The book Platoon Bravo Company contained it all. From the missions all the way down to the soldiers. An awesome book! The best part of the book is how it takes us to the front lines and lets us experience what the war actually may have been like. This is an excellent book for schools to refer back to and show what it was really like to fight in Vietnam. It is also a great book if you like action and a book that keeps you reading from beginning to end. A good element of the book is how Hemphill tells us his story from the day he takes over Bravo Company and until the day he leaves his command of the Infantry. This is a great aspect because it was meant to show us how Vietnam took drastic measures on American soldiers.
The book showed us how Vietnam really was, rather then what it has been portrayed as. It also shows us why the madness takes over the soldiers. Hemphill's explanation of the Tet Offensive is tremendously helpful to get an understanding of its effect in this book. The book over time gives a basic understanding of how these men not only had to save their lives and lives of others; but also save men from the madness brought to them by the war. This book to me portrayed the realistic madness of Vietnam as well as the surroundings Americans were forced to fight in. It gives a great understanding on how hard it was to fight in a place like Vietnam. The explanation in this book was so good that I now have a totally different opinion about Vietnam. In my opinion the best Vietnam book out there.

In"Platoon: Bravo Company", Mr. Hemphill's account of the 3rd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, Bravo Company's Vietnam war experience, while under his command as Captain is unflinching, candid, and necessarily detailed. The author takes the reader with him from the very first day that he takes the helm of Bravo Company for the duration of his command. The author carefully pays attention to battle site, historical, and factual detail, and weaves sufficient prose to pique the readers interest by describing the surrounding elements of experience, characters and survival. This book is recommended for the military enthusiast or avid reader who appreciates excellent non-fiction.

Platoon: Bravo Company by Robert L. Hemphill served in the U.S. Army from 1964 to 1989, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel of Infantry, receiving a Silver Star (for Gallantry in Action), Bronze Stars with "V" (for Valor in Ground Combat - 4 awards), a Purple Heart (for Combat Wounds) and several other citations and awards. He was a captain in charge of a combat platoon in Vietnam and found that his combat infantrymen to be like American combat soldiers everywhere: some were very good, some not so good, but most took their job and service seriously and did the best they could with what they were given to do. Platoon: Bravo Company is a candid, revealing, eye-witness record of merican troops in an Asian ground war -- a superb contribution to the growing body of literature on the American military experience in the Vietnam War. Highly recommended.

After becoming very disappointed in the direction of leadership in our local civic organization, a friend of mine and I decided to run as candidates for president and vice-president. We bought this book, followed its strategy and won the election with over 75% of the vote! I later shared this book with a politician friend of mine who decided to run for a high county office in a race against 2 established county officials. He won with over 60% of the vote. I strongly recommend this book!

A friend bought me this book for Christmas because I was thinking of running for office. I didn't think much of the book until I sat down to read it. What a great book! This book dosen't waste your time reading through a lot of useless material to get to the point. I already had some ideas as to how I was going to run my campaign. After I sat down to read the book, I realized that some of my ideas would have wasted a lot of my time and money. Now, with the advice from this book I will be able to put on a much more effective campaign. I have a few friends who are thinking of running for office and I plan to do them a favor and buy them this book.

What an easy book to read. It's written in laymen's terms and it is so easy to understand. The author goes straight to the point on every page. There is no wasted space here. The advise on targeting the voter and how to maximize your time when going door-to-door is worth the cost of the book itself. If you are going to run for a public office, as I plan to, this book is a very wise investment!

What can one say for this bible of internal medicine ! Excellent algorithms, organised sections about the diseases with precise information are dominant in this book. It's a reference book with the ability to keep you satisfied no matter what you are looking for. If it's not in Harrison's it isn't anywhere !

This book is the Bible of Internal Medicine. Anyone considering a career in medicine should have this book in their library. Comprehensive and well written, it is the gold standard of medical textbooks.

This book is a medical tradition, and it is as important to doctors as their stethoscope.
It is very complete, there is no doubt about it. Every subject of medicine is covered, and for a reference book is a must-have. It is also written in an easy-to-read way, but some chapters are more difficult to understand than others, and like a good meal, in excess it can get heavy and occasionally become a brick, so slow-reading is advised. Also worth to mention are the atlases, that give a lot of pictographic information.
I would recommend it only as a reference book, because for the USMLE, or as a course textbook, it is impossible to read it all, especially if time is scarce.

