Book Description
Based on diaries and e-mail correspondence that architect Suad Amiry kept from 1981 to 2004, Sharon and My Mother-in-Law evokes the frustrations, cabin fever, and downright misery of daily life in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Amiry writes elegance and humor about the enormous difficulty of moving from one place to another, the torture of falling in love with someone from another town, the absurdity of her dog receiving a Jerusalem identity card when thousands of Palestinians could not, and the trials of having her ninety-two-year-old mother-in-law living in her house during a forty-two-day curfew. With a wickedly sharp ear for dialogue and a keen eye for detail, Amiry gives us an original, ironic, and firsthand glimpse into the absurdity — and agony — of life in the Occupied Territories.
Customer Reviews:
Superb book - you can't put it down........2007-07-04
I read this book within a day, I just couldn't put it down, it was so beautifully written, and so easy to read.
Suad Amiry has a remarkable ability to say in one sentence what other writers take three pages over. A single sentence can be so thought-provoking, you consider all the many implications that follow from just one statement.
Despite the misery of her situation, Suad's defiance of her occupiers is hilarious - what a courageous and spunky woman! Her frankness and honesty of her own feelings, including her failings, are also very impressive.
Well done to Suad Amiry, I eagerly look forward to her next book - I hope she will write one!
arafat and my hot flashes.......2006-12-26
Arafat and my hot flashes - an Israeli response to Suad Amiry's Sharon and my Mother-in-Law.
After reading Suad Amiry's novel Sharon and my mother in law I was extremely moved ... as an Israeli, living in Tel-Aviv at ta time when all around me people were "bursting at the Seams" or merely committing suicide at their leisure while taking other people's lives, limbs, children and women with them, I could identify myself with her agony at not being able to move freely...
It was Saturday eve; I always felt weird on Saturday eve, uneasy. On a verge of a panic attack. Maybe it was to do with the gloom I experienced at home, as a child on Sat. eve (My mother was a BA -graduate of Auschwitz). It was exactly 2 years ago, me and my not-such-a-great-hero, husband, who was an extremely gifted and intelligent man but the biggest coward if there's ever was one, were having a row, after a long week ... I wanted to venture out. Out of doors...out of our building; living in Tel Aviv had become a Russian roulette ... the streets were very quiet and empty ... not a dog in sight, the stray cats had totally disappeared, everyone was waiting for the next one, and we didn't know where it would come from. I wanted to go to the movies.
"Are you out of your mind?!!!" Gideon screamed. I couldn't sit at home anymore I had to go out. To a coffee place, "A coffee place?!!! Now?!!" Only yesterday one of the most popular coffee places in Tel Aviv blew up.
"Ok then, the bar around the corner is always empty! Why would a suicide bomber come there, to kill us and the barman?". I thought that was reasonable enough.
"I don't know why?" argued Gideon back "he might just get fed up half way to the Hilton, did you think about that?".
I tried the movies, again.
"Crowded places?!!! Hello? Anybody home?", pointing at my head.
"but we never had a suicider at the cinema!!", I tried to reason.
"Exactly!!!", exclaimed Gideon with a big smile, winning the argument.
I felt a hot flash coming on. It was August and I just had to have some air. "I don't care!!!", I screamed, "I am going out!!! Now!"
All of a sudden a siren was heard, and another one and another one, a string of sirens always meant a suicide bomber, and the ambulances were rushing to the scene. We looked at each other with terror and turned on the TV. There was a suicide bomber at Michael's Pub, a few minutes away from us. It was my son's favorite hang out; thank God he had been living in Holland for the last few years. He didn't even come home for a visit; I wouldn't let him, my only son...
Gideon, quickly rushed to the phone to ring his three children (from his 2 ex wives) they were all in their twenties ... that was his usual routine, every time a bomber hit the town. Then he would take his clooney (Cloonex - a tranquilizer) I was always angry when he took it, being a practitioner of Chinese medicine, it was totally against my principals. But he couldn't care less. He was slowly becoming addicted to clooney.
We stayed at home glued to the TV watching the horrible scenes of children, women, blood, screaming, etc etc. Gideon began his usual snores beside me, the clooney had knocked him out!
The next day we heard on the news that Palestinians were under curfew ....
There are always three sides to every divorce: the wife, the husband and the truth...
We are having a terrible, endless bloody row: it's time to stop talking about the past. I would expect an educated person like Suad not to live in the past, but to accept our existence in Israel and to start talking from that point. We have no where else to go, and the experience of living as a Jew outside Israel has not been very successful ... I could attach a picture of my mother's green number tattooed on her arm, she is only 74, she was 12 when they took her to the camps, one of the last survivors in the world ... Tell me Suad, the truth: this is not about the occupied territories. Barak begged Arafat to take it back. This is about Jaffa...according to your book. Do you expect my mother to go back to Czechoslovakia? And look for her confiscated home? And what about me? I was born here, am I to take a dive in the sea?
Yours sincerely,
Yael Stern O'Dwyer
Worth reading with some caveats for the uninformed reader.......2006-09-16
I enjoyed reading this book but was chilled at the author's inclusion of "1929" as a year of Palestinian "pride" without mention of the atrocities of the Hebron pogroms. "Text without context is pretext" as the PLO's old friend Jesse Jackson used to remind us. Tom Segev's One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (which alot of Amazon reviewers think has an anti-Zionist bias) would be a good corrective for the reader new to these issues.
Amiry is not a fanatic or a fundamentalist and this is her P.O.V. and her life. Can she address the moral failures of the Palestinian leadership, beginning with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and ending in Hamas? Maybe, but this is not that book.
Our hope for peace? We're in trouble.......2006-09-03
I picked up this book at Ben-Gurion airport at a time when I could have used an uncommonly witty look at life under the Occupation, but alas, I found nothing witty or uncommon about Suad Amiry's wonderfully named but lazily written screed -- and if you are a thinking person, you'll find nothing funny about her bigotry.
Some parts rattled me, but it wasn't her so-called reportage, which anyone familiar with the region will recognize as the usual embroidering. I am not saying that life under occupation is not difficult and sometimes brutal. However, my editor's antenna went up more than once. Naturally, Amiry's stories are impossible to verify.
No, it was her attitude throughout the book that unnerved me. For instance, Amiry dismisses out-of-hand the very public military inquiry into reports of looting by Israeli soldiers. And yet she cheerleads without shame for Palestinian thievery, and even opines that Palestinians aren't stealing enough from Jews.
And the child-free Amiry treats us to a charming vignette, her tacit approval ringing loud and clear, of Arab mothers warning their mischievous children: "Behave or the Israeli soldiers will shoot you."
Interestingly, on my flight to Israel, just in time for the Israel-Hizbollah war, I read Amos Oz's new book, an essay, really, called "How to Cure a Fanatic." And one of his cures is humor. If you can laugh at yourself, you are in no danger of becoming a fanatic. Sadly, Amiry can make fun of her neighbors and relatives, and she can indulge in the most racist of rants against Jews, knowing someone will find them funny. But she cannot laugh at herself. I suppose we should be grateful that she left out the hilarious phenomenon of suicide bombers.
In the end, I pitied Amiry -- an obviously unstable middle-aged woman who I suspect would have been unstable even if she had stayed in her native Jordan. If the Israeli occupation hadn't driven her to distraction, something else most assuredly would have. But if you can blame the Occupation for your woes, so much the better. How good and pleasant it is to be a victim. How little responsibility you bear.
