A very informative book, Napoleon: The Final Verdict, describes all aspects of Napoleon's military career. Although it lacked extensive details on individual battles, it gave basic knowledge necesary to understand the Napoleonic Wars. The book is divided into two sections. The First section gives the knowledge obtained on his life. The second section analyzes the information given in the first to help you determine Napoleon's true quality. I especially like the pages of quotes which the author has included in the back of the book.

Kadare sets out two stories, that slowly blur together. Not a traditional historical novel, this story helps explain the dichotomy between new ideas and old traditions in present day Albania.

This somewhat autobiographical sort of a novel, first published in French in 1986, won the Black Humor Prize. The most interesting part is a sketch of the author's background--as a child of a Sephardic Jewish family that had been in Morocco for four centuries. He assumed he was destined for greatness (as a writer) and sees this as a sort of ontogeny for the phylogeny of the Chosen People. Both as a 20th-century Jew and as someone who (like Camus) feels lost the paradise of living under the North African sun (living in the dingy, gray Paris of the 1950s), he believes he has a duty to remember.

His later book _Jacob, Manahem, and Mimoun_ fulfills that duty in a fuller way, though that book, too, is about the failure to create the literary masterpiece he always expected from himself. Bénabou (and/or his narrator) has conceived many masterpieces, but shied away from apprentice works, or, indeed, from writing more than a few pages of any of his grand designs. "What had been a confident wait imperceptibly transformed itself into torpor."

The book about his nonbooks (the books he didn't write) starts over and starts over and starts over, but, aided by some very apposite quotations about writing from myriad other writers, details the ultimately impossible love of an author who can not bring himself to besmirch beautiful virgin sheets of white paper even to create the literature that would redeem his claim to be a writer.

In addition to the universal reasons for putting off writing (especially the ease of reading instead: Bénabou characterizes his compulsive reading as a form of bulimia), a French writer has to beware the "reigns of theoretical terror which generally crop up in the most protected circles and make of reality the negligible byproduct of a few concepts."

Many people have realized that being unsuited for writing and even unable to string more than a few words together does not remove the desire to be a writer. Without venturing beyond the struggle with writing (to the absurd lot of blocked writers such as Anthony Burgess' Enderby or Michael Chabon's Grady Tripp) Bénabou makes being a writer who does not and cannot write archly funny and even poignant.

I characterize it as a "sort of novel" because nothing happens, not even a change of consciousness of the narrator. The "somewhat autobiographical" links to the lost Moroccan Jewish world, and, perhaps, to not being able to write anything remotely conventionally a novel. However, Bénabou, who has earned his living as a professor of ancient history, published a book in 1976 on African resistance to the Roman Empire, and had published another eight as the 'Definitely Provisional Secretary' of Ouvroir de Littrature Potentielle (the Workshop of Potential Literature founded in 1960 by the playful Raymond Queneau and of which the master of metafiction, Italo Calvino, joined), so was not so blocked as the narrator of _Why_.

Allright, the catchy title (referring to Papa Doc Duvalier of Haiti) and cool cover enticed me into buying this slim, unsatisfying book. Apparently functioning as a sequel to the highly autobiographical "An Aroma of Coffee," it nominally follows one teenage boy's weekend in early 1970s Port-au-Prince. In actuality, the boy mostly functions as an observer of the whirlwind lives of a group of fine young women who live across the street from him. This is reflected by the more apt ordinal French title, which translates to "The Taste/Appetite of Young Girls." Theses women are a fairly unpleasant, nasty, catty, backstabbing lot, and are fairly hard to tell apart. Written as a series of scenes, the book conveys some atmosphere of the time, but not enough to make it worthwhile.

At first glance, this book seems like a simple rite-of-passage tale: young boy goes across the street to commune with gorgeous women and learn about sex and nail polish, or some such thing.

If you look deeper, however, it becomes clear that the journey depicted by LaFerriere is one of political discovery as well. "Papa", a seemingly minor chartacter, lurks in the background, somewhat menacing and completely disinterested in the drama surrounding him. While women kick, scream, yell, and turn on each other viciously, "Papa" (representing Haitian Dictator Duvalier) hardly looks up, hardly notices, does nothing when asked to intervene.

