This book is a fine example of what WWII was being fought with. Just a normal person doing heroic things for defence of his country. I was unable to put the book down until I had read the whole thing. The author put in some lighter moments at just the right time, because you will find yourself in the war with him while you are reading.
I was impressed, and have added this book to my library of books to keep forever!

Although history and aviation buffs will definitely enjoy this book, there was so much more to it. This book really makes you think about the value of life. Many, many people died in this book, from training accidents, falling off boats in the ocean, getting hit by "friendly fire", as well as getting hit in combat. Yet nobody complained. Lives were expendable for the cause. And for some pilots, just the act of flying was worth dieing for. The act of living seemed to become more important, and people seemed to live life to the fullest in spite of the troubling times.

Don't get me wrong, this wasn't some deep, intense book. It was also very entertaining. I learned a lot about early aviation, and the early part of the war between England and Germany. But at the end of it I got a much better inside view about what it was like to live during World War II, and to enjoy the life we're given.

From the first page to the last, I couldn't put the book down. I never gave it much thought what a Fighter Pilot went through during the war. An outstanding read for all history buffs.

As the title suggests, Reitlinger follows for the reader the inception and budding organization of the SS and other police or civil branches within an increasingly-menacing police state in Germany. The reader must read carefully through the first fifth of the book to avoid confusing names and relationships, but ultimately the actors are well defined. Every conversation or statement from the main characters is routinely cited from firsthand accounts. The book includes an extensive bibliography and a biography of dozens of characters in the upper echelons of the Nazi military, SS and civil bureaucracy. Reitlinger weaves a remarkable tapestry of places, names and events until we have a better understanding of the inner workings of the Nazi government, their secret orders of exterminating Jews and Slavs and other "sub-human" races, the often public denials of the concentration camps by members of the highest rank, the contests for power under Hitler, and the seductions and betrayals between officers and agents(like a nest of vipers) at the heart of the German Reich. An important scholarly addition to any WWII library, this book details the most insidious plots and conversations among history's most brutal mass murderers, the corruption of their officers, and the incredible processes of armies within armies, states within the state, and secret intelligence forces within the police and other ministries.

Well-written, consise, and highly credible.

This book provides a very accurate description of the facts, the tactics and the people who ruled the destinies of the Third Reich. The story of the SS is in fact the story of Nationalsocialism. The author displays a wide and precise knowledge of the events, and offers a complete vision of it, both global and detailed. The analysis spreads from the NSDAP takeover, the rise and fall of the Sturmabteilung (SA),the development of the Schutztaffeln (SS) and the Intelligence Services before the war, to the II World War, the role of Waffen SS (Armed SS) and the finally apocalypse which came over Germany, all through the period 1922-1945. It's really worth while, for instance, the acute descriptions of the RSHA (Reichsicherheitshauptamt-Reich Main Security Office), the SD (Sicherheitsdienst-Security Service) as well as its transformations through the war, the role they played with the SA in overthrowing constitutional legality of the Weimar Republic. In this book you can also realize who is who in Nazi Germany, the account of all the dramatis personae such as Himmler, Heydrich, Kaltenbrunner, Muller, Schellenberg, Ohlendorf,..., as well as the Waffen SS generals, their rank and position in the widest and most complex totalitarian organization ever created, except perhaps the KGB. To draw a conclussion, a wonderful exposition of what the SS was in its origins and what it became: a Staat in Staat, a State inside a State. Definitely, a non replaceable book.

It's been over thirty years since Gerald Reitlinger's 'The SS. Alibi of a nation, 1922-45' was published and yet it still remains one of the most informative and important books on the subject of Nazi Germany and the SS. In 1945-6 the Nuremburg court ruled that the SS was a criminal organization and membership itself was a crime. Reitlinger argues that this was a mistake- in criminalizing this one organization, the court all but absolved the other bureacratic agencies that contributed no less assiduously to the 'Final Solution,' and provided a nation that willingly followed Hitler with the ultimate scapegoat. Throughout the book the reader is introduced to lesser known, though no less responsible, members of Hitler's Reich- Martin Luther, Walter Schellenberg, and Gottlieb Berger are just some of the every-day bureacrats that allowed such terror to reign supreme in Germany for twelve years. Truly a great work of history.

One does not need a mathematical background to follow the narrative of J.L.Heilbron's THE SUN IN THE CATHEDRAL but a knowledge of high school geometry will probaly help. Dr. Heilbron was aware of the "geometrically challenged" reader when he developed his book and has written the text for the lay person. Heilbron received the Watson Davis Prize for Public Understanding of Science for his work DILEMMAS OF AN UPRIGHT MAN. The average reader without a fear of math should be able to follow the ABCs in the text and link them to the ABCs in the diagrams. It took me several weeks to read the text, not because it is so difficult, but because it is filled with information and I had to take breaks to absorb what I had read.

