This book was truly stunning in its comprehensiveness and ease of reading. I was amazed and could not put it down until I had read it cover to cover. Unlike many books in its field, it focuses on important information, not convoluted thoughts like the use of bear paws. I recommend this book to everyone.

Having taken several courses on Medieval History, I find Daileader's book to be very insightful. It is amazing how similar his insights and conclusions are to those of my professors. I believe this work is truly a great addition to the field.

This is by far the most difinitive and best work I have ever seen on the subject of medieval history. Without it, the entire discipline would suffer, as it has for centuries up until the publication of this book. It makes books like Ermengaard of Narbonne pale and hide behind their little awards. Easy to read and highly enjoyable, I recommend everyone buy this book.

An absorbing and enthralling read.
A clever combination of in depth research into the construction and manning of fine ships and the parallel development of English Society and humour of the period.
An insight into the development of the British navy under succesive Monarchs as the early foundations of the Empire were laid.
The author proposes a lively and imaginative interpretation of the politics of the time as though he were embroiled.
More from this author please.

A well researched book by an author who obviously has a deep personal love for his topic. The diagrams are easy to understand and the book is accessible for any reader. I thank the author for this, a wonderful book.

The book is very interesting and obviously researched by a man who loves his topic. I thank him for sharing his knowledge with me.

Wander through the Venetian countryside and discover the magnificent retreats created for the most of discriminating patrons. No need to tote along a camera, all the photos you will want, are in this book. As a matter of fact, don't bother to pack anything, Srs. Muraro and Marton have created an extraordinary armchair tour.

Divided into two sections, the first, provides an informative backdrop for these villas, including artists, architects, patrons and general historic background, accompanied by relevant pictures. This humanist approach sets the stage for the much larger second part which represents eighty villas in chronological order. Each estate is represented by a group of photographs, sometimes plans and elevations. The majority are exterior shots of architecture and gardens as befit a photo collection of country estates. Nearly 500 pages brimming with 463 illustrations, 438 colour photographs 27 pen and ink renderings coupled with insightful accounts and analyses.

This coffee table book is a monumental work, which covers 80 of the most important villas in Veneto, the hinterland of Venice. These Villas were built by wealthy Venetian merchants about 500 years ago for the time when the summer heat in Venice made Italian merchants and gentlemen long for the fresh air of the country. For the ones in the know: many Villas were built by Andrea Palladio, the master architect from Vicenca. The photographer of the book, Paolo Marton, took 2 whole years to take the very best pictures of the different palaces, villas, country houses and mansions, and his effort has been worthwhile. The text gives readers the right background about how these beautiful residences came into being and why they are renovated and lived in by families such as the Benettons.

One of the best books I own! Incredible survey of the villas in their historical, stylistic and architectural context. Interesting relationships with literature, philosophical thought, artists and identities of the day are discussed. The best point is the comprehensive internal shots of each villa - instead of the purely external profiles you normally see - particularly of the interiors of the Villa Capra which I have never seen before. Beautifull format and excellent visuals.

My husband gave me this book for Christmas before we went to Venice and it was a great help planning our trip. I read it at least 4 times and used it to plan our walks through the city. If you are interested in art and architecture (why go to Venice if you are not?) this is the book to plan your days in Venice. My husband particularly liked the fact that Mr. Links understood the importance of stopping in a cafe to savor the city on each walk!

My husband ordered this book for me last Christmas in preparation for our trip to Venice. It was an enjoyable read and the walks laid out in the book were an excellent way to see Venice. Note: the hand drawn maps in the book are good but Venice is a very confusing city and I photocopied parts of a good map (with all the streets named) and highlighted the walks on the copies - this proved invaluable for keeping on track! I highly recommend this book to anyone as general reading to get in the mood for the trip or to follow Mr. Links on his 4 walks.

This book features wonderful history and walking tours in Venice, shared by a writer with a tremendous love for Venice the city. The author hopes that this trip you're making is just one of many, so you can spend more time sitting at an outdoor restaurant, rather than rushing to the next museum. You can always catch that museum on another trip--stay outside and soak in the romance of Venice itself. I have taken this book with me on my several visits to Venice, and try to follow his advice. You'll want to have another "standard" guide to the city, but don't forget this small gem.