Read this way, the book offers insight into the burgeoning political mind of a young man in a terribly beautiful, terribly corrupt place.

The story goes limp a few times, but I am still there! I love that Dining With the Dictator, was written almost like a screenplay. And the different personalities of the girls clashes together so well that one can't help but to wonder what is going to happen next!

There's a lot of good sense and good food in this book, but the California style is getting a bit past mark of mouth, if you'll permit an archaic phrase/pun. I've made a few of these dishes, and they're fine, but somehow this isn't the book I pick up and flip through, asking myself, "what's for dinner?" With Jody Adams, Daniel Boulud, and Pat Wells on the shelf, I'm not sure I'd call this a "must have" addition. But, if you're a Waters fan, go for it .

This is one of Alice Waters' early books, and it shows, as compared to the later ones. Many of the recipes are complicated, and involve ingredients that are not easy to come by, even in NYC. I read it more for amusement. The later books (Vegetables, Fruit, Cafe), are much more user friendly and result in great dishes. I wouldn't recommend this to someone new to her philosophy of cooking, or who doesn't have serious kitchen experience.

There's a special reason we go to the books of the great chefs. It's not to throw a meal together in 2 minutes, or to make sure we will find a dish we can cook with no trouble in two pans in our kitchens at home. It's to look inside an imagination and see what someone can achieve with ingredients and passion when it's what they do all day, every day, with devotion.

As Nigella Lawson said about another writer, "I often cook, if not directly from it, then inspired by it (which is more telling)". This is a truly inspiring work, one you will go back to again and again. From the buckwheat crepes with glaced fruit and eau de vie, to the amazing amazing fish soup, simple dishes with corn and over the top reworking of french classics, the judgement of flavours and textures is perfect. Ignore Water's fetish about perfect lettuce, read it, and just go to the kitchen. 10 stars out of five, the best of all the Waters books.

Eloqently and aesthetically written for writers, this is the book for those who delight in literature. The book transubstantiate the reader:Macey establishes a post-humous dialogue in which the reader uncovers the archeoalogy of Foucault, his experiences as a writer, politician and philosopher. The author takes the reader through the labyrinth at the centre of which Foucault lurks as a minotaur. It uncoils the myth of literature's wordily genesis in which writing is discussed extensively and given the authority of infinity, as an original force that was there from the beginning before things unfolded into the natural world of things. Foucault died from intellectual gibbosity-"inflammation of the cerebrum".

Trueman Myaka Tel:0927 31 303 6466 Fax: 0927 31 303 4493

david macey's biography of michel foucault is both the best researched and the most carefully analysed account of foucault's life currently available. While it lacks both the interpretative drive behind james miller's "the passion of michel foucault" (who reads foucault as a nietzscheian), and the treatment of friendships and specific themes throughout foucault's life given in "michel foucault et ses contemporains" (didier eribon's second work on foucault), macey is incredibly erudite, very well-balanced and a solid reader of foucault. macey recounts many more details of mf's life than any other account, and doesn't take foucault's self-reflective moments for granted as correct interpretations of his past actions and thought (Foucault gave tons of interviews, where he tended to reflect on his past works from his present perspective - so he could say that he had always been working on power etc, when this argument could undermine tensions and different trends in his work). he gives a solid, if long account of foucault's intellectual development, manages to place him in as much of a context as the biographical genre permits and, within this context, is mildly critical of his subject. macey is also a fun read. perhaps not as much as miller, but he certainly provides better balanced -and more interesting to read- accounts (than both miller and eribon) of foucault's works as well as of his life and homosexuality

nonetheless, there are important criticisms to be made. there's a certain elegiac tone throughout much of the book which is not totally appropriate to foucault's thought and perhaps even to foucault himself. this tone complicates the problem of writing a biography of a thinker without treating him through his own lens of comprehending "the subject," "the author," "the self" etc. in other words, the account is stylistically rather conservative, something that might lead readers to doubt the level of depth at which foucault is approached. and indeed, though the depth is considerable, the approach is too conservative to catch some of the more radical tones in foucault especially as regards his "post-modern" tendencies (foucault was suspicious of that term).

still, this is a very good biography and a good reading of MF, that mixes well his life and his thought. worth reading, even (especially) if you've read other accounts. it complements them well and improves on them considerably.

