Meir Wagner's The Righteous Of Switzerland: Heroes Of The Holocaust focuses on one of the aspects of the Holocaust that is as heroic as the atrocities of the Third Reich were horrific. Non-jews of Switzerland who risked their opposition, hardship, danger, and even death because they refused to remain neutral in the face of Nazi crimes against humanity. Their combined and determined efforts were to result in the saving of thousands of Jewish lives from Nazi pogroms and death camps. While some of these courageous figures are known, most are relatively obscure and "unsung" -- but their lives and deeds must not be forgotten. In addition to their individual stories, Meir Wagner's The Righteous Of Switzerland is enhanced with the recorded speeches of Yitzhak Mayer; Andre von Moos; and Federal Councilor Joseph Deiss. A notable memorial to individual and collective heroism in service to humanity, The Righteous Of Switzerland is a welcome and ardently recommended addition to personal, academic, and community library Holocaust Studies reference collections and reading lists.

This is an outstanding advanced undergraduate treatment of the following topics at the core of modern mathematics: set theory, equivalence and ordering relations, cardinals, ordinals, propositional logic, quantifier logic, and just enough recursion theory to explain the paradoxical undecidability theorems.

The treatment is thoroughly contemporary (eg, Hintikka sets) but not too difficult, because this text emerged out of the philosophy rather than the mathematics classroom. The text is written in the mathematical tradition, consisting of many terse numbered subsections, each containing a definition, theorem, remark, or problem. The organisation of the subject, and the index, are excellent.

This is the finest treatment I know of the propositional calculus, the core of modern logic and the subject that drew me to this book.

This book of short first hand accounts from Holocaust survivors is easy enough reading for a youth but even more worthwhile for an adult.

This book affected me greatly and I'm sure that you will feel the same. "Am Yisrael Chai."

Library Journal: A knowlegeable proponet of the Lubavitch movement, a Chasidic sect that embodies many of the mystical aspects of Judaism, Gurary has written an extensive interpretation of Judaism. He uses framework of Maimonides's famed 13 principles to attach basic Lubavitch concepts. He correctly distinguishes between normative Judaism and Chasidim and prefaces many statements with "Chasidus explains..." this distiction is particularly important when he addresses controversal areas such as the doctrine of reincarnation orthe concept of the differences between a Jewish and non-Jewish soul. Well sritten, highly recommended

AT FIRST GLANCE IT MAY APPEAR TO BE ANOTHER ENGLISH SEFER. THEN UPON READING & LEARNING IT, I REALIZED HOW VALUABLE IT IS. FROM THE PESACH SEDER TO THE YOM TOV OF SUCCOS, FROM THE TEFFILEN WE WEAR TO FOUR SONS OF THE PESACH SEDER, YOU WILL LEARN THE UNDERLINING IDEAS BEHIND OUR MANY MITVOS.

This book is the biography of the German revolutionary Wilhelm Marr. Marr was a radical revolutionary left wing intellectual who based his philosophy on that of the Left Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbach, advocating atheism and maintaining an anti-Christian and antiSemitic belief system. He became known as a journalist and editor of the paper _Mephistopheles_ during the nineteenth century. He became known for his antiSemitism (and may have originated the term "antiSemitism") despite the fact that he was to have a series of Jewish wives after writing a book entitled _The Jewish Mirror_ (_Der Judenspiegel_). He also involved himself in business deals in America where he may have participated in the slave trade and the ensuing debate over slavery. After having met the Italian liberal nationalist intellectual and founder of the "Young Europe" movement, Giuseppe Mazzini, Marr became enamored of this individual and earned for himself the title of "The German Mazzini". Subsequently, Marr would write another infamous antiSemitic text, _The Victory of Judaism Over Germanism_. During this period, Marr's political alignments began to shift so that he became favored in certain reactionary circles. Marr also became involved with the Anti-Semitic League at this time. Later in his life after having several failed business dealings, Marr would come to criticize antiSemitism. He argued that antiSemites were fostering an environment harmful to the poor worker in the same manner that the Jews themselves were. At this point, Marr renounced his antiSemitism as well as his previous reactionary leanings and returned to his original revolutionary beliefs. Marr died in relative obscurity, penniless. However, he had made a name for himself as the instigator of antiSemitism and perhaps as the man who coined that very term. Marr generally comes across as a rather despicable individual despite the fact that he would later come to at least partially repent of some of his antiSemitic beliefs (though never of his atheism and anti-Christian beliefs). He played some role as a prophet who foretold the coming of the Third Reich and the horrendous evils of the twentieth century, although he would be rejected by the actual intellectuals of the Third Reich, as would the term he coined - antiSemitism. Marr's place is among the antiSemitic left wing revolutionary intellectuals such as the musician Richard Wagner in Germany in the century before the coming of the World Wars. This book provides a good biography of an obscure figure who played some role in predicting the coming events in the German nation in the twentieth century. It is to be recommended despite the fact that its central figure is certainly less than savory.

