I truly enjoyed this one. Definitely one of the top ten I read this year. The book was thorough, enticing and educational. I look forward to Brumwell's next book.

Having recently met Dr. Brumwell, a soft spoken gentleman. And having had the pleasure of discussing this book. He asked me a simple question, after he made sure I'd actually read the book, " Did you agree or disagree with the content?" I assured him that I totally agreed with him, as it was 'bang on' with the research I had completed. I have been trying for some years to explain that soldiers in the war did not venture about the wilds in their 'Sunday Best' and on the contrary were quite adapted for this forest warfare by 1758. This book when carefully read will give a true picture of the adaptation both common soldier and officer had made. As a reenactor of 'the Black Watch' in this time period, I need only to point to this book as a primary source for documentation for our strange uniforms and tactics. I highly recommend this book to the scholar and reenactor alike. It is very refreshing to see such a large amount of study going into something like this. And as I had told Stephen,"If it were in my power, I'd see to it you'd recieve a medal, for a job very well done." He, on the otherhand, said,"I could only wish."

It is very refreshing to see a book about the Seven Years War in America that combines solid academic scholarship and research with insightful interpretation -- all in a readable format. This is not a romanticized account of soldiers vs. savages. Rather, this is a history of the redcoat himself, not a chronological account of the French and Indian War (If you want the latter, simply read Fred Anderson's superb "Crucible of War.") Brumwell describes the redcoat's life, background, recruitment, service, etc. through a variety of perspectives, including one quite interesting chapter on the use of Highland regiments in America. His detailed account of how soldiers were recruited, drafted and transferred for service in the British regiments during this period is particularly valuable. This author strives to make the point that the "man in the ranks" who shouldered a musket under very trying conditions, for poor pay and in dangerous conditions, should be seen as the main reason for the success of British arms in the colonies.

I had to buy this book in Germany from Amazon.de so I could expand my travel plan after an unexpected longer stay (brought two of Steve's other books there). The price I paid was more than 50% higher than the States.

But boy, what a bargain!! It saved my time, energy, and money. Use it as a tool, not a book!!

I travelled Europe for 6 weeks with this book and three other Rick Steves' books. Everything was just fantastic except maps. With only this book, I always needed to drop by tourist information center to get some detailed maps just as Rick recommend. However, sometimes it was too much demanding for short-term travelling in each city. Also to find some recommended restaurants, it was very hard to find by using maps on this guide book. Even though I enjoyed most restaurants which Rick suggested, those were hard to find. Next time I'd rather bring another guidebook such as Lonely Planet with this book. Personally, I prefer maps on LP.

Rick Steves' travel philosophy is to travel better by traveling cheaper and closer to the people. If your idea of a dream vacation is sleeping on the eighth floor of a high-rise hotel for a fortune every night, this is the wrong book for you. If your idea of wonderful is to sleep in an exquisite four-poster bed at a B&B owned by a pleasant old lady who will talk to you for hours, all for about fifty bucks a night -- buy this book. Steves has three big strengths, which are all at work in this book: The most important, by far, is the accomodations. Steves consistently finds amazingly good buys among centrally located B&Bs with friendly owners. The only problem is that everybody knows this, so getting a room on short notice in the summer at one of his spots can be dicey. The second big strength is the practical guides to sights, which include lots of interesting little details that you won't find elsewhere while telling you in no-uncertain terms which sights are must sees and which ones you should skip. Over time, his picks may not always coincide with yours -- but I almost always found his stuff on-target. The third big-strength is Steves' travel philosophy, which is especially helpful to first-time travelers (or those venturing away from the Hilton for the first time). I highly recommend that you also check out Europe Through the Back Door, Steves' classic magnum opus, now in its 19th Edition.

As a 54 year old librarian and writer, I was amazed at the author's ability to maintain the voice of an 11 year old narrator and tell the story and grow the characters. This is an easy-to-read book and very charming. It must have taken the author years to write because it reads like not-reading, like you are standing there watching the characters live.

Highly recommended!

This was a wonderful story of forbidden friendship, and how love develops between an uncle and his orphaned nephew and what it can do to their relationship. The orphan went from almost nothing to everything he could dream of.The book was very interesting all the way through, and had an ending that made me want to cry almost. The book is well written for all ages.