Nostromo is a novel much like War and Peace. Often seen as Conrad's greatest work, it contains clear - one might say appalling - insight into the human condition in the century that was just beginning. Conrad's father had served time in Siberia-like exile with his young family in tow, for participating in revolutionary, patriotic Polish politics. The experience had shortened his parents' lives and left Conrad an orphan at an early age, giving the writer a personal preview of what the new century was going to be like for so many others.

The novelist's modern insight was not only on the political and social front but also into man's sense of identity. With Godot-like despair, Decoud, the character closest to Conrad in Nostromo, "beheld the universe as a succession of incomprehensible images." Stranded by himself for several days he becomes suicidal, realizing that "in our activity alone do we find the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as against the whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless part." At the same time it is beautifully written and is a gripping adventure - so can work on many different levels. Anyone who reads novels should read this classic.

Revolution is a fertile ground for nascent ideologies, and neology is perhaps the richest algar on which emerging heroes feed upon. Costaguena is a territory existing only in the unparalleled imagination of Conrad, whose mind was perpetually stimulated by an abstract, unknown, and merely projected world. Nostromo is his instrument of oscillation; ultimately a pendulum caught in the momentum of change, he falls into the precipice that separates the glory of selfhood and the danger of vanity.

From the beginning, Conrad sheds equally heavy recognition on a string of characters. Charles Gould an European capitalist trapped in his father's tragic political enmeshment, Decoud an uprooted native who dies proving his credential, and Antonio Avellanos an audacious aristocrat who carries the torch of her generation are have the protagonist make-up. But following the Greek formula, Nostromo is the true hero who fumbles into falsity because of his one défaut: hubris. The enormous vanity develops into his temptress, and in a way, Nostromo makes the conscious choice to let his incorruptible pride corrupts his morale.

The fatality of Nostromo, very much like many of Conrad's protagonists, marks the inability of men, in the utmost bleakness of mental solitude, to reconcile to the goodness of nature.

Joseph Conrad is one of the most effortlessly cosmopolitan writers in the English language, and "Nostromo" finds him in a fictitious South American country called Costaguana whose mountains are a bountiful resource of silver. And Conrad is probably the only writer who can transform his novel's hero from an all-around tough guy to a heroic savior to a sneaky thief to a tragic victim of mistaken identity through plausible twists of fate without ever letting the story fall into disarray.

The main action of the novel takes place towards the end of the nineteenth century in a town called Sulaco, which is the base of operations for the San Tome silver mine up in the nearby mountains. The administrator of the mine is an Englishman named Charles Gould, whose primary challenge is to find American and European speculators to invest money to keep the mine in business. The other problem he faces is a civil war between the present government and a faction of rebels led by a general named Montero. Gould's wife Emilia is a prominent figure in town, an elegant matron with a philanthropic attitude towards the downtrodden native mine workers and townspeople.

The hero, Nostromo, is an Italian sailor who settled in Costaguana for more lucrative work and is now in charge of keeping the dockworkers -- the "cargadores" -- in line. When Montero's troops invade Sulaco, Nostromo and Martin Decoud, an aristocratic Frenchman who runs Sulaco's newspaper, escape on a boat with the town's silver treasury to protect it from the marauders. Their boat is sideswiped and damaged by a ship commanded by a rebel colonel named Sotillo, and they are forced to moor on a nearby island and bury the treasure there. This island is the future site of a lighthouse to be maintained by the Violas, an Italian family whose patriarch, Giorgio, once supported Garibaldi and still reveres the man like a deity. There is obviously much more to the plot, too much to reveal in this review, and there are many additional important characters, but these are best left for the potential reader to discover.

Narratively, Conrad keeps the story moving with plenty of action and suspense combined with the typical excellence of his prose. Structurally, though, is how Conrad's novel intrigues its reader: He frequently shifts viewpoints, in both place and time, to give the effect of different perspectives of both the immediate events and the long-term history of Sulaco. Contemporary reviewers of the novel apparently saw this technique as an artistic flaw; in retrospect, it seems well ahead of its time.

Thematically, the novel presents a debate about the benefits and problems of imperialism and colonization, using Costaguano as a model colony and the Gould Concession as model imperialists. When Sotillo accuses foreigners of robbing his country of its wealth, Gould suggests to him that a country's resources (i.e., Costaguana's silver) can be used as an asset only from the cooperation of the native workers and the capital and technical knowledge of the colonists. Such a concept seems relevant to global economic development throughout the twentieth century.

