Chamber of Fear had many plot twists and was very exiciting

great plot. plotwise probably the best but overall only one of the best. I like the Id ea of a chamber.... a deadly chamber........

in which no one has returned

The book was really good. I really enjoyed it. I started it and didn't put it down until I was done.

I am a book junkie. If it's about clicker training, I have it. This is the best of the bunch. Easy to read. Cross-referenced. Indexed -- thank God. (Finally, an indexed clicker training book!) Complete answers to every question I ever had. Where was this book six years ago when I first learned to clicker train? Save yourself a lot of fumbling -- whether you're new or experienced, get this book if you have any interest in clicker training.

Love this book. I've clicker trained for several years. This book covers beginner through advanced material and helped me improve my training skills. It seems like all the other clicker books out there are strictly for beginners. This is the only one I've found that helped me take it to the next level. It's not a book I read just once -- I keep it with my dog stuff and refer to it whenever a question occurs to me.

I "met" Melissa Alexander online, and I've been impressed with her ever since. This book is wonderful, and I highly recommend it. It's not step-by-step instructions, but it's the best FAQ I could imagine. It answered every question I had before I knew I had it! My favorite thing is the cross-referencing. The answers I want are so easy to find!

Combinaorial Optimization is one of those rare books that is an instant classic. The authors weave a readable fabric of intuition and theory that is unmatched in this exciting discipline. The choice of topics covered begins with two fundamental optimization problems, namely, the minimum spanning tree and shortest path problems. Next, maximum flow and minimum cost flow problems are discussed, followed by matching problems, polyhedral issues arising in combinatorial optimization, and the famous traveling salesman problem. The text concludes with chapters on matroids and NP-Completeness. The exposition on these topics is very well written and the proofs are rigorous. There is a terrific blend of theory, algorithms and applications without overwhelming the reader with computational details. The authors also do a good job of developing an accurate historical perspective of the material, most of which evolved during the time period 1955 to 1995. The book is suitable for an upper-level undergraduate, or a graduate course. The exercises are very well thought out and are at an appropriate level. I have taught undergraduate courses in combinatorial optimization for over 10 years and have always struggled to find an appropriate text. My problem has now been solved.

This book was thoroughly written by great-minded Masters. It is well-organized in their topics and presentation. However, the book details is unbalnced, some chapters are overwhelm the data, and some others are insufficient. By the way, I graded this book a Very Good one. Worth Reading !!

A good introduction to Combinatorial optimisation and integer programming.

Especially recommended are the chapters on minimum weight matching and the TSP.

THE COMPLETE MODERN BLACKSMITH is an excellent book! This book covers everything from tools to techniques, forge design to making your own custom anvil. I have personally read and re-read this book, and would reccomend it to anyone interested in blacksmithing or other types of metalwork, and wood/stone carvers who would like to make their own tools. This book is most assuredly a valuable resource.

Mr. Weygers was a superb sculptor, printmaker, philosopher, and raconteur - as well as a consummate teacher. I had the good fortune to take a couple of courses from him. He considered the books to be elaborate notes for the courses he taught. I am delighted they are back in print at last, for they are a treasure of wit and inspiration. I only quibble that his illustrations suffered slightly in the transition from the out-of-print originals.

Whether you have been blacksmithing for years or are just starting out, this book is a must read and/or have. Mr. Weygers technique for passing on this skill and art through a printed text is one of the best. I like his emphasis on scrounging and recycling raw material, and making as much of your own tooling as possible, even an anvil.

Virtually anybody who prepares a list of the five greatest writers in world history will include at least one Russian on the list. If there is only one, that one should be Pushkin.

Unfortunately, Pushkin is given short shrift outside of his homeland. The reason is not hard to explain - most of his work is poetry, which translates badly. What's worse, even in translation his poetry wouldn't read any better than, say, Lermontov, whereas the difference would be obvious to a Russian, just as the difference between Shakespeare and Marlowe would be to an English speaker.

