I just got back from a month in Europe and covered Venice, Florence, Rome, Paris, London, and Amsterdam. I used 90% of the book and could not have had a better trip. Rick Steves book made touring cities, museums, palaces, and churches an enjoyable and funny learning experience. You will never need a tour guide. And I am serious when I say, DO NOT GO TO EUROPE WITHOUT MONA WINKS!

When my parents and I went to Europe for the first time, we wanted to visit all the top museums but didn't know how to get started. I got Mona Winks because I love Rick Steves' guide books. I followed the instruction, ripped up the book, and carried only the chapters we needed. My parents (they only speak Chinese) were a little suspicious about it. Our first stop was the National Gallery in London. We went there at the hour that the guide recommended and the museum was almost empty. We went through all the important paintings in two hours, and learned a great deal of art and art history. In the museum, we met a couple holding the same ripped pages from the same guide!

With the help of this book, we visited five other museums including the British Museum, the Louvre and Versailles. We avoided the crowded hours and the expensive local guided tours. This book saved us a lot of time and money, and helped us gain a lot of basic knowledge of history and art of Europe.

After the trip, I mailed back all the pieces from the book and $5.00 to Europe Through the Back Door, and they sent me a new copy! Next time when I visit Europe, I will take the book with me again. If you are a art dummy, this is really the only book you need to tour Europe's top museums. That's all I have to say about this book.

From our background in travelling, we knew that museums could make or break a vacation (especially in Europe) so we bet on Mona Winks. It paid off big time. We saw many of the world's greatest museums (British Museum, Louvre, Vatican Museums, etc.) all in a simple uncomplicated tour. By reading different parts of it, you could see when and where to get a snack and how to avoid to crowds and the long lines. It saved our vacation, and when we go back we will use it again. The good thing is it is updated every year, and it covers the museums from the Prado in Madrid to the British Museum in London. This is a MUST for anyone who wants to know a little about art, travel to the great museums and survive, and overall have a great trip.

One of the best coffee-table books on one of the most beloved and tragic families of this century. Several photos show Nicholas and Alexandra before the birth of their first child, Olga, until the house arrest of the family. With an accompanying text and several annonations, this poignant photo album/book show the lives of the Romanovs through carefully chosen pictures from the Russian archives. Leafing through the pages of the book will make one feel transported to a different era, the time of Imperial Russia. A must for Romanov memorabilia collectors and historians.

If you are a Romanov history buff, you MUST get this book. Photos that you won't see in other books, excerpts from personal letters, it's just a one-of-a-kind book. This book touched a place in me that actually hurt when I thought of the family and how they were killed. When you read the girls letters, see their drawings, you know they were sheltered, sweet, loving girls, whose last moments must have been horrific. alix and Nicky, not realizing the depths to which Imperial russia was falling, brought about their families demise, although they had been warned. Rasputin took total advantage of alix's grief, she only wanted her son to live. A beautiful and heartbreaking book. I own a library of Romanov/Imperial russia books, and this one is my favorite.

This is an astonishing book about the last Imperial Family of Russia. Crisp text backed up with amazing and wonderful array of exclusive, never-before seen photographs from the Russian State Archive. Truly, a book that will change your view on the Romanovs.
Highly recommended to those who build a library on the Romanovs.
Great job, Leppi Publications!!!

This book, like the best chocolate, is rich, complex, dark and voluptuous. And not only is it poetic - it's also informative, in the best way. It makes you want to find out more and shows you how. The photographs, by the author, match the refined sensuality of the language, and both words and pictures are as concentrated as the experience the author seeks to share with us. I'm afraid I left none for later, ingesting all at one sitting, afterwards becoming a furtive hunter for chocolate, snapping open foil packets by candle-light in the company of those I loved most, savouring every aspect of the ritual. Futterman's book opened up this world at a perfect moment; it has helped me to appreciate the wonderful organic chocolates now coming onto the market in the UK. I am discovering cocoa treats in London that I would not have sought out without this book - a refined treat which lingers in your mind long after you have tasted it.

In Bittersweet Journey, Ms. Futterman has created a stunning and original piece of work, which is part novel, part travel guide, part biography, part cookery book, part culinary art gallery, part obsession, but is all consuming. The writer tenderly and skillfully combines these ingredients into an addictive mixture, which, like her rich, moreish and somehow deliciously indulgent writing, perfectly reflects the nature of love, longing and, of course, chocolate.

