This volume in the series of Trotsky's writings actually doesn't deal with a number of the major developments in 1930 and 1931. Since they are so extensive, his writings on events in Spain and Germany are to be found in separate compilations. This book is one to buy and browse thru' simply because it helps complete the picture of Trotsky's work in that period of history, the incredible scope of his collaboration and attention -- everything from patient letters to Chinese revolutionists encouraging them to abandon flights of scholarly abstraction and get a grip, to good concrete explanations of why workers in the USSR cannot be simply cheerled to socialism. A single scathing page chastises Stalin's apparatus for the imminent death of an old Bochevik leader hemorraging from tuberculosis and denied a transfer to better climes. The lack of respect for a lifelong fighter and cynical disregard for someone who has never bowed his head could only be practised by those who had no interest in fighting themselves. Trotsky makes you think about the big picture even when he writes about smaller things.

In 1930-31 the last Great Depression (as opposed to the one we just
entered) gripped the capitalist world. Fascism was becoming a real and
recognizable threat in Germany. Spain was in the throes of a
pre-Revolutionary situation. In the Soviet Union the Stalinist (not socialist,
not communist) bureaucracy was squandering the prestige of the world's
first workers state (at the bottom of the Depression, the USSR was
virtually free of unemployment) in one disastrous lurch in economic
policy after another - the years of forced "collectivization." Leon Trotsky,
co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the Russian Revolution, exiled by Stalin to
Turkey, strove with might and main to build a worldwide revolutionary
leadership of worker cadres organized in revolutionary parties. The record
of his efforts is here in part. The rest of his efforts in 1930-31 are
recorded "... The relevance of this work should be
clear: in a world gripped by the beginning of the Second Great world
Depression marked by the collapse of Stalinism-- the opposite of
communism -- a seemingly unending series of imperialist wars, and the
survival of the beacon of light for the world's toilers that is the Cuban
Revolution-if you are a young rebel of any age who wants to fight for a
truly human world, then this book belongs on your shelf to be STUDIED.

The Trotsky Writings books are addicting. The short pithy, wise articles, interviews, polemics, the illuminating and interesting notes, and the drama of Trotsky's struggle in exile are available on a week to week, month to month, year to year basis across from 1929 until 1940. You end up reading the next article, and the next article, and you have to discipline yourself to put it down if you can. A constant feature is the continued interviews by newspapers, magazines, international press services from the US, Britain, and around the world, because even in exile, even these bourgeois forces knew that Trotsky was one man who could put together the trends in the world. As much as they teach us about history,these books teach us revolutionary answers to questions we need to answer today: how to go from small revolutionary movements to a revolution like Trotsky and Lenin led in 1917, how to fight the middle class bureaucrats in the former Soviet Union and China, how to win workers, farmers, women and oppressed women.

As a fan of both Saunders and Smith, I felt compelled to pick this one up. The book itself is well-made -- beautifully bound with heavy, tactile paper.

I was expecting something a little more adventurous from Saunders, but still he knows how to tell a fun story in the tradition of Seuss and Dahl. Gappers from the sea are molesting the goats of Frip with their joyous shrieking, while young Capable must support both herself and her widowed father, who insists on eating white food. You get the idea.

Or maybe you don't.

The real stand out here is Smith's illustration. I'm hoping to buy or recreate a couple of these pieces and hang them on the wall.

A good book for the kids' shelf too. This one will make for about an hour of bed-time reading and picture-viewing.

This book is glorious. I find myself pondering passages at the oddest of times. I've read it aloud to my high school students and to friends over dinner. Saunders's prose is of the highest quality, witty, and exceedingly intelligent. Smith's illustrations are evocative and magical. This world of Frip, with its goats and its gappers and its three leaning shacks by the sea is a wonderful place to explore.

The thinness of the book is deceptive. I have read it literally dozens of times at this point and always delight in some turn of phrase that I didn't fully appreciate before. The images are rich and multi-layered and just as much fun over which to pour.