Pushkin's prose works provide a basis for remedying the situation. His stories are disarmingly simple and readable, just like his poetry. Yet practically every major Russian novelist of the nineteenth century acknowledged his debt to Pushkin as a model and crafter of prose, as well as a source of themes. This includes Gogol, Goncharov, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

My personal favorites are "The Captain's Daughter", "The Moor of Peter the Great", which is about Pushkin's own great grandfather, who was Ethiopian, and most of all "The Queen of Spades", which practically singlehandedly created the genre of stories of the supernatural. Any one of the stories can be done in one sitting (well, maybe one long sitting for a few of them). Do yourself a favor and make the acquaintance of one of the best writers that ever lived.

Given the crowded field of the 19th century writers of the Russian Empire, Pushkin is not appreciated enough. And it's understandable - with Gogol, Dostoievski, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Goncharov and Chekhov around, Pushkin gets squeezed out. His prose and his plays are wonderful to read even in translation, and if you're lucky enough to be able to read Russian, his poetry is simply unsurpassed among the Slavic poets, even the Polish Mickiewicz and the Ukrainian Shevchenko. Pushkin the poet belongs with Shakespeare, Goethe and Byron. Pushkin's stories are fun to read, and are a good introduction to the big league Russian Empire writers that follow him.

Pushkin is a master of the short story form. His stories are written in the clear, taut, concise form that he has become famous for. The Aiken translation is considered by many Russians to be the best. Especially recommended are the TALES OF BELKIN, The Postmaster. Have fun!

Creek Mary's Blood informs the reader about the good and bad of the Cherokee life. The reader becomes part of Mary's family and feels their pain.This is a book I will read over and over.I recommend this book if you have any interest in Native American history. I wish it was recommened reading for high school students.

This novel concerns Mary Musgrove who was the Creek wife of John Musgrove, an Indian Trader who had a trading post near the Savannah River when Oglethorpe brought the first settlers to Georgia in 1731. After Mary's husband was killed, she was eventually forced to abandon her home and people. The novel sets out the problems she encountered and follows her children (Mary's Blood) on the trail of tears westward and ends up with some of her decendants involved in the battle of Little Big Horn. This novel transports the reader into the person of Mary Musgrove and allows us to feel the pains endured by the natives of this country during a period of disgraceful acts committed by some of our forefathers in the name of patriotism.

I read this book for the first time in high school. I have read it a couple times since then. For as long as I can remember I have been interested in the Native-Americans, their beliefs and customs. In this novel, Dee Brown, captures all their feelings from betral of the white man for unmercifully taking their homelands and the fear of being wiped out like the buffalo to the pride in their people and their faith in spirits who guided them through those devastating years. The story pulls you in and you become one of the Native-Americans, experiencing every joy and pain.

In The Eagle & The Wren, naturalist, conservationist, and wildlife activist Jane Goodall retells the classic fable of the Eagle and the Wren who once disputed who could fly the highest. The two birds held a glorious contest to determine the issue once and for all. But the outcome surprised them all -- especially the might eagle! Alexander Reichstein's superbly presented artwork is a perfect showcase and complement to Jane Goodal's exceptional story that will enchant young readers preschool through first grade. Also very highly recommended are Goodal's three earlier children's books available from North-South Books: The Chimpanzee Family Book, With Love, and Dr. White.

This book contains the retold fable of the eagle and the wren, which was a favorite bedtime story of Dr. Jane Goodall and her sister, Judy, when they were girls. In addition, Dr. Goodall has an epilogue in which she describes her interpretation of the fable in terms of her own life. The book also contains luscious, detailed pastel drawings that add a majesty and grandeur to the tale. You will feel like you are seeing the world from a bird's eye view . . . way up on high! It's beautifully peaceful there. That's a nice way to end a bedtime story.

The story begins when all the birds have an argument about who can fly the highest. Everyone loudly proclaims their superiority. Finally, owl points out that a contest can quickly settle this dispute.

Off they go. Many of the birds don't actually go very high. When they return to Earth, they are comforted by the ostrich (who, of course, cannot fly at all) who notes that they have each done the best that they can. Some are distracted (like the vulture) and don't continue the contest.

Finally, there seems to be a winner. Just then, an O. Henry style twist occurs to turn the contest onto its head.

"How can you fly so high?"