Life OVER the Occupation.......2006-07-09
Suad Amiry's book is very witty and easy to read. The book is based on a compilation of emails, letters and Amiry's recollection of the various events. Amiry offers a portrayal of life of a relatively well off Palestinian family under Israeli occupation. The Israeli occupation and the siege of their city feature prominently in the book but almost as natural disasters or "Act of God" ..so they are there thrown into the mix making ordinary complex life even more complicated. The politics of the occupation are touched upon but clearly what is central is just the day to day life.
The title of the book is very much a reflection of the light hearted style of the book but also of the very menacing undertones. In the United States Sharon largely has(d) the reputation of being a tough minded and determined leader and with the Gaza withdrawal in 2005 as a peacemaker; whereas in most of the world outside of the US Sharon is seen as a ruthless cruel man responsible for the death and destruction of many who was sanctioned by his own country and was even wanted for trial on war crime charges in Europe. For the Palestinians I imagine Sharon had simply been a brutal merciless monster; the title Sharon & My Mother in Law with that background is therefore very ironic! A daughter - mother in law relationship in a middle eastern environment is never straight forward ..the very words mother in law carry a whole world of conations. The very title of the book comes across funny to any Middle Eastern; equating or even putting Sharon & mother in law in the same sentence carries with the wit and the determination that comes across in Amiry's words.
Many reviewers of this book talked about the book illustrating the humanity of the Palestinians, I doubt if that has been on Amiry's mind; for those who doubt the humanity of the Palestinians better read John Grisham or watch Pirates of the Caribbean; this book celebrates the humanity of the Palestinians and the triumph of their spirit.
Book Description
Hannah Arendt's authoritative report on the trial of Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann includes further factual material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt's postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account.
Customer Reviews:
A Classic that Elaborates on the Genocide of Jews and Others.......2007-09-20
I am delighted to see this classic back in print. Jewish author Hannah Arendt has provided a wealth of timeless information that goes far beyond the trial of the German war criminal Adolf Eichmann. This review is based on the original (1964) edition.
Arendt (p. 39) gives the readers a taste of the scale of the Kristallnacht (November 1938): 7,500 Jewish shop windows broken, all synagogues burned, and 20,000 Jewish men incarcerated in concentration camps. In common with many others who wrote during the first two decades after WWII, Arendt (p. 5, 11-12) addresses the issue of Jewish passivity in the face of death during the later roundups and transports to the death camps.
Arendt briefly discusses the fate of Jews of some individual European nations. She mentions the conniving of the Bulgarians (with, of course, the implied freedom to do so) performed in order to avoid sending their Jews to the death camps, and the fact that Finland, Germany's ally, was never seriously pressured to turn over her 2,000 Jews to be murdered (p. 170). Clearly, the latter part of the oft-repeated statement, "Not all of the victims of the Nazis were Jews, but all Jews were victims of the Nazis" is incorrect.
Throughout this work, Arendt gives various biographical details of Adolf Eichmann. For example, she mentions that he was a Gottglaubiger (p. 27), a Nazi term for those who had broken with Christianity, and which Eichmann maintained right up to the very moment of his hanging, having refused the solace and Bible reading of a Protestant minister (p. 252).
Arendt briefly discusses Hitler's flouting of the Versailles treaty and his rise to power. While Jan T. Gross has asserted that there were Poles who praised Hitler in the 1930's, Arendt makes it clear that this was far from limited to Poland during that time: "...Hitler was admired everywhere as a great national statesman." (p. 37).
While most recent Holocaust materials focus on the real or imagined collaboration of locals in the sending of Jews to their deaths, Arendt is unsparing in her criticism of Jewish collaborators in this regard: "Without Jewish help in administrative and police work--the final roundup of Jews in Berlin was, as I have mentioned, done entirely by Jewish police--there would have been either complete chaos or an impossibly severe drain on German manpower. (p. 117). She adds that, because of this collaboration, only a few thousand Germans, most of whom furthermore only did office work, were able to send hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths (p. 117). Finally, Arendt concludes that: "Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another, for one reason or another, with the Nazis. The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had been unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and a half and six million. (According to Freudiger's calculations about half of them could have saved themselves if they had not followed the instructions of the Jewish councils..." (p. 125).
Arendt (p. 42, 118, etc.) elaborates on the actions of a Jew, Rudolf Kastner (Kasztner). He made a deal with Eichmann in which 1,684 Jews were allowed to go to Palestine in exchange for Kastner's silence before and during which 476,000 Hungarian Jews were sent to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Jan Tomasz Gross, who has gotten a great deal of publicity for his books (NEIGHBORS and FEAR), has stated that the 2-3 million Poles who died in the hands of the Germans were largely the collateral victims of military action. Arendt knows better: "...Eichmann knew that right behind the front lines all Russian functionaries ("Communists"), all Polish members of the professional classes, and all native Jews were being killed in mass shootings." (p. 95). "At no point, however, either in the proceedings or the judgment, did the Jerusalem trial mention even the possibility that extermination of whole ethnic groups--the Jews, or the Poles, or the Gypsies--might be more than a crime against the Jewish or the Polish or the Gypsy people, that the international order, and mankind in its entirety, might have been grievously hurt and endangered." (pp. 275-276). Arendt realizes the alternative future: "The measures against Eastern Jews were not only the result of anti-Semitism, they were part and parcel of an all-embracing demographic policy, in the course of which, had the Germans won the war, the Poles would have suffered the same fate as the Jews--genocide. This is no mere conjecture: the Poles in Germany were already being forced to wear a distinguishing badge in which the "P" replaced the Jewish star, and this, which we have seen, was always the first measure to be taken by the police in instituting the process of destruction)." (pp. 217-218).
Arendt praises the Danes for saving Jews during WWII and then, without mentioning the incomparably more difficult conditions under which Polish rescuers of Jews labored, nevertheless gives the Poles their due. After listing some individual examples of Polish assistance to Jews, Arendt adds the following: "One witness claimed that the Polish underground had supplied many Jews with weapons and had saved thousands of Jewish children by placing them with Polish families. The risks were prohibitive; there was the story of an entire Polish family who had been executed in the most brutal manner because they had adopted a six-year-old Jewish girl." (p. 231).
Beneath the thin layer of civilization.......2007-07-19
In covering, from a moral and ethical rather than legal standpoint, the trial of former Nazi Adolf Eichmann, Arendt must have known she was jumping head first into certain controversy. While I disagree with her insistence on international law, as opposed to an Israeli-ran trial (unlike Arendt, I have the hindsight of the Milosevic trial, not to mention pretty much every other pathetic joke of international law flouted by the U.N. but to which no nation honestly adheres outside Belgium), I must say that she made a rather convincing case regarding the "banality of evil".
Her point seemed to be, to the outrage of her critics, that seemingly normal men are capable of doing terrible deeds. It doesn't take a monster to act monstrous. Her critics accused her of attempting to humanize a Nazi war criminal, but I think what most people were secretly offended at was her assertion of the duality of human nature. We like to think of history and sociology in terms of black and white, good and evil. There are good guys, and there are bad guys, and there is no blur between them...
What Arendt is saying is that, save the occasional saint, we are all capable of committing the crimes that Eichmann did. It may take years of systematic propaganda, carrots and sticks, career enhancements, and whatnot, but in the end, the leap Eichmann took from ethical civilization into barbaric genocide wasn't a far leap at all. Weimar Germany wasn't a Third World country. For an industrialized, cultured, and Western nation to descend so rapidly into the dark age of Nazism is not a sign of any inherent flaw in German civilization, but rather of how thin the line between humanity and barbarism truly is.