Images such as those found in "Viennese Types" render words superfluous. Capturing a time long past, a serene turn-of-the-century Vienna, Dr. Emil Mayer has preserved street scenes perfectly representing individuals often seen, such as sidewalk vendors, window shoppers, a scissors grinder, a carriage driver, and more. All of these photographs are artfully composed, beautifully rendered. Most amazing, perhaps, is the intimacy and sympathy these images convey. It is almost impossible to view them without being moved.

Born in 1871 in Bohemia, Dr. Mayer was a Jew who was the victim of Nazi oppression. Following his suicide at the age of 66, his possessions, including his photography collection, were lost. Thus, regrettably, little is left of his great work.

Nonetheless, "Viennese Types" is mute testimony to his photographic artistry. This is a rare volume, one to be treasured.

In photography when things turn out well it's often because there's been an especially graceful coalescence of art and science. The photography of Dr. Emil Mayer (the "Dr." was an honorary title in common use by lawyers in Austria) is a sublime example of that happy merging. Mayer was an enthusiastic practitioner, teacher, and proponent of bromoil process photography - a method that allows for a freedom of expression via a series of laborious chemical manipulations of the negative, and produces a monochrome print that has a softly grainy appearance, and a sort of quietude, in addition to effective, evocative painterly depth. From this collection and the essays that accompany it one comes to understand Mayer had the soul (and the eye) of an artist, and the patience and skill of a scientist. The results are terrific.

Rudolf Arnheim's Foreword offers an elegant preview of these atmospheric documentary photographs of a vanished time and place: turn-of-the-century Vienna, a city and a culture that has been called a "uniquely civilized world."

Edward Rosser's sensitive accompanying biographical essay, "The Life and Art of Dr. Emil Mayer," is both an appreciation and a fine critical piece. Mayer, a Jew, was born in 1871 in Bohemia. His family moved to prosperous, bourgeois Vienna when he was a child. He was well-educated, and became a lawyer and a passionate hobbyist photographer, leading a large Viennese amateur photography club for 20 years, from 1907 to 1927. Mayer published numerous monographs (some in the US) on bromoil process.

Rosser explains that Hitler's annexation of Austria intervened, however. In June 1938 Mayer and his wife committed suicide. Their possessions, including of course most of his photographs, were confiscated, lost, or destroyed. Rosser's essay elaborates: Many if not all of the Europeans who would have remembered him after the war fell victim to the Holocaust themselves. Mayer's disappearance, then, was nearly assured in a scenario replicated - unthinkably and by the millions - in our time.

But in fact Mayer's photographs were rediscovered, and the facts of his life reconstructed by the hard work and efforts of several people (credited in Rosser's essay).

The complete portfolio of the 51 photographs in this collection reside in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. They are of everyday street life - a sort that vanished with the coming of the First World War. They are portraits: at least one interesting person is in each. People conduct all sorts of business on the streets. Horses pull wagons and coaches. (Most everyone wears a hat, a cap, or a kerchief - and aside from a group of men in bowlers, the hats are quite thrilling - to this modern eye). The cobblestone streets are for people, goods, and horses - and there are many. The profusion of things to buy and to sell, so emblematic of the bourgeois ideal that was Vienna, caught Mayer's eye - and caught mine, too.

This book engaged, challenged, and delighted me. Anyone with an interest in European street life at the turn of the century, in the deep and absorbing technique known as bromoil process, and the sensitive, artful, and deeply humane photography of a man who very nearly disappeared - will appreciate this fine book.

Viennese Types :: Wiener Typen is a remarkable compilation of the photographs taken by the late Dr. Emil Mayer in Vienna around 1910. A lawyer and photographer active around the turn of the century, Mayer's photographs are exceedingly rare because most of his prints were destroyed by the Gestapo after his death (Mayer and his wife, both Jews, committed suicide in June 1938, soon after the Anschluss). But two copies of a remarkable portfolio of his original prints survived the Holocausts, and it is this portfolio which has now been published by Blind River Editions, augmented with an informative essay by Edward Rosser and a foreword by Rudolf Arnheim. Viennese Types :: Wiener Typen is a unique and outstanding contribution to the history of photography in general, and the memorable, impressive, beautifully executed work of Emil Mayer in particular.