Another thick complex Conrad adventure has a great vivid setting and his usual playful narrative style that exposes the same story at different times through several different points of view, all which clash over the big silver mine in the center of everything, which seems to control every action in the plot. The most riveting aspects of the tale (outside the revolution and the tortured bonds between the characters) happen but briefly on the water. Comparisons to Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness are inevitable though this one stands out on its own, provided the over detailed writing doesn't off put the casual reader. Once again, as with every Conrad piece, you have to read carefully, and be on the look out for abrupt changes in time, place and thought, which he purposely intertwines to expose a larger picture: a rather effective way to unleash the English language, considering that it wasn't Conrad's original native tongue. Title character Nostromo stands out as the key tormented romantic "hero" but the rest of the abundant cast each have their dramatic moments near and around, and before and after him as well. JC weaves all their lives into the same colorful pattern. The silver mine by the time all is finished has power over each of them, a very hypnotic and manipulative symbol of greed and loss. Don Martin Decoud, next to Nostromo himself, makes an impression as the story's most heartbreaking character. He becomes the most tragic person in the book.

Peter Bogdanovich has written a book that is for the movie enthusiast. I suspect the general reader may find some of the interviewees obscure, and the topics technical. I feel that is their loss. For the student of film or film history, this is a treasure trove of information, ideas, experiences, and feelings about films taken from interviews with some of the most distinguished directors in movie history. The author's selection is not encyclopedic, but the directors' experience spans from the earliest years of silent film to the present. These men are not just informative, but their strong and distinctive personalities show in each interview, giving the sense that one has actually met and understood many of them. Some of the interviews are brief, or even very idiosyncratic, but the best are delightfully personal. This is a long book, but affords many pleasant evenings of good conversation. It also makes one want to go back and see the films again!

Peter Bogdanovich pioneered the director interview in English, and this wonderful collection will give endless pleasure to film buffs. The book-length interview with Allan Dwan alone is worth the price of admission. Bogdanovich always did vast amounts of study before sitting down to talk with his subjects, and his expertise and enthusiasm encouraged them to open up in a way they usually did not with other interviewers. Anyone writing about the careers of the directors Bogdanovich interviews has to start with his work on them. A fitting companion piece is Bogdanovich's encyclopedic interview book "This Is Orson Welles."

The title was suggested by Howard Hawks who once observed, "...I liked almost anybody that made you realize who in the devil was making the picture...Because the director's the storyteller and should have his own method of telling it." Hawks is one of the 16 "legendary film directors" represented in this volume. It is important to keep in mind that these are conversations rather than interviews such as those conducted by Robert J. Emery in The Directors: Take One and its sequel, The Directors Take Two, as well as interviews conducted by Richard Schickel in The Men Who Made the Movies. It is also worth noting that Bogdanovich is himself a distinguished director of films such as The Last Picture Show, What's Up, Doc?, They All Laughed (a personal favorite of mine), and Texasville. As a result of his own background, Bogdanovich's questions and comments reflect somewhat different interests and perspectives than do those of Emery and Schickel.

I rate all of these books Five Stars but probably enjoyed reading Bogdanovich's book the most because the conversations ramble along somewhat messily, as most of my own conversations tend to do, and also because Bogdanovich is more actively involved in the interaction than Emery and Schickel are. As a reader, I feel as if I were really an eavesdropper as 16 directors casually share their opinions, information about specific films and actors, gossip, "war stories," and overall evaluations of their careers' various successes and failures. At no time does Bogdanovich seem intrusive or manipulative. Moreover, perhaps to an extent he did not realize when writing this book, he also reveals a great deal about himself...much of it endearing and some of it admirable. His passion for film making and his appreciation of the great directors are almost palpable. Readers' interests about various directors and their respective films obviously vary. I include myself among those who are die-hard film buffs and so I enjoyed reading every chapter and every word in each chapter. Indeed, each conversation was for this amateur "gourmet" a feast to be consumed with delight and, yes, gratitude.

Perhaps I'm a little bit biased towards this novelization of the life of Joey Smallwood. No, I'm not from Newfoundland. No, I'm not a historical fiction buff. No, my name's not Joey.

But as I read along, a sneaking suspicion entered my mind. I did a little bit a family research, and it turns out that I am distantly related to the character of Prowse, who could be loosely described as Smallwood's arch-enemy. Admittedly, it is a tenuous relation (three generations by marriage), but still, very cool. And of course, it helps that the novel is one of astonishing quality.