Whether you agree with Arendt or not, the book will make you think. There's nothing wrong with hearing a fresh and opposing viewpoint, even for debate's sake.
Book Description
A profound and personal journey to the heart of a shattered nation.
In March 2003, Patrick Cockburn traveled secretly to Iraq just before the invasion, and has covered the war from Baghdad ever since. In The Occupation, Cockburn describes the fighting on the ground as Saddam's armies collapsed, the looting of Baghdad, the failure of the US occupation, the springs of the resistance and how it turned into a full scale uprising. Explaining how the three main Iraqi communities, the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunni, responded to the growing conflict, he gives us a nuanced portrait of daily life in Baghdad, of how Iraqis themselves reacted to the invasion and the long war and occupation that followed.
Customer Reviews:
Gripping, Horrifying.......2007-08-12
Patrick Cockburn is a British journalist who has lived in Iraq for a long time--and who supplements that with having been close to and covered the similar occupation by Britain of Northern Ireland.
So he is miles ahead of U.S. journalists who were "embedded" with the U.S. military.
The "embedded" journalists saw only what the U.S. military wanted them to see.
The U.S. military had learned an important lesson in Vietnam: NOT to avoid invading a country and alienating its people, but to avoid letting journalists see it and report it. One of the big factors in opposition to the Vietnam War was that every night on TV, people saw burning villages, killed civilians, wounded and dead U.S. soldiers.
Cockburn saw what he wanted to see.
But even in that, he was limited--because Iraq has become so dangerous that even journalists are fair game for kidnappers and killers.
Still, he does a good job.
His reporting (because of the danger of traveling) is anecdotal, but it is telling.
And he understands the politics and ethnic dynamics in Iraq--which the U.S. administration either did not understand or did not care about.
He also understands nationalism: no nation, no matter how bad its government, likes to have outsiders invade and take over.
This lesson is all-important. It is the lesson of Vietnam. It is the lesson of the American Revolution. And, now, of course, it is the lesson of Iraq.
Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds hate each other and without Saddam's fierce repression, civil war was inevitable. But they all hate the invading U.S. soldiers and administrators (and contractors, who take their work, when Iraqi unemployment is 50% to 70%) more.
Cockburn states that the U.S. occupation was bound to fail, given the tribalism and sectarianism of Iraq. Be he also outlines how the stupendous arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence of the Bush administration made it far worse.
On the other hand, we should all be glad that Bush IS incompetent. If he were competent, he would be Hitler.
Anti American point of view of our effort........2007-08-04
From the spelling and from the total contempt of American and Americans I gather that the Author is British. And that is mainly what this book is about, contempt for American actions, and to a certain extent contempt for British actions where the Brits are allied and trying to help our noble cause.
What the book is about:
`The Occupation', is mainly a list of things that we have done wrong, and how terribly bad Iraq is after American liberation. And the truth is things are bad here, and there have been mistakes and misdeeds, and there is plenty of sad events and misery, enough to write this short book.
If the book had been written by an educated insurgent, I don't imagine it would be much different. The author writes of no American successes, as though for the entire war that has gone on for four years, that nothing has ever been done right. I expected at least a notional objectivism so the author could claim journalistic integrity or something, but he makes no such attempt. He does write plenty about the successes of the insurgents and how they are undefeatable.
The author writes that the only reason for American success in Fallujah was our superior and overused firepower, but that it was really a success of the insurgency because they learned not to fight us that way. He seems to think that the only reason we ever win anything is because of our superior firepower.
The author concedes nothing to us in terms of good will, stoic effort, any talent or ability. He offers not one example of anything that we have done right. He offers no useful suggestions of what we could do to improve the situation. No useful or non-useful suggestions really. Just that we are bad greedy, incompetent, amoral and corrupt. And the Brits in that they are on our side, are only slightly better, but are also bad on average in all those categories, because they are on our side.
Readability:
The book was fairly easy to read, and I read the whole thing, so there must have been some parts of interest. There are some interesting personal stories. But really I have probably had my fill of tragic human interest stories in Iraq. When reading the book, I was hoping for something useful, some suggestion or idea about how we could be doing things better over here. But I came up empty in that regard.
My first exposure to any book by Patrick Cockburn.......2007-06-01
I won't give it 5 stars because the writing style is too informal and he doesn't follow a chronological line; he jumps back and forth in time between chapters. Still, this is a valuable account of daily events in the lives of Iraqis, which have largely escaped our news services. It's tragedy piled upon tragedy, and if it weren't a situation full of death, destruction, desperation, and horror, it'd almost be comical.
It is certainly an easy read and it's hard to put down... you'll be done with it in no time.
Definitely a valuable contribution to anyone with an interest in the history of the second war against Iraq.
Excellent survey of a disaster.......2007-01-05
Patrick Cockburn, the Independent's Middle East correspondent, has written a vivid first-hand account of the US-British occupation of Iraq. He notes of the war's prelude, the 1990s sanctions on Iraq, "Imposing sanctions on all ordinary Iraqis was a cruel collective punishment, one of the great man-made disasters of the last century."
He shows that opposition to the invasion and occupation of Iraq radicalized most of the suicide bombers in Iraq. An Israeli study also concluded that almost all the foreign fighters in Iraq had been radicalized by the invasion. A Saudi investigation showed that few suicide bombers had any contact with al Qaeda before 2003.
Cockburn details the brutalities of the occupation, the imperial arrogance, the use of mercenaries, the deepening religious divisions, the vile sectarian killings, the lawlessness and insecurity, the rampant corruption and the economic chaos (oil, electricity, water and sewerage are all still worse than they were pre-war). All lead to growing national resistance.
The Bush administration claimed that toppling Saddam would stabilise the Middle East. Instead the invasion and occupation have destabilised all the region's countries. The war has destroyed Iraq, worsened the prospects of peace and justice for the Palestinian people and strengthened the al Qaeda terrorists.
The war was `a terrible mistake', as the Royal Institute for International Affairs recently noted. US General William Odom, a former head of the National Security Agency, called the war `the greatest strategic disaster in American history'. We need our troops back home, to defend our borders against the terrorists, people-smugglers and drug-runners generated by the Labour government's criminal wars against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq.
excellent.......2006-12-29
Very well written, detailed and inciteful, highly recommended for anyone who wants more than the "embedded" corporate media perspective.
Customer Reviews:
Serious research, must read.......2007-05-08
After reading negitive reviews of this book I decided to read it. And I am glad I did. Among other things, the book explains very thoroughly how anti-Semitic bigotry has been cultivated in Europe, mainly in France, during the last 30 plus years. The book's author did excellent job researching roots of European antipathy toward the U.S. and utmost hatred toward Israel. She shows how ridiculous and at the same time how wide-spread is joint Arab-European modern mythology about Islam's great contribution to world's science, art, and the cause of human rights, while in fact Islam remains the most backward, intolerant, and barbaric ideology ever created on this planet.
The book includes a very impressive list of appedices (real documents), notes, and bibliography. I think it should be a required reading for anyone interested in the subject.
A Frightening World.......2007-03-10
Bat Ye'or writes intelligently about recent developments and changes in the world. Sixty years after the end of the Second World War and the Holocaust, it seems that we are once again facing a perilous situation in Europe. Through the ages, more people have been killed in the name of religion than for any other reason. Will we face that reality once again in the twenty-first century? Her book is definitely worth reading.
