Dippel explores a lesser known aspect of the struggle to bring the Nazi regime to its knees in his account of wartime espionage. He provides keen insight into a realm of World War II history which is rarely touched upon. Follow these two brave and elusive men as they search for Nazi secrets that may gain the allies an advantage!

The better book you have

This is a wonderful bedtime story book. My children enjoy having this book read to him every night, so much so that it is becoming a bit tattered. The illustrations are very good and the story holds a little one's attention. It is a calming book for bedtime. I would highly recommend this book.

John Vivian's book provides practical no nonsense information and advice on efficient fireplace design including many interesting historical examples. It also provides extensive advice on wood burning stoves and how to manage your wood supply. For example 5 acres of softwood trees will provide sufficient wood for a household including cooking and heating requirements, in perpetuity. There are detailed designs for fireplaces that will burn as efficiently as most enclosed wood heaters. A great book for the homesteader and environmentally conscious wood burner.

The poet shows incredible "versatility and poise" in his examination of consciousness against the backdrop of the Central and North Okanagan's exquisite scenery.

Eliot-like in its interiority (bad pun), the poem has a narrative drive (another pun) akin to Wayman's poetry.

One of the few poets of substance in BC.

I'm an industrial technology teacher and have been looking for a book for my woodworking class that was not only informative but also "fun" to read. This book explains everything you need to know to begin woodworking. I also learned lots of small tidbits that I haven't read from any other book. The author has been writing wood technology books for at least as long as I've been teaching but this is by far his best effort. I'm not sure how it worked but he combined his experience with the people from wood magazine and the result is a very visual book. Lots of good illustrations to make key points. It has seperate cahpters for each wood joint and well as the "key" components for constructing them. (The best descriptions I've seen)In conclusion, it's the best "1" book I've seen about woodworking and it's processes. If you have any questions feel free to email me.

I got this book from the library for my 3-year old sons who love zebras. While the text is clearly for older kids (9 and older or so), the book is full of illustrations and photograhs and lots of information even younger kids can enjoy. One son sleeps with this book and never tires of looking at the pictures. He points to parts of the text near the pictures he likes, asks me to read, and he sits captivated.

We've also gotten other books in the Zoobooks series from the library and they are always a big hit! I finally bought the zebra and the gorilla (two favorites). If your kids are interested in animals, they'll love any of these books.

In this reenactment of the ancient Western myth of Faustus, Thomas Mann tells us the story of German composer Adrian Leverkuhn, a man obsessed with themes of mathematics, theology and music. Leverkuhn is intent on composing the greatest and most original work of music ever thought of, and so, in a tiny village in Italy, expresses his disposition to sell his soul to the devil in order to achieve that. He gets what he wants, and for a number of years he works at another village, in Germany, until he achieves his dream, at a cost so terrible that in the end you will feel the creeps about it.

Intertwined wiht this story, written during WWII, are reflections of another selling of the soul to the devil, this time not by an ambitious individual but by a tormented people, the Germans, humiliated after WWI and in the midst of utter decadence, economic, political and moral. The devil is personified by a man called Adolf Hitler, who promises the Germans a thousand years of power and richness, if only they will support him in destroying the Western civilization, the Jews and international peace. And price the pay they do, but somehow you can not trust the devil and in the end, after the most gruesome conflagration in history, destruction is all the Germans get.

This is not an easy read. It takes concentration and a willingness to digest deep reflections on the subjects mentioned above, like the relationships between mathematics and music, sexuality and theology, and the reflex of the ancient myth on the lives of Leverkuhn (the prostitution of art) and Nazi Germany (the prostitution of hope). However, it is an exceptional work of art and of modern thought, so it is very rewarding.

This is considered by some to be Mann's last great work. Great it is, though perhaps not the monumental triumph equal to the Magic Mountain. This novel is a Faustian story--its hero is the German composer Adrian Leverkuhn, a musician who becomes so tormented with his music and so obsessed with creative genius that he makes a pact with the devil and bargains away his soul for twenty-four years of unparalleled musical ability.