The answer to that question will open up important lessons about the potential for cooperation. What is impossible for one is often easy for several. Many people go throughout their lives without ever understanding that point. Anyone who has read this story will always know differently. That can be the beginning of many wonderful joint accomplishments and collaborations in life.

Dr. Goodall's epilogue uses the eagle in the story as a metaphor for her life as an outstanding scientist. "We all need an eagle." "I like to think of all these people [who helped me] as the feathers on my eagle." "Each one has played an important role." " . . . [M]y eagle is part of the great spirit power that is all around us."

Almost all children's stories emphasize individual competition. This one celebrates cooperation. Every child deserves a chance to hear the cooperative side of that choice. This book is a superb way to open up that understanding.

After you finish enjoying the story together with your child, I suggest that you think together of places and situations where two or more animals, people, or combinations thereof can accomplish more together than singly. Let you child come up with the examples. That will deepen the significance of the lesson for her or him. You can cooperate by praising the ideas.

Like Dr. Jane Goodall, her staff, and the chimpanzees in the Gombe Preserve in Tanzania, may you and your child live in peaceful cooperation with all the living creatures around you!

Quick, children! Jump right into your jammies and hop into bed for a heartwarming bedtime story - a real "Once Upon a Time" treat. It's Dr. Jane Goodall's nifty version of a timeless fable, THE EAGLE & THE WREN. You'll witness an exciting contest to determine which kind of bird can fly the highest. Here's a hint as to how it turns out: With amazing results, one of the birds counts on another for help, just the way people do. But what's more, we can all be winners even without the ability to fly the highest. We just need to strive to do our best. Take it from the ostrich in the story, "You have all done as well as nature intended...You all have wings, but each of you flies to a different height for a different purpose..." Throughout the story, be sure to keep your eyes wide open and the lights turned way up, so you can thoroughly relish the accompanying delicate, feathery pastel illustrations by Alexander Reichstein. Isn't that a gruff, menacing-looking eagle on the cover? Not to worry! He plays a very gentle and caring role in this story. THE EAGLE & THE WREN is bound to peacefully and happily carry you soaring off to dreamland.

To summarize our earlier review, this is one of the most comprehensively educational works we've ever come across.

We'd wanted to include the full dust jacket blurb for the 1978 1st Edition, ahead of its complete 3-Volume Topics List, as an additional public service (since Amazon doesn't happen to display an editorial review for these scarce but valuable works) -- but we were concerned about exceeding our 1,000 word limit.

So, here it is as a supplement (again, we'd like to REQUEST A COMPARATIVE REVIEW from anyone familiar with the additions and changes incorporated into the 12/2001 2nd Edition; diplomats and/or scholars, please pass this along):

------------------------------

"The Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy is a selective reference work containing specially commissioned essays that explore concepts, themes, doctrines, and distinctive policies in the history of American foreign relations. The essays range in coverage from broad concepts such as isolationism and national self-determination to specific topics such as the Monroe Doctrine and the China Lobby.

This topical approach presents to serious readers - students, academicians, government officials, journalists, politicians, and the interested layman - an authoritative compendium of essays that analyze the development, application, and meaning of basic concepts in foreign policy.

The ninety-five essays in this volume are all based on the most recent scholarship, and many of them deal with topics that have not previously been the subject of consistent investigation and systematic analysis. Even in those essays that deal with material that has received considerable scholarly attention, the authors offer original syntheses and interpretations. All topics are discussed within a meaningful historical context and in a manner not available elsewhere.

The authors were not required to adhere to any standard methodology or ideological model. Among the foremost scholars in their respective fields, they have written with complete freedom. The result is not the conventional chronological account of American foreign policy but wide-ranging discussions that cover a broad political spectrum, from Left to Right.

The Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy: Studies of the Principal Movements and Ideas reflects the importance of American foreign policy in the contemporary world. It is a comprehensive survey of thoughtful analyses, which enriches and clarifies foreign policy and the concepts and rhetoric associated with it. It is an undertaking unique in the historiography of American foreign relations."