An Important Book.......2007-01-10
This is an important book that eveyone with an interest in Islam and politics must read. This book explains in detail how and why Europe is undergoing a process of Islamization. Not just allegations, the author fills the book to overflowing with references, citations, and ample evidence to prove her point. This is required reading.
A true Zionist and a Manipulator.......2006-12-22
I have never read such an exagerated propaganda in all my life's reading and academic studies. Bat Ye'or needs to repent and to apologize to the world especially to Jews, Christians and Muslims. Ye'or must have undergone some sort of trauma as a child with a bit of brainwashing by the zionist movement. I do not recommend anyone to invest in this unscholarly crap. The book trashes everyone except the zionist movements and its supporters. I wish I could rate this book a zero rather than 1 star. Ye'or and her followers need psychological and mental help. If you do not believe me read the book with a critical eye and you will question her credibility and dismiss her as a fanatical zionist for blood.
White birthrate to blame, not Islam.......2006-12-02
The book is based on false premises and a lack of broader understanding. There wouldn't be millions of Muslims in Europe if the White Europeans didn't have such a low birthrate. The Muslims arrive there for work and those countries need their labor. Are Arabs to blame because Euros refuse to have children? I don't think so.
Product Description
`History: Fiction or Science? Chronology 2` is the second volume of the most explosive and astounding tractate on history ever written - however, every theory it contains, no matter how unorthodox, is backed by rock solid scientific data. The book is easy and pleasant to read; it is well-illustrated, contains hundreds of charts, graphs and illustrations, copies of ancient manuscripts, and countless facts attesting to the falsity of the chronology used nowadays. You will be amazed to discover: - That the chronology universally accepted today and taken for granted is simply wrong; - That ALL methods of dating of ancient sources and artefacts known today are erroneous or non-exact; - That there is not a single document that could be reliably dated earlier than the XIth century; The Author refers to the Middle Ages as the Antiquity and proves mutual superimposition of the Second and the Third Roman Empire, both of which become identified as the respective kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Furthermore, he asserts that the famous reform of the Occidental Church in the XI century by Pope Gregory Hildebrand was the reflection of the XII century reforms of Byzantine emperor Andronicus who in his turn identifies with Jesus Christ. The Trojan war counted by Homer happened only as late as of the XIII century A.D. and the great poet actually lived in XIV century A.D. No stone in history of Antiquity is left unturned. Literally. This book is the beginning of a major correction to the chronology we live with.
Customer Reviews:
Check and see.......2007-06-21
I don't care what other people say of this book. Those affirmig it's fake, they hadn't ever read it. Or have some special reasons to do so. "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see..." This book won't make you feel comfortable. It'll make you feel free. It'll make you feel you're "not the only one" to feel you'd been lied to for centuries.
Suprise! Suprise!.......2007-03-22
Here is a serie of books which turns "the whole world" upside down. I learned a lot of it and I hope that a new book from A.T. Fomenko will follow very quick. A absolute must for everybody who is interested in history or even a little bit from it.
Prescient St Augustine?.......2006-02-05
We can so far divide the New Chronology into the following three parts:
a) The verifiable theory that proves consensual chronology wrong with the aid of astronomy, statistics and mathematics;
b) The new chronology hypothesis based on a new understanding of known historical facts and the most likely logical explanation of the most obvious inconsistencies inherent in the official version of history;
c) The history conjectures, that is experimental historical reconstructions based on assumptions that the authors believe to make sense in the light of their research and linguistic parallels - void of ironclad factual support to date.
Fomenko's theory complies with the most rigid scientific standards as a whole:
It gives a coherent explanation of what we already know.
- It is consistent: independent lines of inquiry all lead to the same conclusion.
- The predictions it makes are confirmed empirically.
Fomenko goes by the following axioms:
- Chronology is the basis of history;
- Human evolution has always been linear, gradual and irreversible;
- The "cyclic" nature of human civilization is a myth, likewise all the gaps, duplicates, "dark ages" and "renaissances" that we know from consensual history;
- The accumulation of geographical knowledge as reflected in cartography is a gradual and irreversible process;
- The chronological distance between a given manuscript and the events described therein is proportional to the amount of distortions it contains;
- There is no "useless" information in authentic ancient sources.
Why the mainstream historians do not shower mathematician Academician Dr.Prof Fomenko with thanks and laurels?
The Russians:
Because Fomenko asserts that there was no such thing as the Tartar and Mongol invasion followed by three centuries of slavery, providing a formidable body of documental evidence to prove his assertion. The so-called "Tartars and Mongols" were the actual ancestors of the modern Russians, living in a bilingual state with Arabic spoken as freely as Russian. The ancient Russian state was governed by a double structure of civil and military authorities. The hordes were actually professional armies with a tradition of lifelong conscription (the recruitment being the so-called "blood tax"). Their "invasions" were punitive operations against the regions that attempted tax evasion. Fomenko proves that Russian history as we know it today is a blatant forgery concocted by a host of German scientists brought to Russia by the usurper dynasty of the Romanovs, whose ascension to the throne was the result of coup d'état, charged with the mission of making their reign look legitimate. Fomenko proves Ivan the Terrible to be a collation of four rulers, no less. They represented the two rival dynasties - the legitimate rulers and the ambitious upstarts. The winner took it all! Over some 30 years of controversy, Russian historians have made a most remarkable transition - they were initially accusing the young mathematician Fomenko of anticommunist dissident activity and attempts to deface the historical legacy of Soviet Russia; nowadays the middle-aged mathematician is accused of adhering to "pro-communist Russian nationalism" and defacing the proud historical legacy of Great Russia.
The Westerners:
Because Fomenko blows consensual Russian history to smithereens, successfully removing a crucial cornerstone from underneath the otherwise impeccable edifice of World History. Fomenko adds insult to injury, wiping out one by one the Ancient Rome (the foundation of Rome in Italy is dated to the XIV century A. D.), the Ancient Greece and its numerous poleis, which he identifies as the mediaeval crusader settlements on the territory of Greece, and the Ancient Egypt (the pyramids of Giza become dated to the XI-XV century A. D. and identified as the royal cemetery of the Global "Mongolian" Empire, no less). The civilization of the Ancient Egypt is irrefutably dated to the XII-XV century A. D. with the aid of the ancient Egyptian horoscopes cut in stone. He was the first one to decipher and date all such horoscopes, coming up with mediaeval dates in every case. English historians rage at the suggestion that the history of Ancient England was de facto a Byzantine import transplanted to the English soil by the fugitive Byzantine nobility. To reward the English historians who consider themselves the true scribes of World History, the cover of the present book portrays Tintoretto's Jesus Christ crucified on the Big Ben.
The Chinese:
Because Fomenko wipes out the Ancient History of China outright. No such thing. Full point. The compilation of the so-called Ancient Chinese History is reliably datable to the XVII-XVIII century only. It is perfectly recognizable as the Ancient European history, reworked and transcribed in hieroglyphs as yet another historical transplantation, this time performed on the Chinese soil by the loving Jesuit hands. The Chinese are the next in line to go berserk. Chinese history is inevitably bound to get both more ancient and more eventful, proportionally to the growing involvement of China in the world affairs. Chinese historians will keep on finding valid proof of prehistoric Chinese spaceflights until the Politburo orders them to shut up.
The Arabs:
Too bad. Islam with all its key figures is datable to XV-XVI century A. D. Arabic historians may find consolation in the crucial historical role of the Ottoman Empire in the XVI-XVII century. The trouble is that this empire was initially a Christian state, with Hagia Sophia identifiable as Temple of Solomon, according to Fomenko! We can only guess if the acquisition of Alexander the Great (a Macedonian and a Christian) as the founder of the Muslim World Empire will make Fomenko's theories more acceptable to the Arabic mainstream. He certainly does not spare any holy cows at all, claiming The Stone of Qa'Aba in Mecca to contain the lost Arch of the Covenant.