A colleague of mine (also a professor) recommended this book to me, and I am glad that he did. This book is a first-rate portrayal of the complicated world of European philosemitism and strange attempts to re-create a lost Europan Jewish world. As a graduate student working on German-Jewish history, I lived for several years in Germany, and I witnessed this complicated and somewhat peculiar phenomenon first-hand. Gruber explains so well what I witnessed and have struggled to explain to others. In particular, I would recommend Part 1 to my students and to others wishing to find suitable course reading on this topic.

Ruth Ellen Gruber is an excellent writer. She sneaks up on you and manages to make a subject in which you think you have no interest absolutely fascinating-- and interesting! It takes much talent and erudition to do this and Gruber appears to have both in abundance. The subject of this book, at first glance, seems of minor importance, or probably even boring. Instead, Gruber draws you in and before you know it you can't put it down. For anyone even vaguely interested in Jewish culture, and/or modern European history, this book is a must read.

Ruth Ellen Gruber is the acknowledged authority on Central Europe's Jewish renaissance since the fall of communism and this is her best work so far. Drawing on years of hands-on experience and passionate commitment to uncovering hidden stories, she explores the paradox that Jewish life and culture is vigorously alive in regions where actual numbers of Jews are comparatively few.
She examines everything from music to food, scholarship to jokes, culture to kitsch, and shows intimate knowledge of countless Jewish communities thriving throughout Eastern Europe. She describes how Jewishness in the region has triumphed over the twin traumas of the Holocaust and Communism to reconstitute a vibrant culture recognised and admired throughout the Jewish and non-Jewish world.
This is a great book, sensitive, scholarly and life-affirming, of interest to anyone who cares about roots, history and survival. I loved it.

This book terrified me in its magnification of horrors and atrocities suffered by those in the Communist gulag. What evil was perpetrated on millions of innocent lives during this time. Read this book and you will never forget the gruesome images, the agonizing despair felt by the inmates of these bloody camps. Anyone who thinks that Communism and Socialism are beautiful ideologies should read the accounts of those who lived under such glorious regimes as Stalin and Hitler!

This book contains the first hand accounts of many of the people involved in the work camps of Belene and Lovech. Belene is an island located on the Danube where one of the first work camps began. It still functions as a prison today. Lovech was started when 160 men went on hunger strike in Belene. Many of the prisoners were tortured and beaten to death. After death, their bodies were fed to pigs.

The horrific first hand accounts contained in this work documents not only the victims but also their families and the directors and guards at the camp (almost all of which are still deny their involvement and none of which have been brought to justice)

What is most disturbing is not so much that something similiar to the Nazi camps occured in Bulgaria but the fact that noone has had to pay for what they did. This book serves notice to the world that not only did atrocities such as this occur after WWII but that they are still occcuring in Vietnam and other places and will continue to occur as long as we allow it.

The only real deficiency in this book is that it doesn't have any accounts from any gypsies or Turks who undoubtly recieved worse treatment at the hands of the Bulgarian communist party. Also many of the accounts were right after the fall of communism. Having personally talked with some former inmates of Belene and Lovech I cannot help to think that many were still scared to speak out and that many equally horrible events remain uncovered. As one inmate put it "Even now there are very few people willing to talk about their experiences in the campss. They're still afraid! I am too. Yes I'm afraid, but my sons are now grown up and can fend for themselves. So why should I be afraid? Because the gun is still loaded in the hands of old men who won't hesitate to fire. Thus it was and still is in Bulgaria.

Todorov's book is a great read for both students of East European history and political violence. The book is a careful compilation and editing of recently published memoirs and TV documentaries that reveal the brutality of the Communist concentration camps. The book catalogues the senseless suffering of many of the victims of Communism, not because they were dissidents, but because they knew a Western language or liked rock and roll. Todorov also gives us the views of the prison guards and party functionaries and carefully details their duplicity and self-justification. Overall, it is a powerful book that fills an important gap in our knowledge about gulags in other countries besides the ex-USSR as well as reminds us of the brutality of the Communist system.

My wife and I recently went on our first trip to Italy. We stayed in Florence about 10 days and planned to take some day trips out of Florence. I bought the walking tape on Florence a couple of weeks before leaving home and was so impressed with the clarity of English and the historical content that I ordered the Siena and Pisa tapes too. They were all more than I expected. Although I listened to most of the tours on the flight over, I was very satisfied with using them on the actual tours and so was June. We took along a tour-guide book as well and found that the two really complimened each other. It was a great way to sightsee the streets of those beautiful cities. They were obviously well researched and written so that European history was linked here and there with U.S. history as well as the root of a lot of our English language. I recommend these tours to anyone traveling to Italy.