I am an eighth grader at Lucille Erwin Middle School and I have recently completed the book, "The Robber and Me". I fell in love with this book. It literally became impossible for me to put it down! I was so intrigued with Josef Holub's style of writing because of the way it incorporated passion, mystery, drama, and comedy. This book needs to be on your "must read" list, because it is incredibly dazzling!

My son received this book as a birthday present and was thrilled to see the beautiful illustrations. All he could say was Wow!! We are looking forward to more books illustrated by Bud Peen.

This beautifully illustrated rendition of The Pied Piper is a real treasure. The story is a classic but remains a good lesson to us all. Bud Peen has captured the subtle colors of the period and his detailed work is a delight to the eye. I intend to gift this book to friends.

I found the book beautifully illustrated and the story itself is an important teaching tool. I enjoyed his artwork and I felt I was truly involved in the story. I can't wait to enjoy Bud Peen's next illustrated book.

Dr Hooper does an excellent job on Roman Realities. He not only does a fine job in outlining the history of Rome's transition from Republic to Empire but he also highlights the price of that empire. The inability of the Romans to adjust to the changes that hegemony brought about contained the seeds of its own destruction.

Hoopers narrative is clear and concise and is easily understood by students or laymen. As is pointed out in an excellent review below it is a bit outdated in some areas but its analysis is so well done that few books published on the empire today can match this wonderful book. The reflection on the causes of the fall of Rome are worth the price of the book itself.

Reading Hooper brings to light that fact that much of Roman history is a foreshadowing of the realities empires in every era face.

The late Dr. Hooper's terse style is like the Romans he tells of: to the point, shorn of excess, straightforward. The tone of the book matches the expression of the bust of Caracalla that adorns the cover: gravitas personified. He spends more time on the Republic than on the Empire, and breaks off during the Civil Wars for a chapter on Latin letters and poetry (a subject taken again in his "Roman Letters"). Hooper covers all the highlights in highly readable fashion. A fine general/introductory book on the subject, written in magistral fashion. -Lloyd Conway

I read Roman Realities for a class that I had to take for Roman History, although we only touched on a few of the earlier aspects of the book, it is still a great book just to read, even if it wasn't assigned for a class! If you have any intrest to learn about the Rome in any way, go ahead and get this book!

Review of The Rotten Heart of Europe: the dirty war for Europe's money, by Bernard Connolly, Faber & Faber, 1995, £17.50.

THIS BRILLIANT book is a devastating exposure of the pretensions of those who want to rule Europe. It shows that the attempts to achieve monetary and economic union, and consequently political union, are bad for us. They will not bring monetary stability, economic growth or political harmony. Instead they will destabilise currencies, reduce growth and promote hatred between the nations of Europe.

Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) is supposed to build on the experience of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). Britain's membership of the ERM forced us into a disastrous and quite unnecessary recession. After two years of suffering, Major said in July 1992 that Britain would soon be the leader of the ERM. Two months later, we were well out of it, and ERM had bermbed, as Jacques Clouseau, Major's mentor, would say.

ERM constrained British Government policy on non-monetary matters too. The Government appeased Spain over the fishing dispute to keep Spain happy about the sterling/peseta rate. So the Common Fisheries Policy, so damaging to Britain's fishing industry, is not an isolated EU aberration: it stems from the whole logic of economic and monetary union.

The ERM was described as the Eternal Recession Mechanism; EMU is likely to be Even More Useless. The ERM kept the poor countries poor; it did not help them to converge; it certainly did not help them to meet the Maastricht criteria. Spain's experience of ERM was catastrophic: 22% unemployed. The ERM forced Denmark into recession: unemployment doubled to 12%, the budget was slashed, and investment, output and wages all fell. In the ERM, Ireland's unemployment soared from 11% to 23%. ERM subordinated nations' economic interests to minorities' foreign policy goals: ruling class interests dominated working class interests. Some still claim that ERM and EMU could control capital, but actually they were and are attacks on the working class.

A 1992 report by the Monetary Committee, which advises the EU's Council of Ministers, admitted that ERM did not stabilise prices or money and did not reduce inflation. Perhaps it was after all just a tool for moving countries towards political union.

