Opens a window on the lives and deeds of those who were the most ferociously persecuted under the regime of Stalin and his Soviet successors: the oppositionists who stood firm on the platform of the Russian Revolution. While most of this generation were wiped out in the mass executions of the 1930s and 40s, some lived through it and told their story, as part of the rising Samizdat ("self-publication") movement of the 1960s and 70s. The "Memoirs of a Bolshevik-Leninist", some 130 pages long, alone make Samizdat worth reading. Former Major General Pyotr Grigorenko, imprisoned in the 1960s for four years in a psychiatric hospital for counterposing Marx and Lenin to the rotting Soviet regime, also tells his story here. Essential to understanding the course the former Soviet bloc has travelled from the 1917 revolution to today.

The current leaders of Russia and the other parts of the former USSR are a different name for the same old group of bureaucrats that muscled their way in under Stalin. Workers, oppressed nationalities, women have to fight them at every step to preserve the gains won during the workers revolution in 1917, to move forward for a decent life. The words of these Bolshevik fighters who refused to let Stalin and his successors stop them from defending the revolutionary ideas of Lenin and Trotsky, their words, and example and struggle will be come weapons for the new generation of fighters in these countries.

This volume shows a view of the history of Soviet anti-bureaucratic opposition that is not widely known in the U.S. Samizdat is the term for self-published political writings in the former Soviet Union. This volume includes documents ranging back to revolutionaries purged by Joseph Stalin, and as late as the early 1970s.

My favorite section is the anonymous "Memoirs of a Bolshevik-Leninist", written by a veteran of Lenin's Bolshevik Party and member of Leon Trotsky's Left Opposition, imprisoned by the regime until the 1950s.

This book is wonderfully written. It tells a mini-story of Bach's life in a very child-friendly way. It touches on his birth (and death) and his religious life. The focus is on Bach - not his religion. The artwork is vibrant and I highly recommend the book.

Johann Sebastian Bach was born into a family of musicians. All the Bachs played musical instruments, and young Sebastian was no exception. But even more than the joy of playing, Bach loved composing his own music. "Sebastian heard the music in his head. The melodies came fast- as his pen raced over the page, he rarely changed a note. He heard one melody for the violin, one for the trumpet, one for the flute, and one for the oboe. Each instrument had its own voice. And when all the voices sounded at the same time, it was like good friends talking together." Bach married, had twenty children, and settled in Leipzig where he was the church music and choir director. He worked all day teaching his students and playing the organ, and composed all night as "new music filled Sebastian's head." During his life, Bach wrote over one thousand compositions. It is said that even as he took his dying breath, he was composing one last piece..... Jeanette Winter has written an engaging and informative, introductory picture book biography that brings Bach and his times to life on the page. Her simple, spare, yet eloquent prose is lyrical and poetic, and complemented by her evocative, vibrant, and expressive signature folk art paintings. Together word and art give youngsters a real feeling for the intensity of Bach's great love and devotion to both playing and composing music. Perfect for reading aloud, or for early readers 6-10, Sebastian is a fascinating and entertaining biography that will whet the appetite of budding musicians, and send them out looking for more.

Winter has achieved another perfect picturebook bio for reading aloud (see My Name Is Georgia and Diego Rivera). Simply told, with beautiful language this book is a keeper! Wow, she's an awesome illustrator too! Music teachers across the country should be buying multiple copies for their classrooms! Buy it!

I am shocked to find the great many people who are unaware of Mussollinni's ill-fated pursuit of glory in the east. His broken dreams left many Italian families orphaned and widowed. This well written account of the brutality of combat on the Eastern front is a fine addition to any WW2 eastern front library. It is well written and fascinating.

Mario Rigoni Stern was barely twenty-one - and already a battle veteran - at the time of the hallucinatory World War II disaster searchingly described in this book. In July 1942, the Italian forces in Russia totaled 230,000 men. They included three divisions of Alpini troops, specially trained for winter warfare; the author of this book belonged to one of these, the Tridentina. In December, the troops began retreating, entirely on foot, with no supplies, at a temperature of 30-40 degrees below zero. Many of the troops, overcome by exhaustion, broke away from the column; others were cut off and captured by the Russians, others lost in the steppes. In the end, about 90,000 were missing or dead, about 45,000 frostbitten and wounded." "This narrative, together with his novel The Story of Tonle and several other works, paints a broad fresco of Italy's history in this century, chronicling social and political change so radical and profound that it has touched even those in such secluded provincial communities as that which Rigoni Stern has so masterfully described.