These tapes are wonderful because the information is based on the antiquities, and the tour taken is much more meaningful. The traveler can go at his or her own pace. Reading a travel guide and then applying that knowledge later looses something, these tapes are as the title states "Walk with Me". The traveler feels just like he or she is walking with the author, a very knowledgable, real person who knows what travelers need!

I would like to buy this guide cassette in Italian language, but I can see that you do not sell it. I like Cicerone man because his ENglish is very clear, and the map is good. But, please produce this cassette in Italian for other cities like Rome and Venice, Naples and Palermo.

A magnificent book, all 228 pages. Huband's documentation alone is enough to guarantee the high quality of this book to anyone interested in the Islamist movement.

More than ever, it has become imperative for the West to understand the Arab world. Warriors of the Prophet chronicles Osama bin Laden's ascent to power during the Islamic Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Author Mark Huband reveals the important role bin Laden played in uniting the Arab Muslims with their Afghan compatriots and spreading the ideology of the jihad, or holy war, to protect Islam, to all the various Islamic factions that took part in the war in Afghanistan. Although a number of recent books address the rise of fundamentalist movements in the Islamic world, none attempt to explain to general readers the emergence, character, and significance of that revival, nor do they bring together the many voices dividing both conservative and liberal currents in the region. I found this book extremely useful and quite compelling - a surefire way to get at the Middle East "problem" and ways in which we can do something about it. The tone is fluid yet serious, just the kind of perspective I needed. I recommended this with great confidence.

...I turned to this book with the hope that author Mark Huband could shed some light upon the enigma known as the fundamentalist Islamic phenomenon. From a layperson's standpoint, this book was an invaluable resource for understanding the complexities of the Middle East factions, including their history, motives, religious beliefs, and political alliances. Fortunately, the book takes specific notice of Osama bin Laden and the Islamic movements in Afghanistan, an eerie predilection of their role in future world events. With the author's journalistic style and personal anecdotes, the book held my interest as well as its significance to present circumstances. Educating ourselves is the only way we can begin to make sense of the motives behind the terrorist acts, and I found no better resource than Warriors of the Prophet. It has my highest recommendation.

I'm doing some research into the years immediately prior to WW2 and needed a good recap of Weimar for context. This book was superb for the purpose. Not long after starting it I concluded that I might as well save my yellow hi-lighter and simply dip the whole book in florescent yellow ink. There is hardly a page that is not a superbly concise rendering of an important point. Peukert, who died at age 39, was a star of German history of the 20th century, and this book, intended as both a primer and a summary, shows why. Excellent grasp and presentation of both statistics and economics. Few if any hacknied answers to banal questions, but rather a probing for new questions as well as new answers. A willingness to say "I don't know" when that is the proper thing to say. Peukert's intellectual honesty shines through, and all his traits inspire confidence. This book is not, however, a delightful read, being so thoroughly boiled-down to its essence. It contains very little in the way of flowing narrative, witty vignette, or deft portraiture -- mostly it sticks pretty close to what might, with a wink and a nod, be called the "objective facts" of Weimar. It is nonetheless well written, crammed with information, and free of jargon (this last point not to be taken for granted in academic writing of the 70s and 80s) -- and apparently well-translated. A very good job of what it sets out to do. That said, I got very little in the way of the "flavors" of Weimar from it, and now feel the need to read something else for that -- perhaps Doblin's "Berlin Alexanderplatz" will provide that.

A masterly translation of a remarkable book! The radical shifts of Peukert's thought are lucidly rendered in an English as limpid as it is urgent.

Detlev Peukert's analysis of Weimar Germany exceeds any other in breadth and readability. His book not only examines the experiment of Weimar democracy from social, economic, political, and cultural angles, but provides an interesting thesis for why Weimar democracy failed, namely that Weimar Germany epitomized the crisis of classical modernity. I have read many books on Weimar Germany, most of which focus on one particular aspect. Peukert synthesizes all of the most important aspects into one, offering a clear account of why Hitler happened.