COLONY tells of the slow rise of Joey Smallwood, from his very humble beginnings to his eventual election as Newfoundland's first premier. Now, I don't know anything about the history of Newfoundland. I don't believe the book is meant to be a technically accurate representation of Smallwood's life. This is not a biography.

What COLONY is, is a vastly entertaining look at the twists and turns that can occur in the life of one man. As in John Irving's best novels ( I kept thinking of THE CIDER HOUSE RULES as I read along), COLONY is an epic view of a tiny subject. As Smallwood's life progresses, the story becomes more and more enriched with characters and themes and regrets and promises. What Smallwood does with his life is miraculous, and sometimes awe-inspiring. I don't mean to imply that Smallwood is a saint. But his flaws and delusions only serve to heighten his triumphs and failures.

As I said, I don't know how much of COLONY is factually true. Did he have an ongoing unrequited love affair with his childhood friend and nemesis Fielding? Are the motivations behind his actions accurate? In the end, it doesn't matter. This isn't meant to be a treatise on the political background of a premier. This is a story, and a damned fine one. And it is obvious after reading it why, for all his mistakes, Joey Smallwood is a widely beloved figure in Newfoundland.

I read this novel 40 books ago. I still think about it. Wayne Johnston pulled me right into his wild, stark, exotic Newfoundland, where I found two unique characters with an ever tense and often wacky relationship. Johnston's writing is clean and crisp and never conceited. His landscape is frozen and beautiful. And his humor is dead-on. While the well-done SHIPPING NEWS gets all the Newfoundland publicity, that book doesn't quite measure up to this masterpiece. For fiction at its finest, visit A COLONY OF UNREQUITED DREAMS.

Describing this novel will almost certainly minimize its tremendous power. A fictionalized first person of a key Newfoundlander's life, coupled with intercalary chapters which are a satiric history of Newfoundland, sounds like one of those heavy tomes worthy of a Canadian TV mini-series rather than a good evening's read. But this book is a powerful, solid read, the kind of read one imagines cannot be obtained in a modern novel. Smallwood, Newfoundland's first premier upon its confederation with Canada, is portrayed in a variety of situations throughout a long life, some historical and some fictional. But this novel does not bear the cobwebs of the "fictional history" genre. Instead, the book's two major characters--Smallwood and Sheilagh Fielding--seem as real as life, flawed and fascinating.

This book is vibrant and alive, straightforward, believable,and wholly warm and human. The parts of the book based on actual history are much more fantastic than the parts of the book which are pure fiction. The book explores some interesting ideas--the twin pursuit of compassion and ambition, the persistence of love over time, and the effects on the protagonists of constant self re-invention. The reader comes away with a sense of place as to Newfoundland, with that feeling of having "known" the characters,and with an abiding respect for a gifted novelist. This is one of the truly great novels I've read.

I decided to read this novel out of interest both as a musician, and as an A-Level English Literature student. After two chapters I was hooked, and could not put the book down. The thing that puts this novel head and shoulders above all the others is the brilliant characterisation - as a reader, you begin to care for Pelagia, the doctor's daughter; Mandras, her fiance who has been left physically and psychologically scarred by the war; Carlo, the brave but gentle Italian homosexual; and of course, the eponymous Captain Corelli. The writing style also plunges the reader through a range of emotions. The book goes from being hilariously funny, to poignant, to brutally shocking. You cannot help but laugh at a chapter written entirely from Mussolini's viewpoint, in which 'Il Duce' demands that the temperature of Italy be lowered in order to increase the resilience of the Italian youth! Likewise, when an Italian character has his head split by a Greek bullet, and asks Carlo to break the news to his mother, the poignancy is unbearable. De Bernieres' description of Corelli's music is so vivid, you can almost hear the pieces he plays, and the depiction of battles is also brilliant. This book will open your eyes to the fact that not all of the Fascist troops in the Second World War were maniacs - some, like the fictitious Captain Corelli, were ordinary people caught up in a savage conflict.

