This book, 'The Final Sack of Nineveh: The Discovery, Documentation, and Destruction of King Sennacherib's Throne Room at Nineveh, Iraq', by John Malcolm Russell, is an important work of preservation in archaeology. Much of archaeological work can be, in fact, rather destructive -- careful documentation is vital, as layers are swept away to reveal lower levels, and in the process, much is in fact destroyed. Archaeologists readily admit this fact, little realised by non-archaeologists, but it has been accepted as a necessary part of the trade. As much as can be preserved will be, but archaeology has other dangers besides the clearing away of layers. The 'final sack of Nineveh' does not refer to a final battle in history, but rather events a mere decade old.

Russell gives a brief essay of the history of excavation at Nineveh. The first excavations of the palace occurred in 1847 - 1849 by British amateur archaeologist Austen Henry Layard. The excavations remained undisturbed for over 50 years, until another British explorer, Leonard William King, was sent on behalf of the British Museum. Some of Russell's reports in this text represent the first published accounts of King's expedition and excavations, as much of his work remained unpublished for a century.

Again it was over half a century, 1965, before more excavations and work was done on Sennacherib's palace. Tariq Madhloom of the Iraqi Department of Antiquities and Heritage re-excavated the throne room suite (yes, re-excavated; in an effort to preserve that which will be not be studied again for a long while, archaeologists will often re-bury their finds). This became important as one of the modern plagues of archaeological sites -- encroaching urban sprawl -- threatened the site of ancient Nineveh.

Russell, associate professor of Art History and Archaeology at Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, came to Nineveh first in 1981, and returned in 1989 as associate director of the University of California Berkeley excavation team to record in detail through narrative and photography the great palace of Sennacherib, the first (and as it turns out, will be the only) documentary work of this magnificent structure. Forty figures of maps, line art, drawings and old photographs complement the 277 plates of photographs and line-details of details of the palace. Virtually no stone was left unturned in this documentary piece -- cornerstones, walls, rooms, floors, doors, court slabs - all the details are recorded in meticulous detail, in situ, with many details drawn out on the black-and-white photographs. Black-and-white photographs are often preferable for seeing the details of writing, carvings and engravings on stonework, so the majority of the images in this book are high-quality black-and-white. There are also colour images which give a sense of the stone work and environment.

In addition to the structure itself, Russell records some of the sculpture and artwork that adorned the palace. In room by room descriptions, Russell describes the statuary, inscriptions and artwork, which help show some of the important images and ideas for the Assyrians.

Finally, Russell describes the patterns of destruction, ancient and modern. The palace originally burned, which is a tragedy not only for the structure, but for its reconstruction.

However, this is perhaps not the most tragic of destructive times for Sennacherib's palace. Russell highlights three periods of destruction in the modern era. The first he terms collecting, something the European archaeologists, largely amateurs, were famous for doing. Layard's first expedition in the 1840s removed a relatively small amount, but was destructive nonetheless. Some of the greatest of sculptures where destroyed in the effort to remove them to the British Museum.

This period, however, led to the second phase of destructiveness, exposure. Things uncovered that are not recovered begin to deteriorate rapidly, particularly if no one returns for 50 years to help preserve things. Layard did backfill many items, but not all. Russell discovered that either some areas had not been backfilled as Layard, and then by King in the early 1900s, or had been uncovered and destroyed by unknown people sometime prior to 1965.

The third destructive phase comes from looting. This is not a problem unique to Nineveh, nor is it a problem that has been dealt with. Many of the figures and plates in Russell's work show 'before and after' scenes -- a beautiful relief on the throne room wall in 1989; a missing slab with broken stones scattered about in 1997. Russell had hoped to return in 1990 to work on extensive preservation, but it was not to be.

Russell has not been able to return to the site, due to travel restrictions, but has had photographs supplied to him from Iraq showing the extensive damage, and many of those are included in this book.

Russell ends his narrative with a plea to include preservation of antiquities as an internationally recognised priority, beyond politics and border concerns. He repeats the concern about documentation and publication that plagues the field, and reminds readers that backfilling after excavation is a necessary step for continuing preservation. So much is at risk in the ancient world.

This is not really a book for amateurs. It is a scholarly book, so the narrative to the non-historian and non-archaeologist may seem flat. It is meant to be a report rather than a story, and it serves that purpose well. Likewise, the photographs are technical in nature, rather than 'glamour shots' -- measuring sticks and scale devices are seen frequently in the photographs, and the lighting is meant to highlight important archaeological details, rather than for aesthetic effect. It is also an expensive book if purchased standard retail. However, you may be able to find it on a special deal, as I did, in which case you will have in your hands the last remnants of Sennacherib's grand palace.