Our central protagonist, Charlotte, winds her ways through the cafes and confectioners of European cities (bookended by Brooklyn), with only her passion for the sweet and her hope for a love with whom to share it. She is so carefully and sensuously drawn that one can almost taste the emotional highs and lows of her beautiful journey--Charlotte is both our heroine and our empty canvas, on which we play out our own story of obsession and hope.

Bittersweet Journey is, quite simply, a beautiful experience, which anyone with any interest in love, travel, dreams, or chocolate should immerse themselves in.

I recently had the pleasure of reading Enid Futterman's Bittersweet Journey. Bittersweet is a portrait of Charlotte, her friends and family brought alive by exquisite, unadorned prose and gorgeous photographs. The story of Charlotte's relationship to chocolate parallels her life. The book is interesting also because it contains intriguing information on the myriad varieties and forms of chocolate.

This is a good book for teenager and alult to learn the truth. This book is relly sad. I hope this will never happen again it is so sad. No one should forget the holocaust. I was suppressed how they treated in the holocaust. It's important yo learn about the holocaust. During World War II the jewish Community was destroyed.

Four segments of this book detail Jack Ratz's experiences. The first three segments detail Lenta, Salspils, and Stutthof concentration camps. Another segment details the death march from Stutthof and is one of the most harrowing personal accounts of a death march that I have ever read. Jack Ratz welcomes the reader into his life with open arms and an engaging writing style.

I think this is one best book because it talk about the holocaust. Some people try to forget what happen and teach their kids that it never happen. I think this is one best book. I wish that this won't happen agin but happen agin in Kosovo.

This book is an amazing, detailed, and comprehensive look at humanity's darkest event. Konnilyn Feig broke ground in the subject over twenty years before the buzz of the Holocaust that is happening today. If you're interested in the recent lawsuits or the investigations into the actions of the allied and nuetral governments during the Holocaust-this book is of great improtance. HITLER'S DEATH CAMPS tells what happened, who was involved, who aided the Holocaust, who profited, who experimented, and how over 4 million Jews were systematically rounded up, transported, and sluaghtered. The accounts of horrors are chilling. It is simply a must read for anyone who wants to know all the happenings of the most savage events in human history.

This book is perhaps the most comprehensive book on the concentration camp system. It offers insight into the make up each and every individual camp including the ghastly actions that took place inside the camps. Konnilyn Feig has done extensive research on this subject and should be regarded as one of the world's leading authorities on the holocaust and final solution. This book is a necessity for anyone trying to comprehend the madness that took place in Nazi Germany. It gives names, dates and places along with instructions on how to get to each of the camps. This book should be read before visiting any of the holocaust camps and/or museums. "Hitler's Death Camps" is currently in the National Holocaust museum. Anyone wanting to know anything about the holocaust and/or final solution needs to read this book.

Hitler's Death Camps by Konnilyn Feig is a remarkable analysis of the Concentration System. The first intense study of the systematic killing centers, offers clarity into an area of the past that we know very little about. More than a book about the camps, it allows us to put into perspective, indifference, human abuse, stugglers, oppression, killing, hatred, to know and denial. We must open our hearts and our minds to this book to truly understand the unspeakably cruelties that took place during the Holocaust so that we may never allow such an atrocity to take place again. Konnilyn Feig writes with a passion unlike anyone else. Hitler's Death Camps-Sanity of Madness should be read by all, for we all share a "common thread"-human decency.

As the other reviewers have already stated, this is an action packed adventure of a young man fleeing the Nazis. Leo fled from his native Vienna, to Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, France,and Switzerland. In this book, he describes the Austrians as welcome participants in the Holocaust and not as the victims. Austrians treat themselves as the first victims of Hitler's aggression rather than the willing helpers of Hitler. As he fled, other nations tried to avoid Hitler's refugees. No one welcomed the outcasts from the Hitler regime.
One comment about the nature of this book. Most of the victims did not know what was going to happen when they embarked on the train journey to the camps. Leo states it in the narrative. I don't think even he knew, other than the future was bleak. It lessens the story narrative as he pictures the death that awaits these people. This should have been told at the end.
This is a great book to read. It shows the suffering of the Jews and those who opposed Hitler.

full of surprises, turnes and twists is this true story of World War 11. My heart pounded as I read Leo's harrowing tale of escape. It is with both pleasure and pride to say that I personally know this man. He has been a friend of my family for many years. I never knew the true extent of what he had to endure just to survive until I read this book.