I picked up this book to help me prepare for a short presentation I had to give on Foucault. Since I had very little time to do reasearch (only 2 weeks), reading through a book such as Discipline and Punish or even the Foucault Reader was out of the question. This was a great introduction to Foucault's general theories, and it included brief synopses of specific works. The writing style is quick-to-the-point and full of light humor, and the comic book style added to this feeling. I especially enjoyed the way this book used certain stories and situations to put some of Foucault's points into "lamens terms". It also tells you which of Foucault's books make the best starting points, for anyone who wants to read "the real thing".

I will agree with some of the other reviewers that some of the explanations were a little TOO brief, but that's to be expected with such a short book. Despite this minor imperfection, I was able to walk away completely understanding the major points of Foucault's study. Not to be counted on as a single source, this book is best used as an introduction, or a companion, to the works of Foucault.

Beginners books sets out to simplify Foucaults work and essentially does so. Sometimes almost too simple. I enjoyed the material, as I had no clue what Foucault was about previous to reading, however, I also felt the writing was a little too sparse. The pictures are nice, which makes this series attractive, yet, they filled the page often with splash words and large fonts which sometimes seemed unnecessary or only to fill a page. Regardless, the text is good and informative and reccomended for anyone who is interested in reading Foucault for the first time but does not know where to begin.

FOUCAULT FOR BEGINNERS

Foucault's range is amazing. Very few disciplines escaped his epistemological examination. His examination includes literary criticism, criminology, and gender studies. Arguing that definitions of abnormal behaviour are socially constructed, Foucault explored the power relations between those who meet and those who deviate from social norms. Foucault's examination of the birth the prisons includes a very graphic description of early punishment and the orgy of suffering does not escape Moshe Süsser's and is cleverly written by Lydia Alix Fillingham. This book gives a very brief introduction to Foucault's work (or the part of it that interests us), plus a very good bibliography.

According to Foucault, people do not have a 'true' identity. In essence, the self is a product of discourse. Identity, is performative our interaction with others, but this is not static. It is a dynamic, temporary and shifting. Foucualt centers his epistemology around power, knowledge and language. People do not really have power per se. Power is a force which people engage in - as in power knowledge and language. Power is not owned; it is used. Where power is, there is also an equal and opposite reaction.

I was particularly impressed by the treatment of "The Birth of the Clinic" since this is one of the few of his works that I missed and hope to read soon, it placed for me the significance of his play on power and the gaze. I get the sense that "The Birth of the Clinic" is a spin-off from "Madness and Civilization" based on his take of the dis-empowerment of the sick (not well, not normal) as well as the mad. I understand when this comic book mentions that reading "The Order of Things" is not the best starting point to understanding Foucault and I will venture to "The Archeology of Knowledge" aremd with this introduction and the other readings I have done on Foucault. A primer, I think it is a really good start. However, in reality, Foucault and French deconstruction is NOT infinitely incomprehensible. Conversely, be warned, if you think you can read this as a substitute and come to class to discuss Foucault, you might be disappointed.I highly recommend this to start and hopefully it leads you to the fascinating maze that is Foucault.