The book also depicts the present dangerous struggle between the French and German ruling classes for control over the proposed institutions of a single European state. Germany is determined to keep the Deutschmark and the Bundesbank: it wants EMU so that it can assimilate other countries into an expanded Deutschmark zone. France wants a new currency and wants to get its hands on the Bundesbank; it pushed for the Maastricht Treaty, which would destroy the Deutschmark. Who would control Europe's currency? Who would control the proposed new European Central Bank? Germany or France?

As Wilhelm Nolling, a Bundesbank Council member, said: "We should be under no illusion - the present controversy over the new European monetary order is about power, influence and the pursuit of national interests."

They are already fighting about the 1996 InterGovernmental Conference. Germany wants the economic criteria for EMU met as soon as possible: it insists that economic convergence must precede monetary union. France wants the earliest possible date for monetary union, believing that monetary union would produce economic convergence. Both are wrong of course: convergence cannot and will not be achieved, either way.

EMU's implications are universally unpopular. The workers of France, Italy and Belgium are striking against the EU's schemes. The Austrian Government fell in October, unable to pass the EU-required budget.

We can see both from ERM's effects, and from the effects of the attempted imposition of the Maastricht criteria, how damaging membership of EMU would be. It would cause, as intended, a permanent lowering of wages, a permanently higher level of unemployment, and massive cuts in public spending.

Connolly sums up: "My central thesis is that the ERM and EMU are not only inefficient but also undemocratic: a danger not only to our wealth but to our freedoms and ultimately, our peace. The villains of the story - some more culpable than others - are bureaucrats and self-aggrandizing politicians. The ERM is a mechanism for subordinating the economic welfare, democratic rights and national freedom of citizens of the European countries to the will of political and bureaucratic elites whose power-lust, cynicism and delusions underlie the actions of the vast majority of those who now strive to create a European superstate. The ERM has been their chosen instrument, and they have used it cleverly."

Bernard Connolly was fired by the European bureaucrats after this book came out. If you read this book you will understand why. This book has all the detail you could ask for. It is an incredible expose of the events leding up to European Monetary Union.

If you support the European Community, reading this book will change your mind -- if you dare read it.

Excellent work. The reality at the core of all the pomp-and-circumstance surrounding EMU. Read it and be wiser.

This book contains much more than a description of one woman's efforts at wartime resistance. It is a remarkable depiction of the intellectual and social life of the liberal and sometimes left-leaning intelligentsia in Madison, Wisconsin, and as well as of the liberal upper class in Germany in the period from the turn of the 20th century to 1945. The material ranges from vivid social commentary,historical narrative, and thriller, to final tragedy and its aftermath. The writing style is lucid and the footnotes copious. This book conbines the virtues of being a good read and a highly informative social history. I recommend it strongly.

A first class research by Brysac finally puts to rest the conflicting histories of the Red Orchestra (Rotte Kapella): the white-washing done by the FDR (former Federal Republic of Germany) vs. the pro-communist embellishments of the DDR (former East Germany).

The author's exhaustive research (de-classified Stasi and KGB archives, interviews with survivors, US Army documents) finally does justice to the only American in the German Resistance who was executed (Mildred Fish-Harnack) and also allows the readers to reach a balanced view about who the Red Orchestra was.

The reader will also become acquainted with how life was in Germany (particularly Berlin) during the 30's and early 40's through the lives of Mildred Fish-Harnack and her husband Arvid Harnack. Since the Harnacks were highly educated, came from esteemed families, and had influential friends in elitist Berlin society the reader also gets a glimpse of how divergent the views of various Germans and Americans were towards the Berlin regime.

In conclusion, it is sad to see how a heroic German-American (Mildred Fish-Harnack) and an independent thinking German intellectual (Arvid Harnack) who spoke-out against, resisted, and even sabotaged the evil regime of Hitler met such a drastic end due to the follies and reckless acts of Stalin's regime.

Resisting Hitler, by Shareen Brysac

When criminals gain control of governments, average citizens mostly pretend not to notice. Each thinks to himself something like, "How could I possibly pass judgment on our august leaders?" In a state ruled by force there are no competing politicians left to whom they can shift their allegiance. By default, then, they allow themselves to be used by the regime to prove that it has popular acceptance.

Not so my great-aunt Mildred Fish Harnack, whose resistance against the Third Reich has been a vivid legend in our extended family for half a century. Her story gradually became known to a widening circle of interested people, including Shareen Brysac, who finally taking the initiative, researched the case exhaustively with its myriad details, and assembled from them a powerful, vivid mosaic.