I came across this book at a Baltimore bookstore on the day the authors were doing a signing, and was very pleased. This is the story of a young Jewish man and his flight for life across Europe during the Nazi invasion. The book is gripping as Mr. Bretholz is dealt one fate after another during his many attempts to outrun the Nazis. The tension mounts as you follow Mr. Bretholz through the horrifying adventure of Nazi Germany and run in his footsteps. I've read numerous books about World War II, but this is the first that to give me a true sense of seeing the horror first hand as it unfolded. It is a tragic personal adventure that will bring you to tears as you experience the inhumanities and tragedies of the war and then share in the author's final triumph of coming to America. I've read two memoirs this year, this one and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes. While they are two very different tragic stories, they are among the better books I have read in quite some time.

During the 2nd WW, I spent a good deal of time selling newspapers in the days before vending machines took over. I now live in Huntsville, Al. so thought I should read something by this author,who is best known for "Rocket Boys." However,when I came across this title, I decided to go with U-boats. It was a subject which had great news exposure in the papers I sold . Well I never realized how close the sea war really was to our shores in the early going. This is an well documented account of Nazi sub activity which was apparently kept quiet at the time. As a matter of fact there are so many accounts of ship sinkings that I almost gave up reading Torpedo Junction; rather like having to endure a losing football team for several seasons. This all changes at about p.200 when Hickman proceeds to give a most exciting account of a battle twixt the 'Icarus'(coast guard cutter) and U-352 which was the first German submarine sunk by our side . If you are interested in this aspect of the war which was a critical effort in which we were losing badly, this is your book. For those who like their desert first, start on p 200 of the paperback edition. If you are a "senior" like me get the nore expensive edition with larger type!

this book is for you. Homer Hickam is an exceptional writer and a great researcher. This true story reads like an exciting adventure novel. It focuses on the tiny coast guard cutters that fought the German U-boats that attacked the American east coast during World War II. Thoroughly documented, the reader will be introduced to a huge, bloody battle that took place just off American shores (including the Gulf coast). This is the same Homer Hickam who wrote October Sky and The Coalwood Way. He actually dived on the U-boat wrecks and the freighters and tankers he writes about. Highly recommended for the World War II buff or if you just like adventure books. Every bit as good as The Perfect Storm. It reminded me of that book.

The only dry part to this book I saw was a necessary review of World War II U-boat activities up to December 1941. After that, with the arrival of the U-boats off New York and then the bloody carnage off Hatteras, this book is a gripping, bloody true tale of American and British courage on the high seas against a determined German onslaught of the American coast. Read it for knowledge and for its fascinating personal stories of seamen at battle. You'll feel like you've also rode on the deck of the little coast guard cutters as they battle the U-boats and, at the end, you'll never forget the unsung heroes who fought and died so close to our shores.

I really loved reading The Crouching Dragon. We need more heroes that we can follow, not comic book ones like Xena or ones like Buffy fighting enemies that don't exist in the real world. Both my brother and I loved reading the book and since he is in 4th grade and I am in high school, anyone over age 8 should love this book too. We both have read the Narnia books and the Harry Potter books, but the heroes in those books need magic to overcome their enemies. The great thing about The Crouching Dragon is that the heroes beat their enemies by banding together and supporting each other instead of needing magic. Another great thing is that one of main characters is a woman who does not have to act like a man to be a hero. I love to read history and I want to go to Europe as soon as I can so I loved the parts of this book that described France in such detail that I felt like I was there.

Upon reading the first chapter of this book I was instantly excited and thirsty for more. Any war, history, or medieval topic lover will devour this in a few hours under the covers after your parents have gone to bed.

The perspective was from the mind of an American-hating young French boy. I eventually found myself wondering whether the author, Len Lamensdorf, was French but I never did find out. Hmmmmmm...? This must be one of those life mysteries.

Unless they are intellectual, readers under 12 years old may find themselves skipping through and reading the parts about the castle instead of reading the background parts. But if you're like me and enjoy vivid description, you will enjoy the whole

The Crouching Dragon deals dramatically and effectively with teen weapons and violence. It takes place in France in 1959 when a bunch of kids take over an abandoned castle near the beaches where the Allies landed in World War II. The kids find weapons - some are centuries old, some date from the recent war - and the question is how will they deal with them? The answer given in The Crouching Dragon are not only exciting, but original and provocative. Besides being a terrific story, well told, it throws light on our present problems and offers ideas we can apply to solve them. It's a really important book, which I recommend to kids, parents, educations -- everybody.