THE SUN IN THE CATHEDRAL is nothing less than the story of how the Christian Church parented modern science and technology. Although the ignorant will persist in accusing the Church of being a roadblock, the truth is that the impetus and sustenance of scientific exploration in the West came from the church, and although one might call it an unholy alliance, Christian ideology and Science have moved in lockstep ever since. Heilbron predicts that eventually Gallileo, who was sponsored by the Church, will be cannonized a saint.

Why does this happen? Dr. Rock who invented the modern birth control pill was Roman Catholic. He developed the pill to help RC women control their fertility in a manner acceptable to the Church that had to do with the timing of the release of the ova. His method was not accepted by the Church, but nevertheless the use of Rock's pill has led to falling birth rates in the U.S. and other Catholic countries (U.S. is 40 percent RC) and a subsequent decline in the poverty rates. (Economic development is important, but per capita household income is affected by fertility levels.) Maybe he will become a saint someday.

How did the Church become interested in the study of time? The means of communication were slow in the early days of the Church and this slowness led to a requirement for advance knowledge of the moveable feast dates which the Church passed on to its far-flung parishes. The problem of determining when these dates would occur lay with determining when Easter would occur. The moveable feasts of the Church year fall in accordance with Easter (i.e. Chistmas is a fixed date, Pentacost is a moveable feast that follows Easter by 40 days, Good Friday and Lent preceed Easter by a fixed numer of days. Easter is calculated relative to the Spring Equinox which is the point at which the day and the night (solar) are exactly equal.)

To address the problem of measuring the Spring Equinox, the church employed bright young men (like Gallileo) and gave them the resources they needed including church facilities. THE SUN IN THE CHURCH is their story and the story of those who followed them who were sponsored by the Reformed Church and Royalty of both RC and Reformed persuasion.

The book suggests that even as one problem was solved, yet another arose (you need the geometric diagrams to understand the intricacies of these problems as well as their solutions). First there was the problem of finding a structure large enough to create a BIG sundial, since sundials were useful for figuring out the length of the day. This led to the use of cathedrals and other very large public buildings where even today a numer of gnomen (little windows that admit sunlight) and meridians (sun dial like stuctures inside the building) can still be found. Inside these cathedrals, pillars and other obstacles had to be overcome and how this was done is ingenious.

Obstacles to the precision of measurment led to discussions about the height of the terrain where a building was situated, the thickness of the earth under the building (some sank), the shape of the earth (affected the location of the center or apex of the triangle of measurement), the distance of the moon from the earth and the sun, etc., etc.

Most importantly, a discussion ensued about whether or not the world was heliocentric. If you start from a false premise such as the sun revolves around the earth, no matter how carefully you conduct your calculations the results will be wrong. The issue of heliocentricity proved a big stumbling block. In the end, the records of the scientists who said the earth moved about the sun were preserved (else Heilbron couldn't have written his book) but for a long time the Church held that the sun revolved around the earth, and anyone who said differently was speaking heretically. Some really funny compromises occurred, probably because intelligent church men knew they were not necessarily correct (some of the scientists were Jesuits or former clergy). And, at one point England and Italy were on two different calendars because the English refused to accept anything Rome devised, even if it was CORRECT!!.

The study of time led naturally to the study of space and both led to global explorations. The Jesuits (grey friars) traveled the globe and impressed their new converts with the science (magic) of the West. The Domincans came to the New World with the Conquistadors and recorded the science and magic of the inhabitants.

Protestants continued the tradition of exploration which led to the discovery of longitude. Seems the earth is not the same diameter every where. A team measuring the diameter of the earth in Peru was attacked by local Indians who thought the Europeans with sticks were lunatics or socerers. Ditto the Appenines in Italy. "Who would think Italian countymen could behave like savages" remarked one scientist. Geodetic surveys and even the GPS system in use today are descended from this research.

THE SUN IN THE CATHEDRAL is a fabulous book, and one every one who wants to gain a better understanding of the world around us should read. This book cancels the mistaken notion that the church tried to block science. This book is about how science and ideology interacted and framed the world we live in with "Western" ideas. And, as Heilbron points out, even in our so-called advanced state of knowledge censorship is alive and well. "All of which will be unpleasantly familiar to observers of the operation of political correctness in contemporary universities." Reason and science are threatened today by a much more insidious enemy.