The Divinity:
Despite of reiterated statement that his theory is all about chronology and not Religion, Fomenko stirs up a whole condominium of wasp nests. His collection of anathemas, fatwa, and other condemnations from all parties concerned is already considerable. Little wonder, considering that the history of religions à la Fomenko looks as follows: the pre-Christian period (before the XI century and JC), Bacchic Christianity (XI-XII century, before and after JC), JC Christianity (XII-XVI century) and its subsequent mutations into Orthodox Christianity, the Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, and so on.
According to Fomenko we know strictly NOTHING about the events that predate the X century A. D.
St Augustin was prescient when he spoke unto us: "be wary of mathematicians, particularly when they speak the truth."
Something of a disappointment.......2005-09-09
After having read the first volume of this expected series of 7 volumes I was triggered by the thesis of these authors that ancient Greek and Roman history did in fact take place in the Middle Ages. So I started studying medieval history of the Middle East - also known as Islamic history - to find out if the opponents of the ancient Greeks and Romans - the Acheamenid Persians, Sassanids, Scythians, Egyptians, etc. - also have their duplicates in medieval history. My search was disappointing: none of the many medieval Islamic dynasties seemed to correspond to the ancient middle eastern rulers.
However, I did find a close correspondence between Herodotus' Persian kings and medieval events:
- the defeat and capture of an Anatolian king - the Lydian Croesus - by the Persian conqueror Cyrus is identical to the defeat and capture of another Anatolian king - sultan Bayezid - by the Asian/Mongol conqueror Tamerlane;
- the Persian conquest of Egypt by the cruel tyrant Cambyses reds almost exactly as the Ottoman conquest of Egypt by Selim the Grim (note the nickname!);
- Darius the Lawgiver of the Persian Empire looks very much alike to Sulayman the Magnificent, the Lawgiver in Islamic history;
- Xerxes, whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by the Greeks at the naval battle of Salamis, looks like Selim II (the Sot) whose main claim to fame is to be defeated by a Spanish-Italian alliance at the naval battle of Lepanto.
I should have expected Fomenko et al. to arrive at similar conclusions, however, they claim that the Persian kings are the alter egos of the Angevin kings of Sicily whose biographies do not contain the exploits of the Persian kings.
The similiarities I indicate lead to the conclusion that Herodotus must have written his Histories at the close of the 16th century. But this is extremely late, given that Herodotus is "the Father of History", so therefore all other "ancient" histories must have been fabricated even later. Yet, the founders of modern chronology - Scaliger and Petavius - laid their foundations also at the close of the 16th century and had the full corpus of ancient histories already at their disposal.
It seems to me that Fomenko has to address these inconsistencies, maybe in the forthcoming 5 volumes?
Another critique of their book is that the correspondencies between different rulers are often based on a superficial comparison of the biographies; upon a more thorough comparison many details appear that do not correspond at all.
Finally, the authors rely heavily on the works of Gregorovius (1821-1891!!) - his medieval histories of Rome and Athens - as the source of medieval history; these works are - at least in the West - hoplessly outdated and have been superceded by more up-to-date works (for instance, Julius Norwich's trilogy on Byzantine history is not even cited).
Romulus courts Helen, Paris founds Rome, Moses goes to Troy.........2005-07-30
If you agree with Fomenko that Roman chronology is basically the foundation of the entire edifice of global chronology; you would also certainly agree that despite its numerous gaps and inconsistencies, Roman history is the best-documented field of ancient history, and thus a reference scale. But how well is the actual date of the Eternal City's foundation known?
Firstly, Rome is supposed to have been founded by the Trojans who had to flee after the fall of Troy. Some claim Rome to have been founded by Aeneas and Ulysses shortly after Troy had fallen; others are of the opinion that there was an entire dynasty that ruled for 500 years between the fall of Troy and the foundation of Rome.
Well, that's just an innocent 500 years long misunderstanding compared with what heretic Fomenko says, asserts, proves in his second volume: Second Roman Empire, Third Roman Empire, Biblical Kingdom of Israel, Biblical Kingdom of Judah, Holy Roman Empire are stories about basically same events, written from different points of view at different times. The underlying events have actually taken place during xii-xv cy. These histories have been written and perfected by multitude of highly talented humanist and clerical writers of xiii-xvi cy disguised as "ancients" with glorious names like Homer, Pluto, Thucydides etc..Chronology 2.0 beta..
Historians are kindly invited to report the bugs.
Book Description
An all-new translation of the most important ancient Near East documents that share parallel themes and issues with biblical stories.
Customer Reviews:
Interesting Compilation.......2006-12-30
I first read this text when I was taking a course in surveying Ancient Middle Eastern languages and texts. I have however found it to be more interesting for study of ancient religion than linguistics. Many of the myths contain the imagery that Lovecraft should have used to make his terrors more terrible. The authors voices breath the dusts of their deserts and antiquity. They give a window on civilized homes haunted by the twin shades of starvation and inexplicable disease. They show us a world where warfare really meant covering your hands in the blood and entrails of your enemies. As a Sunday School teacher I have turned back to this text often to provide context for understanding the ancient Hebrew's captors, allies, enemies, and neighbors and to understand the wrath of their God's intense jealousy.
OT Clarifications in Adoptions, Parallels or Allusions .......2006-01-14
"How manifold are thy works! They are hidden before men,
Oh sole God, beside whom there is no other. Thou didst create earth according to thy heart." (Akhenaten hymn /Psalm 104)
TaNaKh in Ancient Texts:
Many ancient texts from Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia discovered recently as a result of archaeological excavations, shed light and give various sorts of background information for OT books. Many of these texts provide historical information that clarify our knowledge of ancient biblical times. Some of the ancient texts have literary parallels to biblical narratives and could help students understand literary genres, and reconstruct the parallel culture and thought of ancient east Mediterranean peoples with whom the Hebrews had sojourned.
Those adoptions, parallels or allusions are only confirmations of the active role those Semites developed ultimately their religious thought to monotheism. This faith journey, with numerous contributors from Akhenaten, to Moses, to the prophets is exegetically described as: The history of Salvation.
Hebrew Bible Parallels:
The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) did not come to expression 'Ex Nihil,' even if still an unconscious belief of many orthodox Jews and fundamental Christians, to come close to the idea of revelation as mechanical dictation. The debate over who wrote the books of the Old Testament and when they were written has raged for over two centuries. While tradition plays a role in answering these questions. Scripture itself makes certain claims about authorship and date. Given in the light of the Exodus, a historical events for Israel; e.g., the Decalogue, when compared with the much older Egyptian Book of the Dead, 'Not have I despised God...Not have I killed...Not have I fornicated...Not have I despoiled the thing of the God...not have I defiled the wife of a man...Not have I cursed God...Not have I borne false witness,' clarifies how humanity pronounced the words of God.
Archaeological finds:
There have been astounding archaeological finds in the regions of Syria and Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia, since the early twentieth century. In relation to religious sites, there has been the identification of temples and shrines. There are several sources for understanding Middle Eastern life and religion, in particular the Egyptian, Canaanite pantheon. Israel was under the powerful influence of Egypt, and later in constant positive and negative contact, with her neighbors, Syria and Babylonia. These sources include the Old Testament, and the discoveries of Tall el-Amarna and Ras Shamra. The studious faithful should not be detracted from seriously considering proven historical data provided by scholars and archaeological finds, to avoid fall off the other side of their hermeneutical vehicle, examining ancient resources availed to us by archaeologists to uncover the ancient thought-world and religious milieu.
