"This series has long been respected as one of the best of its kind. Each book contains detailed color maps and a listing of accommodations by area. They include color photographs, the address and phone number, a star rating, amenities, price, and a brief paragraph describing the property. Newly revised and updated, these excellent guides to accommodations in Europe are highly recommended for all libraries." Library Journal

I lived in Paris during my junior year in college. Returning for a visit, I certainly am not interested in a businessman's hotel where the faxes may get to you on time but the room, itself, is cramped and void of personality.

If you feel, as I do, that a good part of your vacation is your hotel and you're on your way to Paris, then this book will not disappoint you. Paris is a city for people who love beauty, character and charm.

The book is divided into the areas of Paris called arrondisements: #1 through #18. If it's important for you to be in a specific arrondisement, simply find out where most of your business will be held and then choose from the wide variety in the book.

The photos, although not plentiful for each hotel (there's only one per hotel)are beautiful and give accurate views of what is important or what is a specialty of that particular hotel. The descriptions are full and give you every detail you will need to help you make an informed decision: pets? laundry? minibar? meals? And most important what makes this hotel one of "character and charm." You can always use the telephone or fax numbers to ask further questions of the specific place(s) you're interested in. And since rates vary from day to day, you can, of course, ask whomever answers your questions what the dollar is worth on that particular day.

An invaluable, beautifully designed, clever, practical book: It actually tells you exactly what the title announces. And nothing more or less. RECOMMENDED.

"The best guides for the finest kind of vacation." Elle magazine

In this book, which is based on 63 dialogues with residents of Paris, San Francisco, and Minsk, Belorus, Francis Feeley has given us remarkable descriptions of ordinary people and events in three cities. This comparative study of urban life ( enfanced by revealing photographs of the people interviewed ) is recommended reading not only for students of French society, of which we are a part, but for students of western societies in general, where similarities and differences are not well-defined in the minds of many. In today's context of " globalization", this book might well remain a essential text for analysing the evolution of convergences and disintigrations of social units in western societies, especially in the three urban centers represented in this book.

This book is a comparative study of daily life in three historic cities. Students of sociology, anthropology, and comparative social history will benefit from reading these first-person accounts of individual aspirations, disappointments, and triumphs.

The cultural differences between the French, the residents of the former Soviet Union, and the Californians are interesting, but what these great people share in common and their attitudes facing daily life are valuable reminders of why we have survived as a species.

This is a fiery hot collection of lesbian delights, dripping with sensual intellect and an irreverent charm that will have you squirming, laughing and grinning from ear to ear. It is the kind of book you want to read out loud to your lover, ex-girlfriend, and every other dyke you know, a book that will call to you in your sleep and have you fondling its pages over and over again. These tightly bound short poetic jewels possess a sizzling wit and shameless wantonness. This book is divided into English and Spanish, and throughout the text you see an agility and deftness in both languages that is rare in bilingual editions. This book is a must-have for every one who has tried to define what makes lesbians so bold, sexy, infuriating and captivating. Gozalo!

With the release of her first book-length work, For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology, editor-poet-essayist tatiana de la tierra adds philosopher to the many hats she's worn. The Hard Ones is actually two books in one: a Spanish text (Para las Duras) that, when flipped over, also reveals an English translation. A metaphysical treatise on the nature of Latina lesbian identity, For the Hard Ones blends philosophy with prose poetry to explore the uncharted territory of queer Latina sexuality and language (with plenty of punning on the Latina lesbian "tongue"). The brevity and open-endedness of de la tierra's text may leave some unanswered questions. Grade: A-.

Reviewed by Myriam Guba...

Intellectuals have problems fitting in with the big buddies in the world. This might be more true in Russia during the last few centuries than elsewhere, but PUSHKIN'S CHILDREN by Tatyana Tolstaya does not have an index, in which to look up Lenin, for his opinion on the intelligentsia, to illustrate the point. The intellectual freedoms which literary people in Russia had been seeking since the time of Herzen were finally granted by Gorbachev. But then the Partocracy, "accustomed to doing nothing concrete, to producing a lot of empty talk, they were shaken from their usual rut by the very mystery of what was happening. They were so baffled that it was easy to sweep them from their posts. When someone has fainted, you can quickly throw them out the door." (p. 44). People who live in democracies should recognize the ability of voters to do this to rulers on a regular basis, if the voters have enough reason and are given the opportunity.