Like the Diary of Anne Frank, it is a tragic story imbued with the sense of inevitability that comes from everyone knowing the ending -- and yet it is joyous, because through Brysac, we cannot help being deeply inspired by the example of Mildred and the scores of her fellow resisters in the Red Orchestra, including her husband Arvid Harnack. They all knew they were taking a mortal risk, but as serious intellectuals who cared deeply about -- and even helped to create -- the best in German culture, they knew the truth of Socrates' dictum that "the unexamined life is not worth living." And so they lived their lives to the hilt.

By telling Mildred's story, which is by extension and implication the story of every person willing to put their life on the line to resist tyranny, Brysac has enriched my life, and all our lives. I have been inspired by Mildred for 50 years. Now let the rest of the world be inspired too.

I'll be going on my second trip to England this summer, and I thought that I would use this book a lot. I had used the London guide two years ago and was very happy with it. But I bought the book a few weeks ago, and I'm kind of disappointed. Since I've already been to England, and know some of what I want to see, this book isn't all that helpful. I don't need just a list of the normal tourist stuff in Edinburgh, or Bath. I think that Rick Steves is great at helping people try to travel on their own, without a tour group, but I don't think that his choice of places to visit are particularly original, or complete. He seems to really like Bath and Blackpool, but totally ignores some of my favorite places in England, such as Canterbury Cathedral. Also, although his directions to finding places in London are great, and he does give some information about each site, he doesn't give nearly enough background information about places to suit me. His directions to places outside of London are not nearly as helpful. If you're an experienced traveler in England, this book is not for you. If you're going for the first time, I'd buy this book for the directions to places and accomodations lists, and to help narrow down choices of places to visit, and then I'd look at other guidebooks to get more in-depth information for specific sites. I'd recommend the Dorling-Kindersley guide to London for starters. His sense of humor is terrific, and I appreciate his honesty about some of the things that he doesn't like, but I need more information than is available here. Spend some time on the internet, looking up things you're interested in, and researching, along with another guidebook or two, and you'll be much happier with your trip to England than you would be if you just relied on this book.

He doesn't attempt to tell you everything that he can cram into x number of pages. He says what to see if you've got a week, 10 days, two weeks, etc. Extensive detalied coverage of B&B's everywhere, in London as well as in little villages. I'll tell more after I come back from England.

Rick Steves' travel philosophy is to travel better by traveling cheaper and closer to the people. If your idea of a dream vacation is sleeping on the eighth floor of a high-rise hotel for a fortune every night, this is the wrong book for you. If your idea of wonderful is to sleep in an exquisite four-poster bed at a Scottish B&B owned by a pleasant old lady who will talk to you for hours, all for about fifty bucks a night -- buy this book. Steves has three big strengths, which are all at work in this book: The most important, by far, is the accomodations. Steves consistently finds amazingly good buys among centrally located B&Bs with friendly owners. The only problem is that everybody knows this, so getting a room on short notice in the summer at one of his spots can be dicey. The second big strength is the practical guides to sights, which include lots of interesting little details that you won't find elsewhere while telling you in no-uncertain terms which sights are must sees and which ones you should skip. Over time, his picks may not always coincide with yours -- but I almost always found his stuff on-target. The third big-strength is Steves' travel philosophy, which is especially helpful to first-time travelers (or those venturing away from the Hilton for the first time). I highly recommend that you also check out Europe Through the Back Door, Steves' classic magnum opus, now in its 19th Edition.

Dr Getty's study of the Terror is among the most groundbreaking and insightful of the last decade. I believe it is the best book on the Terror yet written. What began as a moderate attempt to clean up the Party in 1933 through controled means turned into violent chaos in mid-1937. The Yezhov years are covered deeply with a great reliance on archives avalible. For the first time the documents themselves can be viewed by the reader. Getty clearly defines the periods of the Terror according to their severity. In 1933 people were purged from the Party but it only ment dismissal and a chance for readdmition. In 1936 things began to get bloody but it was still controled by the elites. The explosion of 1937 with the liquidation of top Soviet Marshals signaled the coming of a full blown bloodbath. This period lasted from the last half of 1937 to the first half of 1938. This was largely directed by the NKVD under Yezhov but Getty stresses Yezhov was ordered by Stalin and the Politburo to conduct arrest and executions of party elites in both the Center and provinces along with mass shootings of social marginals. The Terror was horrible yet more conservative numbers of deaths are given. Elites were the primary victims. Getty's statistics appear to be correct. Millions were not executed but social trama of the Terror was horrid. This work shreds Robert Conquest to pieces...