The Documents:
I came across those parallels early on, in my dad's catechist style replies to my teenage questions, which I suspect 'The Dawn of Conscience' was his prime source. D. Winton Thomas translated and edited OT scholars in, 'Documents from OT Times' in 1958, and M. coogan rendered, 'stories from ancient Canaan' two decades later. In this expanded edition, Matthews and Benjamin, updated their fresh translation of some famous stories, songs, and laws, in a Biblical chronological order with the OT books, providing some hundred scenes and figures, supplemented by notes that clarify common concepts, and identify where the ancient text was found; few are selected herein:
Story of Balaam:
During 1967 two fragmentary inscriptions, were recovered by H. Franken while excavating in the Jordan valley. 'The story of Balaam,' written in Aramaic, of southern Canaan, in around 700 BC. Balaam, son of Beor appears as a prophet in the Book of Numbers (22:5 - 24:25).
Egyptian Moral Teachings:
Two thousand years separate Ptah-hotep and Amen-em-ope, but their teachings demonstrate the consistency of the Ancient Egyptian world view. The wise was not perfect, only the gods are acknowledged to possess perfection. You could enjoy reading the 'Thirty Chapters' of admonition and knowledge in matthews/ Benjamin; O.T. Parallels.
The Thirty sayings of Amenemope:
Professor Lange of Copenhagen was a pioneer in comparing the teachings of the Egyptian moralist Amenemope (Tenth Century BC), before any of the Old Testament was written, with the Book of Proverbs. In his book 'The Dawn of Conscience', Breasted gives parallels between prophet Jeremiah, who lived in Egypt for sometime, and ancient sayings of Amenemtope. Archaeologists now know that his sayings were translated into Hebrew, and read by the Jewish scribes, before it found its way into the book of Proverbs (22.17 to 24.22)
Hymn to Aton:
James H. Breasted, an outstanding Egyptologist, was the first to compare the 'Hymn to the Sun' written by prophetic Pharaoh Akhenaten, Ca 1300 BC, with Psalm 104 of the Hebrew psalmody, showing the striking parallels.
Book Description
From MSNBC terrorism expert Walid Phares, this is a frightening look into the future of jihad.nbsp;Though annbsp;alarming new picture of what we can expect from terrorists in the future,nbsp;Walid Pharesnbsp;reveals how the United Statesnbsp;can win the war. Phares, who served as an expertnbsp;with the Justice Department, briefednbsp;the Defense and State Departments,nbsp;and testifies to Congress, shows that there has been a fundamental misunderstanding about al Qaeda's ultimate goal in the West and what victory means to jihadists. He answers such critical questions as: How long will this war last? Is the United States secure on the inside? Future Jihad shows how our defenses have been infiltrated; identifies the future generation of homegrown terrorists; and points the way for America to win the ideological war at the heart of jihad.nbsp;
Customer Reviews:
If you want to see how they are going to destroy us..........2007-09-03
Read on... This is a must for anyone who wants to see how they are destroying us, and what they intend. It is an absolute must for every American, Canadian, European, Latino.... this is a war of culture, religion, and people versus people. We are in the last stage of war, where one people rise up against another irrespective of nation, politics, philosophy, resources or technology. It is an all out war to the death of one, or the other. There is no compromise, there is no middle ground, there is no peace. There is only death or surrender.
A must read!!.......2007-09-03
This book is a must read for anyone who is a true student of counterterrorism studies. Well writen, a real eye opener!
Informative.......2007-08-11
The book provides historical prospective and covers current Jihad plans and tactics. It is a read that all Americans should read to understand our current Terrorist situation and challenge. I highly recommend it for all Americans, especially our elected officials who are invovled in protecting American.
Essential Primer for Dealing with Global Jihad.......2007-07-03
Lecturing and writing about world jihad in the 1990s when hardly anyone was listening, Walid Phares, who hails from Lebanon and who fled the violence and found exile in the United States in 1990, has written the essential primer in order for America, and the Western free world, to repel global jihad. He shows with mastery that jihad is not some recent crackpot idea that Osama Bin Laden cooked up in the last decade or so. To the contrary, jihad is part of a master plan that was set into motion when the Islamacists conquered the Medina back in the Eighth Century. Phares goes into the mind of the jihadist and shows how his jihad, currently sponsored by Saudi-funded Wahabism, is a long-term goal, namely, to make the entire world beholden to strict Muslim Law, Sharia. The tenacity and Machiavellian techniques employed are blood-curdling. After analyzing the jihadi master plan, Phares explains America's denial and complacency, characteristics that will result in our demise if we don't wake up soon. This book is that wakeup call. It is the definitive primer to dealing with global jihad and mates perfectly with the narrative of 9/11, Lawrence Wright's masterpiece The Looming Tower.
Puts It All Together.......2007-06-26
Not a difficult read...yet puts together in historical context the development of the different lines of Islam, their internecine conflicts, leading to the state of Jihad today and for the future.
If you ever wondered how the Grand Mufti could have become an SS General in Berlin, or how "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" has led to chaos in the modern world, this book will make sense to you. It will help you understand what world Jihad is all about, and why a united Muslim front is difficult to obtain.
Most highly recommended for serious student of modern geopolitics!
Book Description
The genocidal barbarism of the Nazi forces has been well documented. What is little known is the fate of fifteen million German civilians who found themselves on the wrong side of new postwar borders. All over Eastern Europe, the inhabitants of communities that had been established for many centuries were either expelled or killed. Over two million Germans did not survive. Some of these people had supported Hitler, but the great majority did not. In A Terrible Revenge, de Zayas describes their horrible fate. This new edition includes an updated foreword, epilogue, and additional information from recent interviews with the children of the displaced.
Customer Reviews:
Time the World Put Communism on Trial........2007-08-12
I have this book, and glad I bought it. It's very enlightening.
I'll have to find out what that "Konzentrationslager Dokument F321 fuer den Internationalen Miltaergerichtshof Nuerenberg" is... seems very little info exists for it on the web.
and...
I am wondering when they will put the Nuremberg trials on a second hearing like Trotsky got... Dewey Investigating Committee found Moscow trials were a "perversion of judicial process," how much more so the Nuremberg Trials, and afterall, Soviet Justice demanded fake trials (the General who was appointed by the Russians, had been involved in fake trials in the 1930's in the USSR), since for Stalin, a false charge was just as good as a legitimate charge for more information After the Reich: The Brutal History of The Allied Occupation). ... as for Nuremberg, starting with creating laws, and backdating them, no cross-reference of witnesses, accepting hearsay as testimony, no right to appeal, heck, the officers weren't even allowed to know what charges were being brought against them. Despite an outcry from legal authorities everywhere that Nuremberg Law was hypocritical (e.g., the atomic bomb and the unforgivably inhumane bombing raids) the trial was simply victor's justice and revenge, not justice, but Stalin and his cohorts would have their way. Been reading some other books on the history of world war II and I'm not happy with.... the Seven Million Holocaust against Ukraine, that nobody ever utters a word about -- because the New York Times was too busy denying it (1932-1933), and the League of Nations was too busy sucking up to Stalin, and well.... you should read about the 85-110 Million murdered by Communists... and what about those gas chambers of the KGB? We never hear about them.