David Macey's "The Lives of Michel Foucault" - 1993 is by far the best of the three significant biographies that have thus far appeared (there is James Miller's "The Passion of Michel Foucault" - 1993 and Betsy Wing's translation of Didier Eribon's "Michel Foucault" - 1991 all available on Amazon.com). For Macey, the "silence" of Foucault is something to be taken seriously, not as theoretically authorized avoidance of truth telling, but rather as the bewilderment of a man; a real man situated in his time and place, caught between different roles and self-conceptions. Macey tells Foucault's story clearly and without fanfare. What is truly scholarly helpful in Macey's telling is a rigorous archive of how Foucault, this most tenacious detractor of institutional power, was ironically the beneficiary of the French intellectual establishment, and how this retiring scholar proved remarkably proficient at seizing political moments for stepping up onto the public stage. Macey's intensive research and detailed textual elucidation provides the type of documentary support that is often lacking in James Miller's "passionate" book. Macey's book, is conversely, is a cautious account of Foucault's doings, written with expertise of a careful study and a sharp spirit of defensiveness, as might be expected from a biography that has been duly "authorized" by Foucault's surviving companion Daniel Defert. As opposed to Miller's very good biography that offered a portrait of Foucault the man and thinker - Macey's rendition pays attention to the day-to-day goings on offers the reader a more vivid picture of Foucault as a political activist. Macey painstakingly explores the early 1970s - when Foucault plunged into a life of sustained political involvement. I am grateful to all three biographers for making Foucault come alive as a person and more understandable as a scholar. Macey though, is really good at taking Foucault's anti-humanist perspective and developing it, not as a theme or explanation of Foucault's life but rather as a topic of study. According to Macey, no French theoretician has had a more recondite or permanent influence on American thinking then Michel Foucault. Foucault, who been dead for more than a decade now may no longer be the first name to be dropped at academic circles and seminars, but the terms he made famous, terms like 'discourse' and 'networks of power' - often misappropriated and dropped at a moments notice get a very good treatment in this book. Macey is really helpful in taking the often cryptic writing of Foucault and makes it accessible to the unfamiliar - and at times even familiar - Foucault scholar. According to Macey, the cult of Foucault, matured in its impact because Foucault and his cohort had intellectual claims beyond the reading of "texts." Going beyond the often dead ended practice of "deconstruction" practiced by such luminaries as Lacan, Derrida and Levi-Strauss.

Foucault was shaping an enterprise in anti-humanist, anti-essentialist "discourse." In sync with many other strains in the thought of his continental contemporaries - with Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger were acknowledged as his primary influences while Althusser, Canguilhem and Barthes were included in the mix - Foucault's ideas about the essential constitution of civil society drew on a ardently anti-liberal attack on the Enlightenment. Far from being the light of reason to shed light and resolve problems surrounding the human condition, the Enlightenment according to Foucault replaced the ancien regime model of social marginalization and class demarcations with a better mousetrap of domination, which was simply a modernized technology of social control. It would no longer be possible to look to the obvious figures of sovereignty and privilege - embodied in king and counts - for the telling signs of "power." Power was beginning to make its way into the ordinary institutions of social life. The reigning king of the humanist project was still Sartre, who became the locus of Foucault's efforts. Sartre, according to Foucault stood for a tired philosophy of "Marxist humanism." Sartre did not see, in Foucault's view that humanism was inevitably the soiled result of the new technology of domination that sprang up with the Enlightenment. Sartre, according to Foucault, was the poster boy of the Enlightenment. Macey spells out how according to Foucault, Humanism was just the happy facade put on the medical and scientific lessening of the human being into an itemized, categorized and catalogued object of a detached "gaze" - recognition of this phenomenon according to Foucault should put to rest any ebullience for the communitarian didactic discourse of the Sartrean "politics of commitment." More openly then does Miller (or Eribon for that matter), Macey recognizes Foucault's ongoing struggle against Sartre's "gaze," against any other interpretative or evaluative power. What was really happening, Foucault posits was the construction of a "networks" of power - though one was not supposed to ask "'whose' power?" Power, this new social fixation with discipline and surveillance, became its own rationale according to Foucault. As I mentioned above, power was not to be found in leaders or social organizations or parties or in any given social structure, but was rather a kind of "discourse, " a set of terms or symbolic representations that connect, in an abstract way, the given instances of discipline and surveillance at work in social life. For Foucault, to fight a diffuse "power" was to be able to pick any point of attack in any institutional setting and do the work of social revolution. Foucault is not keen to lay out a recipe for such transgression but his strength is in critique. Macey's strength is making this often baroque author accessible - the Macey that I appreciate.