This book was, quite simply, one of the most enjoyable and enduring I've read for a long, long time. Like a lot of people, I keep thinking there's a book inside me just waiting to get out but I don't think I'll ever be capable of such a masterpiece. Indeed, I don't think I can find the superlatives to express how good I felt it was. I think what makes it so beautiful is that there are so many lovable characters - people that are developed so well in the text that you know them inside out. I felt as if I had lived among them. The circumstances that befall the small Greek island and its inhabitants are so sad and, at the end, it was almost enough to make me weep. Not sadness borne out of the cruelty of the war but of the sadness that came with the love of the central characters. I've lent this book to two friends who both said it was brilliant. A little note for new readers - I found there was a part of the book near the beginning where I had to "stick with it". It's the narrative that explains the Italian/Greek roles in the Second World War. But it's essential (at least it was for me) to fully enjoy the whole book. Read it, you'll love it!

I was put off buying a copy of "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", due to its popularity (it even appears at the end of "Notting Hill", in Hugh Grant's hand!), but I regret not having read it soooner. There is a very good reason for its popularity. Quite simply, it is a literary work of genius. Despite my young years, I have read many novels, and I have never been so moved. It is sad, without being depressing; historical and political, without being dull; romantic, without being conventional and, for want of a better word, "soppy". It is a novel which embraces the very epitome of the word "perfection"- I have even written to Mr. de Bernieres to commend him, something I have never done before; no author has even made me contemplate doing so until now. Some readers disliked the ending: I can understand their point of view, due to the sheer frustration and tears provoked, but there was a good twist of the plot, albeit somewhat cruel for the reader! Several times, I had to put the book down, to compose myself, that I may continue. I shouted! I roared with laughter! I sobbed! Once, I was crying for 10 minutes solid, laughing through my tears, in spite of myself. I have SO much to say about "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", but frankly, a) I have no words that can be compared to Mr. de Bernieres' and b) I would hate for someone to read my review, and to get their hopes up too much. Please, just read this book. It is a fabulous yarn!

Axel Heyst, the protagonist in Conrad's novel, Victory, makes a final statement to Davidson, a fellow seaman, just before he dies: "...woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love--and to put its trust in life!" This statement coming from a man whose whole life has been lived in isolation is remarkable. His father taught him that life was a Great Joke, that it was an illusion; that the best way to survive was to drift oneself into oblivion. But he found love in the person of Lena and it changed his perspective on living and was responsible for his change of heart as represented in the above-quoted statement. It's too bad that the novel could not have had a happy ending, but Conrad's view of the world probably would not permit it. I found the novel engrossing, somewhat melodramatic, yet vintage Conrad in its depiction of good and evil battling each other on the island of Samburan.

Victory is in many ways more fluid and readable than Conrad's more dense works (for comparison sake I'd previously read Heart of Darkness and Conrad's collection of short stories Tales of Unrest.) In Victory we have Conrad's standard fare of tragedy and man's isolation, but in this case wrapped in a tale of adventure and swept along by an uncharacteristically eventful plot.

Conrad's works have, of course, been reviewed to exhaustion; the only thing that I could hope to add would be my emotional response to the novel as a reader.

Personally through the majority of the novel I found Heyst to be the only truly well defined character. Much of what we learn of him is revealed indirectly through the observations of others, but somehow Conrad manages to use this method to flesh out a complex and intriguing figure in Heyst. The remanding characters, while interesting, serve mostly as scenery. The villains Jones and Ricardo, while interesting, struck me not so much as human characters but as forces of impending doom; they could have as easily been an approaching storm or a plague or any other brand of natural disaster. The girl Lena in the end is the one exception; perhaps the one thing that I found most gratifying is the way in which her character developed as the novel neared its climax.

The Penguin Classics version is well footnoted for those of you (like me) that would have missed some of the more obscure Biblical references and allusions to Paradise Lost. The notes also comment on the narrator's shifting viewpoint, and on revisions Conrad made to subsequent editions. For those readers interested in an insight into Conrad's thinking I'd recommend this version.

Victory is the best of the handful of Conrad novels I have read (for reference sake, the others are Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Heart of Darkness, and Nostromo). For one thing, the other novels were much heavier in their narrative and descriptive content. As a result, I often suffered from mental imagery overload when plodding through a page-long paragraph. Victory has more dialogue, making it an easier read. Conrad's characters are always great, and the ones in this book are no exception. I also really liked the correlation between these characters and their environment. Heyst living in a serene yet isolated island matched his aloofness perfectly. As the book reaches its climax and tensions reach a boiling point, Conrad adds to this tension in godlike fashion, as the storm evinces the internal and external struggles occurring in Heyst. Of course, Conrad don't write no happy tales (sic), but in the end, I think that the title Victory was still very appropriate. This was an excellent read and one of the best novels I have read in a long time.

