The book is well translated, and retains it's edge, concerning the book's material. I would recommend the author's book to anyone who enjoys a good mystery, and intellectual stimulation. The author conveys a rare insight into humanity, and the terror long past, yet still remembered, as indicated by the reprint of this book. The author is brilliant. Happy reading!

This is a novel that manages to remind the reader of the emotional turmoil of adolescence while providing a remarkably prescient snapshot of Czechoslovakia in 1935--Hostovsky has no illusions that war can be avoided or that Jews will be spared. Hostovsky does all of this and in language that is creative yet spare enough to make this a short, compact, novel.

The main character is a 15-year-old who spends sleepless nights mulling over his choice of a career, brooding over his appearance which for the first time bothers him as he meets his older sister's girlfriend, or just being perplexed over why his mother doesn't entertain the same feelings for his father as he does for the wickedly beautiful young guest in his house.

The protagonist could just as easily be the town itself, where a mysterious arsonist, or even arsonists, strikes and forces people to confront their own sense of anxious terror.

It is confronting this terror that brings the town's -- and our young anti-hero's -- story to as much of a satisfactory but incomplete and short-lived story as you can expect in real life.

There are no happy endings all round here--a poor barber whose wife dies then loses everything else, first his house and livelihood, then his mind and his health. Yet Hostovsky seems to spare him no pity, or maybe he's just making the point--if you think that's sad, see what's coming.

The book came as a relief after I read a rash of novels by Booker Prize winners that were all, in comparison, cases of style with no substance. I would recommend it to any one looking for something a bit different and a refreshing change from all those polished but essentially run-of-the-mill bestsellers or crusty classics. It certainly renewed my ambition to travel to the Czech and Slovak republics one day.

Morris examines the development of a Mississippi community from early frontier to its rise as a center of the cotton culture. The book is extremely well written. Unlike most historians who attempt to write community studies, Morris writes with the reader in mind. His prose is accessible yet informative, sophisticated yet always enagaging. A must read for anyone who wants to learn more about antebellum Mississippi.

I bought a whole stack of books on law and philosophy during the several months before I actually started law school (in fall 2000, at the age of 37). Most of them were just for "personal use"; as you can tell from my other reviews, I have a longstanding interest in philosophy anyway. But I waited until I completed a semester before reviewing them, so that I could plug the ones I found most useful.

This is one of them. It's an expensive book, but it's worth it if you have any involvement (professional or student) in legal theory and philosophy of law. It consists mostly of papers presented at a conference held at Bowling Green State University a bit over a decade ago, and every item in it will be of tremendous interest to lawyers and law students investigating the philosophical foundations of their field.

Two items are of particular interest, at least to me: Randy Barnett provides an update of his "consent" theory of contracts, and Ernest Weinrib offers a carefully reasoned piece that summarizes the outlook on which he would later expand in his brilliant 1995 work, _The Idea of Private Law_.

The Barnett piece is, so far as I know, the only source for Barnett's theory of contracts apart from back issues of law journals and excerpts in law textbooks. Since some of Barnett's older pieces _are_ in fact excerpted in my own contracts text, I thought other law students might like to know about Barnett's essay in this book.

The Weinrib piece is a terrific introduction to the man's thought in general. In fact I had read _The Idea of Private Law_ before I read this volume, but this essay nicely complements Weinrib's essay on "legal formalism" in Dennis Patterson's _Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory_ (also highly recommended, by the way).

The collection overall covers contracts, torts, and punishment. In this last area, the volume includes a piece by the late Jean Hampton, and in general some of these essays link nicely to the collection _Incomparability, Incommensurability and Practical Reason_ (Ruth Chang, ed.).

(In case you're curious: one _other_ really useful collection is _Philosophical Foundations of Tort Law_, edited by David Owen. I've reviewed that one too.)

This is one of the best anthologies of Renaissance polyphonic sacred music, a great singers' edition for choirs. A nice variety of music, and the price is a bargain.

Boasting of more than 2,400 pages of well-illustrated references and definitions, this "Academic Press Dictionary of Science and Technology" offers a fantastic value. It provides all you need in a single-volume. It is accessible and versatile. Its authority is unquestionable.
However, it biggest sin is that since 1992 it surfaced, Academic Press has failed to revise and keep it up-to-date. Also, the weight of this book is so heavy that having a CD-ROM version of it is necessary. Nevertheless, I still appreciate its value.

I have used this book to define every scientific term and vocabulary word assigned since freshman year in Highschool. It is a complete refrence for every aspect of the Congnitive Sciences. If you were stuck on a desert island this book will help you do everything from convert sand into a seaworthy ship to finish your honors chemestry report on the ionization of Calcitrate. What is Thermal Latency? It has the meaning as used in 8 fields of science, from Thermal Dynamics to Engineering. The book even has illustrations and models.

A remarkable overview of this important period of photography. A must read for serious students/collectors/appreciators of modernist photography.

As a physical therapist, I have found this book to be an excellent reference for my practice in a outpatient orthopedic rehabilitation setting in which my colleagues consist of athletic trainers and sports medicine physicians. I think that this book covers many important areas of the field of sports medicine and working with athletes of all backgrounds. As a recent graduate I have turned to this book many times for gaining extra information to support my clinical decisions regarding the rehab of the athletes which pass through our clinics. This book is a great asset to any sports medicine professional's library as it has clear, concise information regarding several topics and situations which are usually not covered within the curriculum of professional education in the field of physical therapy.