You know Joseph Goebbels wasn't denying the Holocaust? You know that? In his speech, "Communism with the Mask Off," he addresses the question that even possibly as many as 6 million may have died due to the famine forced on Ukraine, by Stalin's collectivism stupidity. Wretched. But nobody was listening to Goebbels' warnings about Communist aggression. I don't like it when I see these same Marxists in our governments now, running the media... and of course, that explains why nobody is discussing the 85-110 Million murdered by Communists; Stalin's extermination against nationalism, religious persecution (turning churches into barns, atheistical rampages of hatred and intoleration).. my God! my God! When will the Communists and Marxists be put on trial for their mega-murdering crimes against humanity? When will justice be served on the great criminals responsible for World War II?
This book serves as just one more piece of incriminating evidence against the true criminals responsible for World War II (and several others as well.
"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be."
-New York Times, November 15, 1931, page 1
"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
- New York Times, August 23, 1933
"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please."
- New York Times, December 9, 1932
"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
- New York Times, May 14, 1933
"What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant. This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated."
- New York Times reporter Walter Duranty (1932-1933).
The disregarded genocide.......2007-05-03
The most grievous violation of the right based on historical evolution and of any human right in general is to deprive populations of their right to occupy the country where they live by compelling them to settle elsewhere. ... the victorious powers decided at the end of WWII to impose this fate on hundreds of thousands of human beings ... in a most cruel manner.
-- Albert Schweitzer, ca. Nobel Prize for Peace, Oslo, 1954.
Ancestors of my best family friends lived in rural villages in land near the Danube River watershed. (Biggest crop: cannabis hemp.) They are known as the Danube Swabians and were among several peoples living outside of Germany's early 20th-century borders (often in enclaves resented by their neighbors) referred to as the ethic Germans (Volksdeutsche).
Following WWII, due to concessions made by England and America at Yalta[, approximately 17 million of these East European Germans were systematically expelled from their lands where many of them had lived for centuries.
2,111,000 were killed in the process!
A Terrible Revenge is the story of this forced dispossession.
Human rights activist and author, Dr. de Zayas, paints a sad and brutal picture of The Expulsion. Through touching personal stories of dozens of the victims and through a detailed account of the machinations of states, Dr. de Zayas has raised the issue of this uniquely "disregarded" 20th century genocide to center stage.
Why haven't we heard of this one? And why should we?
To answer the first question, let's go to a Webpage on 20th century genocides, where we obtain the following list:
Bosnia-Herzegovina: 1992-1995 - 200,000 Deaths
Rwanda: 1994 - 800,000 Deaths
Pol Pot in Cambodia: 1975-1979 - 2,000,000 Deaths
Nazi Holocaust: 1938-1945 - 6,000,000 Deaths
Rape of Nanking: 1937-1938 - 300,000 Deaths
Stalin's Forced Famine: 1932-1933 - 7,000,000 Deaths
Armenians in Turkey: 1915-1918 - 1,500,000 Deaths
Giving the benefit of the doubt to the accuracy of the numbers, we can see that 2,100,000 killings certainly qualifies The Expulsion as a genocide. It's actually the fourth highest in absolute death count. Also referring to the site's definition of genocide as massive "race" "killing" by intention, The Expulsion meets any objective criteria for inclusion on the standard list.
...
For my complete review of this book and for other book and movie
reviews, please visit my site [...]
Brian Wright
Copyright 2007
Amazing book on the persecution of innocents.......2007-03-08
Dr. Zayas has collected a comprehensive account of the persecution of innocents after WWII. A must read for those interested in the little known atrocities. Filled with touching antidotes told by people who were unlucky enough to have their home taken away and expelled under brutal circumstances simply as a political expediency.
A long overdue tale about the greatest crime of the 20th century in peacetime.......2007-02-17
This book is one of the few books I've read that actually caused me to feel physically ill. It details the horrible treatment innocent German civilians had to endure from the Bolshevik hordes in the period from 1944 and onwards. Even though written from a liberal and kind of "excuse me for being German" perspective, I appreciate the effort the author has made in writing and researching this thought-provoking book.
I'm fully aware that the German soldiers and their allies didn't exactly rub the Slavic population gently on the back as they passed, but due to partisans and Bolsheviks, I don't think they had much of a choice. But that being said, I think you'll be hard pressed to find instances where 20 German soldiers rape one Slavic girl again and again in front of her parents, before they slaughter the entire family and torch the property, for no other reason than the family being Slavic. As you might have guessed by now, this was more or less what happened to every German girl that found herself in the hands of these Eastern hordes.
After the initial ravage, plunder, murder and rape was through, in the ending phase of the war and just afterwards, followed the forced expulsion from their Germanic ancestral lands for nearly a millennium with nothing but what they could carry away in a few minutes, if that, in hand. The treatment these Germanic brethren of ours got by the Bolshevik conquerors, and the cowardice displayed by the Western "Allies", turning a blind eye to the horrible crimes committed against these helpless people from 1944 and onwards, is probably the most unknown and at the same time apocalyptic crime, carried out in peacetime in the heart of Europe.
Highly recommended as a compliment to the eternal repetitions we are forced to hear about daily in regards to the events nowadays elevated to what basically amounts to "our" modern mode of religion.
Wonderful and well written.......2006-10-26
This is a Great book. The author brings the issues home. I am the son of an expellee and still to this day my Father has nightmares about this time in his life. It gave me a better understanding of history and my past. If Mr Zayas writes more on this subject I will buy it also.
Amazon.com
While living in Argentina in 1960, Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann was kidnapped and smuggled to Israel where he was put on trial for crimes against humanity. The New Yorker magazine sent Hannah Arendt to cover the trial. While covering the technical aspects of the trial, Arendt also explored the wider themes inherent in the trial, such as the nature of justice, the behavior of the Jewish leadership during the Nazi Régime, and, most controversially, the nature of Evil itself.
Far from being evil incarnate, as the prosecution painted Eichmann, Arendt maintains that he was an average man, a petty bureaucrat interested only in furthering his career, and the evil he did came from the seductive power of the totalitarian state and an unthinking adherence to the Nazi cause. Indeed, Eichmann's only defense during the trial was "I was just following orders."
Arendt's analysis of the seductive nature of evil is a disturbing one. We would like to think that anyone who would perpetrate such horror on the world is different from us, and that such atrocities are rarities in our world. But the history of groups such as the Jews, Kurds, Bosnians, and Native Americans, to name but a few, seems to suggest that such evil is all too commonplace. In revealing Eichmann as the pedestrian little man that he was, Arendt shows us that the veneer of civilization is a thin one indeed.
Customer Reviews:
Report of Banality of Evil and Poor Human performance.......2007-05-19
Burned question like roll of Romania in holocaust, the little understanding about treacherous behave of Jewish leaders starting from supposing clever Jewish intellectuals of Germany, Hungary and Poland mentally paralyzed by sneaky performance of Germany machine of extermination (I ask forgiveness to use "sneak" to try to explain the human's perfidy); the little silly Zionist mind of the strange Mr. Kastner and other Zionist fellows. Far more astonishing is how poor and failing was the human performance of these involuntary protagonists of the holocaust.
Let be clear: briefly a tragedy expressed very well in this book.
And if we want to look straight in the eyes of following generations we have to accept our fallings and weaknesses and by exposition of this tragic holocaust trying to prevent future mistakes.
This Eichmann was nothing; what was in his mind is secondary and of no importance to his acts. The clerk of the dead Eichmann, was a primitive guy with unfortunate instincts to manipulate his victims. How was this guy, what was in his mind, how he perform is of no importance and this is the smallest revelation in Hanna Arendt book.