I have a hacky sack book that was printed in 1982 i found it when i was cleaning my bookshelf and i realized how much it helped me when i first started hacking...Get this book if you want to know how to use a footba

Occasionally I check amazon.com listings against by personal library to see what has been reprinted. I was pleased to find that a publisher has reprinted this book, first published in 1955. It is an interesting and entertaining report about an assortment of places, and illustrates that some places are isolated enough (or no-account enough) or simply have traditional relationships such that big governments leave them alone. They continue merrily on their way, sometimes oblivious to the world around them (sometimes involved and sometimes not). They range in size from tiny (the Sovereign and Military Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Rhodes, and Malta which occupies a small space in the middle of Rome) to somewhat larger (like Sikkim) and have a variety of governments and relationships with adjoining countries. Monaco, ruled by a prince, has its own membership in international organizations. Sark is a feudal state that theoretically is a vassal fief to the Queen of England (the Duchess of Normandy). The backgrounds of most of the places described are tangled in historical grants, purchases, treaties, etc. Some might seem a good choice for people wanting to drop out of the modern rat race, but beware of local customs, laws, and taxes.

A telling account of the men and women who worked for the Office of State Security during and just after the Second World War and who were responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity, directed primarily against innocent Poles, Germans and Ukrainians. Many of these killers subsequently escaped to the USA, Canada, Israel and western Europe, and they remain in our midst, unpunished for their evil. Just recently one of the most infamous of their number, Shlomo Morel, a communist concentration camp Commandant, was discovered in Israel, but that state won't extradite him to stand trial in Poland for his crimes, rationalizing this by saying that the statute of limitations has expired! Just as no democracy should ever harbour Nazi war criminals in its midst, so too we must root out and punish those guilty of war crimes committed under Soviet tutelage. To refuse to do so, or to turn a blind eye on these mass murderers' deeds, would be to utterly invalidate any pretence of justice. This book belongs in the library of everyone interested in bringing all war criminals to justice, regardless of who their victims were, or who they are. A book that must be reprinted!

This book is written with a good narrative style that makes it an easy read. But more importantly, the book reveals the truth in that no race or nation can lay claim to moral superiority over others. All races and nations include evil people who will do horrible things to others when given the chance.

Perhaps the most poignant observation in the book came in one of the updates at the end, Sack reporting on a Holocaust Memorial service he attended with several of the death camp guards and commandants in New Jersey. He remarked that "Those who were saying 'Never Again' were the first ones to do it again."

Interestingly, despite the horrible revelations of their activities, Sack tries to picture the Polish Jews who murdered innocent Germans as being more moral than the SS guards who killed Jews during WWII because they walked away from it after 6-12 months of carnage. Of course, this ignores the fact that an SS man quitting Auschwitz could look forward to a trip to the Eastern Front, while a Polish Jew quitting "The Office" could look forward to emigration to America or Israel. Perhaps if the Polish/Jewish guards and torturers would have had to face imminent death in combat, they would have chosen to remain in their positions. Additionally, "The Office" was starting to eat itself, turning on its own and imprisoning and torturing former guards and commandants, so the time to get out had certainly arrived.

John Sack is a brave man (this must be pointed out - he deserves credit) John Sack is a Jew (this is pointed out by him - why do some claim he is "anti-Semitic"? ) How can facts be "anti-Semitic"? I know this must hurt him. I say don't shoot the messenger!
Mr. Sack reveals the threats against him by those that did not want him to write this book. He fearlessly explored these terrible crimes against humanity. He reveals how the crime is ongoing because we all know this is a "no-no" subject and those that can have used there power to keep this book from being the blockbuster it should be in America. You need to read this book if you want to know the WHOLE story about the Holocaust. (not the edited version sold to the American public) Buy this book while you can - it may very well go "out of print" - Mr. Sack has told his web site readers that his books have been destroyed in the past. Jews teamed up with communists and systematicaly killing ten of thousands of Germans is something we are not to know about. The history he sheds light on is one that is being suppressed - it cannot be argued otherwise. I say you don't have to be in the dark - don't let the censors win - read it and know.

I thought this was going to be a good book about Vietnam, but, now that I've read it, I can see that my hopes were too high. Did you ever read the beginning of a book and think to yourself, "it'll get going here shortly..."? Usually, when I feel that way, I read a respectable portion of the book and then decide whether to finish it or drop it. With this book, since it was so short, I finished it, but never stopped wondering when it would get going.