Gita Sereny's "Into the Darkness" is based on a series of interviews with former Treblinka extermination camp commander Franz Stangl, his family and associates. It reports, beyond reproach, on the machinery of extermination, justification, and cover up of the Holocaust.

The book seek to answer the question how an ordinary citizen like Franz Stangl can raise to the complicity in unimaginable horror and still live with himself for many years after that. Mrs. Sereny shows how deeply ingrained the moral fiber of being is in the soul after all, how important is it in order to live in peace with oneself, and how difficult is the struggle of repression, justification and denial is for one guilty. How cunning evil is in diffusing its scope beyond recognition of individual responsibility; and how at the end in the darkest recesses of his soul the guilty knows and finally has courage to say the truth. How adapt the human soul is in building barriers, masks and ritual to hide the ugliness and suffering.

Without taking sides, in cool and non-judgmental journalistic style, narrative is a masterpiece of it genre. Difficult book to read no doubt, because the magnitude of horror is not masked by petty emotion. This book does not offer any answers, any solution, it just sadly reports on what went on.

I read this book after devouring Gitta Sereny's wonderful biography on Nazi Armaments Minister, Albert Speer. This offering is superior to anything else on the Holocaust, bar none. Sereny spent many hours interviewing the Commandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl. He reveals in dispassionate tones the horrors of this death camp: the subterfuge to confuse those arriving to the camp, the fake train station, the beautiful gardens... it's almost surreal to read this man's words. More disquieting is that Stangl appears to be rather normal, though obviously a psychopath since the concept of guilt is alien to him. He loved his wife, was a devoted father and was an attractive personality, yet he was involved in monstrous crimes.

Sereny also interviews Jews who survived Treblinka by working in the "clothes factory," and she also interviews some of the S.S. guards who presided over this horrific complex. But the heart and soul of the book is Stangl, whom she interviewed while he was in a German prison in 1972. When she asked him, "When you saw children about to be gassed, did you think of your own children?" Stangl vacantly looked away and said mutely, "I don't know."

This book should be required reading for those who deny the Holocaust or seek to make excuses for Nazi genocide. Sereny is a masterful writer and every word of this book is gripping. This is not a product to skim haphazardly, it's as engrossing as anything ever written about genocide in the 20th century. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Often, the most frightening--and courageous--action we can take is to confront the truth about ourselves. Through Franz Stangl, commandant of the Nazis' Treblinka death camp, author Gitta Sereny reveals how the choices we make in our lives inevitably, and sometimes mercilessly, change us. And she shows us that the only way we can be at peace is to accept responsibility for them.

Sereny's is no mere biography of Stangl; instead, his life becomes the point of departure for a complex look at Nazi Germany, ordinary Germans (and Austrians, like Stangl), the workings of Treblinka, the escape and pursuit of Stangl after the war's end, and the Catholic Church's complicity in aiding Nazi war criminals. On this last subject, readers will especially appreciate Sereny's thoughtful and scholarly approach, as well as her persuasive conclusions regarding Pope Pius XII's curiously ambivalent behavior at the peak of the death camps' operations. Compare Sereny's analysis with the recent Vatican apology (of sorts), and judge for yourself which is the more credible account.

Throughout the book, Sereny manages to keep the focus on individuals and still retain the vast scope necessary to treat the Holocaust as a historical event. Stangl himself is presented as an ordinary man who made his Faustian pact and tried, like so many former prisoners of the camps, to move on and repress his feelings without processing them. His interviews with Sereny were ultimately as cathartic as they were therapeutic, and he died soon after their last meeting.

The impression we are left with at the end of "Into That Darkness" is one of tragedy as well as horror, for unlike a Goebbels or a Himmler or an Eichmann, Stangl could have been one of us. Sereny makes no apologies for Stangl; quite the contrary. But that's what makes this particular truth so hard to face.

For most of the past century, there have been two schools of thought about Hitler and Stalin. One states that Stalin wasn't really so bad, because he fought the Fascists; the other insists that Hitler wasn't really so bad, because he fought the Communists. Alan Bullock leaves both viewpoints in the dustheap of history, where they belong. Both Hitler and Stalin came as close to pure evil as human beings ever get; both stood for the utter repression of the human spirit and the annihilation of anyone who might possibly be suspected of standing in their way. Bullock demonstrates this in exhaustive, but never exhausting, detail. More people should read this book, if only to be cured forever of any temptation to support any form of totalitarianism, any time, anywhere.

