As with all his books he weaves a spell that captures you and you can't put the story down. To me a great author is one that can do just that capture and hold you through the whole book. If I don't get interested by the first chapters end, then I won't read it. As in all his books, you can easily see, feel, and hear the story as if you were right there in the middle of it. Well written.

Intriguing tale of travelers on the Bozeman trail in 1869 who are thrown by their own needs to reach white settlements. Hannah headed back East to spend the gentile life her wit has made in real estate in Virginia City, Mt, Linc, 12-yr old whose parents were killed by the Souix, ane Wiley Smart, a "used horse" salesman, are taken under the wing of the less-than-friendly Absarkees. The gradual transformation of Linc and Hannah under the protection of the Indians and the blaggardy of Wiley make for an exciting and informative tale.

I studied Russian in some capacity for almost 5 years now. As a russophile one runs into many text that offer little explanation to make this complex language more easily understood. This book is certainly not one of them! The Grammar review sections are perfect whether you are advancing your study by yourself, or you are reviewing for a test in a class. The vocablary sections are complete and well organized. This the second Golosa book focuses even more on authentic texts than the first volume. My only complaints include: the glossary--it is not a complete enough to serve as a useful tool; the cultural sections--on rare occasion are not complete enough to avoid broad generalizations; and the illustrations are childlike and not always clear. Nonetheless, this is a text that must be included in every Russian language student's reference library!

Richard Evans offers the student of modern German history an excellent review of the so-called Historikerstreit, which took place amongst academics in the mid to late 1980s. He outlines the basic arguments of those "neoconservative" historians who attempted to relativize the crimes of the Nazi regime. Evans focuses primarily on Ernst Nolte and Andreas Hillgruber, both of whom claimed that Nazi atrocities were justifiable responses to impending violence on the part of the Soviet Union. These historians also asserted that the Holocaust was not fundamentally different from Stalin's murder of Soviet citizens in the Gulags or from the massacre of Armenians in 1915 by the Turks. Evans clearly sides with the majority of historians when he argues that these attempts at relativizing Nazi crimes are irresponsible. Overall, this book is quite useful to the serious student who wants a quick review of a heated historiographical debate in modern German history.

Opportunities in Real Estate is a book in which you'll find data on earnings and hours worked for various real estate professionals. The book speaks to the influence of the World Wide Web. It educates on projected growth rates for both commercial and residential real estate and how the changing population will effect trends. A great book to help determine how to get started, where to get trained, and what to expect on the job.

As the author of The Christmas Box, I found the parody irreverent at times but, on the whole, a lot of fun.

Richard Farson is a brilliant writer and academician. This is a brilliant book. Every chapter left me saying, "I couldn't have said it better myself." UNTIL.......

He started the wicked chapter off as well as he could have. Something along the lines of "I know I am going to lose most of my audience here, (TRUE!) but intellectual honesty compels me to go on....." (BETTER HAD HE NOT!) and then he, quite horribly, goes on to give an intellectual justification for child-molestation.

Of all the ironic, oxymoronic books, or even philosophies! To state the case for children's rights so compellingly and to then devolve into saying children have the right to sex with adults, if they so choose!

I guess I'll have to grant that it is always the most extreme proponents of any "ism," that are the embarrassment of the more rational moderates. I am a gung-ho advocate of giving children the right to vote. But despite that, I am still such a stick-in-the-mud that I would lock up and throw away the key on any adult who has sex with a child. I am glad Farson, lately, moved on to other areas where he can do less damage. How can I ever forgive him?

Guaranteed to get you thinking with ideas that have never occurred to you before. I wish there were more people who could wrap their mind around the idea of equal rights for children.

This book goes through essentially every area of society and shows how it could be modified to give children equal rights (not superior rights) to adults. It conclusively shows that a free child is more likely to be happy and well adjusted, both short and long term, than a child shackled by society and his or her parents and schools. I don't like the chapter on sex however, mostly because for the forseeable future children will still be very vunerable to adults in that area. However, this is a very good book, and should be required reading for everyone who lives with and loves children.

Professor Evans was one of the expert witnesses in one of the most important trials in history--the libel case brought by David Irving against Penguin Books. Irving claimed that Penguin, by publishing a book critical of Irving's methods and motives in books about WWII and Nazi Germany, had damaged his reputation.

This book is a compelling account of Evans' role in showing that so-called "historian" David Irving had been manipulating, mischaracterizing, and misusing historical evidence for virtually his entire career of writing about the Second World War and Nazi Germany. And Evans is devasatingly convincing in showing just what really went on in the trial, as well as how widely the trial itself and Irving's work were misunderstood by even intelligent and sophisticated commentators in the world press (some of whom thought that Irving was being somehow prosecuted for his creativity or unpopular views).

