I've worked for Otis for nearly 30 years. I thought I knew how the company started and grew, but I was wrong. This book, produced by United Technologies, Otis' parent corporation, could have just been a promotional piece, but to the credit of the author I found it to be a well researched, well written chronical of Otis' humble New York beginnings in 1853 through today's global presence.

It is a book written for people who are interested in the growth of the world's greatest cities and a company that was instrumental for that growth.

The biggest surprise was the book's readability. Goodwin helped me understand the personalities and motivations of the people who brought Otis to where it is today. He painted pictures of the situations surrounding the events which helped me understand the logic behind Otis' progress. I felt he dealt honestly with United Technologies' takeover of Otis in 1976 (which I experienced) and brought the influences of Otis' global operations into perspective.

It is an eye opener for internal Otis associates, and an educational experience for non-Otis readers who want to learn how a company can start from nothing and influence the way we all live. It is a book about machines, business, cities, and time. I highly recommend it.

"Elevators'..is modern sounding,compared to stevadore implication of British..'Lift'. Began in 1853 by mechanic Elisha Otis,(NY foundry), this corporate history was commissioned by parent co...United Technologies,which paid in advance for 'modest # of copies". Otis's automatic braking system took fear out of skyscrapers-, but implosions of WTC has put it back

I read this book when it first came out, and I really loved it. I still refer to the facts I learned within; just last week I was explaining Lapsang Souchong to an Irishman. I was left feeling that I knew Mr. Goodwin, and contemplated finding him and making him my husband, primarily so we could travel together.

This book is WONDERFUL! Be forewarned, however: you WILL begin to guzzle litre after litre of tea during the reading of this book. Mr. Goodwin gives an absolutely wonderful first-person account of his often hilarious travels investigating the tea trade, from its' beginnings in Canton to the present day. A MUST for anyone who loves tea - and I'd rate Mr. Goodwin's writing style on a par with Pico Iyer's. A good read, full of humour and information...

This book was also published in paperback in the United States under the title A Time for Tea: Travels Through China and India in Search of Tea (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991). Informed and entertaining, the book is a combination travelogue-history; the author visits China, India, and a few other tea-related places (Boston, as in Tea Party), all the while telling us how tea is grown, processed, and drunk; how it was first discovered; and how it came to be exported to the West. I found it totally engrossing. Had it been written by an American, I would class it in the category of New-Yorker-style writing: intelligent, witty, light - yet informative. I suppose the book may now be out of print in the American version, but it's certainly worth tracking down. Highly recommended.

I must have been drunk when I wrote this book. There was no "Ottoman Empire". You have been cruelly deluded.

Probably one of the first examples of journalistic fiction, Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year" is a pseudo-eyewitness account of the London plague of 1665. Writing this in 1722, Defoe casts himself into the role of his uncle whom he calls H.F. and who recounts the events in grisly detail but with magnanimous compassion. Aside from the prose, the book has a surprisingly modern edge in the way it combines facts about a sensationally dire historical event with "human interest" stories for personal appeal. It seems so factual that at times it's easy to forget that it's just a fictitious account of a real event.

The plague (H.F. writes) arrives by way of carriers from the European mainland and spreads quickly through the unsanitary, crowded city despite official preventive measures; the symptoms being black bruises, or "tokens," on the victims' bodies, resulting in fever, delirium, and usually death in a matter of days. The public effects of the plague are readily imaginable: dead-carts, mass burial pits, the stench of corpses not yet collected, enforced quarantines, efforts to escape to the countryside, paranoia and superstitions, quacks selling fake cures, etc. Through all these observations, H.F. remains a calm voice of reason in a city overtaken by panic and bedlam. By the time the plague has passed, purged partly by its own self-limiting behavior and partly by the Great Fire of the following year, the (notoriously inaccurate) Bills of Mortality indicate the total death toll to be about 68,000, but the actual number is probably more like 100,000 -- about a fifth of London's population.

Like Defoe's famous survivalist sketch "Robinson Crusoe," the book's palpable moralism is adequately camouflaged by the conviction of its narrative and the humanity of its narrator, a man who, like Crusoe, trusts God's providence to lead him through the hardships, come what may. What I like about this "Journal" is that its theme is more relevant than its narrow, dated subject matter suggests: levelheadedness in the face of catastrophe and the emergence of a stronger and wiser society.

Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year is an interesting volume that blends fact and fiction quite indiscriminately, as the author intended. It is easy to forget it is fiction as it reads as fact (and it seems likely there are enough actual facts strewn throughout as to enhance this perception). Defoe was less concerned about these issues concerning fiction and non-fiction than modern readers and writers and it is fascinating to see an example of the early beginnings of novel writing. The style could frustate some readers (there is virtually no attempt at characters and only small strands of a narrative per se) but the descriptions of a town in crisis were both gripping and fascinating. An unique volume.

When a subject is gruesome it attracts notoriety. Unfortunately, if it is real, it loses it. This story of the the affects of the Plague in London in 1665 should be required reading for all people of all civilized countries. How the Plague started, how its spread was covered up initially and why, how the government was forced to respond, what happened to the economy and the outlying regions - these things could happen any day in any year in any country. Look at the news archives of the spread of SARS, how the government in (I think) Indonesia enacted house quarantines, how the Chinese economy was distablized. This is a very real warning and will not lose its timeliness as long as people build cities and economies. He is not just describing what happened but giving us warning and ideas for how it can be handled better.

This is a hard review to write, I wish I had an option to give this 3 1/2 stars, but I can't quite give 4 and I can't quite stomach 3. This book is great if you wish to glean facts about 13th century Europeon male's point of view of the middle and Far east. There are some tales that are completely stupendous, and cannot be believed at all and then there are some great, anecdotes, a favorite of mine is one were Marco challenges the ability of Kublai Khan's empire to function using a paper monetary system, at which Polo is completely incredulous, a monetary system, everyone in the world uses today. There are some excellent recounts of native islands, unspoiled back lands and an excellent feeling for the travels of a trader that took that original silk route over 600 years ago. It's an easy read though, short chapters, and fanciful tales make it flow fast, so even if the fantastic tales annoy your need for historic fact, it's probably worth the few days this takes to thumb through.

Marco Polo appertains to an exeptionally small group of historical personalities widely known on all continents. Such knowledge in the first place is based on the passing from generation to generation tales of adventurers and marvellous riches of the Asian World in the Middle Ages. To evaluate in this way of Marco Polo's book is the result of a renaissance interpretation of above all a rational text. No matter how interesting, such an image has made that text to reader of all ages over the past seven centuries, it has concealed its values: understanding of the reality and connection of numerous people and their cultures present on the extended Euro-Asian area. Colonel Henry Yule, himself a great admirer of these infinite diversities; such as geographical, climatic, ethnic, cultural and what else not, has unselfishly made available his great experience of a scientist and researcher, talent and good will in verifiying the saying of Marco Polo and presented it to the scientists and public. The summary of this extremely complex, professional and meticulous work is laid out on these 1680 pages (vols. 1 & 2). Numerous illustrations and detailed descriptions of itineraries and places from the Mediterranean to the Pacific and India, an area of abundant testimonies of great cultures; where great armies have roamed; obstinate missionaries and merchants, diplomats and spies have operated and what we called The Silk Roads, introduce the reader into the great world of Marco Polo and are a valuable source of information for everyone who intends to see these wordless testimonies and numerous fascinating landscapes of vast deserts and their oasis, mountain ranges and green valleys, where life runs slowly but with dignity as Marco Polo has seen and described it. Marco Polo and his work have been in the focus of many individual researchers and teams before and after Mr. Henry Yule, giving valuable contributions. However, for the overall knowledge, vision and comprehension of Marco Polo and his achivements, the book written by colonel Henry Yule "The Book of Marco Polo" has maintained the very top position won by its first presentation to the public in the distant year of 1871.

Marco Polo's memoir of his life and travels in the medieval Asian empire of Kublai Khan is the ultimate adventure tale, a true one-of-a-kind. As a teenager, Marco Polo, scion of a Venetian trading family, embarked on a two-decade adventure into the remotest corners of the known world through his family's connection with the Great Khan and his court. Year later, (after dictating his story in a prison back in civilized Europe), Polo published a dazzling account of sights he witnessed in lands little known to Europeans of the Middle Ages. So extraordinary and exotic were his reports, that Polo's tales both fired imaginations and inspired skepticism. For the modern reader, the book offers a fascinating picture of a lost world and a sense of ultimate adventure. One element that makes this an appealing edition of an opt-published classic is the use of 32 woodcut illustrations by Witold Gordon originally created for a 1930 edition of the book.

There is no doubt that Goodwin's walk must have been an interesting. Walking the length of Eastern Europe in early 1990 must have been a daring and exhillarating experience.