Miguel Llora

I understand completely being unsettled by the term "Jewish soul" as if it were something higher or different from any other soul. Please understand that the term "Jewish" is only "one who walks the path of G-d". Whatever G-d is to you, the Universe, the Collective Soul/Consciousness, Divine Light... so long as you are seeking to act according to Truth, so long as you struggle to listen, or surrender to hear- constantly or again and again; you who walk towards unity and/or clarity, you may read this book and know that it is indeed addressing you. Do not let language interfere with truth.

"Jewish soul" are wrong words for it ! The right words are "ISRAEL's soul" ! The cabalistic meaning of "ISRAEL" is: "the one who have striven with GOD". She/he can be anybody of any culture or religion. She/he have only to be so far... This correction will probably make you give 5 stars!

This fascinating book reveals the spiritual depth and meaning of the Hebrew letters. It is a must for all those interested in truly learning and understanding Hebrew.

Open Source Development with CVS Karl Fogel

Here is a chatty discussion of CVS and how to use it. The best thing about the book is that he spends a lot of time discussing his examples. That helps you to understand the output. I also found the troubeshooting section to be more than adequate, and a discussion of pcl-cvs (the plugin to emacs) to be a nice and helpful addition.

Fogel wrote some chapters about open source development. Call them filler or distractions, still it gives insight about how version control management contributes to open source. . The book has an appendix of descriptions of each command and at times Fogel urges the reader to refer to the Cederqvist manual. I actually appreciated that because it allowed Fogel to write about the things not already found in the online manual.

One quibble was with the organization of the book. To learn how to setup CVS from scratch, you need to start by reading chapter 4 (Admin), and then go back and reread chapter 2 (An overview). Maybe a briefer overview would have been better and an explanation of the functions in succeeding chapters.

The chattiness of the chapters (which is a good thing) often made it hard to find the user commands. Perhaps user input could have been highlighted in some way. Also, the discussion of file permissions was simply inadequate. Indeed, chapter 4 contained an error related to permissions on page 112 (what does "+R" mean? ) and didn't discuss sticky bits for group ownership. This was significant, because I couldn't proceed with learning CVS until I could figure out those permissions.

In short: an excellent, invaluable book, but you should consult the Cederqvist manual for the section of file permissions.

I've been bugging Karl with both simple and complex CVS questions for as long as I can remember; I guess I annoyed him enough that he wrote a book just to shut me up! Here at last is a great place to get the answers to all my CVS needs. CVS is complex enough that it deserves a close inspection and detailed examples and explanations. Karl seems to have pulled it all off; this book is well organized and will easily be an essential reference and definitive guide to programmers and managers alike who use revision control in any project, Open Source or not. One of the biggest selling points of this book is that it not only covers CVS but it also examines software development from a design and organization standpoint. It will explain why CVS is such a power tool for seeing a project through, from development to releases (and everything inbetween). It also covers using CVS as a revision control tool for web sites and documents. It is nicely organized, easy to read and follow. You should check this book out for whatever role you play in a company which deals with home-grown source code or documents. If you're a CVS admin, developer or project manager: Get this book.

I found this book a joy to read. Before ordering this book, I had read the GPL'd chapters online and found them to be quite good so I wanted to support the author with my wallet. I figgured the rest would be the regular pomp about Open Source that we are seeing alot of lately, but I could not have been more incorrect! The author not only knows his technical details about the CVS system, he fully groks the Open Source movement, personalities and community.

The author alternates chapters between community issues (ethics, forking, project maintenance and administration, as well as "people skills") and the technical nuts and bolts of running a CVS server and/or using a CVS client.

While the title touts the Open Source movement, CVS is just as at home in a closed environment, say a web development team, inhouse application development, or anywhere else that you need to track text based files. Mr. Fogel does a good job of showing run of the mill examples and code, as well as some more esoteric uses of CVS commands and utilities.