This is one of the most comprehensively educational works we've ever come across. The older 1st edition is now a bargain, with the bulk of its articles, covering pre-1978 events/issues, still holding great validity. They would make valuable supplementary copies in a school or public library, or highly informative reference works in a private one. We're anticipating as much fun with our copies over the next couple of years as we had with War And Peace!

WE INVITE A COMPARATIVE REVIEW from anyone familiar with the additions and updates in the 12/2001 Second Edition; diplomats and/or scholars, kindly pass this on....

Here for your delectation is the 1st Edition's complete 3-Volume Topics List (if it all fits: Volume 3 ends with "Unconditional Surrender"):

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Volume 1:

ALLIANCES, COALITIONS, AND ENTENTES, Warren E Kimball ~ AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARD WAR, A. Russell Buchanan ~ ANTI-IMPERIALISM, E. Berkeley Tompkins ~ ARBITRATION, MEDIATION, AND CONCILIATIONS, Calvin D. Davis ~ ARMED NEUTRALITIES, I. Mugridge ~ ASYLUM, William 0. Walker III ~ BALANCE OF PAWER, A. E. Campbell ~ THE BEHAVIORAL APPROACH TO DIPLOMATIC HISTORY, J. David Singer ~ BIPARTISANSHIP, C. David Tompkins ~ BLOCKADES AND QUARANTINES, Frank J. Merli, Robert H. Ferrell ~ THE CHINA LOBBY, Warren I. Cohen ~ THE COLD WAR, George C. Herring ~ COLLECTIVE SECURITY, Roland N. Stromberg ~ COLONIALISM, Edward M. Bennett ~ CONGRESS AND FOREIGN POLICY, Bruce Kuklick ~ CONSCRIPTION, Thomas C. Kennedy ~ CONSENSUS HISTORY AND FOREIGN POLICY, Lloyd C. Gardner ~ CONSORTIA, Warren I. Cohen ~ THE CON- STITUTION AND FOREIGN POLICY, Alfred H. Kelly ~ CONTAINMENT, Barton .L Bernstein ~ THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM, Marvin R. ,Zahniser ~ DEBT COLLECTION, Richard W. Van Alstyne ~ DECISION-MAKING APPROACHES AND THEORIES, James N. Rosenau ~ THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE, Jerry Israel ~ DÉTENTE, Arthur A. Ekirch, Jr. ~ DISARMAMENT, Merze Tate ~ DISSENT IN WARS, Russell E Weigley ~ DOLLAR DIPLOMACY, Eugene P. Trani ~ THE DOMIN0 THEORY, Ross Gregory ~ ECONOMIC FOREIGN POLICY, Joan Hoff Wilson ~ THE EISENHOWER DOCTRINE, John A. DeNovo ~ ELITISM AND FOREIGN POLICY, Richard S. Kirkendall ~ EMBARGOES, Jerald A. Combs ~ ETHNICITY AND FOREIGN POLICY, John Snetsinger ~ EXECUTIVE AGENTS, Kenneth J. Grieb ~ EXECUTIVE AGREEMENTS, Diane Shaver Clemens ~ EXTRATERRITORIALITY, Jules Davids.

Volume 2:

