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I don't know if you can believe everything in this book. Jonas in his introduction and footnotes, states that some things were just not reported in the newspapers. When Avner and his buddies kill three Arabs in a church in Switzerland, and there are no news accounts, I wonder if this ever took place. Same with his buddies who were killed and the Athens KGB man, this might be fiction. Without knowing who Avner really is, this might be part true or even a novel.
All in all a great read on how Israel dealt with terrorism in the seventies. Israel put the fear of God in those who put fear in others. Just retribution.
Of particular interest to me was the weapons training recieved by the Israeli team who went after their targets. Using only .22 pistols, and occasionally no more than homemade slap-fire zipguns, they systematically tracked down and executed hardened terrorists. The level of training, focus and determination portrayed is something you have to read to believe.
It also gives me hope that there is a response to terrorism beyond the 'bomb it and pave it' strategy. Knowing that terrorists will be hunted down, no matter where they go, and killed in a grimy alley or a deserted tenement instead of in a blaze of glory may be a more effective approach to take.
I also appreciated the insight into the psyche of a trained assassin who wrestles with the mission he has been given, and watches as others around him begin to crack up from the strain. His account of how the lives of his fellow team members ended is a sobering picture of the biblical axiom that those who live by the sword die by it also.
If you can get your hands on this book, I would highly recommend it. It is a great story, comparable to any spy thriller and action novel you have picked up, but with the added bonus that it is true.
WHY MEN WON'T COMMIT: GETTING WHAT YOU BOTH WANT WITHOUT PLAYING GAMES provides a straight forward guide for frustrated women to enable their mate to find his feelings ("gut reactions") by altering her behavior. Before feminists scream "no Jane" chauvinism and machos play Tarzan, the key in Dr. Weinberg's help guide is to accept that the male is the "weaker sex" so that the stronger female must take charge by being the relationship caretaker reaching through the stereotype stud to his inner being. This is an easy to follow guide that wastes little if any space assisting frustrated women with solid advice.
Harriet Klausner
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The fictional and lovable hero, Marchus, a relative of the famous Hannibal, accompanies him on the Carthaginian campaign against Rome. I learned so much about Hannibal through this book, yet the majority of the plot involves other adventures that Marchus gets into. He has near escapes from bears, wolves, lions, treacherous tribesmen. In two instances, he escapes with the help of an elephant, and a raft in the subterranean reservoir of Carthage. This was fun stuff, and I am so impressed that this book I found, that is so old it doesn't even have a publication date in it, could be so delightful. Someone could make a great movie out of this!
A collection, by common usage and by operative definition, is an accumulation of objects for purposes of examination, comparison, study, display and viewing, and enjoyment. Private collections usually contain treasures only a chosen few can enjoy. Nelson has done every history enthusiast a real service by putting into literal publication this volume of Alamo images. They are, in a word, fascinating.
Though not as massive in its heft as the facsimile of Leonardo's "Leicester Codex," in format Nelson's volume could easily serve as a superb "coffee table" book. In it, one finds accounts, illustrative and written, of the Alamo's evolution throughout the centuries. Some of the artist's renderings are the author's own, and most of the photographic images are historic.
The most unique picture in the book might be the 1849 Alamo daguerreotype. It's unique mainly for two reasons: it's the first photographic image known to have been made in Texas - and it's the only known photograph of the Alamo Church before the now-iconic campanulate roof was added by the U.S. Army not long after the image was made. That there are a few people visible in the photo lends a special distinction - a human quality - to the image, even though we're seeing in it a literal freeze-frame of mid-19th-century time. That instant shows certainly not the battle that occurred there thirteen years before, or even a "reality" of daily life at the moment the photo was made: what it captures is essentially a brief view of one of history's "coffee breaks."
We should be thankful for the existence of this particular Alamo photo, and that George Nelson included it in this book. Made the very year Chopin died, the picture seems to cement the attachments that tie us to our own history. Historic photographic images like this one have certain primacies others do not, and only the most minimal reflection and effort reveal to us the important connections between the times of those photos and the corresponding people and events. As just one example, the first known photographic image ever made is a "heliograph" on a pewter panel by French lithographer Joseph Niepce. A view from his window at Gras, it took eight hours to expose, is primitive by any standards and lacks real detail. Nevertheless, that photographic image is still extraordinary: when it was made in 1826, Beethoven was still alive, with the mighty Missa Solemnis and the Ninth Symphony already two years behind him. There's no way to know that the 1849 Alamo daguerreotype has no hidden story: can anyone say that none of the people visible in that photo didn't actually witness the events of Sunday, March 6, 1836 from a safe point in or near the town of San Antonio de Bexar? Conjecture may be fruitless, but it's still fascinating.
The artist's speculative rendering of the 1836 Alamo compound, one of the finest in the book, has an odd detail. The southern main gate seems totally surrounded by a U-shaped fortification of earthworks and cannon, with two rather narrow doorways on the eastern side of the Galera (often referred to as the "Low Barracks") being the only visible means of ingress or outlet to and from the entire compound. It's conceivable the artist might be suggesting that at the time of the battle, entry and exit might have been effected via those two doorways, perhaps with the intent of maximizing protection of the compound under conditions of seige. This still leaves open certain questions about how larger apparati might have been brought in. Even if this unusual peculiarity was an oversight in the rendering - after all, nothing is "perfect" - it certainly doesn't invalidate the overall worth and quality of the book, just as a wrong note or two wouldn't invalidate an otherwise fine performance by a fine pianist.
Exemplified in Nelson's book is the "Show, don't tell" principle. The finest writers show us with prose; and as the skilled musician can "hear with his eyes" by reading a score, the finer artists can "tell" us with images rather than words. Resurrected in this book are conceptual renderings and actual photos of places in eras long gone. With such a wealth of illustrations, the book offers us a rare and fascinating opportunity for comparison and study of images that have a very direct Alamo connection.