And then there is the lesson of the story. Never preachy, never saccharine. Though I suppose there are several messages from which you can take your pick. Ask for help when you need it. Don't believe the party line. Be kind to people, even when they don't really enjoy it. And love something that will love you back. No matter what the age of the reader, everyone needs to be reminded of those things sometimes.

I would recommend this book to children and adults who are not boxed in by what they think adults whould read. Too many grown ups are scared of books with pictures. Read this aloud to friends and family and to yourself.

George Saunders, the master of quick-witted stories about a dystopic near-future that are despairing and hopeful at once, tries his hand at a children's book. He has not only succeeded, but has written one of the modern classics in children's literature.

The story of Capable and her father is movingly told, without sentimentality. Typically swift and effective characterization you find in Saunders' adult fiction can be found here, i.e. the father who barks at the sun to stay up, eats all his food after it's been dyed white because white rice is the last thing his wife ate before she died.

The main story of Capable having to fend off the gappers who threaten the entire stock of goats in her house and persevere the situation is told with incredible agility. The villains, the hilariously self-righteous Christian neighbors who refuse to help, are drawn with such surreal, but vivid force, that one cannot help but feel polarized at such disparity in grace given and not given to people, the apparent unfairness in the world. It makes you feel like a kid, once again, so unabashedly rooting for Capable and the good to overcome the hypocritical world.

Saunders opts for a gentle ending where everyone, including the neighbors, finds a harmonious way to live. The underlying hope and faith that present itself so ambiguously in Saunders' fiction are more openly expressed here.

All in all, a tremendously satisfying reading. If you are a fan of Saunders, or a well-told tale, you can't miss with this one. It is savagely funny as well as gently moving. Lane Smith's illustrations are uniformly gorgeous.

Sure, there are precursors to George Saunders-Kurt Vonnegut, Mark Twain, Nathaniel West, to name a few. However, I find his voice to be one of the most unique in American literature today. The stories are, for the most part, extremely funny. Yet there is a sense of darkness and despair to be found lurking in each of them, and then the ending of each story seems to cleanse the darkness and leave the reader refreshed. I'd hate to call a work of literature cathartic, but somehow I feel like the stories in "Civilwarland in Bad Decline" almost are cathartic in a way. The stories have deeper resonances, but never come across as difficult or pretentious. In the case of George Saunders, it appears, we have a natural story-teller.

I think the reviewer (The NY Times, was it?) who described Saunders as the illegitimate offspring of Nathaniel West and Kurt Vonnegut, as much as I usually hate such analogies, hit the proverbial nail right on the head. Saunders' endearing sense of humor seems to me to be a cross of those two literary giants'. However, there is nothing derivative or hackneyed about this collection at all. In fact, I think he is the most original and interesting of literature's new voices. Though many of the stories share much in common, the collection is, as a whole, diverse and extremely enjoyable. Maybe even cathartic? I found "Civilwarland in Bad Decline" to be one of the most enjoyable collections I've read in years and I'd recommend it to anyone searching for something new from the world of literature.

This short fiction is the best published in years. Readers of David Foster Wallace and Rick Moody will find much to enjoy here, but Saunders' fresh voice is all his own. His views on the near future are apocalyptic (of course, they would be), archly amusing, and (most surprising) humane. I especially enjoyed the title story, "The 400-Pound CEO," "Downtrodden Mary's Failed Campaign of Terror," and the novella "Bounty" (satire worthy of Voltaire). I can't wait to read more by this writer. This book is a genuine treat.

I thought that this was an exciting book, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes adventure. Southern dialect is used throughout the entire novel, and it was difficult to understand at first, but once I had read a little ways into it, the language added tremendous reality to the story. This book is about a young boy who runs away from his dad, the town drunk, and is later joined by a slave, Jim, who is running aways at an attempt for freedom. It questions a lot of the values that Americans had when it was written (before the Civil War), and it's message is timeless. It was an awesome book, and you should definitely check it out!