FOREIGN AID, lan J. Bickerton ~ THE FOURTEEN POINTS, Daniel M. Smith ~ FREEDOM OF THE SEAS, Armin Rappaport ~ IDEOLOGY AND FOREIGN POLICY, Paul Seabury ~ IMPERIALISM, David Healy ~ INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, ,Jr. ~ INTERCULCURAL RELATIONS, Akira Iriye ~ INTERNATIONALISM, Warren E. Kuehl ~ INTERNATIONAL LAW, Adda B. Bozeman ~ INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION, Inis L. Claude, Jr. ~ INTERVENTION AND NONINTERVENTION, Doris A. Graber ~ ISOLATIONISM, Manfred Jonas ~ JOURNALISTS AND FOREIGN POLICY, James R. Boylan ~ THE KING COTTON THEORY, Gordon H. Warren ~ MANDATES AND TRUSTEESHIPS, Edward M. Bennett ~ MANIFEST DESTINY, David M Fletcher ~ THE MARSHALL PLAN, Gaddis Smith ~ MILITARISM, William Kamman ~ THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, David F. Trask ~ MISSIONARIES, Paul A. Varg ~ MISSIONARY DIPLOMACY, Roger R. Trask ~ THE MONROE DOCTRINE, Richard W. Van Alstyne ~ THE MORGENTHAU PLAN, Warren E Kimball ~ THE MOST-FAVORED-NATION PRINCIPLE, Justus D. Doenecke ~ NATIONALISM, Lawrence S. Kaplan ~ NATIONAL SECURITY, Gerald E. Wheeler ~ NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION, Betty Miller Unterberger ~ NATIVISM, Geoffrey S. Smith ~ NAVAL DIPLOMACY, William R. Braisted ~ NEUTRALITY, Ruhl .J. Bartlett ~ THE NIXON DOCTRINE, Thomas H. Etzold ~ NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND DIPLOMACY, Kenneth J. Hagan ~ OPEN DOOR INTERPRETATIONS, William Appleman Williams ~ THE OPEN DOOR POLICY, Richard W. Van Alstyne ~ PACIFISM, Charles Chatfield ~ PAN-AMERICANISM, Thomas L. Karnes ~ PEACEMAKING, Berenice A. Carroll.

Volume 3:

PEACE MOVEMENTS, Robert H. Ferrell ~ PHILANTHROPY, James A. Field, Jr. ~ POLITICS AND FOREIGN POLICY, Fred Harrington ~ POWER POLITICS, Thomas H. Etzold ~ PRESIDENTIAL ADVISERS, Albert H. Bowman ~ PRESIDENTIAL POWER IN FOREIGN AFFAIRS, David M. Pletcher ~ PROTECTION OF AMERICAN CITIZENS ABROAD, Burton E Beers ~ PROTECTORATES AND SPHERES OF INFLUENCE, Raymond A. Esthus ~ PUBLIC OPINION, Melvin Small ~ REALISM AND IDEALISM, Paul Seabury . RECIPROCITY, Robert Freeman Smith ~ RECOGNITION POLICY, Pablo E. Coletta ~ REPARATIONS, Carl Parrini ~ REVISIONISM, Athan G. Theoharis ~ REVOLUTION AND FOREIGN POLICY, Richard E. Welch, Jr. ~ SANCTIONS, J. Chal Vinson ~ SUMMIT CONFERENCES, Theodore A. Wilson ~ TRADE AND COMMERCE, Paul S. Holbo ~ TREATIES, J. B. Duroselle ~ THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE, Walter LaFeber ~ UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER, William M. Franklin. --END.

This set of books is the best refrence material anyone interested in American foreign policy. I myself had a project on this and without this set, I would have been lost!

This is probably one of the best books on Primal Type Therapy available today. While Janov's books reached a large number of interested readers, promising early "cure" for neurosis, he never explained the actual process of the therapy. As a result, a number of people who had to go it alone, were very confused. Some of them did well, but others (both patients and therapists) misunderstood the therapy and landed up in difficulties. Ms Sheppard Alexander's book is unique in that she describes the process, step by step in a way that the unsophisticated reader can understand, and the professional find meaningful and helpful. I have personally passed this book on to several clinical psychologists and their response has been most enthusiastic. Lay people who I have shared it with have also found it moving and helpful to themselves. The writer describes her own childhood traumas in a way that anyone can understand and identify with. More importantly she talks about how, through the therapy, she was able to start working through these traumas, and transform her life from being a frightened, bewildered 20 year old, who dropped out of college, into the successful mature professional she is today. I see I can give this book only a five start rating. My personal rating is a ten!

Its just a very good book. Its not just for those in pain. Thersa Alexander had a horrible childhood, and yet she came out alive and well, and has thrived as a thearpist and a person. I highly recommend this book.

Theresa Alexander documents her own Primal Therapy experience in a direct narrative form depicting her intital three week intensive. Chapters alternate between client point of view and therapist point of view. Insightful, poignant,and ultimately hopeful. I cried my way through the book, and sighed at the end.