In the case of Gorbachev, the larger question of how he managed to preside over the collapse of an empire and an economic system is of unusual interest for people in democracies whose outlooks for wealth are not stable. Tolstaya pictures the intelligentsia as being too moral to grasp the downside of what would happen when "Gorbachev made his first, and perhaps his most serious, mistake. He forbade the people to drink.
"The intelligentsia forgave him for this (they were `moved by their own perdition'). The Partocracy was happy. Here was a concrete task, and a familiar one: to fight, to root out, to fire people from their jobs. They set to tearing out grape vines, paving over rare vinyards in the Crimea, uprooting muscat so fine and expensive that `the people' couldn't get near it. They only counted the monstrous losses when the campaign was over. During the campaign, however, people cursed Gorbachev, bought up all the sugar, perfected their knowledge of moonshine manufacture, and most important of all, grasped that they could do everything their own way and not get caught or punished. An epidemic of hoarding began. Sugar, soap, matches, and lightbulbs disappeared, and then sheets and pillows, and then clothes, shoes, eggs, and finally bread." (p. 45).

Most of the people in the world live in countries where they do not need to depend on their government to supply them with such items, and even the United States, rich as it is in so many ways, might expect to be able to conquer anyplace it chooses without having to furnish such items to everybody. Even the current road map might appear to create a state for the Palestinians in an area in which Jewish settlements are the hoarders of anything they might really want. Long before, this book, PUSHKIN'S CHILDREN, starts with a book review of SOVIET WOMEN: WALKING THE TIGHTROPE, by Francine du Plessix Gray, in which reality conforms to the old maxim, "Women can do everything, and men do all the rest." (p. 3). War and prison camps kept men away from homes and jobs in the first half of the twentieth century. "An honest person tried his or her best not to participate in this `official' life. Those who did get involved in the hellish machine were broken: either it destroyed all traces of individuality and compromised them morally and ethically, or--if a person rebelled--it threw him out of society, sometimes sending him as far as Siberia." (p. 11).

Things change as the essays in this book were written. "In January 1994, no one talks about politics and no one explains anything, no matter how much I ask. No one understands anything. No one believes in anyone or anything." (pp. 127-128). With incredibly high prices, "But there are happy surprises, too: a medicine that I bought in America for $50 turned out to be so cheap in Russia that I bought fifteen jars and paid only five cents for it. (I should have bought thirty jars.)" (p. 128).

Another explanation for the collapse of the Soviet Union was in the personality conflict between its primary leaders. "In February 1991, Yeltsin was dying to speak on television and Gorbachev wouldn't let him. . . . Many people understood that the conflict between these two strong personalities did in fact threaten the country with collapse--and with unforeseen consequences." (p. 147). Then, "Having rushed to `seize' Russia, he didn't know what to do with it." (p. 151). Yeltsin is pictured as dreaming that things would be better for him if he were in America. "(I wonder whether, somewhere in the depths of Yeltsin's subconscious, he is remembering the last house of the last Russian tsar, given to Nikolai II by the Bolsheviks, which Yeltsin himself had blown up on orders from Moscow.) In any event, I rather think that if an American president willfully decided to get rid of California, Nevada, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, the two Virginias, both Carolinas, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, the grateful American people wouldn't build him anything more than a hut in Alaska, at best, and wouldn't give him any sled dogs either." (pp. 151-152).

This book is really too good. Even if you know a lot of what this book covers, the point of view is unusual and witty enough to make it entertaining. But in our times, even PUSHKIN'S CHILDREN has to admit, "Recently Americans have not shown much interest in what is going on in Russia." (pp. 185-186). The final paragraph, dated 2000, includes the kind of things that feed current fears. "Russians began to remove everything they possibly could from institutes and factories, and to sell everything they stole, including state secrets--actual, not imagined ones. They stole poisons, mercury, uranium, cesium, and vaccines. Even, in one instance, smallpox virus." (p. 242). Take it from an author who "used to buy meat patties at some tank factory. No one ever stopped me." (p. 242).

This is a wonderful collection of essays. Tolstaya is sharp, opinionated, and savvy. Full of insight into contemporary Russia -- its leaders and its people.

I wanted to learn Russian when I was in college, but I chose to learn Finnish instead. Always wished I'd chosen differently--no offense to the Fins! This book gave me the basics that I needed for when I went to Russia over the holidays. Although I wasn't there on business, this book and helpful audio CD made me more comfortable approaching someone when I needed help or directions. I also learned that mentioning Pushkin casually is really good ice-breaker.

This book and CD set was invaluable when I had to learn Russian fast (my company is expanding to the C.I.S.). The book made it easy to learn the basics and the CDs were a great reinforcer. I highly recommend this set to anyone making a business trip to Russia.