J.L. Heilbron's The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories is a beautifully illustrated, finely written exposition of how the Roman Church used sacred space to perform astronomy. The most sacred day in the Church calendar is Easter, established as the Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. As it turns out, this was an astoundingly difficult day to calculate, especially years in advance. As a result, in the Middle Ages the celebration of Easter "drifted" from the true date; the Church found itself commemorating Christ's resurrection on the "wrong" Sunday, a matter of grave concern. To solve this problem, astronomers determined that large buildings - most ideally churches themselves - could be made into solar observatories with a light opening at the apex and a meridian line placed on the floor. By this device, Church-supported scientists could observe the sun's precise position and movement with reference to the meridian line, and thereby make needed Easter (and other) calculations.

I confess that I am mathematically challenged, and much of this book is devoted to fairly detailed geometric and trigonometric proofs. I had no choice but to "bleep" over these sections. Heilbron's prose and argument are clear, entertaining, and persuasive, and I felt I lost none of his key points by needing to skip the proofs. Everything about Church history and astronomy in the Church - except a chapter about the unfortunate treatment of Galileo - was entirely new to me, and I was absolutely enthralled. For those who have read Dava Sobel's Galileo's Daughter, this is a useful second perspective on the Church and astronomy.

I'm a professor of mathematics, but I'm also a "closet historian". This book is a great work of scholarship both in terms of history and mathematics. It's true that if you don't know much about spherical astronomy, you may get a bit of shell-shock, but why don't you pick up Kaler: "The Ever-changing Sky" or Evans: "The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy" to learn the basic. The you can go back to Heilbron's book to appreciate it fully. Believe me, it's worth the effort!
PS. One of my students has written a mathematical supplement to this book. It's available on my home page. (Amazon won't let me give you the URL in the review, but just do a quick searh on the web or look at the "äbout me section".) So far it only covers the first few chapters, but we hope to be able to expand on it later. I hope some of you may find it useful.

I have yet to travel the Trans-Siberian, but when/if I do, I will take this along. It is well organized and has good basic info on both the planning particulars of the train (visas, tickets, weather) and points of interest along the way. My only complaint is that it has quite a few grammatical and spelling errors, which make me wonder about their attention to detail on more important facts.

I found this book to be of great help in planning my Trans-Siberian trip. It is organized and contains information that will definitely be indispensible along the way: basic translations of common terms, general info on departure cities other than Russia and things I would never think of adding to a travel guidebook.
I would recommend this guide to anyone aspiring to travel by train in Russia.
J

It does not cover adequately the dangers of the Mongol/Russian boarder that I'm told is a paradise for the bandit hybred race of bandit/Khan/Slav comprising the area that I will be visiting in seven days. Good luck fellow travlers! May you find what I hope to.

I believe this book was very well-written and fair in its evaluation of Ukrainian history. I based these comments in part on my Ukrainian descent; and my travels and discussions with Ukrainian citizens. The book does a better(and excellent) job of reviewing fairly recent events in Ukrainian politics and demographics; than it does in reviewing Ukrainian history - but that appears to be intentional. As an American, I noticed what appeared to be British colloquialisms in several places that I didn't understand.

I believe this book was very well-written and fair in its evaluation of Ukrainian history. I based these comments in part on my Ukrainian descent; and my travels and discussions with Ukrainian citizens. The book does a better(and excellent) job of reviewing fairly recent events in Ukrainian politics and demographics; than it does in reviewing Ukrainian history - but that appears to be intentional. As an American, I noticed what appeared to be British colloquialisms in several places that I didn't understand.

Wow what can I say, Mr.Wilson has written a book that will set the standard for all future works for Ukraine. As a previous reviewer said, this book tells you what it is to be a Ukrainian. At sometimes it is a bit too dry and academic but any serious student should not let that get in the way of this otherwise excellent book>