The Ideology of Life: The Foundation of Political Revolution and 21st Century Sustainability By Dr Joseph Palmer Roberts ISBN: 1-890456-02-0 In The Ideology of Life, Joseph Roberts defines two broad groups of people, the Maladaptors and the Adaptors. The former are the Systematized types who are the spoilers and the latter, those who are seeking something entirely new. Joseph Roberts sees that the underlying cultural ideology is primal in coercing the former behavior and way of thinking and insists that this factor is not generally appreciated. Thus, people continue plugging away at mis-aligned policies and ways of life detrimental even to themselves. While familiar in a general manner with most of Joseph Robert's positions, certainly the support material and concepts he holds are more detailed and further reaching than I usually see expounded. I see the value of this book, not only in educational terms - as it is targeted at those in the Maladaptor sector - who will be reluctant to read it - but for those activists and thinkers who are trying to do something about the mis-directed circumstance of the human being today. Here is a lot of information and a comprehension of processes. The most receptive audience of course is the already converted, but isn't this always the case! Here, those on the brink of a universal change, likely because of personal suffering which causes them to begin a rethink for the matter is coming from a place beyond their own immediate control - the System reverting to default. In this way The Idealogy of Life will help turn the tide in the favour of the Adaptors. Beyond that it appears Joseph Roberts writing has all the elements of a world-wide manifesto for a political entity that takes as its focus the entirety of the problems which, implicating all people's on their own doorstep, originate elsewhere. This points at the multi-national corporation, the supporting industrial and military complex and the power holders of today who refuse to give an inch or assist in the furthering of real democracy. They only want a style of formal democracy where they retain control. Because of a fixed market - the Maladaptors would say free market' - the stance of the developing nations is negatively affecting economically distant countries as seen in the North America-South America fiascos of market domination and the suppression of home industries, which in turn - as detailed in the Ideology of Life - is breaking families everywhere. Quote: "Make no mistake about it, it is the negative economic impact that the globalization and centralization of the economy is having on families and communities, not the lack of family values' as the ruling elite want us to believe, that is the primary cause of family and community disintegration.". Ignoring what is plainly stated in the book may result in a general collapse where humanity has to start again. This means terrible world-wide suffering. So we had better use such as this writing as a basis for change in a linked grouping of political parties - or create them if they don't exist as Joseph Roberts assumes - across the world to begin affecting the kind of root changes delineated in The Ideology of Life. A worthy read that is more than timely; that is almost too late... Tony Henderson, Chairman, Humanist Association of Hong Kong, and Asia Zone Representative of the Humanist International.

The revealed truth becomes obvious to the reader only after one has had time to digest all that the author is saying. Even though the ideas presented are controversial, it is the controversial nature of those ideas that make the book very interesting reading. Dr. Roberts is obviously a leading thinker on the subject of 21st century sustainability. His vision of a sustainable future is compelling. His suggested path to that future (a political-ideological revolution) is both compelling and controversial. I embrace that vision, if not the entire path, and urge others to fully understand and think about what he is saying. This book should be mandatory reading for all students, politicians and environmentalists. In fact, it should be mandatory reading for any person who is interested in using the democratic process to create a better world. -- M. Jones.

"The Ideology of Life" is unique in its field at simultaneously incoorporating a deep look at the causes of the Western world's accumulating crises, with a rational and detailed outline of solutions to our crises. He accomplishes his goal of instigating cultural change by presenting this information in a style that allows an average reader to fully and easily grasp the implications of the processes. His formula for cultural change remains within the framework of the capitalist infrastructure, a goal usually overlooked by writers of this calibur in the field of political revolution. Few writers present criticism this extensive and answer it with this level of detail in novel and practical solutions capable of being understood by the majority of people. This book presents a balanced paradigm shift.

I happened to mention to a few colleagues the other day that I was reading Robert Conquest's "The Great Terror". This drew blank looks. I amplified somewhat, referencing Stalin, Yeshov, Molotov. More blank looks.

I grew up in a cold war household. My father was a something of a rarity, he was a right wing journalist who travelled widely in Russia bringing back a story which, in the 60s and 70s, was largely ignored by the media and everyone else. He knew then what we all know now, that Russian communism was rotten to the core and was a house of cards teetering on abject collapse. Alas, but that house took decades to come down and so condemned a further generation or two to lives of quiet and unrelieved desperation and hopelessness.