Unlike other mass murderers, the Bolsheviks left a paper trail detailing their horrific criminal deeds. Naturally, dictator Josef Stalin is prominently cited in the formerly top secret transcripts of the Soviet's Central Committee. Others, however, like his nomenklatura henchmen; Lazar Kaganovich, a Jew and rabid Christian hater; Vyacheslav Molotov; Lavrenti Beria; and Genrikh Yagoda, were just as complicit as him. The historian, H. R. Trevor-Roper put it well, "Great massacres may be commanded by tyrants, but they are imposed by people." The authors conservatively estimate that "1.5 million" Communist Party members were killed during the "Great Terror" purges of the 1930s. The majority were shot to death, others died in the GULAG camps, originally established by the fanatical Bolshevik thug, Vladimir I. Lenin. This riveting story opens by telling the sad tale of one Alexander Yulevich Tivel. It is typical of what happened to many of Marxism's true believers. A hack propagandist for Pravda, Tivel was shot as an "enemy of the people" on March 7, 1937, in Moscow, after a perfunctory trial. He was also a Zionist, who had made the fatal mistake of knowing Grigory Zinoviev and Karl Radek. Like Tivel, they were all Jews, who were suspected by the Kremlin elite of plotting with its arch rival, the exiled zealot, Lew Davinovich Bronstein, a/k/a Leon Trotsky. The Tivel drama didn't end there. His wife was sent to Siberia and she wasn't freed until 1953. Their young son was placed in an orphanage for being a "member of the family of a traitor of the Motherland." In this book, too, surprisedly, you will find the modern seeds of the dubious "Hate Crime" concept, championed by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY). Stalin, in a rant about the putative enemies of his Communist hell hole, is quoted in October, 1937, as saying, "Anyone who by his actions and thoughts-yes, his thoughts-encroaches on the unity of the socialist state, we will destroy them and their kin." I'm sure Schumer, a pompous windbag, will deny the alien-based connection to his legislative scheme. This is an authoritative book that exposes the unspeakable crimes of Stalin's Bolshevik gang against its own party faithful. It should be a sobering lesson to anyone who tends to believe in extremist solutions.

William Hughes, J.D. Baltimore, MD. (Published in the journal of the Social Justice Review, July-August, 2000 issue.)

This book is tremendously useful because it gives a hitherto unknown insight into exactly how Stalin and his closest cronies set in motion the purges of the 1930s. The heart of the book consists of around 200 secret Communist Party documents interspersed with commentary from the authors. The archival material suggests very strongly that the path to the terror was not planned meticulously from the start but consisted of a series of false starts and zigzags until Stalin decided in 1937 to crush all resistance to the party's rule. Of particular interest are a couple of documents which show how many members of the inner Politburo demanded stricter punishments for alleged wrong-doers than Stalin did himself. Barring the discovery of Stalin's diary many of the dictator's motives will remain unknown forever but the documents in this book do paint a largely convincing portrait of an unpopular regime in Moscow lurching from crisis to crisis, trying both to stablise the internal situation and also to eliminate the possibility of serious internal resistance. What does come through very clearly is how arbitrary the terror was and how many of those charged with repressing alleged foreign spies and saboteurs were almost guaranteed to be shot themselves. First the Politburo lashed out at the secret police for not doing enough to stamp out centres of Trotskyite resistance and then issued orders demanding the execution and arrest of millions of people across the country. Later the secret police came under fire for allegedly indulging in indiscriminate terror and repressing too many people. I can understand the point of the Kirkus Reviews contributor who doubted the authors' explanation that the Politburo pushed ahead with the purges because they were indeed convinced enemies lay behind every corner and a coup was always possible. A sense of self-preservation and the need to show Stalin they were onside surely did partly explain their enthusiasm for spilling blood. But this is a minor quibble about an otherwise excellent book.