However, it is perhaps because of the high expectations that I had for this book that I was so thoroughly dissapointed by it. Having read much about the Balkans in particular, and having lived and traveled extensively throughout the region, I was rather dissapointed in Goodwin's approach. Very early in the book, one notices how Goodwin sees all the countries he walks through with a very Northern European viewpoint.

Despite his implicit acknowledgement that he really has not spent much time with Romanians, Goodwin is quick to denounce the nation's claims to Transylvania and everything else. Goodwin makes it clear that in his view, Romanians are the scum of the earth -- a people without culture, class, or civilization. Staying throughout with Hungarians and Saxons, Goodwin makes very little effort to interact with Romanians, and thus shows the prejudices of his hosts in his writing. Even in the titles of his chapters, he uses Hungarian and German names -- names not commonly used anymore -- instead of Romanian names for various towns he visits. Most disturbing is Goodwin's complete disregard for Romania's third great region, Moldavia -- a region many consider to be the cultural heart of Romania; a land of immesnse beauty, world-class wine, and hospitable -- Romanian -- people. While Goodwin understandably did not make a detour in this region, his utter contempt for Romanians -- blaming the people themselves for the brutality of Ceausescu -- is reprehensible.

This book had a lot of potential, and could have been a wonderful read. However, it is clear from reading it that Goodwin made his journey with a closed and prejudiced mind -- something that denied both him and the reader a true picture of a very rich and beautiful region. The one reedeeming factor is that despite all his biases, Goodwin's descriptive powers are immense. Many of the spots where both he and I stood are depicted with great authenticity in the book. All in all, a book worth reading -- albeit with a large grain of salt.

In this day and age when everything has been discovered, and every person on this small world has been touched by the conquests of another country or the speed of technology, there comes a long the travel log of Jason Goodwin.

The written details are enough to put you on the path with Goodwin and his two close friends. From the lands they visit, to the hardships they encounter, you really feel as if you're on the path to Instanbul with them! And yet somehow, he still has room to focus on the people of these regions, during a hard and confusing time in eastern Europe. While people struggle to find their identites and find the freedoms they may have missed, these three British travelers are welcomed in to their homes and barns, as if they were long lost friends. Goodwin notes all aspects of these people they visit, and doesn't sugar coat a thing!

The sheer amazement of walking from Poland to Turkey, in a time when they could easily fly over it without so much of a glance or concern, truely opens the history of the iron curtain to all of us.

Again, these countries Goodwin and his companions walked through, no longer exsist as he saw them. But with this novel, the split second time of change for the Eastern Block, is immortalized.

Jason Goodwin has produced a wonderfully inventive travel book, one in which Istanbul is the ultimate goal. Wanting to have some sort of experience of what was it was like to visit such a distant goal in the past, as well as to tour Central Europe, he and two friends walk there! They journey on foot (only very rarely accepting short rides) from the northern Polish port city of Gdansk all the way through the rest of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria into Turkey. An incredible journey, he describes it vividly, with worries about bandits, wolves, bears, the weather, hostile customs officials, dogs, and most of all finding food and a place to sleep at night. They meet an interesting and diverse group of people along the road, many of whom befriend them, taking them into their homes, sharing part of their lives with the travelers.

Perhaps somewhat dated, published as it was in the early 1990s, Goodwin does provide an interesting portrait of Central Europe. The book spends quite a bit of time in Poland, a land shaped by the rise and fall of empires, shaped by the northern crusades of the Teutonic Knights, the Hanseatic League, of various powers that had over the centuries coveted and eventually gobbled sections or all of Poland, the broad flat plains of the country providing little obstacle to invading armies. Indeed Goodwin finds that the Poles often go to great pains to make it clear that they are distinctly Polish; though often that is simply making it clear that they are not German. As part of the country was once part of Germany, their concern is perhaps understandable.

Though Goodwin's journey never takes him into Germany, he often encountered German cultural influence and odd outposts of Germans, even well into Romania. German settlers had been invited by many rulers in Central Europe, and for centuries German merchants, craftsmen, and guilds dominated town life, the towns in essence becoming German, the main language in Gdansk or Cracow or Buda German. Many of these Germans though Goodwin finds have left, those few remaining either thinking of leaving, stubbornly clinging to old ways in isolated Saxon settlements, or slowly assimilating with the larger majority.