FOUND IN TRANSLATION

It's hard to review a book when one feels that she could have written it herself and worse yet when in fact that book has been published already. In some ways it's reassuring to read the same thoughts, opinions, even the same literary references and mythological symbols. In other ways it is almost eerie to share with it a similar structure of titled chapters which can be read independently. It all started with the cover of Lucia Graves' A Woman Unknown. Voices from a Spanish Life (Washington D. C.: Counterpoint, 2000) where I saw the familiar picture of Mercedes Formica, a writer I interviewed some years ago, but more about her later.
Lucia Graves is the daughter of Robert Graves, the English poet who lived in Majorca with his Spanish wife and children for several years. Her book is labeled as her autobiography, but it's more like a history of Spain during the almost forty years of Franco's Dictatorship and the ensuing some twenty years of Democracy. Her role is more that of a well-versed witness, a woman who has lived among three different cultures: the English of her birth, the Spanish of her adopted country and the Catalan into which she married. Hers is a well documented account of everyday life, political repression, historical events and a study of the richness of languages.
The author moved to Majorca, where a version of Catalan is spoken, when she was three years old. Despite her father's prominence, she lived a rather modest life on the island before it became a popular tourist destination. A few years of her childhood were spent in Palma, the island's capital, where she studied in a repressive nun school like any other Spanish girl, until she was almost convinced to be baptized in the Catholic Church ( to keep her from "going to hell"), at which time her parents had her first tutored at home and then send to England to receive a "proper" education.
At Oxford, although she missed Spain terribly, she became familiar with the language of her birth, her own father's work and - interestingly enough- Spanish literature which she could then study uncensored. It was her appreciation of the complexity of languages and in particular her translation class, that gave her the tools to become the accomplished translator she is now. Her reflections on language are in themselves worth the reading of A Woman Unknown. Her dilemma should be familiar to anyone fluent in more than one language: "I began to see that being trilingual meant I had never been able to focus fully on any one of my languages, that each one covered only particular areas of experience, and as result I could not express myself fully in any of them" (115).
Lucia Graves' book is full of expressions in Catalan which she carefully explains and translates into English. In fact, if anything, her careful attention to detail is superfluous to the initiated reader of Spanish culture. Her knowledge of the subtleties of the Spanish and Catalan character is commendable as is the varied tidbits of information about popular customs. Her appraisal of the repressive years of Franco's regime is equally on target as is her appreciation - only now becoming official in Spain- of the liberal Republican government.
However, for all her political openness, Lucia Graves is very coy about much of her personal information. For instance, she mentions in passing the sudden death of her half-sister Jenny (149), but doesn't bother to explain it, or we know little more than her oldest daughter's name and not even that of her other two daughters. Her Spanish mother, despite the fact that her illness opens and closes the book, remains a mystery as well. The reader is left wondering what led to her divorce from her Catalan husband and even to whom is she married now since she alludes to a second marriage, while she analyzes in depth the effects of the new Spanish divorce law of 1981. It could be argued that this lack of detail is a good thing since the reader's curiosity is peaked due to her talent as a writer and her, indeed, fascinating life.
The title, "A Woman Unknown" refers to the legal terminology given a woman in divorce proceedings. In fact Lucia Graves gives special attention to the situation of Spanish women: from the liberties of the Second Republic before Franco to the repression of the years after the Civil War, up to the new freedom we are presently enjoying. Her representation of postwar courtship rituals is as poignant as that of Carmen Martín Gaite's, one of the best Spanish writers who have written on the same topic. Her sympathetic portrait of Margarida de Prades, in the chapter titled "The Queen Who Never Was," a fifteen century Catalan noblewoman, for example, makes for captivating reading.
Lucia Graves is equally sympathetic in her depiction of the Sephardic Jews who inhabited Majorca and Catalonia. Their exile, in many ways, parallels her own quest for a homeland. But she is overly simplistic when she states that Franco was anti-Semitic. Despite all his other abuses, Franco saved over thirty thousand Ukranian Jews as it is documented in Chaim Lipschitz's book, Franco, Spain, the Jews, and the Holacaust (KTVA Publishing House, 1984). In fact Franco's own mother was of Jewish descent; her maiden name, Bahamonde, being typically Jewish.
There is no mention in the text of Mercedes Formica, the writer who graces the book's cover. This is a surprising choice given her right wing ideology - she was a sympathizer of the Falangist leader, José Antonio Primo de Rivera. My guess is that it was chosen by the editor in an otherwise beautiful, careful edition. These minor issues aside, Lucia Graves' book is a well written, compelling history of contemporary Spain from the point of view of a not so foreign woman, even when her own story is still not completely told.
CONCHA ALBORG

Concha Alborg is a Spanish writer who lives in Philadelphia and teaches Spanish literature at Saint Joseph's University. She has recently published Beyond Jet-Lag (New Jersey: Ediciones Nuevo Espacio, 2000), her second work of fiction, about the immigrant experience. Beyond Jet-Lag is available on Amazon.com ...

This is a fascinating perspective from the tri-lingual-daughter of a well-known poet. Lucia is caught between two identities-Britain and Spain. She tells tales of growing up-island style-off of the coast of Spain-with her Roman Catholic upbringings. All this set after the Spanish civil war where people's identities marred, hopes dashed, and properties confiscated under the Fascist Franco regime (1939-1975) which was characterized by the tight grip of church and state. Her viewpoints on women rights, religious rights, the Catalan identity and the translation profession are particularly illuminating.