Miguel Llora

Napoleon's Maxims totalled more than ninety, and the totality of ALL of these are invaluable to the student of military history. Yet only a fraction of them were translated in the original volume that first appeared in the early 20th century; even worse, Chandler did not complete the job since this would have been a golden opportunity to showcase the previously ommitted and rarely-seen Maxims. Hopefully, some historian will do the complete job the next time.

Here is a distillation in one slim volume of the knowledge and wisdom of history's greatest military commander. Napoleon's unparalleled success was built on practical experience combined with his own study of the great empire-builders, from Alexander to Fredrick the Great--and the essence of what he learned from them is incorporated in this book

(from the introduction of the work)

I enjoyed reading Eroshima. Basically it's a small book with a short story and several smaller stories and japanese poems, all revolving around the theme of sex and death (death due to the atomic bomb). The author Laferriere uses a lot of the same wit, reflection, insight and humor about sex and race in the first half of the book (How to make love to a Negro). In Eroshima the main character (most likely the author) has a sexual relationship with a japanese woman and refuses to get out of bed for days. That part of the book is interesting, however, Larerriere diverts into several directions with short stories that lack a real plot. Laferriere depicts senarios of men and women from around the globe, which is interesting, but I don't think he digs deep enough or give purpose to their relationship. Overall, I think he wrote a decent first half of a book, and he could have extended that insight and humor throughout the entire book.

This is a very well written book with lots of interesting new ideas about the Waterloo Campaign of 1815 and a broad perspective that goes beyond the usual British and French-centered approach. Unfortunately the author tries too hard to find controversy and unjustly besmirches the reputation of some good 19th-century historians. But the real - and ultimately fatal - flaw in this book is the inaccurate source notes. In the course of my own research I have checked most of the footnotes and found that very frequently the sources cited by the author are either not related to the issue in the text (and thus do not provide evidence to support the author's allegations) or - even worse - they actually say the opposite of what he has claimed. Such unreliable footnoting greatly reduces the book's usefulness, since you can't be sure if the author actually has any evidence to back his "new perspectives." This is a shame, because the book is a good read and does offer new ideas. I think the book was very hastily written to meet a deadline, and I hope that someday the author prepares a new, carefully revised edition with accurate footnotes. If I could trust what he was saying, I would change my review from two stars to five.

The shortcomings of this book are by now well known. A fair number of the author's citations sem to be fictional, and the attack on the Sibornes is unsupported. However, the actual campaign narrative in this book is really rather good. It takes a broad perspective, unlike many other accounts, is full of useful insights, and is well-written and entertaining. No doubt it contains flaws, though it is interesting to note that most of the critics of this book focus on inaccuracies in the citations (and the attack on the Sibornes) rather than specific errors in the campaign analysis itself.

By all means ignore the rant against the Sibornes, and read the portions alleging various conspiracies against Napoleon with a healthy measure of skepticism, but don't dismiss the campaign history. It may not be the gospel truth in all particulars (what historical account is?), but it is more insightful and informative than most treatments of the Waterloo campaign.

I found Hamilton-Williams' book to be most enlightening, despite certain flaws in its source material. To my knowledge, and I may be incorrect, Waterloo: New Perspectives was among the first english-language books to seriously challenge the long-held notion that the British defeated Napoleon at Mont St. Jean. Simply by challenging the status quo, well-founded or not, Hamilton-Williams appears to have made the battle of la Belle Alliance once again an issue of intense controversy. Whether "meticulously researched" or not, I remain in doubt as to whether subsequent works on the battle emphasizing the Dutch, German and Prussian roles would ever have been written. As for the account itself, it seems well-enough written work, and very informative in areas where citation is not so necessary, such as the depictions of the musket smoke clouding the battlefield, and descriptions of the horrors of receiving artillery fire. The general narrative is also good, especially regarding the Prussians' travails.