Hungary Goodwin finds is seemingly more stable and prosperous than the others he went through on his trip, particularly when contrasted with Romania. Though a third the size of Poland, its people took pride in regional names and differences, making the country seem larger than it was. One area that was interesting was Silvasvarod, noted for the famed Lippizaner horses it supplies to the Viennese Riding School.

Much of the book is spent in Romania, particularly in the region of Transylvania, an area once part of Hungary, its loss still keenly felt by many in Hungary as well as the substantial Hungarian minority in Transylvania itself. Goodwin found a number of people who held strong opinions on the matter, and it appears to remain a bone of contention with many. The only undisputed inhabitants of Transylvania are the once nomadic Szekely, Hungarian speakers, though not Hungarian. Famed for fighting on horseback, noted for their light cavalry even after they ended their nomadic ways, once proudly cherished by the Hungarians as defenders of the realm, they are still found in eastern Transylvania, a region known as Szekelyfold, where Goodwin observed their nearly pagan "totem poles" that marked graves and the massive palisade gates they erect at the entrance to their farms.

Gypsies Goodwin found played a major role in the life and economy of Central Europe, particularly in Romania. Sometimes feared (many warned Goodwin that they were thieves and cutthroats), sometimes hated (they were very poorly treated by Ceausescu in Romania), sometimes even admired (Goodwin did find some who pointed out that they fulfilled a vital economic function in many areas), he found them more diverse and interesting than he imagined, a people who are not tied down to cities and have more in common with their ancestral Indian homeland than Europe.

Goodwin did not like Romania, feeling it more like the Third World than Europe. He found it a land that had suffered greatly under Ceausescu, his legacy still looming large in everyday life. Romania seemed alone in Central Europe in lagging behind economically and in pursuing democracy, even in basic services. Goodwin visited an orphanage in Romania, making for heartbreaking reading, children barely cared for, virtually unable to speak as they haven't had enough human contact, having to be shown how to play with toys! What disgusted Goodwin the most though was the "gang mentality of ordinary Romanians," how the days of mob rule from the past still existed, present everywhere from the unfriendly "leering beer-garden swillers" that were present in many Romanian bars to the rioting peasant farmers that had recently fought ugly street battles in Tirgu Mures. When leaving Romania, Goodwin suffers from food poisoning, the poison of which he compares to his trip through the country, which had been administered "from the moment we crossed its border," beginning in the border town of Oradea, where the "first black depression" settled upon him, abating only upon leaving.

Goodwin was glad to enter Bulgaria, a land he found far different, a land perhaps of opposites. Country homes he found were often surrounded by trash, rather than extremely clean as they were often elsewhere in Central Europe, a holdover from traditions of not displaying wealth to Turkish overlords. In Bulgaria they nodded to show no, shook their heads to say yes, again legacies of confusing Ottoman rule perhaps. Drier and emptier than any of the previous lands, Goodwin was glad to enter it; clearly feeling his next stop was in Istanbul.

If I had any complaint to offer about the book, it was that we never get to see Istanbul; the book is all about the journey, and really about Central Europe. Having said that though, it was still great to read.

Simply put, this is a bad book. It is poorly written and is bad history.

When the author stops digressing, he has many unimportant and trivial anecdotes about the dollar in American history.

His interpretation of American history is terrible. Just a few examples: Early in the book he cited Hawthorne, Thoreau and Twain (who lost a fortune trying to be an industrialist) to reach the conclusion that Americans did not collect and hoard money in the nineteenth century. Apparently he did not read the rest of his book which went on ad nauseum about Americans in the nineteenth century chasing and counterfeiting the dollar. In another instance he concludes that all civil rights were suspended during the civil war (not that this had anything to do with $) - completely ignoring the fact that the Supreme Court overturned Lincoln's attempt to suspend habeas corpus. Lastly (I could go on and on), he finished the book by noting that on our dollar bills are the icons that were present at the birth of our nation. This, after telling how Grant and Cleveland were on our bills! Last I looked they lived late in the next century.

I kept hoping that some pearls about the dollar would come shining through. Whatever pearls there might have been were muddied by his erroneous history and his horrible interpretations of the history he included.

I felt I wasted a good deal of time reading this book. If one wants to read the only useful part of this book, limit yourself to the chapter(s) describing the private banknotes. Nothing before or after is at all worthwhile.