What is most fascinating about this novel dual biographical approach toward understanding both Hitler and Stalin is the startling degree to which such an unorthodox approach illuminates one's understanding not only of their remarkable similarities, but also their philosophical, tactical, and personal differences. This truly is a fascinating and absorbing book, and it is well enough written that the narrative seems to spin along on its own strength, and we find ourselves captivated by the degree to which these two seem star-crossed in terms of their destinies. As Bullock deftly illustrates, the main differences between the two dictators were found in their personalities. Yet, even after all these crucial differences in both personal style and substance are considered, the degree to which they were similar is both remarkable and frightening to comprehend.

Stalin was a creature of bureaucracy, the ultimate insider, someone who knew how to use the organization bonding the Communist Party together for his own rise to prominence and power, an increasingly clever, adroit, and masterful practitioner of power politics. He was nothing if not careful, cautious, deliberate, and shrewd. Hitler, on the other hand, was a gambler, a masterful politician, a bold, easily bored, and endlessly distracted dreamer whose natural ability to charm, captivate, and enchant helped him to rise by extraordinary means. In many ways, these men came to prominence in quite different ways; Stalin, by mastering the art of bureaucratic manipulation and quietly assuming key roles within the organization that gave him friendships, alliances, and information that he used masterfully to rise through the ranks of the faithful, and Hitler, the manic-depressive natural leader whose charismatic popular appeal and desperate, authoritarian, and often violent measures were used to gain political power through extraordinary means.

Yet Bullock shows how similar both men were in terms of the way they used their power once established to execute their national responsibilities, and in the way they ruthlessly pursued their goals without mercy, remorse or any concern for others who suffered for their sake. Both used extralegal means to maintain position, both cruelly purged potential rivals through purges or political overthrows. Both bordered on being psychotic; Hitler coming close to being declared certifiably insane, and Stalin by having all the symptoms of classic paranoia. Certainly both had personal histories that can most kindly be described as bizarre in terms of the ways in which they treated those close to them as well as the populace in general. Both also seemed convinced of their own central and unique role in terms of their country's destiny, and indeed each identified his own importance in terms of succeeding in accomplishing that historical mission. Also, both were guilty of massive crimes against humanity, both against the opposing forces they captured and their own subjects. Hitler persecuted German citizens who were Jewish, Gypsies, or otherwise "undesirables", while Stalin persecuted Ukrainians in general and peasant farmers in particular, not to mention the systematic purges of thousands of Army, Navy, and Air Force officers he or his cronies suspected of potential disloyalty.

This is a wonderful book in terms of its insights, unusual research sources, and provocative speculations regarding each of these two quite unique historical figures. The narrative carries itself in an entertaining, edifying, and comprehensible fashion, and his use of photographs and maps serves the text well. All in all, I would have to describe this book as a must-read for anyone seriously interested in how the personalities and characteristics of these two key leaders in 20th century history figured into the unholy calculus of madness and mayhem, otherwise referred to as World War Two. I highly recommend it. Enjoy!

To describe Sir Alan Bullock's Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives as a duel biography does not do it justice. It is no less than a history of the formation and evolution of the most violent and pathological dictatorships in the history the world, and an understanding of these dictatorships is necessary to an understanding of the twentieth century. However, Sir Alan Bullock tells this story primarily through the two men whose efforts, paranoias, prejudicies, and impressive if ultimately evil intellects made their regimes possible. Without a doubt, he tells their stories masterfully, interweaving their lives within the context of twentieth century history and ideas yet maintaining their distinct personal and political identities, talents, and mistakes. His book is both interesting narrative and unquie analytical fair for both the general reader and specialist. In their latest book, Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison, Sir Ian Kershaw and Moshe Levin write of their subjects: "Studying the history of inhumanity, perpetrated on such a vast, unprecedented scale, has an emotional and psychological cost. It is not like studying the history of philosohpy, the Renaissance, or the age of the cathedrals. The subject matter is less uplifting than almost any other conceivable topic of historical enquiry. But it is history al the same. And it is important. The emotional involvement has to be contained, even when the very effort to arrive at some balanced and reasoned interpretation seems an affront. . . There is nothing else . . . than to adhere to scholarly methods in the hope that knowledge might inform action to prevent any conceivable repetition of such political pathologies as characterised Stalinism and Nazism." With his most recent work, Sir Alan Bullock has gone a long way toward achieving the ideals set forth by Kershaw and Lewin. I highly recommend this book