This wonderful little book makes a good companion for whichever Paris guidebook you plan to carry. It not only lists many interesting Cafes to visit, but also gives interesting background information on the famous writers and other celebrities who once hung out in them. It gives you an excuse to visit parts of Paris you might not otherwise visit. Great book.

I stumbled across this little gem a few days before my wife finally dragged me to Paris in 1991. Lucky for me! Thanks to this work, we have come to love Paris, especially the Left Bank. Away from the tourist throngs, the reader can people watch and sip for literally hours reflecting upon Hemingway at the Brasserie Lipp, Picasso at the Cafe de Flore, Shirer at the Brasserie Balzar and so much more. It is truly amazing to me that these places still function just as they did 75 years ago and more. I considered myself a well educated and well traveled person, but this small volume has opened up a world that I knew about but never fully appreciated before and has made Paris one of my favorite vacation spots. To heck with the Louvre, this is what Paris is all about!

This is the first book to take to France with you (or to give to a friend who is going). The history is brief, but it goes back two centuries.

Two summers ago we went into Seychelles, and Mauritius,Reunion& Seychelles LP travel guide was essential for us. Thanks to it, we could discover Seychelles was not just a diving and incredible beaches paradise, but its interiors landscapes were the best of our journey. We recomend it,because its fantastic information about Mahe,Praslin and La Digue islands, their national parks (such as Sainte Anne or Vallee de Mai). Prices were as high as the author wrote! and all information about public buses, rent-a-car and restaurants was right. Just one thing, we couldn't find where La Gogue Reservoir was! If anybody can strength the lake exists, please let us know!!

This guide was my Bible while I traveled through Mahe and Praslin islands in 1999. The Seychelles are full of kind, open-hearted locals who are generous and more than willing to show Westerners around. My trusty LP guide helped me find several reasonable b&b's, Michael Adams' studio (wonderful local artist) and the most perfect beaches in the Indian Ocean. What I love about LP guides, and this one in particular, is the extensive history of the area the book is covering, as well as the locals' interests. Those intending to visit this incredible area should take this guide book - the photography alone will tempt anyone.

I used an earlier edition of this book on a trip in 1996, in which I visited the Seychelles, Mauritius, and Reunion. I was travelling independently (not as part of a package tour) and the book helped in many ways to make my trip a great one. It provides a wealth of information about hotels and restaurants, island culture, and places and things to see on the islands. If you can only visit one of these three islands, I would recommend the Seychelles, which offer some of the finest tropical scenery I have ever seen. One advantage of Mauritius for the budget-minded traveler is that it is considerably less expensive than the Seychelles.

MFK Fisher holds a special place in the hearts of all 'foodie' Americans. She was perhaps the 1st person to see the sense of writing food-based literary books and articles, and of course it's now a genre unto itself. But few have rivaled her beautiful prose, and I recall reading that she once said she considered it a day well-lived if she'd managed to compose one perfect sentence. To consider her just a food writer is to do her an injustice; she is a writer, first and foremost, who happens, sometimes, to write about food.
Long Ago in France is a memoir of her years in Dijon in the 30s, a book full of rich wine, rich ideas, character portraits filled with rich detail. It's about Life, a life filled with joy, experience, food, travel, and memorable people. This book is a paean to a lost era.
Highest recommendation.

Between 1929 and 1932, young M.F.K. Fisher (later a famed chef and memoirist) and her husband Al Fisher lived and studied in Dijon, France. Here she discovered the people and the food of Burgundy, and she describes both with warmth, sensuality, and humor (without becoming overly sentimental: "It was there, I now understand, that I started to grow up, to study, to make love, to eat and drink, to be me and not what I was expected to be."

Her writing is crisp and evocative. "He took the apple slices from the bowl one by one, almost faster than we could see, and shook off the wine and laid them in a great, beautiful whorl, from the outside to the center, as perfect as a snail shell. We said not a word. The music trembled in the room." Fisher helps the reader discover the beauty of our appetites. She writes of an old soldier who offers her chocolate: "The chocolate broke at first like gravel into many separate, disagreeable bits...Then they grew soft, and melted voluptuously." Then a doctor offers her bread, admonishing, "Never eat chocolate without bread, young lady!" There is a delicious denouement: "...in two minutes my mouth was full of fresh bread, and melting chocolate, and as we sat gingerly, the three of us, on the frozen hill...we peered shyly and silently at each other and chewed at one of the most satisfying things I have ever eaten..."

This was a time of great importance for Fisher, and she generously shares her experiences in a richly satisfying book. It's a small treasure.