I've heard many times that rigoni Stern's "Sergeant in the Snow"is one of the best memoirs on eastern front,however,very unfortunately this book has long been out of stock in most book stores.At first time I purchsed this book, I was bit dismayed by its size-it's just little more than 100 pages .but shortly after I started reading the book. I can't stop reading it..Not only Rigoni Stern's honest and realistic potrayal of the war but also the beauty of each sentence which is so powerful that it constantly conjures up images of snow,trench, soldiers who had completely normal lives before war ..love,homesick,girls,friends,comradeship,bravity..and a young master sergeant whose humanity and will for life shines and finally prevails all unbearable physical and mental exhaution.
another attraction is that although Rigoni had already been a seasoned veteran by the time his Division became a part of unfortunate Italian 8th Army .he didn't lose his sanity and love for people.(he is very symphathetic to poor Russian people and even his enemy ..) Unlike Guy Sayer , Rigoni Stern doesn't intend to invoke sensationalism by describing death ,multilated bodies, and combat ,but the book conveyed sense of desperation and symphathy for those who lost during the retreat and break out .
The book will be particulary helpful to understand solders of often unfairly labelled Italian 8th army in Russia.

Kudos to Dr. Diane Plotkin for her thorough research into the lives of the women featured in this book. Her attention to detail helps transport us to the various camps where we experience dehumanization and deprivation. Through it all, however, it is interesting to see the various ways these women nurtured and tried to protect one another. This is a "must-read" book because it clearly illustrates the general differences in the ways men and women coped with, and adapted to, life in the concentration camps.

It was hard to put this book down once I started it. Although the women portrayed faced a living hell all around them, the authors elicit the courage and determination each women had to continue the daily existence in the camps. And that is what is so powerful; the daily horrors which become the backdrop for extermination are also part of the reason that each was able to define for herself a path through death.

This book was a difficult endeavor, as one never wants to face the potential raw ugliness of mankind. However, the voices of these women are invaluable in helping the world to remember a time which must never be forgotten.

As a young woman (34 years old) and a mother of three (which qualifies me as a caregiver, I guess), my heart went out to these brave women, struggling to impart some small measure of kindness or at least relief of suffering to their fellow prisoners. Women and children are seemingly the most vulnerable when society engages in chaos, but the women caregivers chronicled in this book were apparently among the most intrepid of all. I believe they gathered strength from the acts of focusing on giving aid to others in the most desperate of circumstances. Anyone who is interested in what the human spirit can endure, and indeed, overcome, should read this book.

I enjoyed this book, which is very well documented with lots of footnoes and bibliography. The Nazis come off looking pretty arrogant about Spain, which they thought was at their beck and call. This book has everything a good history should: adventure, war, diplomacy, economics, conspiracies, and unexpected results. Excellent.

I really liked this book! My boyfriend is a real history buff, watching the History Channel all the time and everything, so I wasn't convinced I would enjoy it when he kept pushing me to look at it, but after I started reading Bowen's book, I couldn't put it down. There are a lot of amazing stories in it, like when Spaniards fought to defend Berlin at the end of World War II, and when Franco said "no" to Hitler -- and got away with it! For a history book, it's a pretty fun read!

This is an exciting story about my country's history during the Spanish Civil War and Second World War, when my grandparents endured starvation and political warfare. Professor Bowen has written a very interesting book, finding archives and research materials that no Spanish historian has used, to create this history which reads like a novel. I had no idea so many of my people were enthusiastically pro-Nazi, fighting in the German army, agitating for Spanish entry into the war, and volunteering, even after the war was lost, to help Hitler win. I had heard of the Blue Division, but thought these were soldiers Franco forced to go to Russia, not tens of thousands of volunteers who wanted to fight Stalin. Sometimes Bowen seems to go a little too easy on Franco, who contributed so much to making life difficult in Spain during this period, but I still recommend this book for everyone interested in the Second World War or Spanish history.

No one book has more information than this one, and it's simply the best all-in-one traveling companion available. But it isn't perfect. Personal anecdotes and incidents sometimes seem amateurish, and Moscow changes so quickly that some of them are now quaintly outdated. The maps are minimal to the point of being useless; the best maps are in "Great Moscow", "Three Days in Moscow" (if you can tolerate the outdated street names), or one of the building-by-building atlases now available (all of these are published and available only in Russia). Finally, the level of detail is so great that some errors inevitably crept in, and hopefully they will be corrected in the next edition.

Rough Guide's book on Moscow is by far one of the best tour books I have seen for that city. Recently we had the chance to live in Moscow for two months. This book, along with the Rough Guides Russian phrase book, were our constant companions. The Moscow book was essential for giving us really indepth information about most of the sites we went to see. Also, the history section was invaluable to us as we found it necessary to do a little homeschooling of our children while there. I still refer to the history section of the Moscow book to refresh my memory on the complicated story of Russian history.

