This book is a required text at cal-poly pomona for the poly soc class, soc 390. The chapters are short and it is often neccessary to look at other sources in order to fully understand the material. Nearly half the text consists of footnotes and endnotes. Considering the cost of the book, and college text books in general, I expected more for an upper division class of this type. Overall reading okay, not too dry, but reads similar to a history text. Unneccessary references to basic sociology and political science topics, which any upper division student should really know by this time. The text focuses on the general ideologies. Lacks any in-depth study or specific examples.

It is interessting to read how a modern city like Berlin is undermined and controlled by vampires. Unfortunately it has some mistakes according Berlin's history. For example after WW2 till 1961 people could almost freely cross the border between east and west, and even after the erection of the Berlin Wall cainites could have gone to the other side. The diverse struggles for power between two princes of the city and the clans, the sects and who ever is fighting are pictured tensing. The idea of powerful elders controlling the city from torpor sounds rather strange.
The book contents a history of the city through the ages, descriptions of all districts, a couple of special quarters and several places of interest. It includes long and detailed portrays of most of the kindred in Berlin. However, if you don't know anything about Berlin and Germany, it might be difficult to role-play only by this book. It provides no hints which Clans control the places of power (Police, Government, Mafia, etc.) Many things changed over the past decade but others are still up to date.
The second part of the book contains a weird story. Some details seem to indicate that the authors never visited Berlin themselves. The old Gedaechtniskirche (Memorial Church) where the meetings are held is almost tiny inside. Not a quarter of space you need to gather Berlin's Kindred society. The Kurfuerstendamm is never, never free of mortals, even during heavy rainstorms. The story itself neither elaborated nor intriguing. A sad story!

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Berlin by night sets up a lot of good potential story ideas. The political conflicts and the struggle between the princes is presented in an interesting fashion. The kindred are all fascinating. A few of them are even historical figures. The description of the city could have used more work as well as the general culture. Based on the descriptions it could have been any generic city. It really didn't provide a feel for the area. The sample story was a bit silly but entertaining. It did introduce a fascinating Setite character and her awesome plans. Storytellers should do some research on their own to supplement this book if they plan to use Berlin for their games.

This long string of words reads like someone's unfinished PhD dissertation. Unfortunately, only a few of these words relate to the title, which initially sparked my interest, and talk about the application of budo for professionals. The book may be of interest to a philosopher, but I don't recommend it to anyone who either practices martial arts or is a lawyer, doctor, or manager.

A difficult to read text. I have used it as a text for a statistics course I taught (it was not my choice). There are few illustrations, the text is not clearly written, and despite this being the 6th edition, there are still numerous errors in the solutions given for the problems at the end of each chapter. Further, no use of current statistical software is mentioned. Many students have been frustrated by this text -- there are better options out there.