M.F.K. Fisher wrote some of the best prose in English--and this memoir is interesting because it documents her arrival and stay in Dijon as a student in the 20's. While some of the chapters were published later, in edited form, in other collections by Fisher, this book is valuable because it deals only with Fisher's time in Dijon. There is more detail about her stay with the Ollangniers, the French family who rented a room to Fisher and her husband Al while he worked on his doctorate. Fisher talks more about the students, professors and her daily life as she becomes, as she put it, a ghost. Perhaps by "ghost", Fisher meant that she knew, at that time, she would always leave a bit of her spirit forever in France. Her days in Dijon formed her as the writer she became, so if you are a Fisher fan, this is required reading.

Fine text & phenomenal photographs.

Wonderful photographs and narrative; this book captures the life and spirit of Berlin during its heyday. The final few pages address the emergence of the Nazi influence; other books thus are left to relate the ensuing horror that befell Berlin. One of my favourite Berlin books. Also worth a read are "Before the Deluge" and "Faust's Metropolis", two excellent books which cover Berlin in the 20's and 30's.

This book of Pre-World War II Berlin is eloquently told in a series of photographs the have an undeniable melancholy effect on the reader for days of tranquility and simplicity long gone. If you can get your hands on a copy it is well worth it.

This little book is a delightful read: informative, well-written, and entertaining. I can't imagine a better book for anyone planning a trip to Spain.

Part way into a year in Madrid, I found this book in a bookshop near the Puerto del Sol. Having read -- mostly with disappointment -- guidebooks of the "eat here, sleep there" variety, as well as of the "observe famous site on the left" variety, I have been absolutely entranced with this book.

What it does is bring alive the stories of Madrid. It's not a guidebook, per se, although I think it would be an invaluable book to have on any visit to Spain. It's more a collection of stories, of anecdotes, that pull you into the actual life of the city as it is and as it was.

A typical example: almost all guidebooks mention the Cafe Gijon, and cite it as a good place to eat where generations of Madrid literati have dined. You are left wondering, which Madrid literati, what was the appeal, and what did they do there? Rather than leave you hanging so, Elizabeth Nash guides through the society of "tertullias" (informal but somewhat stable idle discussion groups) that once flourished in these cafes, quoting from some of the novels written about this literary life, pulling up diverse quotes and recollections. By the time you are done you even know the name and the politics of the man who sells cigarettes at the stand just inside the Cafe Gijon's door.

That's the sort of thing the book does throughout. Rather than just identify sites and give you a summary description, it takes you into tales of selected important areas of Madrid. Some are on everyone's tour itinerary, such as the Plaza Mayor and the Puerta del Sol, while others, such as the college residence hall where Dali, Bunuel and Garcia Lorca discovered each other, art and life, do not figure in the packaged tours.

While drawing on marvellously deep and diverse sources, it's also a very good read. It moves quickly.

I recommend it highly.

The author's knowledge and understanding of Madrileno culture, history, literature, art and psyche are impressive. She brings all these elements together to form the big picture, and the result is a potrayal of Madrid that goes deep beyond the surface. A fascinating account.

First of all, Gimbutas was an eminent scholar, not a "fringe archaeologist". The fact that most archaeologists reject her theories does not prove that she was wrong. In fact, most, if not all, of her opponents has never seriously tried to explain why upper Palaeolithic and early neolithic symbolism is focused on women, while the latest neolithic and bronze symbolism clearly is cantered on men. No one of them ever had a good explanation for this fact - so why so harshly attacking Gimbutas who at least had a plausible theory?

In this book, published five years after Gimbutas death, the reader will get a good picture of Gimbutas theory of the goddess cult who, according to her, was the ideology of a matrifocal and matrilineal society. She is probably right in her main theory - at least none of her critics have a better alternative.

But... there is a contradiction between her tendency to idealize these societies and some known facts about some of them, facts that even Gimbutas acknowledge in this book. For example at page 106 the reader is informed that at the centre of the ritual circle Woodhenge, which Gimbutas sees a sacred place for the Goddess, "the archaeologists uncovered the crouched skeleton of a tree-year old child" . On the next page she argues that all the British "roundels" were sacred places for the Goddess and mentions "the sacrificial or ritual nature of their human remains". In fact , many of these human remains comes from small children, probably sacrificed when the circles where built.

Gimbutas was an eminent scholar, but when it comes to idealizing, it appears to have been a snake in the matrifocal paradise, at least in some regions, after all. If I have to choose, I prefer the Virgin of Guadalupe before the goddess of Woodhenge.