Evans' book is eminently readable, well organized, and powerful without being polemical. At the very beginning, he warns the reader that the Irving case was about more than Irving's contention that he had been libeled by being labeled a "Holocaust denier" among other things by Penguin's author Deborah Lipstadt. That is really important and seems to be Evans' larger purpose: to show that there really are some historical "truths" and that the tendency in social sciences to dismiss objective truth and to excuse wild theories by citing the preconceptions or political beliefs of the historian in question is dangerous.

Among the book's strengths are the evident sincerity of the author and his ability to describe how Irving's deception worked and fooled so many people, from professionals to laymen.

Evans is excellent in portraying how historical research is done, what standards are expected of serious historians, and how Irving's work did not meet those standards. He is also convincing in demonstrating Irving's apparent racism and anti-semitism, and he is also subtle in explaining partly the motivations of "Holocaust deniers", though doing so fully would be outside the scope of this book.

I found few weaknesses, one being the inconsistency sometimes in explanations of detail. (For example, a brief explanation in Chapter 2 of what the Nazi party tribunals that reviewed events of November 1938, so-called "Kristallnacht", were doing would be more important than identifying the proper pronunciation of one proper name in a later chapter). Another weakness is the all-too-common failure to include illustrations. It is frustrating to read descriptions of documents, or in the case of Irving, physical appearance, and not be able to see a few photographs that are surely readily available from press accounts.

But those are minor complaints (and the book publishers are apparently cutting costs like everyone else). The most important theme of the book is how this case shows that there really are truths in historical analysis, and that historians should not shrink from taking on those who would question such truths as the overwhelming evidence of the mass and systematic destruction of Jews and other minorities in Nazi Germany. Historians themselves can be dangerous actors in human history if people like Evans and Penguin do not take courageous stands as they did here.

All in all, wonderfully concise and a great read.

Since David Irving's disastrous libel suit against Penguin books, some highly disingenuous commentary has been written by people who clearly neither attended the trial nor understood it (some, for example, apparently not realising that Irving was the plaintiff, not the defendant). Richard Evans, who was an expert witness for the defence, puts the record straight in an important work. Much of the book is devoted to a devastating assessment of Irving's work as a historian; he demonstrates (with, most damningly, a detailed account of Irving's fabrications concerning the bombing of Dresden) that dishonesty has been at the heart of Irving's work since the 1960s. This done, Evans is in a powerful position to substantiate his judgement: the Irving libel suit went to the heart of what history - a contingent process of testing hypotheses - actually means. Irving subordinated historical inquiry to his neo-Nazi sympathies, in an egregious violation of the scholarly ethic.

The only substantial criticism I have of this salutary and important book is where, in his final chapter, Evans in my view deviates from the discipline of history and ventures some rather more speculative and tentative political judgements. He draws a sharp contrast between Irving's Holocaust denial and the work of those writers who have recently criticised the 'Holocaust industry', who at least do not doubt the historicity of the Holocaust. I'm not so sure. Evans describes the work of Peter Novick and Norman Finkelstein as displaying "widely differing degrees of detail and accuracy", implying - quite rightly - that Novick's book has a claim to scholarship whereas Finkelstein's polemic does not. Yet Finkelstein (and even more so his associate Noam Chomsky) display very similar characteristics to David Irving: an agenda of extreme anti-Zionist agitation in preference to scholarship; an adherence to conspiracy theories about Jews; documented links with neo-Nazis (Chomsky, for example, described one Holocaust denier whom Evans refers to, Robert Faurisson, as "a sort of relatively apolitical liberal"); and a willingness to fabricate source material (see Arthur Schlesinger's destruction, in his collection The Cycles of American History, of Chomsky's fabrication of quotations by President Truman). The Irving phenomenon is an extreme one, but it has its counterparts elsewhere on the political spectrum.

This book is an outcome of the libel trial brought by David Irving against Penguin Books (in general) and Deborah Lipstadt (specifically). A historian and modern social commentator, Deborah Lipstadt had referred to Irving as a Holocaust denier (and a poor historian) three or four times in a nearly 600-page book. Irving took exception and sued her for libel. He waited to sue her in England where the burden of proof is on the defendant, not the Plaintiff. Evans was one of the many historians asked, by the defense, to prove that Lipstadt was not committing libel when she called Irving a Holocaust denier.

Evans has consequently built up a massive body of evidence to show that Irving continually, and with knowledge, suppressed historical facts and documents to support his position. Evans presents both the process of his investigation and the conclusions that he reached. Evans makes a formidable case. He points successfully to incident after incident where Irving knew that information was incorrect and still used it. Evans also points out that Irving's "mistakes" were all in one direction, not chaotic as one might expect from a researcher that didn't have enough time on his hands or was uncertain about his material.

Lying About Hitler clarifies a number of issues, the first being that Irving was not the defendant (I thought so when I first heard about the case). Irving was suing Lipstadt, not the other way around. It was Lipstadt's freedom of speech (and Penguin Books') that was under attack. If Irving had won, he and others like him would have been able to stop (or attempt to stop) anyone who called them liars or disagreed with their position.

