this is one of the most important books available in contemporary photography. i admire it for its bold reality, honesty and shockingly moving images. Anyone who takes documentary photo seriously should own this book. there is no pomp or frill here just the pain, disapointments and celebrations of life and death.

Goldin is the one of the most talented and prolific photographers of the 90's. Her work, which is based mainly on friends and lovers, is painful and delicate, striking a nerve in anyone who looks. It shows the beauty and horror of everyday life, sometimes bringing a tear to your eye. This book is worth every dollar.

Hans Werner Henze has led a rich,full musical life. He had good vital instincts from the start,opting to foster high level contacts within the musical institutions in Europe East and West. The West has served him well first with early operatic productions,a succession of unbroken commissions and latter recordings by premiere ensembles. He turned away from his own post-war generations quest for a new musical language along the lines of serialized materials and post-Webern gesturing. Instead he found his own voice in a lyrical eclecticism that continually searches for differing dramatic situations, as in painters Gericault's "The Raft of Medusa". This autobiography reveals an active life of schedules,concerts, rehearsals,assisting in teams for the productions of his works, discussions and conducting. Along the way Henze stops to chat with friends for inspiration and support and news,he even pays respects when necessary at the funerals of Auden or composer Luigi Nono. We also find Henze in Cuba with revolutionaries And in East Germany with his friend Paul Dessau. Leftism for Henze is odd, a man who sacrificed nothing was still tauted by the primary venues of the West. But we learn of Henze's continual quest for compositional materials and how politics enters this formula no matter what ideology he happens to share.Also how each work inhabits its own life. His politics does extend to going out on a limb for comrades, as when composer Isang Yun was abducted by the Korean government from Germany to return to prison and torture. Henze assembled a forum for his release in Europe. He also made an arrangement of a song by Theodorakis also a victim of imprisonment. For the musician this autobiography makes fascinating reading on Henze's views, how his music is performed, who is the most sensitive conductor, what composer he admires, how he organizes festivals and venues.I must say I never warmed to his music.

A beautifully illustrated and well-designed book, the pictures and stories elucidate the feelings of wonder and transcendence that surround the crop circle phenomenon. The authors balance their presentation by including true accounts from some of England's leading circle makers. The section on natural laws and geometry is also original and informative.
(Simeon Hein is the author of Opening Minds: A Journey of Extraordinary Encounters, Crop Circles, and Resonance).

Three parts to this book--(1) Major allies of the Germans (2) Smaller air forces (3) Individuals from other countries in Luftwaffe service. The opening of Eastern European archives allowed the author to give comprehensive coverage of air force histories and operations little known in the west. Interesting anecdotes from pilots. Balanced accounts--author gives credit where it is due, which is unusual for a German author. Good selection of photos. Well-rounded bibliography. I found the Italian contribution to Axis (and Allied) efforts the most interesting, especially raids on Gibraltar. Highly recommended study.

The author goes with his wife and friends on holiday back to where he was stationed as a young soldier some 20 years ago. He meets his old sweetheart again, and his son, who he didn't know about. During this he has some flashes back to his experiences as a soldier. It seems the author tries to say something about all that in an uninteresting way, or maybe it's a strictly german post-war-theme. Why did they translate it?

This was a somewhat interesting book from a different point of view then we usually get in by American or English authors works. The details are interesting and not usually reported. I think the book could have benefited from either better editing or a straight chronological method in presenting the story. I also know that when books are translated you usually miss out on some of the more subtle points the author was trying to make and I find the writing is usual a bit more wooden as you have with this transcript. For me personally I would have liked more detail of when he was a soldier and less about the post war trip to France. It was probably the only politically correct way to publish the work, but I felt that it was experiences that did not help the book. If you read a lot on World War Two then this is an interesting view into the German solder. If you are a casual reader then I would look a little further.

"Gods of War" is one German soldiers autobiograhy of his experiences during the Second World War interwoven with his recollections of a post war trip with family and friends to the French country side were he was stationed for a time during the war. The book is indeed two stories, the first is his experiences as soldier of the Waffen-SS. The second is his trip to France where he discovers that he has a son now in his twenties that he fathered during the war. Woltersdorfs story as a soldier begins with him being talked out of joining the navy and enlisting at age 17 as a private in the Waffen SS. What follows is a succession of back and forth recollections of training,combat,refitting, return to combat and perpetual movement back and forth across Europe and time. For anyone familier with the German use of the Waffen-SS as a 'fire brigade' this movement from France to Russia then back to France then back to the Russian Front is well known but to a new reader it gets quite confusing as it is told from the ground level by Woltersdorf. Throw in the rushes to the present and back to the war years the book can become rather difficult. The books strong point is Woltersdorfs own story of soldiering, the training regimen, the feelings of isolation and loneliness in the vast expanses of Russia. His impressions of the many 'adopted Germans,' men from areas that were incorporated into the Third Reich offer an interesting portrait of the men of the Das Reich division. His post war experiences of imprisonment in liberated concentration camps for being a member of the Waffen-SS relay all the bitterness and feelings of betrayal that can be imagined. Indeed if properly edited these experiences could form a much better book on their own. As it stands the book relies to much on a stream of consciousness kind of story telling. A reader needs to keep track of the authors two stories and this takes the pleasure out of the reading. The "Gods of War" contributes a first hand account of life in the Das Reich division during the war years. It does, albeit, in an awkward way, tell one man's story and gives the reader the feel, elan and fear of combat soldiering on the Eastern Front from the German point of view. I think better editing could have made this two star book a three star winner.

It seems like that most readers who try to understand Balthasar might want to have a structural grasp of his aesthetic-dramatic-logic trilogy in his own words. However, the selections are presented in traditional Catholic categories of God, Jesus, Church etc. which usually cannot easily convey the main thrust of the theologian's project. I bought this book together with Edward Oakes' and I found myself spending all my time reading Oakes' intro rather than this reader. This book is a complete disappointment for me.

In its original German, this book filled an essential need among the reading public. Unfortunately, the English version hobbled itself with a clumsy translation, one that a general reader unfamiliar with the Tuetonic style of the translators will have trouble deciphering. Moreover, the translators also decided to drop several of the essays, under the pretext (in the 1980's!) that some of those essays would "soon" be appearing in English. But by now, that is true of almost all of the selections chosen in the Reader. And yet, the presence of essays and selections scattered all over the place is precisely the readon for a Reader in the first place! Now the publishers have brought out the book again, unchanged and still truncated and abridged. The introductory essay is worth reading, but the the reading public would be better advised to read some of Balthasar's own shorter works that summarize his thought rather than trying to make sense of this densely and woodenly translated Reader.