What does our society know of this? A society that, in the case of America, can be convulsed with paroxysms of despair when a few thousand people died in a single tragic incident -- genuinely convinced that something without precedent has happened. The most common formulation we hear of this, is the common reference to September 11th as "the day our world changed". For heaven's sake -- there is now a Jenny Craig television advertisement in which a formerly fat person testifies that September 11th changed her world such that she decided to lose wait. Ye Gods.

But what exactly is it that changed? History, as my high school history teacher used to say, tailgates. Conquest tells us that Stalin and Molotov, during a "typical day at the office", would sign liquidation orders for THOUSANDS of innocent people by simply putting their signatures together with the word "liquidate" at the bottom of a sheaf of papers that contained the names. And then they would head for the cinema, a solid day's work done. All that appears to have changed is that moderns have forgotten the nightmares of yesterday. Each fresh outrage is treated as something unique, something personal, something without precedent. "The Great Terror" is an effective antidote to this type of thinking.

"The Great Terror" is a book that was available in the late sixties. It was, like my father, largely ignored. I had school chums who were Marxists. Teachers as well. They either denied the facts or more often, accepted what had happened on the principle that it was necessary to "break a few eggs to make an omelette". And so the regime which was to be responsible for murdering tens of millions of its own citizens, on a scale and in a cold blooded manner that rivals and even surpasses the more famous Hitlerian Holocaust, is ignored or forgotten.

In 1990, communism collapsed. My father, am embittered old cold warrior by then, took little pleasure from having been proven right. Conquest, however, took the opportunity to revise and expand his monumental book. Virtually everything he had written about was confirmed by the glasnost revelations - as he takes pains to demonstrate.

It is true that many of those who died in the execution cellars or the death camps deserved their fate. But the vast majority were innocent wives children, peasants teachers workers and writers. It is estimated that "every other family in the USSR had one of its members in jail". Stalin's purges gave rise to the unthinkable. A slave labour economy. Want to know why they beat us to space or how they got the Bomb so quickly? Well, among other things, they stole virtually all of our secrets and the had slave labour. On the theft of the West's secrets another must read is David Holloway's "Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939-1956".

Conquest writes quite well - he is also an accomplished poet. But the book is also something of a catalogue of horrors and he writes in what is at times a dismayingly dispassionate manner. He is somewhat relentless. As fact piles upon fact, outrage upon outrage we are led to say with each turn of the page, "Dear God in heaven, what fresh hell is this". But the horror is NOT lost on Conquest and he stands, almost alone, as our witness to those terrible times. If not in the pages of this book, then where will we learn the names of those who perished so many years ago. Virtually no one under the age of 40 really understands what went on.

Conquest's book needs to be read by all of us. And in particular those who think that the suicide attack on the WTC was something new; an event that "changed our world". Because it wasn't. ...

When I read the first edition of this book back during the Cold War, it was difficult to believe the quality of scholarship and research effort that Conquest demonstrated throughout this book, written while the KGB was still running amok. What most general histories dismissed with a few sentences or paragraphs as "millions died or were imprisoned", Conquest gave us the names, the chronology, and the results of Stalin's paranoid Reign of Terror. Now that the archives have become more accessible, Conquest is able to update his work and further illuminate this darkest period of Russian (and perhaps world) history. ANYTHING written by Conquest is worth reading if you want to understand the workings of 20th century Soviet politics and society.

Robert Conquest's The Great Terror, a Reassessment, is they definitive English language work on Stalin's purges. The book has had some criticism from the far left, but Conquest has been largely vindicated by the now open Soviet archives.
This book is largely dispassionate. Conquest resists the urge to excessively moralize. Instead, he treats his subject matter in largely chronological order, with a few diversions for background. The result is a detailed catalog of the horrors of the purges. The text relies on excerpts from the trail transcripts, and these are absolutely chilling taken in context of the result. Each trial is worse than the other. In fact, to some extent the trials are worse because of the sheer routine the purges degenerated intoforced confessions, self-betrayals, they all became commonplace. Society turned against itself, until you were not considered a responsible citizen unless you denounced somebody; turning on your neighbors, friends, even relatives became a method of insuring personal security and survival. This book is 'must' reading for anybody who wants to understand Stalinism and this period of the Soviet Union. The lessons learned should never be forgotten...