For those familiar with Gimbutas's earlier works, Part I is a refresher course on how the peoples of Neolithic Europe saw the Goddess. Especially interesting are the chapters on Stonehenge and other temples and ceremonial centers of wood stone and wood throughout Britain and the continent. The book's greatest value, however, lies in Part II, which comprises chapters on the Minoan, Greek, Etruscan, Basque, Celtic, Germanic, and Baltic religions. Gimbutas and Dexter explain with precision and clarity how the civilization of early historical Europe was an amalgam containing both Old and Indo-European elements. The Old Europeans were already there, of course, working the land, building cities, creating their elegant pottery, worshipping in temples sometimes miscalled palaces or fortified settlements. The Indo-European tribes came and saw and conquered. And then they settled in. Yes, they made terrible changes, but they also intermarried and adopted, and life went on. Much remained and was transformed. Although we are, for example, perhaps most familiar with the Greek gods and goddesses, we may not be familiar with their Old European ancestors. Hekate, Artemis, Athena, and Hera survived from Old Europe. So did some of the Greek gods, including Hermes, Pan, and (amazingly) Zeus. The information on the Balts is especially interesting, for they were the last pagans in Europe and their region "represents the greatest repository of Old European beliefs and traditions." This is the paganism Marija Gimbutas experienced as a child in Lithuania. Some who espouse the "culture wars" would have us believe that Gimbutas made it all up. This book is proof that she simply reported what she found. It is a testament to her extraordinary scholarship in archaeology, folklore, history, and matrilineal culture.

The evidence laid out in this series of works is very compelling. The critics of these ideas seem only able to express themselves with "Preposterous!" or "Idiotic" but never with a calm rational comparison of data and artifacts.

The Kirkus reviewer says it is "bordering on the ridiculous" to assume that the bull could have been a female symbol, that this is Gimbutas' imagination. But then there is artwork remaining from this era with clear pictures of bull skulls with horns drawn over the pelvic areas of women, with the horns positioned where the fallopian tubes would be. This murals are reproduced in the book. Had the reviewer wanted to actually check what the book presented as evidence for this assertion, he or she would have been able to find this mural. Bull skulls painted over the pelvises of women, the symbolism is hard to dismiss.

The critics of Gimbutas either don't read her work or address people who have never read her work themselves.

Seeing the anger and spite towards this body of scholarly work leaves me wondering why is there so much hatred and antagonism towards the work of Gimbutas? Why are there so many irrational and inaccurate criticisms of her body of work?

The Kirkus reviewer was sloppy -- if he or she had bothered to read the book being reviewed, then he or she would have had access to the data that supports Gimbutas' assignment of the bucranium, the head and horns of ther bull, as a uterine symbol.

What kind of fly-by-night operation is Kirkus that they allow such sloppy reviews by someone who will make an attack on a position presented in the book without actually looking at the physical evidence for this position that is decribed and presented and footnoted properly in the book itself?

I am not impressed by the critic of Gimbutas. I haven't seen a criticism that was either accurate or unemotional.

This is a masterpiece in self development work.He graphically narrates the importance of travel and education.The advice to his son Phillip is both practical and scholarly. Though at times one may get the feeling of "over kill", Chesterfield has embellished and tempered the book with sound practical knowledge.
Foremost, in the steps for acquisition of knowledge, was the advice given for taking up the study of various languages, especially Latin. The book makes for compulsive reading and must adorn every library.

After reading a children's collection of Chesterfield's writings (The Book of Good Manners) I decided to get this Oxford paperback edition of the actual full-length letters themselves. Chesterfield's complete letters fill six volumes, so any one-volume edition is going to be a selection, but it was the subject of manners which made these letters famous, and this subject is mostly written about in his letters to his son and his grandson, and this edition contains 85 such letters. It also has a few letters Chesterfield wrote to various friends and associates and letters having to do with the functions of his various political career. Even if one doesn't much admire Chesterfield's advice to his offspring (for whatever reason) these insights into behaviour and human nature (in the halls of power or not) are not a bad thing to have an understanding of in your overall world-view. Despite the apparently famous and oft-quoted line from Johnson that these letters teach the morals of a dance master or a prostitute (what Johnson was probably saying was these letters describe the 'surface' of society and the insights and advice in that sense tend to come across as shallow, yet I think it's fair to allow Chesterfield to assume the potential character and substance and depth in the human beings who may practice the manners with the artistry that he describes them) some of Chesterfield's insights come out of (without trying to sound dramatic) esoteric teachings and schools, or at least border on the practices taught in higher schools. 'Tact', for instance, is a worldly word for a higher spiritual practice of seeing things from the point-of-view of other people as-well-as being objective enough about yourself that you can know what kind of impression you are making on others. 'Not expressing resentment', as well, is an art of a high order (dealing with emotional energy in general), beyond the obviousness that expressing resentment makes you look like a fool. In fact, Chesterfield paints a cumulative portrait in his letters of a human being who is not just 'going-through-the-correct-motions' but who is actually, potentially, more conscious (and capable of being more conscious) of himself and the world around him than the average human being usually is. Having said that, I'm sure Johnson saw enough trained monkeys (of the human kind) in his day fully capable of practicing these manners that Chesterfield describes, and so it's understandable that he may have cringed a little upon discovering their publication. Yet, hollow men (or mental vacuums) and fools aside these letters are worth the time of anybody interested in increasing their understanding of themselves, human nature in general, and society at any level.