This is a very enjoyable work, well-written and researched, with numerous anecdotes and sidelights. I thought particularly strong the early chapters on colonial and post-revolution America. One sees in Jefferson an early version of a common type today: the person who is adamantly opposed to debt and credit instruments because he himself is hopelessly swamped in debt. Today's debt paranoiac shuns credit cards and deferred payment schemes of all stripes in favor of cash (paper dollars and checks drawn on bank accounts). But for Jefferson those very paper dollars and banks were suspect. For him, the only "real" money was metallic: gold or silver. The only stores of value in his opinion were coins or bullion or land.

This brought him into opposition to Hamilton, who wanted to inaugurate the new republic by assuming a huge load of debt (all the promises of payment represented by the wartime "Continentals"). Hamilton had a plan to set up a bank and issue paper money backed by gold reserves which didn't exist yet, but which he was confident could be built up by land sales and import duties. His plan, a risky scheme in Jefferson's opinion, was approved by Congress, and our little country began its life with a whopping 42 million dollar debt (p. 102). In spite of Jefferson's misgivings, the scheme worked so well that some twenty years later Jefferson himself was able to double the nation's land area by buying Louisiana from Napoleon.

I was disappointed that in this book, devoted as it is to various forms the dollar took over the years, no mention was made of the exact type of payment by Jefferson for Louisiana. Was it gold bullion? American gold dollars? Spanish gold dollars? Was there some of the paper money that he so despised? Was there a mortgage involved? Or a more racy installment plan (No interest and no payments until May 1808, or until the emperor conquers Russia, whichever comes first! Don't delay! Act now!)

"Greenback" then goes into satisfying detail on the banknote phenomenon, the system of the 19th century whereby banks printed notes (dollars, promises to pay) and either backed them up or did not back them up with gold in their vaults. As I understand it, the US government did not start printing such notes until the Civil War, and it did not become the sole legal printer of dollars until the 1920s. I would have liked more detail about how that latter change came about. What was the exact last day when you could use a dollar printed by a bank. Why did they wait so long to pass such a law, which seems perfectly natural to us now? Might the conversion have had anything to do with the subsequent worldwide depression? All fascinating questions for a follow-up volume which I hope will come from the febrile pen of Mr. Goodwin.

I am about halfway through this book. It is a pretty good book; it has an intriguing subject. But it is a bit confusing, and Mr. Goodwin has a tendency to go offtrack. Also, be prepared to know your history, because a lot of the people mentioned do not have introductions and/or biographies. Overall, this book is pretty good.

This book has some interesting sections, but those looking for a more traditional history, either chronological or thematic, will be disappointed. I read the entire book and it is consistent throughout in reading more like a casual essay or a collection of thoughts, loosely structured around the chronology of the Ottoman Empire (the subtitle "A History of the Ottoman Empire" would better have been dropped). The specifics of historical events are often left out, making it difficult to investigate things further if one wished. Additionally, and a big sin in history works in my opinion, there were constant references to various regions and cities with extremely little in the way of historical maps to help the reader.

This book, at times poetic, is an incredible depiction of an empire from its rise to its fall. However, it is not written with the traditional sense of history in mind. The author will give examples from 1781 while writing about something that happened in 1400's. This style is most likely what confused most of the readers who are complaining about the book. Undoubtedly, it would help to know about the subject beforehand, but this book can also be enjoyed by someone who doesn't know anything about the turkish history...(although upon hearing this the author would say something like, 'Ottoman history is not about turkish history, it is about the history of the multi-cultural empire that they formed and governed.')

The language is quite rich and engulfing. Some chapters are impossible to put down...aspects of a past culture delienated in a way that sounds almost mystical. It is amazing to read about a society so advanced that it assimilated other races into their own at a time when most of the world didn't even recodnize the word toleration...and it is also amazing to see how their traditional and stagnant ideologies remained unchanged for too long to cause their own downfall. In contrast to this, a couple of chapters are a drag to get through, certain unnecessary details here and there dulling a book that is otherwise an incredible read. Epilogue was also quite confusing.

Highly recommended.

This is an excellent account of the Ottoman history from a reporter's view, and I think especially American readers will enjoy the parallel the book underlines (intentionally or not) between their empire-in-making and the previous Turkish one. The reader would want to double-check some of the historical claims made in the book, though.

The tone of the book is quite realistic about the humanitarian and tolerant ways of the Ottoman Turks. This aspect of the book is quite refreshing, especially in a popular book on the topic.

A fascinating story, great summer read. And it will certainly bug some minor Ottoman advesaries.