I loved this book and, as a writer, I found it very inspiring! Graves writes beautifully of growing up on Majorca and her descriptions of the place and the people there, and other parts of Catalonia, are very evocative. The book caught my eye because I am studying Spanish and this book gave me a great feel for life in Spain, particularly under Franco but also, as described to her by people she knew, during the Spanish Civil War. It also offers interesting thoughts on language and identity, because she grew up speaking English at home, Majorcan/Catalan with neighbors (at least until Franco tried to crush the language), and Castilian Spanish at school. It's no wonder she became a translator.

By the way, if you're interested in Robert Graves (I didn't know anything about him - I guess I missed the whole PBS "I Claudius" series), you won't find out all that much about him here - this is Lucia's story. At least he passed on to his daughter his talent for writing.

It is somewhat ironic that we have to turn to a contemporary Marxist historian for the best account of these godly people, on fire for liberty, justice, and equality.

And perhaps a secularising interpretation is best for contemporary readers, many of whom are probably not well enough grounded in Scripture to follow the original writings of these people. The allusions will be lost to them, and the original texts may just seem like pious screeds without practical application. The author's secularising interpretations will help them understand.

Some of these authors were definitely radical, and all may have been prone to getting carried away. When men become free to choose what they believe, some will inevitably choose things that seem wrong. I do think that the author tries too hard to suggest serious unorthodoxy on their part.

As a whole, though, they seem steeped in the spirit of the Hebrew prophets. The very notion of a Christian Left seems almost inconceivable to people in the USA today. The influence on the revolutionary generation in colonial America seems obvious as well. To hear the stories of these Diggers, Levellers, and Ranters is to point out a path not taken: an early and Christian counterculture.

Hill's book taught me an ironical lesson. I've been smugly complaisant about a country I long viewed as smugly complaisant. What I knew of England's history before Hill's work, I learned from the usual unreliable sources: school textbooks, TV, PBS, "thin red line" movies, Churchill's rodomontade, etc. In short, like other Americans, my image of a distant people was molded by all the approved sources of official fact, acceptable stereotype, and general misinformation. The result - the English are a highly dutiful people who dearly love their Queen mum, are respectably unimaginative and hardworking, make good detectives, but most of all, obediently march off to war in the name of the king, the East India Company, The Empire, NATO, or any other patriotic banner that keeps the rabble in line. That is, an orderly society on which to pattern an orderly profit-yielding planet.

Thanks to Hill, I now count Gerrard Winstanley as one of my personal heroes. Because I now know that for one brief, shining period of English history, the spirit of that man and others like him stormed the heavens, smashed the idols, and brought forth the vision of a better society. One that can join with the best of other national inheritances. (There were even disreputable rumors that women might be capable human beings.) It's almost exciting to follow the heroic efforts of the Diggers, Ranters, Levelers, and other assorted itinerants, visionaries, and Biblical scholars, all trying to throw off the oppressive weight of God, King, and the Rising Professional Class. They failed. But England and the rest of us are surely the worse for it. This is hidden history at its best, a magnifying glass held to the beliefs and thoughts of people whose beliefs and thoughts are usually passed over in the grand sweep of events. Yet whose ideas and visions were bold enough to threaten the traditional order and challenge the course of our world.

Judging from the personal data, it looks like the good professor has probably passed back into the biosphere along with those whose words and deeds he did so much to resurrect. I think Hill identified with his subject, though the text is properly sober, scholarly, and certainly not uncritical. Judging from his published works, he's clearly expert in 17th century England and writes for a readership he expects to be also knowledgeable. So my advice is to not be like me, ignorant of the larger events of that period, but to prepare the landscape with a general survey. Whether you identify with his subject or not, the effort is worth it.

For those who think that anti-establishmentarianism started with Woodstock or the Punk scene this book is a must read. Christopher Hill shows the roots of the modern left and the populist movement going back to the English Revolution of the 1600's. He shows a variety of different groups that rocked the status of the era, including movements for land reform and quite radical notions about religion.

If you want to understand American history, this book is a must read because many of these movements could be seen later in the American Revolutionary war. It may also surprise many that the friendly face you see on a box of Quaker Oats has more in common with counter-culture rather than corporate culture.

Hill sticks to his theme and writes well. While filled with footnotes, this book was very easy on the eye. In addition he manages to show how these movements change over time. Never a dull page here!