First to be exhibited to the public were seventy-four Impressionnist and Post-Impressionist paintings, published by Abrams in the acclaimed Hidden Treasures Revealed. Now-in this splendid companion volume and in a second landmark exhibition at the Hermitage-the public can rediscover eighty-nine important drawings by major artists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Russian literature has always been about ethics. I really can't find any other universal feature that makes Russian prose, both classical and modern, so singular a phenomenon. Command of language? Incredible as it is in the works of Russian classics, it's not unique among the world literatures, and anyway is mostly lost in translations. Universal comprehensibility? Not at all; unlike Shakespearean plays that are set in some vague pan-European context, Russian novels are always tightly bound to Russia's very own religion, mentality, and history that are scarcely known in the West. What remains, and what really sets Russian literature apart, is its moral imperative---the impossibility for a Russian writer to show any disdain or ridicule towards those dispossessed, fragile, or helpless. Deep thrilling compassion and frantic pursuit of justice are characteristic of both the Russian classic novels of XIX century and the modern short stories by Tatyana Tolstaya.

"Breathing" is perhaps the best one-word description of Tolstaya's prose. It's not the suffocated gasping of Dostoyevsky, not the gentle crystalline air of Chekhov, not even the powerful storm of consciousness of Leo Tolstoy (whose great-grandniece is Tolstaya). Winds, airs, puffs are transfusing the fabric of these delicate pieces of prose; words and images are streaming, curling, twisting in long yet weightless sentences. Tolstaya's winds smell like sea, like childhood, like love; she makes us remember that the word "spirit" is derived from the Latin stem meaning "air." Reading this book is like breathing freely outdoors after endless hours in a stuffy room...

For those interested in the afterlife; and also if communication with the otherside is possible, then this book is a must read. Tatiana writes with passion and is honest when she tells her life story. She comes across as a woman of great courage with deep wells of inner strength, and after reading this book I came away with deep respect for her and her faith. She has had a hard life but it has only made her stronger, wiser and with a deep empathy for those who suffer, so read and enjoy!

As a researcher and writer on the subject of death and dying, I bought this book based primarily on the title and the preface. It was a quick buy in a "New Age" book store in San Francisco. I debated with myself as to whether I really wanted it and whether it would add anything to my research. Feeling somewhat guilty about walking out of the store without a purchase, I bought it. I'm glad I did. However, while the spiritual messages are interesting, it is the historical content that really intrigued me.

The author was an Estonian film critic in the Soviet Union before migrating to the United States. The story of her trials and tribulations with the KGB and other Soviet agencies kept me glued to the book. While we often heard about the cruelties of the Soviet hierarchy and its agencies before wall crumbled, we did not have that many firsthand, personal accounts. To hear or read the author tell it, it was worse than I had imagined. People were afraid to make friends, because even your friends could turn out to be KGB informants. Because of her confrontations with the KGB, the author was reduced from being a respected writer to being a menial laborer.

The author's spiritual awakening after moving to the United States is also very informative and inspiring.

I and my family escaped from Estonia to America during WWII, and this was why Death the Beginning meant so much to me. It vividly portrays the experience of people who have to start over. The book is well written and interesting to read. I liked the author's sense of humour. It is factual and gives you thoughts about afterlife. It is a fascinating book, because it feeds your imagination and soothes your fear of death. After my mother died, she found a way to contact and comfort me, but I was afraid to talk about it. I thought, maybe it was the pressure of a refugee that made me see things that I was not supposed to see. In Death the Beginning I learned that I wasn't alone and similar experiences have happened to other people as well.

Ello Dykstra Newport Beach, California

First, let me state unequivocally that this is an immensely enjoyable book. Creating an alter ego, Dr, Tatiana, who's a sex advice columnist to the animal world, Olivia Judson offers numerous fascinating examples of the myriad bizarre and entertaining ways in which bugs, fish, birds, and mammals (and a few other things) procreate. The format of the book, with her answering nervous letters from various creatures, is derived from a column she wrote for The Economist in 1997 and it allows her to keep the discussion light and sometimes very funny... The humorous style allows her to explore sexual strategies like adultery, rape, murder, cannibalism, asexualism, homosexuality, etc., without getting too bogged down in their broader implications. That latter point though leads to what will be an equivocation.

It seems, particularly in light of the anthropomorphism that Ms Judson utilizes, like this survey of the sexual mores of other species is ultimately intended to inform our understanding of the various practices we humans engage in. If not strictly suggested by the humanized manner in which she presents her case studies, it is certainly implicated in her conclusion:

I hope that having seen the prodigious variety of sexual practices out there, you'll be more tolerant of the predilections of others.