I think the author needed to either write a longer book and better develop the characters and story or pare his effort down to a smaller focus on maybe one character. As it is, he produced a not very well developed story populated by not very well developed characters. A formula for a forgettable book, in my opinion. I've read a number of excellent books about Vietnam, but I can't say I'd rate this as one of them. I really can't recommend it.

I was there (Ft. Dix Basic Trainee, 9/66-11/66) and Vietnam service (6/68-6/69). This is an excellent, well-written grunt's eye (i.e. worm's eye) of the American Army that fought in Vietnam, who they were, how they did (superbly), and how they fared afterward. A gem.

Had it not been for an English professor who gave me a battered old 1967 copy of this book, I might never have otherwise heard of it. At the time, it was out of print. I am very happy to see that it is back in print, for it belongs on the shelf with all the other great Vietnam War classics, like _Dispatches_, _A Rumor of War_, _Going After Cacciato_, etc. But whereas those books were published during the late 1970s, and look back at the war through the prism of the American "defeat," _M_ is one of the few good Vietnam books actually written during the war--and early in the war, too (before Tet). Stylistically, the book is in the vein of the non-fiction novel of Capote, Mailer, etc. and probably influenced Herr's writing of _Dispatches_. Sack used the real names of real soldiers in an infantry company called "Mike" (phonetic for "M")--see T. Chorba's review! He followed the company from basic training and AIT at Ft. Dix to its overseas tour in Vietnam.

Reviewers classify this as "reportage" but Sack's writing is rife with the kind of irony, wit, and irreverent humor you'd never find in conventional journalism. Sack pokes fun at army pedagogy, training films, windbag chaplains, inspections, and the ridiculously simplistic anticommunist propaganda of Vietnam era. On a more serious note, _M_ also deals with atrocities by U.S. troops at least a year before Seymour Hersh and the revelation of My Lai, and Sack's prescience regarding the issues and questions that such atrocities would raise in public discourse later on is truly remarkable.

This is "literary" and stylistically interesting writing about the Vietnam War. Essential reading for students of literature on the war, or even for anyone who's ever been in the army and gone through basic training.

Absolutely the most disturbing book Ive ever read - recounts William Calley's version of events at the My Lai Massacre and ends up making himself look even worse than his detractors did during his trial. Offers excuse after excuse for his actions and then doesnt even have the honesty to say what exactly he did during the massacre. Dont buy it unless you want to be very depressed.

Very raw book. The reader gets to know leutenant Calley by reading his own words, while getting as well deepper in the bloody mess that was going on during the Vietnam war. It is also a good example of the problems veteran soldiers had to face after in the aftermath of the war. This is a good book to anyone interested in the Vietnam war. I can't believe I found it somewhere on a used book fair, and although it is a translation of the original english book, this is a report-style writen work is still one of my favorite war library books

Quite possibly one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. Lt Calley rounded up, and then gunned down in cold blood women and children, that is a fact - he does not dispute that in this memior. His atempts to mitigate this behavior are incredible - the list of those to be held responsible begin with his subordinates and extend to "society". For junior Officers a case study in the need for moral courage and the horrific results of it's absence.

First of all, I strongly encourage anyone to read an excerpt of this book before purchasing it. Sack (for better or worse) is one of the pioneers of "literary journalism", which means his writing style is more akin to storytelling, with recreated conversations and whatnot, than many people will be used to. This is especially disconcerting because he explains his methodology in assembling this biography of Chinese gang lord Johnny Kon at the end of the book, instead of the beginning. If this doesn't put you off, it's still hard to ignore some of his other stylistic flaws. Foremost of these is an excess of detail-throughout the book the reader is kept up to date on every dish consumed during gang meetings, the cost, style, and provenance of every item of footwear Johnny Kon is wearing, and the precise decor of every hotel lobby and room he passes through. These details, marginally interesting the first or second appearance, rapidly grow annoying and intrusive, ballooning what might have been a 250 page book to it's final 400 pages. Another stylistic flaw is the lack of dates throughout. Once the early part of Johnny's life is past, and the Vietnam War is over, it's very hard to get a sense of what time frame is under discussion.