Alexander Gerschenkron is the type of man many of us would like to be: smart, charming, interested in the world, charismatic, etc. His grandson, Nicholas Dawidoff, seemingly captured his life in a surprisingly honest and thoughtful manner. I say "suprisingly honest" because one could certainly understand if Dawidoff were to give in to hero worship -- given the important role his grandfather played in his upbringing. But Dawidoff saves the hero worship and the highly personal anecdotes for the opening and concluding chapters. The 300 or so pages in between give a very balanced depiction of a complicated man, and that's the stuff of great biography. The first half of the book is a real page-turner, chronicling Gerschenkron's difficult times as a young man in revolutionary Russia and fascist Austria. How could Dawidoff possibly keep up this pace once his grandfather settles down as an educator at Harvard? Well, he doesn't, through no fault of his own. Dawidoff's depiction of Gershenkron's latter life is beautifully written, but the exciting pace of the earlier pages simply can't be sustained. Dawidoff clearly spent a great amount of time interviewing Gerschenkron's colleagues and students, most of whom (although not all) were effusive in their praise. But the book tended to feel slightly repetitious toward the end with the ongoing remembrances and non-related anecdotes. For one so close to the story, Dawidoff managed to expertly review and analyze Gerschenkron's complicated doting relationship with his wife, Erica. Also, a wonderfully telling anecdote at the end of the book reveals not only Gerschenkron's character, but Dawidoff's patient understanding, as well. Although Gerschenkron was an expert chess player, somehow he managed to lose his queen to the 14-year-old Dawidoff. Gerschenkron swept his arm across the board, spilling all the pieces onto the floor. "Num, num," he said. "Let's go eat lunch."

Maybe you had a grandfather who was quite wonderful, but you did not have a grandfather who was wonderful like Nicholas Dawidoff's grandfather was wonderful. Dawidoff's charming biography of his grandfather, _The Fly Swatter: How My Grandfather Made His Way in the World_ (Pantheon) starts with his own memories of Alexander Gerschenkron. For instance, Gerschenkron, known as "Shura" within his family, had an arsenal of fly swatters, each of just the proper color and heft for its particular target. The baby blue flyswatter was just the thing for his particular enemy, the wasps, because they were vicious, and the mild color would make them let down their guard. If he were successful in swatting the wasp (not often), he would give "lengthy disquisitions on swatting technique." He would never allow the insect body to be cleaned up, for he "claimed they were deterrents, that other yellowjackets would encounter their unfortunate colleague and feel inclined to keep away themselves."

Shura was, to be sure, a character. But he was also brilliant in an obsessively academic way. He mastered some two dozen languages, but his field of expertise was not language. He was able to discourse on (and write academic treatments of) _Hamlet_ and _Dr. Zhivago_, but he did not teach literature. He was an economist, a quintessential Harvard professor who left a lasting mark on economic thought with his theory of "economic backwardness." He had a rather exciting early life, fleeing the Russian Revolution, and then fleeing the Nazis, before he found himself in the economic department of Harvard that was to be his academic home. He was a natural show-off. He could certainly be obnoxious and overbearing, and his students often felt they were not measuring up to his superhuman standards, but none of them forgot him, and he left a strong mark on the next generation of economists. Dawidoff makes the case that his standards were so exacting, and his sense of the overwhelming complexity of history and economics so complete, that he constantly spent time in library stacks gaining more information, but was intimidated about committing himself in print. He did, however, play chess with the artist Marcel Duchamp, disparage Vladimir Nabokov for an inept translation of Pushkin, and charm Marlene Dietrich to give him her phone number.

One of the great strengths of this engaging book is that it makes Shura's wide-ranging academic endeavors almost as exciting as his flights from political oppression. The love of reading and the love of learning just for the sake of exercising one's mind could not have a finer exemplar. And while most people would regard a life in libraries as unexciting and unromantic, Shura was fond of living his life as fully as his capacious mind would allow. After he had recovered from a cardiac arrest in the foyer of the Harvard Faculty Club, he used to bring his students to the very spot where he had temporarily died. "You know, there was nothing. No beautiful colors. No castles. No bright lights. Nothing. So, if there are things you want to say and do, don't wait. Say them and do them. You won't get the opportunity after you're dead." During decades devoted to learning, this comprehensive biography makes plain, Gerschenkron drove himself to a life which for all of its time in an ivory tower was full of exuberance and courage.