If you are doing any sort of development and are investigating content version control software this book (and application) are for you.

Oh dear.

I realize he has an international reputation, but this is still second generation, second-rate Beat poetry. One can hear the bongo drums playing when reading it. I am sorry but writing "deep" lines of prose chopped up into lines on the page is NOT poetry...it is still just hackneyed prose chopped up into lines on a page. There is no music here, just an attempt to be hipper than thou.

"Horses and other doubts" is another great book by multilingual Israeli poet Moshe
Benarroch. But it seems to me that some of the poems, as it happen with great poems,
have changed their meaning since sept. 11. Here are the first two poems from the book:

Horses

~~~~~~



And

they will come running

galloping galloping

gray black blue horses

forgotten horses

horses from all the centuries

will come

to crush everything they see

women men and children

and donkeys and foxes and dogs and cats

Come they will Come

horses and more horses

and nobody will be able to stop them

not atomic bombs

nor gases nor chemicals nor viruses

they will be the strongest horses that ever existed

horses that recall all

the injustices made and to be made

and the man will ask

Why in my time

Why in my house

Why my family and my children

and nobody will be able to answer

the blue horses, the celestial horses

those will be the worst

destroying 200 story buildings

destroying tanks and planes

blowing them apart

and the president will calm

and the specialists will analyze

and the televisions will speak

but nothing will help

more and more horses will come

out of nowhere

horses appearing suddenly

in front of people walking on the streets

and you, in bed, you'll look at me

despaired, waiting for rescue

I will look at you and suddenly

I will become

a red horse.

We Count Our Dead

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



When we go to sleep

we count our dead

When we wake up

we count our dead

When we end the century

we count our dead

When we kill

we count our dead

When we live

we count our dead

When we eat

we count our dead

When we pray

we count our dead

When we celebrate life

we count our dead

When we write a poem

we count our dead.

I wouldn't call this prophecy but maybe it's not far from it. It shows how far words can
go, and how the infractsructure of language can carry the future in it. The book goes on
with poems of decaying cities (old cities like Paris) life and immigration, a poem about
a Hamass terrorist and a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, when the poet was a free blocks

away. But Benarroch's poetry is not pessimistic, it is cynical, maybe we can call it
cynical optimism. There is always a grain of hope, in the darkest moments, and a grain
of despair in the brightest ones.
A poet to follow, read and reread.
I think that the poem "Horses" (first printed in Galaxy mag. in 1999) , is bound to
become a classic as "Ithaca" or "Howl", any day soon. It has been traveling the world
through thousands of emails...

I think of the power of words when readin the poem "Horses" that opens the book (remember it was published on sept 2000, a year ago!):

Horses


~~~~~~





And


they will come running


galloping galloping


gray black blue horses


forgotten horses


horses from all the centuries


will come


to crush everything they see


women men and children


and donkeys and foxes and dogs and cats


Come they will Come


horses and more horses


and nobody will be able to stop them


not atomic bombs


nor gases nor chemicals nor viruses


they will be the strongest horses that ever existed


horses that recall all


the injustices made and to be made


and the man will ask


Why in my time


Why in my house


Why my family and my children


and nobody will be able to answer


the blue horses, the celestial horses


those will be the worst


destroying 200 story buildings


destroying tanks and planes


blowing them apart


and the president will calm


and the specialists will analyze





and the televisions will speak


but nothing will help


more and more horses will come


out of nowhere


horses appearing suddenly


in front of people walking on the streets


and you, in bed, you'll look at me


despaired, waiting for rescue


I will look at you and suddenly


I will become


a red horse.

The second poem "We count our dead" seems to be also related to the WTC tragedy and the rest of the poems are as strong as poetry is these days. See also my other review of his other book "You walk on the land..."

And to the anonymous reviewer below who says this is more prose than poetry, it's what they said about most of the great poets of the last two centuries. Benarroch's poetry may not be 'poetic' but it hits hard and deep.