There are countless stories of the Holocaust that can never be told because those who experienced them were lost in the mad destructive fury. The story of the doomed ship _Struma_ might be one of those stories, except that one of the nearly 800 people on board survived the sinking of the vessel. _Death on the Black Sea: The Untold Story of the Struma and World War II's Holocaust at Sea_ (Ecco) by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins, is not just a survivor's story, but a full accounting of a shameful atrocity that has been largely overlooked, even in histories of that bleak time.

The history begins with an account of pre-war Romanian history, and the brutalities that occurred even before the country joined the Nazis. Only the desperate would have paid the shamefully exorbitant cost for passage on the leaky, filthy cattle boat _Struma_, with the hope of getting to Palestine. The British controlled such immigration, however, and restricted it so as not to bother the Arabs and their oil supplies. The ship left Romania in December 1941, with intent to sail out of the Black Sea, through the Bosporus Strait, and on to Palestine. The engine failed on the first day, was patched, and failed three days later. The ship was towed by a Turkish tug to Istanbul harbor. There the ship stayed for almost two months, while bureaucratic nonsense was conducted to seal the fate of the passengers. They slowly withered due to disease and lack of fresh food and fresh air. There was even bickering over a plan to let the children leave the ship, a plan that never happened because Turkey, following a suggestion from the British, cut the anchor of the engineless vessel and simply set it adrift. Stalin had ordered Russian submarines to sink all ships in the Black Sea to prevent them from getting to Germany. A day after being set adrift, the helpless _Struma_ was torpedoed, and quickly sank. Nineteen-year-old David Stoliar miraculously was rescued by Turkish fishermen, but was imprisoned in Turkey thereafter; much of the book is his story.

The horrific story of the _Struma_ is here told in a plain and unsensational way. The authors have rightly sensed that there is no need to try to make the account more dramatic by artificial recreations of imagined conversations or thoughts of the people involved. There is some heroism, like that of Simon Brod, an Istanbul businessman who selflessly devoted constant efforts to helping refugees of various kinds and from various sources. Such lights are few in this, one of the darkest episodes of the war and one that took longest to be seen clearly. There is a portion of blame to go to the U.S., which parroted the British line about the importance of limiting emigration, and did not want to get further involved. The evil of the Nazi purge is to blame, of course, in its Romanian variant, as is the ruthlessness of Stalin's blanket order to clear the Black Sea of shipping indiscriminately. Those on the _Struma_ died, however, because of the joint efforts of the British and the Turks, from veiled anti-Semitism to indifference to outright murder. Frantz and Collins have produced a vivid and shocking book to rescue a gruesome but essential story into history again.

A disturbing but important tale told in rich, compelling detail. The ``Struma'' was to be a lifeboat for desperate refugees from Hitler's Europe only to become a pawn of politics. History kept this secret too long, but thanks to Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins the story of the ``Struma'' has been recovered from the depths of obscurity. And just in time to underscore the real, human costs of indifference to brutal prower and the failure of reasoned diplomacy. Here, the victims have names and they haunt the pages of ``Death on the Black Sea'' -- as they must always the pages of history.

For those interested in decision theory, the author does a sterling job of tracing the impacts that different approaches to decision-making, by different parties, has on the development of a complex and unique mixed use project:

"But like it or not, the power to make these final decisions rested with the various public bodies overseeing the compliance with the city's regulations" (p.106) "It was that an architectural decision had been made by a political body that appeared to care little about archictecture..." (p.105) "Still undecided, however, was the shape of the atrium. This delay was having troubling consequences for the entire construction schedule because the city refused to issue a demolition permit until it saw the final design drawings..." "The developers knew they were unhappy with the atrium but they did not know why" (p.154) "They bungled it because they wouldn't do anything without having three decisions" (p.184) "The debate over the colour of glass dragged on for months" (p.202) "Mancini said he would take the matter under advisement. He was not ready to make a decision on the spot" (p.209) "While Johnson applauded group decisions intellectually, he felt strongly that there was not always a 'right' decision for every dilemma" (p.229")

The book clearly articulates the dialogue between the different decision-making parties and makes for an interesting case study.

My students - this was, for years, the best-liked textbook in Berkeley real estate courses - saw this well-written history of an actual commercial development as a sure-fire hit movie. We selected the cast - not too difficult: incompetent and corrupt contractors, sublimely ignorant city officials, totally dense bankers, a brilliant artist who got ripped off, shady lawyers, venal professors - well, they lost forty million dollars or so. Reporter Frantz covered the (subsiding) ground with hearty humor but without serious libel. The reader is supposed to do the numbers.

When I first purchased "A Full Service Bank: How BCCI..." I was thinking that it is a long boring book, but when I started to read it I was amazed on what BCCI actually pulled off and how they did such things. The governments and banking systems in other countries also intrigued me. "A Full Service Bank" is an exciting book that keeps the reader engaged for a long amount of time and keeps them interested. When you are done reading this novel you should feel a sense of knowledge. I suggest "A full Service Bank" to anyone interested in the banking industry or interested in a great book about scandles andn banks.

This is a good read, very educational on Middle-Eastern and Southeast Asian business practises. Instead of all that garbage they teach at business schools regarding international commerce, they should provide books such as this one as required reading.

This is how things really happen. It details innumerable 'behind-the-scenes' business deals. Provides a great insight to the anatomy of shady international banking deals, not to mention arms deals, drug trafficking and money laundering.

I know some of the people mentioned in this book and it is spot-on with its descriptions of them. This book may be a little out of date but its a worthy read and will be for years to come.

I live in a master-planned community, so I have some experience with many of the seemingly strange rules and regulations described in the book. I'm also fascinated with new urbanism, so I was very excited when I found out about this book. It's higly readable, but there are some awkward places where the authors repeat each other. More troubling, I never got the sense that they went much beyond the perceptions and needs of their immediate family and neighbors. For two supposedly objective journalists, their particular opinions on the Celebration school spoke more of their own biases than anything else. Did anyone else feel like they were more concerned with their own property values than documenting the year or two in Celebration? For a much deeper and thoughtful account, read the "other" Celebration book by Andrew Ross. By the way, he mentions in his book that he tried to contact these authors, but that their editor told them not to talk to him. Interesting. Knowing that the various authors were in Celebration at about the same time, and having them interview many of the same residents was surreal.

I am in the camp of rabid Disney haters. Someday, Disney and their ilk will return to the deepest pits of hell where they belong. Notwithstanding this mild bias, this book actually had me impressed with Disney. No, I would not live there. No, I would not visit there. No I would not make a public comment that Celebration is a good thing. But Disney did try to put into practice all of the new urbanism techniques that so many of us have written about for so long. Disney deserves the credit for funding this experiment, and the authors deserve high praise for making this valuable point. The weakness of this book is that the authors wrote it while they still lived in Celebration. As we learned from the Lynds in their books about Middleton, you need to get away from a place to see it up close. I hope the authors do a follow up later that ties together so many open questions. I suspect the people who have bashed this book are probably Disney employees, or pathetic mouse syncophants.

Unlike some of the earlier reviewers, I didn't think this was anti-Disney or anti-Celebration. After reading it, I almost wanted to move to Celebration myself! (If it had decent transit connections to Orlando it could be paradise). The authors' love for the place showed through, and the only thing that mystified me was why they left.

The authors do discuss the very real problems with Celebration's schools and construction; this part of the book could have benefited from a comparison with traditional suburbs, to show readers that Celebration's problems exist in typical suburban sprawl as well -- as anyone who saw what Hurricane Andrew did to Miami's sprawl houses knows!