We also had Fodor's along with us but found that we relied much more on Rough Guides as a source of important and reliable information. Rough Guides is a must if you visit Moscow.

When I packed my bags for Moscow last summer I included about 4 different guide books, and the only one that came home ragged was this one. Absolutely the best I have seen or ever expect to see -- Step by step suggestions to get you exactly where you need to go, maps and more maps, and a small language primer. The thing that puts this book above the rest is that it gives you a complete historical story behind each destination. I came away with beautiful pictures and the history to go with them. This book even features short day trips outside of Moscow. The Rough Guide pocket sized language primer (available from Amazon) is also an essential. Take these two books and prepare yourself for some of the greatest times you will ever have. P.S. -- Check out the new edition

Walk inside the universe of World Music is not easy. You have the feeling to moove in a jungle of names, titles and unknown instruments. A Guide is necessary to understand and help you for orientation. This book is good for primers and experts, speaking about generes, origins, musicians and their best records. From the 1994's first edition the new release is more rich and reflects the high number of World Music records released in the last five years. I think you are in presence of the best guide you can buy today on the matter.

World Music appeared in 1994 and became a fine resource: here is the first volume of a 2-volume edition; this first volume covering Africa, Europe and the Middle East with expanded musical references, over 80 articles from experts, extensive discographies organized by country and photos and directors of world music labels and specialty stores. An outstanding reference and a 'must' for avid world music listeners. Don't miss the Rough Guide Music Sampler CD, which provides a satisfyingly diverse sampler of some of the most famous names in world music from Carlos Gardel's tangos to Inti-Illimani's Andean sounds and the Soul Brothers' special South African beats.

I am biased: I love the Rough Guide series of CDs. They have opened my ears and mind to worlds I not only never knew existed but also couldn't have imagined. This revision and expansion of the original Rough Guide to World Music is dazzling in its diversity. I agree with the first reviewer about its strengths and weaknesses. However, if you love the exploration of music and are willing to acknowledge that no encyclopedic work can but scratch surfaces, you'll love this book.

Neka znade dusman kleti da ce i nas kucnut' cas. Ako ima boga nece vise nikada cetnicka ruka zuluma ciniti. Dabogda im otpale obadvije. Neka vakih albuma, nek svijet vidi sta su radili jebo ih caca koljacki.

Mozda bi trebalo dat popusta nasem svijetu u tudjini, znas poskupo je to. Eto toliko od mene.
PS. A za slike, jebaji ga, sta ja znam slike ko, slike....nisu za zida

I recently came across this book and a testament to its power is that I am not personally or particularly involved or interested in the Sarajevo conflict but found myself deeply impacted by these photos and accompanying text. I found this to be a wonderfully original idea--to have a compilation of photos from native photographers as opposed to the standard international reporters. It gave a unique perspective.

The killing fields of Bosnia, like so many wars, attracted the world's most renowned journalists. But of all of the war correspondents who covered the war in Bosnia, none have depicted the tragedy, suffering and heroism of war as honestly as Leslie Fratkin - and that's because Fratkin had the foresight to realize that no outsider could tell the story of Sarajevo as well as Sarajevans. Fratkin, an accomplished photographer in her own right, arrived in Bosnia to cover the war and simply set down her camera. She spent the next five years tracking down Bosnian photographers, who now live all over the world, looking at their pictures and listening to their stories. Sarajevo Self-Portrait is the culmination of her efforts. It tells the story of nine Bosnian photographers as they chronicled the destruction of their own country. Through a series of extensive interviews, which accompany their bodies of work, we hear how they struggled to hold their lenses still as their friends and families were struck down by snipers' bullets, how they schemed to smuggle film into the city through and underground tunnel, and how at times they used their won urine instead of developing chemicals to make their prints. At times tear-jerking, and at other times gut-wrenchingly comical, Sarajevo Self-Portrait is one of the best, and certainly the most sensitive book to come out of the war. Anyone who wants to understand the human side of that war should buy this book.

The author was an editor of Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo's independent newspaper that continued to publish daily throughout the 1992-1995 period that the city was besieged by Serb nationalist forces. The journal entries take in just the first 16 months of that siege. It is chilling to realize that the siege would continue for more than two years beyond the period covered by the journal-and that populations in some other cities and villages suffered even more than did Sarajevo's.

The stories of Sarajevo and Bosnia are breath taking. Mr. Dizdarevic brings to light the day to day struggle that so many residents of Sarajevo went through. Not only physically, but mentally as well. Sarajevo is a very beautiful city and is getting more beautiful as it gets rebuilt. I can not imagine what it would have been like to live these stories that Mr. Dizdarevic writes about. This is a must read book!