This hope is hardly justified by what has come before. Even if we grant for the nonce that Ms Judson has demonstrated that evolutionary pressures have created a wide range of reproductive strategies, a "predilection" is a mere preference for something. Assuming that evolution is sound science, animals respond to an overwhelming force of nature; they don't just pick and choose sexual behaviors because they seem like fun; only humans have this privilege.

Taken at face value, Ms Judson's point might invite us to broaden our minds to the point where Jeffrey Dahmer's cannibalism may be tolerated as just another in a wide range of entirely natural sexual practices. Or rape could be accepted as just an evolutionary adaptation; indeed, evolutionary psychologists have proposed that this may be the case. If Ms Judson is trying to suggest that any behavior we can find in another species deserves our tolerance, she really ought to have made a sustained argument, rather than, in effect, just saying that this stuff happens therefore it's natural, therefore it should be tolerated. If she's not suggesting any such thing, then one wonders what the purpose of the book is.

If it's just a titillating entertainment that's fine, because it is very entertaining. But if we are supposed to be able to draw any conclusions from the book, the simple fact that neither survival nor reproduction appear to offer much challenge for modern humans would seem to mitigate against the idea that aberrant behaviors are anything more than mere preferences. Factor in the unique human soul and our free will and it seems fair to ask why the exercise of personal preferences should not be subject to moral judgment.

Ultimately, Ms Judson overreaches her material, but not before she's made reading the book worth our while.

GRADE: B-

We live in a very kinky world. Promiscuity, genitalia issues and sexual insecurities are severe problems that affect most of the planet's creatures. Thank goodness for sex columnist Dr.Tatiana. Informed and confidential she eases many a worried soul from nymphomaniac stick insects to homosexual manatees. Unfortunately she doesn't seem too interested in helping humans, perhaps because sexually we are very boring creatures. Dr.Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation by Olivia Judson is a fascinating and entertaining romp through the sexual battleground of animals, big and small, simple and complex. You will laugh out loud, shake your head and be thoroughly absorbed at the incredible sexual antics described, explained and prescribed. Through her advice to the lovelorn writing to her in desperation on such troubling issues as necrophilia, sex changes and male pregnancy, Dr. Tatiana enlightens us on the evolutionary biology of sex in an often humorous, always interesting and never tedious manner. Olivia Judson has created a real winner with Dr.Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation. It is an impressively researched, enjoyable and very original read and afterwards you'll breathe a sigh of relief for being merely a dull human.

A fascinating read, with a humorous and quirky "sex advice column" approach. Who knew the many various ways in which we reproduce? And you though human sex could get wild! Research on the topic of sex is delivered in a very easy-to-read format that'll have you very entertained even as your eyes are opened to the ideas of incest being okay in some species, more than two genders, the rarity of monogamy, the evolutionary arguments of homosexuality, and many more. Sure, you might know that the lady praying mantis tries to dine on her lover in the act, but did you know why? Do you know how common it is to engage in self-pleasure? Or when it's in a male's best interests to masquerade as a female? Pick up the book and find out; you won't be disappointed!

When Rose and Lila's parents go to Africa for a year, for their work as doctors, Rose(age 10) and Lila(age 8) must stay with their maternal grandmother, whom they hardly know. As they snoop through her house (Book 1), they soon discover that "Far Nana" has a few secrets worth knowing. "Far Nana" runs a doll hospital from her home and has the intuitive skill of listening to the stories of the dolls she repairs. She tells these stories to the girls in the first person, from the point of view of the doll. In these books, the reader is reading the ongoing story of Rose and Lila adjustments to living with their grandmother and the historical story of a doll, in a story-within-a-story format.

In "Tatiana Comes to America" the girls listen to a story about a doll who escaped Russia in 1907 during a time of violence against the Jewish people. Her family came to America to escape the persecution. Tatiana boards a ship for America with her girl, Anya. I enjoyed Tatiana's story because it was lively and and had some unexpected surprises by the end.

Overall, this book is an excellent introduction to the series and I would recommend reading it first if you are interested in this series. We see Rose and Lila say good-bye to their parents and watch them discover their grandmother's secret. The girls begin to find that there will be some good things about staying with "Far Nana", including the wonderful stories of the dolls!

The reading level on this book is for grade 3. I would not recommend it for readers under 6 years of age because the intertwining stories may be confusing. A paper doll is included with each book, which may be of interest to some readers.

My daughter and I loved these books. I thought it was right up there with American Doll books. Great story and great historical/educational infomation.

I liked this book very very much . I didn't even know what a doll hospital is. Now I know that you can fix dolls there. I wish I could have all the stuff in the doll hospital like wigs eyeballs and hats and shoes for dolls and cats .