The life and times of Johnny Kon is certainly an interesting tale, and not one many people could have even attempted, much less completed. From a life of poverty in Maoist China, Kon escaped to Shanghai and then Hong Kong, building a semi-legitimate fur empire. Much of his fur fortune was linked to the huge US Army presence in Southeast Asia during the 1960s, and the sections which detail his interactions with the US Army are very compelling. However, in this period also lies Kon's alleged motive for becoming the leading importer of heroin to the US. I say alleged because the basis for the book is Sack's relationship with Kon and interviews with him conducted in jail, and so it's hard not to view Kon's "motive" as an after-the-fact self-justification. In any event, whether one believes it or not, the event that pushed Kon into drug dealing was the death of two of his children in the chaos of the Khmer Rouge coup in Cambodia. He lays the ultimate blame for this at the feet of the US and its meddling in other countries and spread of indiscriminate death and destruction. The book posits the dubious notion that heroin was "popularized" by all the US soldiers who became addicted during their tour of duty, and thus created the demand for Kon's operations ten years later.

So, Kon builds himself a gang comprised of a tough circle of ex-Red Guard soldiers and embarks on an effective smuggling operation that massive quantities of heroin into the US in the '80s. While the logistics of his operation make for interesting reader, the dynamics of the gang do not. There are so many members of his gang, it gets hard to keep them, their nicknames, and their allegiances straight (here, a diagram or simple list at the beginning of the book would have been a useful editorial addiction). Similarly, the Byzantine feuds of the various gangs and how they all relate to each other gets a bit tedious and hard to follow. Ultimately, Kon's downfall was predictably the result of some rather amazing bungling, silly escalations of petty rivalries over "respect" between gang members, and that ultimate foe of the gangster-betrayal.

One of the more disturbing aspects of the book are the descriptions of how the US government strong-armed a number of countries into extraditing members of Kon's family who had nothing to do with his heroin operations. They were used as leverage against Kon, forcing him to plead guilty-and while there's no denying he was a very bad drug lord, those kinds of tactics are bad precedent setters. Ultimately, the book is moderately interesting, but far too long. It suffers greatly from its more or less detached recounting of Kon's life story-especially odious are Kon's attempts to be a good Bhuddist amidst it all. The same kind of hypocrisy that infested the Irish-Catholic gangs and Italian mafia. Ultimately, unless one is really really interested in the heroin trade, or in Chinese gangs, I'd probably advise skipping this overladen book.

June 10, 2002

For good or ill, the author of 'The Dragonhead', John
Sack, is the book's real 'star'. He spends an inordinate
number of words wowing or attempting to wow his readers.
His style is a marriage of Tom Wolfe's observational
acuity and novelist James Ellroy's cynical descriptive
overkill.

As may be expected, Sack's writing occasionally gets
away from him, particularly during his frequent head-
hopping. Once inside the brains of a subject, Sack
doesn't illustrate so much as wallow. I'd guess he's
fairly on the money, but this impression may stem from
the fact that the book's main character, Johnny Kon,
has a noggin that's been turned around more times than
the wind-up propeller on a child's toy airplane ("Crank
'em up and watch 'em go!").

I'm not a hundred percent on the reportage here, but
I'm more than impressed enough to believe that if not
everything in "The Dragonhead' is true, it could easily
well be. Still, it's an imperfect and not particularly
well-detailed book, and Sack and occasionally tiring
writer.

This book is about the life of a Chinese gangster leader Johnny Kon and his associates. John Jack spent 12 years talking with Kon and his criminals before he wrote this book. The operation of Johnny Kon's drug business is located in Hong Kong, my hometown. I like this book because it depicts the real life of a gangster leader and shows how he gets away from the authorities and how he runs his "business." The book unfolds like an action movie. For instance, in one scene Kon is attempting to smuggle a large amount of heroin around his waist at the airport. When he is about to be body-searched, he drops his expensive Minolta. The camera smashes on the ground, distracting all the security guards. They apologized as Kon walks away with the drugs. It is pure drama. I enjoy this book, however, I hope that readers who read this book do not have an impression that Hong Kong is highest crime cities in the world.

This book is hard to read and difficult to understand at times. I should have taken the advice and not read it.

I did not take the advice of the veteran's of this unit, but read this book anyway. What a shame. A great subject matter totally SNAFU'd. Having been in combat and wounded by friendly fire I understand Burn's hesitancy to "lock and load". As a soldier for 25 years I found the actions and mindsets of some of the soldiers confusing. I finished it, but it was hard.

I read company c several years ago and had a hard time following the flow of the story(non-linear). I was the gunner on Shaffers tank and knew how the story ended but it was still confusing at times. Perhaps from a third party perspective it might be easier to follow,but having first hand experience of the whole thing can make the book very frustrating. Some events are out of sequence and some seem to have been embelished (not outright lies but not entirely accurate). As for Scott Medine I'm apalled that he would attack a fellow soldier,though not completely surprised. Well said Steve.