As always, Mann's work is full of philosophical and theological debates, and there is also a good deal of musical discussion here as well. Adrian's deal with the dark one is a metaphor for Germany in the period during and between the two great World Wars. Like his homeland, Adrian becomes obsessed with power and glory, and revolutionizes music to such a great extent that the outside world is repulsed by it. In the end, like Germany, his power and glory come to an end, and as Serenus (the narrator of the story) sits writing in the midst of the allied invasion of Germany, Adrian is finally called to pay his debt.

Mann's narrative is always very compelling, and this is no exception. And, as usual, there is much deeper meaning than what is perceived at the surface, and the poignant and important message of the novel is the danger of becoming over-greedy for power, and of falling victim to one's own ambitions (as both Adrian and Germany do). Adrian loses his ability to love, and he can never regain it, not even when he ultimately seeks redemption. This is a great spin on the Faustian concept, and also a very powerful novel about the effects of the German Reich during World Wars 1 and 2.

Study the mind of a genius and the soul of a mad man. Witness the depths of depression and heights of creation with demonic infection. In Thomas Manns epic rewrite of Goethes Faust we meet a musical genius through the academic eyes of his best friend. A fascinating and disturbing biografy telling the story of Adrian Leverkuhn whose lifespan was shortened by intellectual exhaustion and led towards distanced insanity.

The novel is written during world war II, and the storyteller condemnes the German aggression and nationalsosialism, while he slowly paints a picture of the growth our genius experiences during his development from innocent childhood towards phsycological corruption and breakdown.

A definite read for the "depths of mind"-oriented.

Considered by many to be the greatest German novelest of the 20th Century, Thomas Mann, in his first great novel, Buddenbrooks, chronicles the life and decline of what must be taken to be a typical 19th Century German middle class family. The Buddenbrooks, a conservative and traditional mercantile family (Johann Buddenbrooks, the family patriarch, sells grain for a living), live in a smallish Northern German town in which they, among other characters in the book, figure prominently as both local notables and political players. However, while this is a family chronicle that is reputed to mirror the joys and travails of Mann's own family, what is glaringly absent from Buddenbrooks is any concern or mention of, other than one in passing, any of the great events which forged the fate of modern Germany. While more than likely an intensional omission on the part of Mann, an omission that may be a telling signal to the reader of the insularity of upper middle class life in 19th Century Germany, the chonicle itself seems to suffer somewhat from the fact that the family seems to be relatively unaffected by the wars, the plebian revolutions of the 1940s--or by the great Franco Prussian war of 1870. Beginning in the 1830s, the family sees its business rise in the wake of the chaos brought by Napoleon 25 years earlier: children are born, grow up into different fates and pursuits, and this mirror of the mercantile classes of German hints at the wonders of an essentially modern era that since has been hailed as a national renaissance. Fashionable, comfortable, concerned with reputation, the Buddenbrooks family is not all that unlike many of the upper class families in America. Like the rise of a new nobility that has come to bear upon the ages in the footsteps of industrialization and the democratic impulse, the Buddenbrooks chronicles reveals just how modern in spirit Germany was in an era its people dominated the European spirit.

What carries this novel is its writing. Mann's style is exceptionally malleable: The descriptions are not only evocative, they are often powerfully emotional, full of the spirit of the times and revealing in themselves of the 19th Century German character. The dialogue is impeccable, the characters memorable and, like all family chronicles, the mundane events are not only entertaining and often funny, they are universal as well. All in all, Buddenbrooks was a much more rewarding book to read than I had expected.

LIKE Goethe, to whom he devoted a novel ("The Beloved Returns") and several thoughtful essays, Thomas Mann published his first and most enduringly popular novel at the age of 25. Unlike "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (1774), Goethe's brief epistolary account of the frustrations of life and love leading to the troubled hero's suicide, Mann's "Buddenbrooks" chronicles four generations in the history of a prosperous North German bourgeois family.

The saga picks up the tale of the Buddenbrooks in 1835 at the peak of their financial prosperity and family stability. Old Johann Buddenbrook, son of the founder of the family firm, has just moved the family and the business into one of the most handsome houses in town. By the time the novel ends 42 years later, the aging yet still spirited Tony is almost the only surviving member of the family. Her parents and grandparents, as well as Thomas and a younger sister, have died. Christian is confined to an asylum, and the only male heir is dead. The house has been sold and the firm liquidated. In the course of hundreds of pages we have witnessed a succession of marriages, births, divorces and deaths punctuating the decline of the initially robust family -- a decline brought about by the weakening of business acumen and ethics as the family succumbs to the enticements of wealth, with its inevitable concomitants of sickly religiosity, artistic inclinations and disease.