Though there's much to learn from the written accounts given here, the images themselves are the mean feature of this book. And images - especially historic ones - can resonate with us as no written descriptions can.
...
I recently met Mr. Nelson at the Alamo gift shop. He was holding court, signing books and telling tales of Texas. Filling all the tourist with the "real" story of the Texas Revolution. He was sincere, knowledgeable, and seemed to really enjoy interacting with the crowd.
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Packer, in a beautiful amalgam of memoir and history, has written a book that has almost singlehandedly restored my relationship with the past and pointed my way to the future. While as a historical account it is spotty, and as a memoir it is sometimes dry, the heartfelt combination of these two styles has a vitality and immediacy I've never seen anywhere else.
His conclusions, while expansive, are also poignant, with a touch of desperation. In his consideration of the prospects of liberalism in this country, I am reminded of the Monty Python sketch about the parrot - "It's just resting!" - while at the same time I'm stirred by its undercurrent of optimism. His last few words ring in my ears: "We will have a more just society as soon as we want one."
If you sense that, like myself, you are a lost liberal that is trying to find your way in the world, this book is for you.
If you are a Rush Limbaugh dittohead who needs a clue as to what "liberal" really means, this book is for you as well.
Like Packer, my father was an academic at an elite university, and as a traditional liberal who voted for Adlai, he was shocked by what he saw during the late 1960s. On a personal level, I liked reading a book by a writer who likes the same authors I like - Saul Bellow (Humboldt's Gift), Christopher Lasch, Irving Howe et al. There is a passage in which Packer perfectly summarizes the thesis of Lasch's "Revolt of the Elites" - gated communities like the ones that dot my hometown in Southern California.
The only area where I would fault Packer's book is that he does not criticize the dogmatic, politically correct tone that liberalism took on during the late 1980s and early 1990s and which still haunts liberalism. What alarmed Packer's father was exactly that, and I'm afraid Packer only devotes one paragraph to it. Left liberalism has, I'm afraid, taken on a neo-Stalinist quality on some college campuses, viz, stealing copies of conservative campus newspapers which take politically incorrect stands on such issues as affirmative action. Liberals should decry that just as much as the depredations of the Right. David Horowitz shouldn't be the only one who claims the moral high ground on that issue. I don't know if Packer's father would be a neoconservative today, but he might have been, if he'd lived.
Aside from all that, I commend Packer's book. It is a decent, humane and intelligent work that says that there's still a place at the political table for liberalism, even for disheartened liberals like me!
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The early portion shows how DJ sound-system battles emerged in the early to mid '70s against the backdrop of a decaying Bronx, attracting youths to more or less impromptu parties in parks, streets, and playgrounds. Competition was fierce as to who had the loudest sound system and the best records, and tough security (gang members) was a necessity. One thing that gets disappointingly glossed over is how this copied what happened in Kingston, Jamaica ten years earlier. It was exactly the same: competing street sound systems, with competing DJs who would take the labels off records so spies couldn't find out what they were playing, gangs, violence-all the same. DJ Kool Herc, who lived in Jamaica until 1967, makes a fleeting reference to it, but that's all.
For the first few years, the DJs were the "stars" of the scene, offering an alternative to disco music. But as DJs started to learn how to manipulate their turntables to extend the "beats" from a song, eventually MCing started to become more vibrant. What had initially only been calls to the crowd to keep the party's energy up evolved into more and more sophisticated catchphrases, freestyle rhymes, and soon MCs were writing and memorizing lines. Again, it's a bit puzzling that no mention is made of Jamaican"toasting" which emerged in the mid to late '60s. This was the practice of DJs who would talk and rhyme over the records they played, and soon progressed to a point where they would have instrumental versions of popular songs laid down for them to rhyme over-often in a boasting style, talking about how they were the "#1", "champion", and so on. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
The other two legs of hip-hop culture are given somewhat less space. The material on breakdancing (aka "b-boying" to the true old-schoolers) seems to indicate that the "b-boy " crews filled a kind of competitive void left by the waning of street gang culture. And while there was some of this dancing at the parties, music was the focus, rather than the dancing-which didn't get big until the early '80s. Graffiti, on the other hand, was clearly a prominent feature of the NYC landscape from the early '70s on. But, what's most interesting here is that while the graffiti artists often went to parties and knew some of the music people, the idea that graffiti was part of a larger hip-cop culture didn't emerge until late in the game. It wasn't until the downtown Manhattan art scene started getting interested that the music, breakin', and graffiti were packaged-by the white art scene-a unified "street" culture.
The book is lavishly put together, with tons to look at-however, the oral history structure isn't the greatest. From a historical perspective, it's great to hear all these unknown voices from the past telling about their roles, but at times it does get tedious. Especially when it comes to details on how so and so met so and so and that led the the formation of this or that. Even more so late in the book, when record companies get in the mix, and then all kinds of resentments come pouring out. There could have been a little more editing, as well as a little more context to fill in some of the gaps. For example, there are a lot of references to gangs being involved in the early scene, and shootings, and violence, but there's never any unified discussion of it. The same for the role of drugs in the scene, at one point someone (I think Spoonie Gee) talks about how everyone was totally coked up all the time, and that's something that could have been explored a little more. In any event, it's still a great book for anyone with an interest in the days of hip-hop, giving proper space and voice to all the unknowns who deserve to be known.
Book has pretty good historical context and the stories flow together. Much props to mr.Ahearn and mr. Fricke. Only giving it 4stars because I'm still halfway in the book. YES YES Y'ALL.
Amazing pix and stories.
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