Written in the first years of the siege by an editor at Oslobodjenje, these poignant war stories, compelling descriptions, and perceptive reflections from a city under fire constitute one of the most authoritative testimonies of the entire Bosnian war. A powerful and often scathing articulation of Sarajevo's disillusionment with Western inaction and betrayal of international norms and values. (This short review is from "Book on Bosnia" published by The Bosnian Institute)

For over twenty years, travelling frequently between France and the United States, I have gathered and compared perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic on French (mis)perceptions of the United States and vice versa. This book adds to a collection which ranges from John Steinbeck's wonderful satire of Fourth Republic politics "The Short Reign of Pipin IV" to Harvard professor Stanley Hoffman's "In Search of France" and including French sociologist Michel Crozier's interesting works on US society. What is distinct about this attempt by a perceptive Canadian couple to explain France to a North American audience is its remarkably compact coverage of a wide range of topics - from the nature of the French state to its elitist "grandes ecoles" - with well documetned historical and other references which the general reader will find neither inacessible nor superficial. One reservation I have is a tendency to bend over backwards to be culturally neutral, avoiding criticism of any aspect of France, but instead showing why North American tendencies to crticize might be misplaced. But then, this is the prupose of the book, it seems. On the whole, the North American reading this with an open mind will also better understand many aspects of U.S. and Canadian society.

Even though I never bought into the whole "freedom fries" thing, until recently I would've been less than kind in my appraisal of the French. However, after visiting Paris for four days in June of '03, I came away with a whole new appreciation for France and its people. I backpacked through four different countries during my trip, and France ended up being my hands-down favorite.

Why the change of heart? Well, first of all Paris has to be seen to be believed. I'm a history buff, and the city is soaked with centuries of it. However, it was the people that really made an impression on me. I was assisted in my wanderings by a number of kind French, including a woman who gave myself and some others an impromptu tour of Notre Dame, and even had three of us over for (free) dinner at her parent's restaurant. And all that just because I asked her for directions! I confess that I fell in love with Paris, and after returning home I began looking for books to learn more about a place that could turn my opinions around so quickly.

I almost skipped over this one - the title and goofy cover art made me think it was some sort of satire. But I gave it a shot, and it turned out to be one of the best books I've read this year. It answered many questions I had about France and the French, from the turbulent history that formed the French national identity, to why a Frenchman spent about a minute correcting my pronounciation of "Champs Elysees." Better yet, the authors write in an accessible, entertaining style, even when dissecting the minutia of French government. A great read from start to finish - don't let this one get away.

I can't wait to go back to Paris, and if you feel as I do, or just want to know why "60 Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong", then by all means get this book!

This book offers a supremely well-balanced examination and analysis of France and the French, something very much needed with the paranoiac hysteria polluting the air waves, print and cyber space regarding the country that helped America win its freedom from Britain.

Do NOT think because of M. Benoit's name that he is just defending his own. M. Benoit is French-Canadian, coming from a people who have long ago severed their ties with the Continent. French-Canadians were well aware that France was occupied during the Second World War. Yet, although some brave individuals volunteered (including some in Britain's high-risk SOE missions to France and the Far East), a majority opposed the war, and one was even executed for refusing to don the King's uniform. M. Benoit's analysis, therefore, is as objective as that of Watson and Crick discovering DNA.

As such, this analysis does much to counter and expose the bacillus of francophobia currently infecting millions in North America.

In particular, "60 Million Frenchmen" does much to undo the popular mythologies spawned by Paul Webster's "Petain's Crime" and Michael Curtis' "Verdict on Vichy", both of which are so virulently francophobic that they would be immediately branded as racist had they targetted any other group. M. Benoit and Ms. Barlow point out, as Webster and Curtis attempt to downplay and hide, that 75% of Jews residing in France were saved by Frenchmen.

What is most curious about the Webster and Curtis books is how they attack the late Francois Mitterand for his minor involvement in Vichy, while they sing resounding hallelujahs about Jacques Chirac. M. Mitterand, for all his sins, actually declared war on Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War. Chirac, by contrast, is known to have been a personal friend of Saddam since the 1970's. It says much about Webster and Curtis that they choose to attack people either long or recently dead, or, at best, in senile old age, for alleged collaboration with "anti-Semitism", while they chose to deify a man who, until a month ago, was very actively collaborating with one of the world's most virulent LIVING anti-Semites!

So, forget Paxton, Rousso, Webster and Curtis. If you want the TRUE story of France, read "60 Million Frenchmen" and Julian Jackson's "France; The Dark Years 1940-44"!!!