This book purports to be a 20th century analog of War & Peace. Unfortunately the author transposes entire scenes from Tolstoy's novel. Characters are one-dimensional, wearing labels such as "Decent Citizen Doctor," "Starry-Eyed Young Jewish Communist" or "Cynical Careerist".
The translation is goofy. No doubt jocular or slang terms for any manner of things sound just fine in the Russian, but using slang for the same word in English often sounds risible. Thus food is usually referred to as "grub," clothes as "duds," and so on.
Then there are the downright errors. Polish names for example are grossly misspelled; names of major streets in Warsaw are chewed up and spit out as names for non-existent neighborhoods.
Stalin and Beria were bad men and their purges were terrible events. That doesn't mean you've got to write bad books about them.

"Generations of Winter" is an interesting history of the early Stalinist period in Russia. While using the vehicle of the well-to-do, privileged Gradov family to describe the era, the book is, however, nothing but a fictionalized tale of the history of those tumultuous times in Russia. Author Vassily Aksyonov does write in an engrossing style which enables the reader to have feeling and empathy for the Gradov family members during their trials (rarely do they have triumphs). The reader will want to finish the book to see how everything is resolved.

The interesting, but unrealistic, fact that the extended Gradov family was personally involved in every significant historical happening of this period will provide the casual reader with an insight into the times, but it merely whets the appetite of those desiring a complete picture. To cite examples: - father Dr. Boris resolves the well-known crisis of Stalin's "constipation"; - daughter Nina participates in pro-Trotsky, anti-Stalinist demonstrations when Stalin was consolidating his power (but, curiously, never is arrested for this); - son Kirill, the doctrinaire Marxist, is arrested and sent to the gulag during the Terror; - son Nikita rises in the military, is arrested during the purge of the military, and then is rehabilitated during World War II and rises to become a Marshall of the Army; - nephew Nuygar, a Georgian thug, becomes a Major General and right-hand man to Lavrenty Beria, the head of what has become the KGB; - son Kirill and daughter-in-law Celia first meet in rural Russia during the de-kulakization of the countryside; - adopted grandson Mitya is drafted into the Soviet Army, is captured by the Germans, and joins the Russian Army of Liberation to assist the Nazis in their attack on Russia; - daughter-in-law Veronika emigrates to the United States; - etc., etc., etc.

As such, then, there is no real plot as we would normally think of a fictional plot, but rather a set of seemingly unrelated vignettes revolving around the history of Russia which become related only because of the omipotent Gradov family and their incredible impact upon Russia's history.

Mr. Aksyonov periodically resorts to a "cutsy" technique of interjecting into the text parenthetical sentences to seque into the vignettes, such as "How did it happen that Mitya Sapunov, who in July 1943 had joined the Dnepr partisan detachment, again found himself in a group of "traitors to the Motherland".....? This technique appears to be necessary because the vignettes are rather unrelated, except for the family connections.

Mr. Aksyonov also periodically includes anthropomorphic "Intermissions" where various things such as the Gradov family dog, a squirrel, and an oak tree provide us with, so Mr. Aksyonov must believe, some intellectual insight into something. These Intermissions add nothing whatsoever to the novel. Perhaps, as another Amazon reviewer noted, these are a holdover from Mr. Aksynovov's attempts in the past to confuse the Russian censors who might actually read them and try to determine what is being said.

All-in-all, "Generations of Winter" left this reader interested in the Gradov family and wanting to read the follow-on novel "The Winter's Hero" depicting the end of the Stalinist era to see if anything really positive could happen to the family during that time. However, readers will be left with an empty feeling if they are looking for a sweeping view of Russia during the Stalinist period. Each of the vignettes of history depicted in this novel deserve a separate detailed study.

Yes, it helps if you've read "War & Peace", but even if you don't know your Rostovs from your Raskolnikovs, "Gens. of Winter" is a must. Funny, wrenching, profound, and above all totally original, "Gens." is a masterpiece I have been reading and rereading for five years. Aksyonov alternates a straightforward, gripping, family-history narrative, full of densely layered, palpably real characters, with quotations-- many of them hysterical -- from magazines like 'Time' and 'Pravda', as well as occasional short chapters from the point of view of a squirrel, a dove, a houseplant, and of course a dog. Far from being bewildering or pretentious, however, this point-of-view smorgasbord coalesces into one vision of startling clarity. This book won't please the fundamentalist or the PC (lots of drinking, smoking, sexual activity), not to mention apologists for Stalin if there are any still alive. If, however, you crave exciting, challenging, world-expanding fiction, with a compelling story line and dialogue so real, you're practically wiping the characters' spit off your face -- if you like the idea of historical fiction but can't bear ponderous, talentless bores like James Michener -- if you've ever wondered what was going on in Russia during all those curtained years, put "Generations of Winter" in your shopping cart and click CHECK OUT. The book is long, the print is small, and the experience can't be surpassed. One of the formative books of my life -- and, could be, yours!