"Buddenbrooks" constitutes a remarkable achievement for a first novel. Incisive characterizations are achieved through a witty use of German dialects and the adaptation of leitmotif techniques borrowed from Wagner. And the fast-paced narrative is tightly controlled by a structure evident in the parallel between the first chapter and the last: both take place on rainy evenings in the fall, and both feature Tony Buddenbrook in conversations about religion -- first with her rationally skeptical grandfather and at the end with her aged teacher, who has always waged the good fight "against the onslaughts of reason." "Buddenbrooks" encounters a work that is close in style, vocabulary, idiom and tone to the writer's intent and can thus appreciate more fully the monumental achievement of the artist as a young Mann, this is a powerful read!

I read this book for an Independent Study on the works of Thomas Mann. Although I found the beginning a tad slow, it soon picked up. For a book written so long ago, there is a lot in it that applies to life today. In addition, the characters are highly developed, and come alive on the page. You actually CARE about what happens to this family. Thomas Mann wove in so much symbolism and made everything connect so wonderfully, this book, although long, is sure to become a favorite. I would recommend this book to everyone. I have always been an avid reader, but this was my first real reading of Thomas Mann. He does not disappoint.

I really wanted to love this book when I picked it up. I had just finished a truly wonderful book, The Roaches Have No King, and this one was continually compared to that one. While it was inventive and different, I found it ultimately unsatisfying as a reading experience.

The positive: this book takes a very interesting approach as everything is described by use of olfactory impression. The story is interesting at times, and compelling near the end. It is, like the main character, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, unrelenting in its drive toward its conclusion. The ending even makes sense given the preceding storyline.

The problem: With those positives, there is a big caveat. It is very hard to care at all for the character, and even in his evil, he is ultimately boring. Many times I felt like saying to the author, "Okay, I get it." If you need to have some feeling for character to like a book, avoid this one.

This book will appeal to the reader looking for a strictly different reading experience because of its unique approach. I would say that if that is what you want, you should try the one I already mentioned, namely The Roaches Have No King by Daniel Evan Weiss, which is superior in many ways to Perfume. It, too, has elements that will disturb some readers, but it has a good heart (although somewhat demented).

A gruesome tale told with consumate grace. Jean-Baptiste Grenouille takes us on an journey through the sights and smells of the decadent 18th-century France of King Louis the Beloved. Possessed of a virtually autistic brilliance, Grenouille has an abnormally sharp sense of smell and nothing else. Like many a prodigy, he is bored by the everyday applications of genius, and instead sets off in search of the holy grail of the perfumer's art: the creation of a scent which could induce love of the person wearing it. For Grenouille, murder is just a not particularly important aspect of the destillation process.

The book is crafted in rich imagery and with biting irony, especially when describing the book's unusually vivid supporting cast. Indeed, the supporting characters are in my opinion one of this book's strongest aspects and Süskind makes brilliant use of them. Where other books leave their eventual fate a mystery, Süskind wrings a few more pages out of each one at their writing-out, briefly taking us a few days or years into the future to witness the often horrorous endings met by those whose paths cross that of the perfumer.

I would like to say that I have read this amazing book twice.I have known about it on a Nirvana's leader (Kurt Cobain)interview and there was written that he could not stop reading this book and it was the theme for a song called Scentless Apprentice.I was really impressed by this fact as I am a great Nirvana's fan.Firstly,the place that Grenouille was born called my attention. It was in a dirty city without any hope because of its misery.Suskind created an atmosphere that is very unusual for me.The boy was born with a gift and for this reason he could seduce anyone.It is an excentric book,different from all I have ever read or imagined.Some friends of mine have read the book and were impressed too.Grenouille is not a human as we are.He has no feelings.He is cold,physically weak,weird,but he knows exactly what he want and knows how to get it and does not matter if somebody gets hurt in this process.The book made me think a lot about what caused the author to write it,where has he had such idea.