While the prose is definitely that of the neoclassic, this text is filled with insight into the nature of society, relationships, business and leadership. I found a dusty old copy of this text in our university library when I was an undergraduate, and it has stayed with me throughout my life. Imagine that these are letters! Each one as carefully crafted as a published essay, and each with a specific point all aimed at the same goal: providing the author's son w/ the tools (weapons in some cases) necessary for success. Here's an example (a paraphrase, as I do not have the text at hand):

Each man is born with all the passions, but in each there is a governing passion which runs stronger and deeper than the rest. Seek out each man's governing passion, and when you have discovered it, remember never to trust him where that passion is concerned. Play upon it to your own advantage if you wish.

The text is full of wisdom such as this. I'm delighted that Amazon can find it for me.

I stumbled upon this book by accident, but I am glad I did. The subject matter sounded very interesting to me, so I gave it a chance, even though I'd never heard of the author before. I was plesently surprised.

Luck was a Stranger is William Coony's story about his life growing up in Ireland and then coming to America. It has some fascinating stuff in it. He had a rough childhood and even thought of joining the priesthood at one point. But instead he came to America, whre things seemed to go well, until he began suffering manic-depression. Some parts are funny, and some are very sad. I liked this book a lot and recommend it if you like books like Angela's Ashes (like me).

William R. Cooney's memoir, LUCK WAS A STRANGER, is the delightful story of one man's life. From growing up in Ireland (where he also went to seminary school and almost became a priest) to his immigrating first to Canada and then to America, where he planned to make a fresh start of it, this is a fascinating story throughout. Cooney has an engrossing and entertaining style, which is often very funny. He certainly is quite the character! But there's also tragedy here as well. The full spectrum of human experience. I definitely recommend it. An enjoyable read!

A funny and fascinating memior about growing up in Ireland during the 1930's, '40's and 1950's. Great anecdotes about Village life, and priests and being a kid in a little Irish town before there was tv and people rode on horses or on donkey and cart or bikes. A much more innocent and simple time. Then William Cooney immigrants to Canada, which in the '50's was a real frontier area and he goes through some harsh conditions and hits rock bottom until he makes it to America. Good stuff!

I first read these books 20 years ago, and the opportunity to purchase them in a new edition is the thrill of the year for me. Costain makes the period come alive, with all its heroes, villains, and bystanders. While many of Costain's opinions and conclusions are somewhat dated by more recent research, there is no more delightful reading experience amongst modern histories of the middle ages.

Costain gives his usual rousing treatment to a period not widely treated.

To my surprise, I found this to be the best of the four-volume series by Costain on medieval English history. Perhaps it was due to the fact that I started in the belief that Henry III did not merit an entire volume to himself. Then I realized that this Weathercock King lived an extremely long life and all that happened during his reign was momentous indeed. For instance, learning how the Countess of Flanders played a part in ensuring future Vatican Cardinals always wear red is something I didn't think I would chance upon during this read. Or all the little bios Costain supplies for people long since lost to the annals of time. Great stuff, I simply couldn't put it down.

I have always been fascinated by illuminated books so this book immediately caught my attention when shopping for nieces and nephews. It is beautifully illustrated and the story is sweet. It would be nice though if once a young lady could render assistance by being invited instead of having her father injure himself first! The center fold on how to make paints is a little unusual. Read the two opposing pages first, then open. Lovely book for children and their parents.

600 years ago, Lady Isabelle of Paris ordered a book from Papa Jacques, a famous book maker and he has only three days left to finish it. However, Jaqueses' eyeglasses is broken. So Jaqueses' daughter, Marguerite finished the book for him. Margurite went to Master Raymond's house for gold leafs, a farm for parchment, the market for eggs, goose feathers,parsley, and a pot of honey, and finally the apothcary for dried saffron flowers, madder roots, a cake of vermilion, some wax, pine pitch, and some lapis lazuli stone. At her house, Marguerite prepared he pens and paint. Then Marguerite started to paint. On one page, which was decorated with Lady Isabelle's favorite daises Marguerite colored Lady Isabelle's robe and hair. When Isebelle came to check on the book, she was very impressed.

Wow, this book has the most beautiful illustrations I have seen in a long time! My daughter and I just love the story and the fold out pages! We have been inspired to do more digging into this topic. I am going to share this book with my Grade 2 and 3 art students. A definite must for little artists.