I am a mother of 2 teens who find it difficult and boring to learn about history. This book not only has historical facts but it also has drama, comedy and romance. My daughters enjoyed this as much as I did and learned some things too. I recommend this book to everyone.

This book is a must have for everyone's library. The details of history are throughout the chapters which makes it a page turner. As you read you begin to become part of the story and can easily relate to the beginning of our country.

The Rainbow People of God is a must-have anthology of Desmond Tutu's most motivating and inspiring letters, sermons and addresses between 1974 and 1994. John Allen (editor) includes some of Tutu's most memorable public addresses and skillfully weaves historical background information into the public addresses for the reader's benefit. This proves extremely helpful in painting an overall picture of the antiapartheid movement in South Africa. Anyone who has listened to Tutu speak understands that he often employs humor to illustrate the darkness and oppression caused by apartheid. Readers expecting such humor will enjoy complete satisfaction in this collection of Tutu's speeches. Through Tutu's voice, we learn how he successfully merged African and Christian philosophy to become one of the key players in defeating apartheid.

Desmond Tutu is definately a man of God. His love, forgiveness and courage is set firmly in his belief of the Gospel. Through this book he clearly demonstrates the power that comes from a belief. The journals will inspire anybody.

This is an eight-volume history of Africa that I can't recommend highly enough. Patiently working my way through it over the course of several months did more to reduce my ignorance of human history than anything else I have ever done. I found several discussions particularly helpful:

- the physical evidence for human origins in Africa south of the Sahara

- The colonization of Madagascar by voyagers from Malaysia, which introduced the banana and several other valuable food crops into Africa in classical times

- How the conquest of valley-dwelling, agricultural Hutu by hilltop-dwelling, cattle-herding Tutsi serendipitously benefited both cultures, since manure from Tutsi cattle enabled greater Hutu cultivation of the banana

- How the Iron Age came to Africa south of the Sahara (this was what led me to this work in the first place)

- The breadth and depth of Arab learning and philosophy at the height of the Muslim empires during Europe's Middle Ages

I did find the discussions of late-Christian Egypt and Arab civilization more difficult to follow than the rest, because these discussions make heavy use of italicized Egyptian and Arabic words without bothering to explain them to the non-expert reader. This forced me to keep going back and re-reading earlier passages as I figured out these terms' likely meanings from their context in later passages.

Overall, however, this is a work I would love to have on my own bookshelf, if it weren't so very costly to purchase. The copy I read belongs to the King County Library system. (Seattle and Redmond, Washington, are the best-known cities in King County.)

Gives Industry rules of thumb for various businesses. It also discusses valuation factors to consider in many businesses. My only complaint is that the last version I have found is 1993.

This monumental collection of first person accounts from World War II was the perfect antidote to the chilled feeling John Keegan's "Second World War" gave me. With his "ghost units" and "divisions of less than the first quality," Keegan turned my stomach. I kept thinking of the human stories behind those stock phrases. This book is a collection of those stories.

I would strongly recommend this as a book for the general history reader. It might occasionally lose a reader who isn't familiar with the skeleton of the war's events, as the personal diaries from which excerpts are taken sometimes fall between the cracks of the great events that might appear on a timeline. That isn't a weakness; it's a strength. Those passages often bring the reader most fully into the confusion and the real human experience of the war.

The great events are well represented, at any rate, in a highly personal and emotional way. Where the usual general history concentrates on the innovations of blitzkreig, this book gives us the diary of Rommel - and another journal by a 12-year-old belgian boy, waiting in an air raid shelter for his mother to come back and trying to comfort his steadily more anxious younger brother.

No book could tell this whole story, and of course this one isn't perfect. There are times when the narrative pauses to 'fill in' some big event in an editor's voice, and when that happens I'm jarred by the shift in tones. As a starting point, though, and just as a read, this is without question the first book I would recommend on World War II. The strength of the bibliography makes it a fantastic resource for other choices later, too.

Very, very highly recommended.

This is an edited collection of first person accounts of World War Two. I turned to this book largely because I'd just read Keegan's "Second World War," a strategic level, numbered-units-crossing-important-rivers retelling of the war. I was left cold by Keegan. This smattering of excerpts from first person accounts was the perfect antidote to the chilled feeling Keegan gave me with his "ghost units" and "divisions of less than the first quality." I kept thinking of the human stories behind those repeated stock phrases. This book is a collection of those stories. I would strongly recommend this as a book for the general history reader. It might occasionally lose a reader who isn't familiar with the skeleton of the war's events, as the personal diaries from which excerpts are taken sometimes fall between the cracks of the great events that would appear on a war timeline. That isn't a weakness; it's a strength. Those passages are sometimes the ones that bring the reader most fully into the confusion and the real human experience of the war. And the great events are well represented, at any rate, and in a highly personal and emotional way. Where the usual general history concentrates on the innovations of blitzkreig, this book gives us the matter-of-fact diary of Rommel - and another journal by a 12-year-old belgian boy, waiting in an air raid shelter for his mother to come back and trying to comfort his steadily more anxious younger brother. There are times when the narrative pauses to 'fill in' some big event in an editor's voice, and when that happens I'm jarred by the shift in tones. No book could tell this whole story, and of course this one isn't perfect. As a starting point, though, and just as a read, this is without question the first book I would recommend on World War II. The strength of the bibliography makes this a fantastic resource for other choices later, too. Very, very highly recommended.

This is an edited collection of first person accounts of World War Two. I turned to this book largely because I'd just read Keegan's "Second World War," a strategic level, numbered-units-crossing-important-rivers retelling of the war. I was left cold by Keegan.

This smattering of excerpts from first person accounts was the perfect antidote to the chilled feeling Keegan gave me with his "ghost units" and "divisions of less than the first quality." I kept thinking of the human stories behind those repeated stock phrases. This book is a collection of those stories.

I would very highly recommend this as a book for the general history reader. It might occasionally lose a reader who isn't familiar with the skeleton of the war's events, as the personal diaries from which excerpts are taken sometimes fall between the cracks of the great events that would appear on a war timeline. That isn't a weakness; it's a strength. Those passages are sometimes the ones that bring the reader most fully into the confusion and the real human experience of the war.

The great events are well represented, at any rate, and in a highly personal and emotional way. Where the usual general history concentrates on the innovations of blitzkreig, this book gives us the matter-of-fact diary of Rommel - and another journal by a 12-year-old belgian boy, waiting in an air raid shelter for his mother to come back and trying to comfort his steadily more anxious younger brother. There are times when the narrative pauses to 'fill in' some big event in an editor's voice, and when that happens I'm jarred by the shift in tones.

No book could tell this whole story, and of course this one isn't perfect. As a starting point, though, and just as a read, this is without question the first book I would recommend on World War II.

The strength of the bibliography makes this a fantastic resource for other choices later, too. Very, very highly recommended.