Growing up Nicholas Dawidoff had a talkative and demonstrative larger-than-life maternal grandfather who had lived in, to paraphrase the Chinese curse, interesting times: his home town Odessa during the Russian revolution and Vienna (where he had to start over, learning German as a student) during the rise of Nazism. Alexander Gerschenkron (called Shura) had married a fellow student, Erica Matschnigg, in Vienna, whom he would deem "perfect," and who was his lifelong intellectual sparring partner. To save their lives they emigrated to the US. After a time Shura found work at UC Berkeley, The Federal Reserve Board in Washington DC, and then at his favorite place ever: Harvard. In addition this brilliant and cultured grandfather was kind and funny, educated, eccentric, and more than willing to act as a sort of a dad for his grandson, whose own father was mentally ill.

The one thing, though that Gerschenkron couldn't, or wouldn't, provide for family, friends, or colleagues - or his beloved and loving grandson - was so much as a shred of concrete information about his childhood, his youth, and anything remotely resembling his feelings. No one got into his inner life, and those who tried (and there were many) learned that it was at all times off-limits. So this book is a memoir but also a work of informed conjecture and detection.

Dawidoff, an insightful man and a compassionate reporter, draws a careful and reasoned portrait, "a biographical memoir, a work of reconstruction" that is a pleasure to read. The "dismal science," economics, has never seemed so vitally important and downright interesting as it does in this book.

Gerschenkron was hyperactive; he gave up reading the newspaper in middle age, citing the number of books he had yet to read and reasoning that the time the papers took from this was objectionable. He loved to argue and to win, but he was courtly, too. He practiced what he called "French manners," combining recognizable rules of European etiquette with extreme chivalry. He could be exasperating, but he was generous and possessed astonishing depth and breadth of knowledge (in many areas, not just economics) which he more than willingly shared with the world. Gerschenkron developed theories of economic behavior that are classics, now, and some which were of great importance to US policymakers' understanding of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and of developing nations' economic behavior. He was a prolific essayist and loved literature. Rather than read translations, he taught himself entire languages. He worked out chess problems without a chessboard. He was a character, and became something of a curmudgeon in later life.

Gerschenkron was also fiercely loyal to certain things - countries, colleagues, ideas, people, and the most ordinary stuff of his life. Dawidoff takes pleasure in this information, and I did, too Of Shura he writes. "[He] had a party (the Democrats); a team (the Red Sox); a player (Ted Williams); a board game (chess); a breed of dog (Labrador retriever); a flower (pink rose); a lower body haberdasher (he sent to a Vienna tennis shop for white linen trousers); an upper body haberdasher (he ordered his wool plaid lumber jackets and matching caps from a hunting supply outfit in Maine); a brandy; a chocolate bar; an aspirin; a bullet; a pencil; a shaving soap; a foreign bookstore; a domestic bookstore; a barber; a newsstand (he would go miles out of his way to buy his periodicals from Sheldon Cohen at Out of Town News); and a weekly news magazine (L'Espresso)." And of course he had a school, Harvard, which he loved beyond all measure. Gerschenkron's calculus was simple: the US was the best nation on earth, and Harvard its best school. He thrived there. Dawidoff claims that Harvard "made his personality possible."

Gerschenkron dominated people and gatherings and enjoyed contact, but also required and demanded great blocks of solitude. Sometimes he hurt those he loved. He insisted that his young daughter practice her flute when he wasn't at home, because the sound annoyed him. He disappointed his daughters often and had some stormy relations with friends and colleagues.

There's hardly a dull moment in this account of a life and the many lives that Gerschenkron touched, and Dawidoff has provided enough interesting tangential information to serve as jumping-off points for a lot more reading and inquiry.

There are Source Notes and Acknowledgements. The books lacks an index, which is a real shortcoming. There are hundreds of interesting and important people, places, and works of art and scholarship in this book and its publisher ought to have splurged on something so essential as a good index. Gerschenkron (a lover of notes, acknowledgements, appendices, and indices) would agree.