One flaw that irritated me a great deal was the translation of the Romanovs' letters and diary entries. For example, one fragment was translated "Talked with golden Mitya... nice, sweet he is." Word order is less important in Russian than it is in English; without having access to the original Russian, I can still guess that a correct translation would have been "he is nice, sweet." Another entry is translated "a bit of him she is," instead of the much better "she is a bit of him." Similar mutilations of grammar occur throughout the book's quotes. This sort of thing is just plain sloppy, and very annoying.

The other fault I want to mention is from the chapter on Empress Alexandra's childhood. It was written by Dr. Manfred Knodt, who wrote a biography of Alexandra's brother, in German. The chapter quotes from Alexandra's mother, Alice's, letters to HER mother, Queen Victoria. These letters were originally written in English. They were published in English; this volume was then translated into German. The quotes from Alice's letters don't match the English volume; my guess is that the author worked from the German edition, and these quotes were then translated into English. Another minor thing, but sloppy. An editor ought to have caught this.

So, overall, the pictures are beautiful and the writing is good. A few sloppy errors in translation, but still one of the best books I've read on the subject.

Lavish and gorgeous, this book is also unique. I cannot recall one other famous person (or family) to whom we have such intimate photographic access. Reproductions of the family's letters and diaries are also included.

This book would certainly be a beautiful and treasured addition to any Romanoy collection.

With that said, back to the book at hand. Sacred Mirrors is probably the book most people who want to get an idea of Grey's art should buy first. I find it slightly more accessible than Transfigurations, and it does not demand any knowledge of Grey's previous work. For those unfamiliar with his work, he paints almost all of the systems of the body in a transparent fashion, layered on top of each other. In his paintings you will see bones, nerves, blood vessels, chakras, and auras all at once. It can be overwhelming, but careful study of the paintings can make you see ordinary processes like kissing in a whole new way. And if you keep looking deeply at his paintings, things will keep revealing themselves. He also paints deities, from Avalokiteshvara to Jesus, with loving detail. This is definitely a great coffee-table book (and so much more!) for anyone interested in how transcendental theories of energy would manifest themselves visually. Grey's book also makes delightful entertainment for any kind of trip. Overall a sound buy for almost anyone who gets that feeling, sometimes, that there may be things going on in our physical reality that we just can't percieve. Grey can see them, and he has shared them with us.

In the latest book in THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY series, Precious Ramotswe, the first female private detective in Botswana, has issues: (1) a strutting, cocky new detective has opened shop in Gaborone and is threatening her business; (2) one of the children in her care has taken up a bad habit; (3) her secretary/assistant, Mma Makutsi is involved with a suspicious man; (4) Mma Makutsi has opened a sideline business, teaching men to type and (5) a client has given her an urgent, delicate assignment.

Like Jan Karon's gentle fiction, I never tire of stories about Precious, her finance, her employee, and their lives in Africa. True, there is no thrilling action (unless you count the miracle in the garage....or the death of a water pump), but there is plenty of heart and some wonderful soul in Alexander McCall Smith's stories about the first female detective in Botswana.

Read the books in order.

Enjoy!!!

In the latest book in THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY series, Precious Ramotswe, the first female private detective in Botswana, has issues: (1) a strutting, cocky new detective has opened shop in Gaborone and is threatening her business; (2) one of the children in her care has taken up a bad habit; (3) her secretary/assistant, Mma Makutsi is involved with a suspicious man; (4) Mma Makutsi has opened a sideline business, teaching men to type and (5) a client has given her an urgent, delicate assignment.

Like Jan Karon's gentle fiction, I never tire of stories about Precious, her finance, her employee, and their lives in Africa. True, there is no thrilling action (unless you count the miracle in the garage....or the death of a water pump), but there is plenty of heart and some wonderful soul in Alexander McCall Smith's stories about the first female detective in Botswana.

Read the books in order. THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENY. TEARS OF THE GIRAFFE. MORALITY LESSONS FOR BEAUTIFUL GIRLS. THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN.

Enjoy!!!

Mma Ramotswe (in traditional Botswana culture, honorifics are always used; it seems rude not to do so in the review as well) has had a tough life: married to an abusive jazz musician, she loses her baby and then her beloved father. But she finds her vocation: she sets up the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and is soon attracting clients. She also acquires a fiancé, garage owner Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, two orphans, and a sidekick, Mma Makutsi, who received a grade of 97 percent on her exams at the Botswana Secretarial College. You don't have to be familiar with the first three books to follow the action in KALAHARI --- McCall Smith is careful to supply context for the first-time reader --- but I think it's better to discover them in order. Not only do you gradually develop a sense of Mma Ramotswe and her life on Zebra Drive (yep, that's the name of her street), but you also become deeply fond of Botswana (this is important since, to the average Westerner, Africa is still a "dark" --- that is, unknown --- continent). These wise, charming books leave you feeling washed clean and peaceful, with an expanded sense of humanity.