I would recommend this book to 15 year olds and up or if you have a good vocabulary. This is a spectacular book. This book kept me in suspense almost the whole book. This book teaches you about slavery. They have a lot of people that think African-Americans should be slaves. It is an adventurous book that takes you along the Mississippi & The Ohio River before the civil war. I liked the book, because most the time when I start a book I get bored with it then I don't finish it. I really recommend that teachers have this book for there students and parents have there children read this book, I hope people wont ever be prejudice.

If you enjoy reading the pervert writings of godless mercenaries who killed many millions of russians, you will like this book. In it you will see how to lie, pay and demoralize the bottom of society in order to achieve great murder and destruction rates. Both of these satanic maids (lenin and trotsky) had one goal - to destroy the nation that tolerated them. Not Russians themselves, they borrowed the pervert anti-capitalist marxism that FAILED to destroy the west.
Unfortunately they had more backers, more money and more luck in Russia. Make no mistake, if you fall into this hateful trap you will be used for the destruction of your own society. The powers of darkness are alive and well today. Be on the alert and may God blees you!

For the workers and farmers of Russia, winning political power in 1917 was a formidable enough job in itself. However, defending the new revolution quickly became a much more Herculean task.

From 1917-21, the new Soviet Republic battled imperialist invasion and counterrevolutionary forces in a civil war. The Kronstadt rebellion flared when it seemed the civil war was at a pause and the political and fighting capacities of the countries working people was near exhaustion.

There were many other rebellions during the period, but Kronstadt posed more serious implications for the existence of working class leadership heading the Soviet government.

Opponents of the October revolution saw Kronstadt as the closest point to Europe and a defenceless Petrograd. A central demand of the nearly 15,000 rebels was, "Soviets without Bolsheviks" which was a weak kneed way of calling for the overthrow of the workers and farmers government.

The book covers the speeches and writings of Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky exposing the dangers involved and what was behind the motivations of the Kronstadt rebels and it's leaders. In later years, Trotsky takes on critics who label aspects of the Bolsheviks suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion as the beginning of Stalinism.

When over three hundred delegates to the Russian communist party congress volunteer to throw themselves - in the biting cold of the Russian winter -into the middle of a military battle you are not sure you are going to win and do just that. Then you know the mutineers at Kronstadt were up against a force much wider and deeper than the Bolsheviks.

This book of speeches and articles on the Kronstadt rebellion by Trotsky exposes the reality of this revolt, often used to discredit the October Revolution. Trotsky writes as the defender of the real revolution, against the real Kronstadt. The real Kronstadt of the revolt had lost many of the fighters who had led the revolution who had left to fight in the civil war on Land and sea. The real Kronstadt had tried to take advantage of their position as military to demand privileged conditions in a country where civil war and imperialist blockade had produced mass starvation. These are the speeches Trotsky used to summon the real revolution, include many of the real 1917 fighters of Kronstadt, to crush this counter revolutionary revolt.

There are lots of books about Christianity, but startlingly few ethnographic studies, let alone comparative ethnographic studies. This unusual little volume by a group of anthropologists describes the Christian life as it is lived by ordinary believers in a wide range of societies among whom these scholars lived while doing anthropolofical field research. Why do Catholics on the Micronesian island of Tobi resist Protestantism although they converted to Catholicism in a matter of days? Why is the book of Revelation so important in Jamaica? How are Chinese churches in California organized? How does politics get mixed up with religion in small-town Italy? What's with processions in Spain? And so on.

I have used the book (and continue to use it) as a text in a course I teach on the ethnography of Christanity and am impressed at how good a discussion each of these excellent brief essays can stimulate. If the publisher hadn't priced this volume to mildew in a warehouse, this would be a major textbook for College courses on Christianity.

Mr. Filer's book is an excellent choice for anyone beginning to work with Allen-Bradley PLCs,SLCs. It does discuss many of the complex functions and capabilities of AB's PLCs, however, it does not go into enough depth to be an aid in "advanced programming".

The material covered in this book is great for an entry level class in PLC programming. This appears to be the intent of one of the authors (Robert Filer), having been instructed by him directly using this material.