainly is a blemish on an otherwise very powerful book. Forget the final five pages and concentrate upon the rest.