Although KALAHARI and the other books are technically mysteries, plot is not the main thing here. There are interlocking events --- a man across town opens a new detective agency; Mma Makutsi starts a typing school for men; Mma Ramotswe solves a case or two --- but there is little real tension or suspense. What keeps you reading is the wonderful writing: pure, economical, funny, utterly lacking in condescension. The evocation of Botswana is often lyrical (its quiet roads, its ubiquitous cattle). Sometimes the stories seem fable-like, as if McCall Smith is telling them around a campfire in the deep African night. This impression is reinforced by the repetition of certain phrases. Mma Ramotswe has a "tiny white van" and is "traditionally built." She believes in "the old Botswana morality" --- a phrase that covers everything from knocking and calling out "Ko Ko" before you enter someone's house to the deeper sense of courtesy and integrity that is being overwhelmed by modern life.

It is one of the many ironies of this wonderful book that Mma Ramotswe and her cohorts, despite their professed yearning for traditional values, are actually the smartest, most progressive people around. Because they are authentic and honest and guided by common sense rather than greed or pride, they make phony modernists like the proprietor of the rival Satisfaction Guaranteed Detective Agency look like idiots (the scene in which Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi pay him a visit is priceless). Indeed, THE KALAHARI TYPING SCHOOL FOR MEN, more than the others in the series, is very much occupied with gender; it has a feminist streak a mile wide.

Consider the characters McCall Smith gives us: the entrepreneurial Mma Ramotswe and Mma Makutsi; the imposing head of the orphan farm, Mma Potokwani, who wangles free products and services from everyone ("It would take a degree of courage that few possessed to turn [her] down"); Mma Tsolamosese, whose daughter has died of AIDS and who is caring for her doomed grandchild with dignity and compassion; and Mma Boko, who is head of a local branch of the Botswana Rural Women's Association but refuses to run for office because "all [men] do is talk about money and roads and things like that. ... We women have more important things to talk about."

With sly humor and wry tolerance, the novel captures that conspiratorial sense among women --- in any culture --- that men are not quite up to their standards (Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni being the exception, of course): "The trouble with men," muses Mma Ramotswe, "was that they went about with their eyes half closed for much of the time. ... That was why women were so good at tasks which required attention to the way people felt. Being a private detective, for example. ..." Or Mma Makutsi, commenting on the essays written by her typing-school students: "All of life seemed to be laid out before her: mothers, wives, football teams, ambitions at work, cherished motor cars; everything that men liked." And when Mma Ramotswe says her foster son is going through "a difficult patch," a friend replies dryly: "Boys do go through times like that. It can last for fifty years."

McCall Smith, it turns out, was born in what is now Zimbabwe (then called Southern Rhodesia) and taught law at the University of Botswana, but those facts alone hardly explain his astounding ability to enter the soul of a woman as well as the soul of Africa. He, like Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni, must be one of the exceptions, a good man. He is certainly an imaginative and observant one. Somehow he manages to communicate the specific feel and spirit of Botswana while also creating characters that transcend the barriers of geography, culture, and gender.

McCall Smith is writing a fifth Precious Ramotswe book, according to his publisher, and has started a new series featuring another lady detective, Isabel Dalhousie (Scottish father, American mother). I can't wait.

--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman

It's one of those books I love--I never once thought I'd find a copy of it anywhere other than my grade-school reader. If you ever want to see what innocence and real fun are like, read "The Forgotten Door".

The Chemistry is beyond me, but it's still fascinating. Buying this book is worth being put on any government list. Yes, it's that good.

The ending of the book will disappoint those who want a happy ending, or just an ending with all the loose ends tied up. In real life, though, loose ends usually stay loose. My thought is that Solzhenitshyn intended the reader to understand that for the characters and the society who are so damaged by the past there can be no happy endings; the best they can hope for is to continue from day to day, grasping at whatever happiness briefly comes their way.

The Cartoon History doesn't quite reach the level of social criticism of A People's History of the United States, nor will it tear down your current understanding of historic events, but it still manages to be very iconoclastic merely by pointing out the silliness of humans throughout history (illustrating how little we've changed!) and through its more 'common person's' perspective.