Another issue Evans deals with is the "but history is so hard to interpret" argument. Evans points out, again and again, that this trial was not about the interpretation of historical facts but the misuse of historical documentation (either invented or avoided). Evans' chapter on Irving's research of the bombing of Dresden is fascinating in this regard.

This kind of book confirms the importance of historical research for its own sake. History is so easily (and so often) manipulated for political purposes (on both sides of the fence). It is so much more important to figure out what happened and why as objectively as possible than to "prove" political agendas.

Recommendation: Buy it in paperback or hardcover. If you don't have the cash, take it out of the library. It is definitely worth a read.

An interesting topic put in the format that a bright 13 year old could understand. Interesting, as I said, but it speaks of the Theory of Evolution as law, not theory.

This is an easy and fast book to read if you want to get a basic overview of what evolutionary psychology is. Like the title says, it is an introduction and if you get the word introduction right, it means that you are going to see only the general aspect of what evolutionary psychology is. I recommend this book to people who are not sure about buying books of greater value on this subject. At less than 10 dollars, you'll have a good idea of what's in store for you in your further readings on the subject.

Enjoy!
Matt.

Not all books in this "Introducing" series are equally good but this one is a success. Most of the principles of evolutionary psychology are correctly represented within the limits of the available space, and the mildly entertaining illustrations make for easy reference. Every page introduces a new concept and can be read on its own. Whether this book is to be recommended as a first read in evolutionary psychology, is an open question. I dip into it from time to time to remind myself how fascinating and compelling a subject evolutionary psychology is. "Browsing evolutionary psychology" would be an apt title for this book.

I have used this book in a two course sequence that was taught by a native Russian speaker who has graduate degrees in philology from prestigous universities in Moscow. I consider her considerably more knowlegeable about the Russian language and how to teach it to Americans than the know-it-all, KMM, who gives this book an unbelievable single star.

Our instructor, who actually knows something about Russia, having lived there for at least 45 years before coming to the US, repeatedly informed us that Golosa is the best text available and easily supersedes anything else that is available. It works for me.

My teacher warned us that a very limited number of phrases weren't culturally authentic and explained why. But, this book is more than adequate. Though some of the tapes don't conform exactly to the text, this engenders some level of sponteneity and helps develop listening skills.

Ignore KMM's diatribes against this book. Talk about a complete lack of crediblity! KMM rails against the American authors of the book, but apparently because KMM is French and knows a little English, too, KMM has expert status and superior knowlege about how native English speakers should learn Russian. Duh???

Wasn't KMM the person who essentially indicated that only a native Russian speaker can teach a Russian course? So, by KMM's own logic, ignore a native French speaker's comments on a Russian language text for Americans. KMM must agree that is it not possible for KMM to understand the needs of an English speaker in learning any language, except possibly French?

The specific criticisms KMM makes of this book-bad graphics and an incomplete "how to tell time" section-miss the mark, widely. Graphics: I've used the book and have two advanced degrees from nationally recognized institutions. I've seen a lot of textbooks. These graphics are adequate. Though some of the letters and notes reproduced in cursive script are a bit difficult to read, isn't the handwriting of many people difficult to read?

How to tell time: The time keeping information isn't introduced just to provide a complete discussion of how time is told in Russian. Rather, it is provided to acquint the beginner with one of the six complex "cases" that must be introduced to cover the basics. Hint to KMM: In Russian telling the time isn't as simple as "Six heures et demi", which is not different from English in structure.

Maybe KMM is only upset because Russian is so much more complex and difficult to learn than French. There are six "cases" and the nouns and adjectives must be "declined" to agree as to number, gender AND case. Even the "gender" is more complicated than French, because there is a neuter, not just a masculine and feminine. Then, almost none of the words are English cognates, though there are some French cognates. Anyone who suggests that Russian can be learned in a self-instruction program doesn't know enough about the subject to be taken seriously.

I am on the brink of completing an intensive Russian course (1 year of Russian compressed into one quarter) which has used this series. Over the course of 8 weeks with the two books and a PhD candidate as my guide I have found myself possessing enough proficiency to converse with a couple I met on a bus, to listen to the news in Russian, and assume I could keep my head above water were I to travel.

The authors' approach is vastly different from other texts I have encountered. A large number of listening and reading excercises accompany lessons on grammar and a wealth of vocabulary. Texts and dialogues, unlike other texts, are not overly glossed and seem to focus on adding unknown words and phrases, forcing the student to pick out what he or she understands to follow the action. Such an approach approximates what a student might experience in a real world situation.

For a student or teacher of early Russian classes I believe there to be few better books. I could not recommend the text and the authors' approach more. Although I would suggest awaiting the 3rd edition (the current edition is rife with confusing errors and typos as well as a cumbersome delivery system for the accompanying audio) the issues can be surmounted by a dedicated student and/or knowledgeable teacher. They do little, however, to detract from the overall quality inherent in the books' approach to learning.

Golasa RULES!!! I wouldn't want to learn russian any other way.