AN OVER-RATED ACCOUNT.......2007-04-09
As a lifelong admirer of Hannah Arendt, especially her thrillingly suggestive "The Human Condition," I was surprised, when I finally picked up her "Eichmann in Jerusalem," to find it a poor account of the subject: disorganized, digressive, meandering. Arendt seems to start the story in the middle and assume too much background from her readers, a fault that grows only more irritating with the distance of time. Every straightforward discussion soon degenerates into a thicket of scholarly throat-clearing and asides. This is the sort of story best handled by a clear-eyed journalist who starts the story at the beginning, introduces every strand properly, nails every discussion with plenty of concreta, and never abandons the reader. Properly told, this story should get more interesting as it proceeds; with Arendt, it only gets more boring and tiring.
Best Non-Fiction Book of the 20th Century?.......2006-12-25
Originally appearing as a series of articles in The New Yorker, Arendt's account of Eichmann's trial is one of the landmark works of journalism from one of the century's finest historians and philosophers. She writes like the native German-speaker she is (long sentences, many clauses), but her dense style suits the complexity of her subject. Sharply critical of the Israeli government's approach to the trial, Arendt guides the reader through each step of the case while we watch her understanding of Eichmann's actions and motives grow. Her brief history of deportations from Europe is as deeply moving as her philosophical justification for the ultimate verdict is incisive. Surprisingly funny at times, always keenly observed, and a thrilling narrative, Eichmann in Jerusalem is one of my favorite books and one of the finest books about the Holocaust and what it reveals about human behavior.
Eichmann in??.......2006-12-12
The most serious flaw in this work is the lack of detail provided about Eichmann himself. For a book where Eichmann is the central character, it is surprising how little time Arendt devotes to the man himself. Of course, the larger picture of the Nazi killing of the Jews must be provided, but it seems Arednt errs too closely on the macro side, leaving aside the micro. Her propensity to study mass, totalitarian movements left her little prepared to write a biography, or report on a trial of one man.
That said, there are some wonderful passages of analysis here, well worth tackling. You can sense Arednt's simmering resentment at every turn, and her spite and rage are a strange pleasure to read. In a world where moral categories are too often drawn in strict black and white, Arednt in Eichmann in Jerusalem was not afraid to write a book almost entirely in gray.
Should be required high school reading.......2006-11-09
The most important factor in my decision to give this book five stars is courageousness with which Arendt was willing to expound controversial ideas, especially since her subject matter was intimately related to such a sensitive topic, the Holocaust. A few of those ideas come to mind:
1. The principal concept formulated in this book is that atrocities such as the Holocaust are not the result of evil masterminds. Even though Arendt leaves room for evil masterminds as secondary factors, to her the most important factor contributing to such crimes against humanity is the "banality" (best understood as "commonplaceness", not "boring", as another reviewer suggests) of evil. We are all evil, in the end. The biggest moral lesson from the book is derived from this concept; that moral lesson is that we are all frighteningly too capable of the kind of evil the Nazis were guilty of. If we spend all day captivated by the evil of Hitler we will have no time left to reflect on our own immorality.
2. Another concept that Arendt develops is that the Jews were surprisingly passive in response to their situation. Now, obviously there are room for exceptions, and perhaps fairly large exceptions, but nevertheless this turned out to be a very controversial idea. I do, however, feel that Arendt successfully defends this position to the point that perhaps a second subtitle to this book might have been: "the banality of cowardice". This problem, too, must be seen in the proper light, for it show us that when faced with an evil attacker too many of us are willing to shy away from the fight.
Aside from the philosophical point, this book is about a remarkable trial. Adolf Eichmann was a former Nazi official, kidnapped out of Argentina by Israeli Mossad agents, and tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the Israeli government. I especially admire Arendt's position on this point because she isn't afraid to criticize the Israeli government for its conduct during the trial (Arendt is Jewish, in case you didn't know). Specifically, Arendt shows that the government attempted to make the world feel guilty about the Holocaust by paint Eichmann as the mastermind of that evil scheme.
This book is well written and helps the reader understand the complexities surrounding the Holocaust and the trial of Eichmann, issues that most people tend to see a simply black and white. I think this book should be required reading in high school because it is a model of good writing and effective academic inquiry.
Book Description
On August 7, 1998, bombs exploded at two United States embassies in East Africa. American anthropologist Susan Hirsch and her husband Jamal, a Kenyan, were among the thousands of victims, and Jamal died. From there, Hirsch went on to face devastating grief with the help of friends and families on two continents, observing the mourning rituals of her husband's community to honor him. When the alleged bombers were captured and sent to New York to stand trial, she witnessed firsthand the attempts of America's criminal justice system to handle terrorism through the law.
In the Moment of Greatest Calamity is her story--a tale told on many levels: personal, anthropological, legal, and, finally, political. The book's central chapters describe Hirsch's experience of the bombing trials in a Manhattan federal court in 2001, including a behind-the-scenes look at the investigation leading up to the trial, encounters with some of the FBI's leading terrorism investigators, and many moments of drama from the proceedings themselves. Hirsch reveals the inner conflict that results from her opposition to the death penalty and concludes that the trial was both flawed and indispensable.
Hirsch's story of this tragedy and its legal aftermath comes to life through--and is enhanced by--her skills as a social scientist. Her unique viewpoint makes it unlike any other story about terrorism.
Customer Reviews:
Susan Hirsch, In the Moment of Greatest Calamity.......2007-05-12
This is a very powerful nd readable book. I highly recommend it and hope it comes out in paperback for students to read.
An Amazing Book.......2006-12-06
This book I heard on an NPR story. A few years ago, I also heard the author, Dr Hirsch, interviewed after the US Embassy attacks in Africa. In which she lost her husband, and then attended the consequent trials of the alleged terorists, part of the then little known group, Al-Queda.
She is a smart and articulate person, and her book is very imformative in today's sensationalist driven media. She is a voice of reason, offers clear and stunning analysis on contemporary culture and ethics.
She is a Cultural Anthropologist, and actually focused her studies on Law. I highly recomend this book to anyone interested in modern culture and the growing tension between Islam and the West.
A unique and timely view on Justice!.......2006-12-04
Susan Hirsch's new book "In the Moment of Greatest Calamity: Terrorism, Grief, and a Victim's Quest for Justice" is a unique and vital introspection into the role justice can play in coping with political violence. Written from the authoratative position of being a participant in one moment of greatest calamity, while simultaneously focusing an analytical eye towards the legal anthropology this moment creates the book provides a remarkable blend of what social scientists often call the subjective and objective approaches to understanding social reality. Hirsch does a comendable job of weaving her personal story of loss together with insightful and honest analysis of what justice means in the aftermath of such calamity. Teasing out the distinctions of justice as determined by past culpability for actions AND by future projections of the good, Hisrch's work is an accessible read for both scholar and lay alike. This is a book that you will find hard to put down! If you are not captured by her story, then her analytical scholarship will surely draw you in.
Books:
- Spellbound
- Tarot Cafe, The Volume 5 (Tarot Cafe)
- Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Black Cauldron (The Chronicles of Prydain)
- The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God
- The Chaos Curse (Forgotten Realms: The Cleric Quintet, Book 5)
- The Children of Húrin
- The City of Falling Angels
- The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales, Deluxe Edition (Literary Classics (Gramercy Books))
- The Dark Sleep (Vampire Files)
Books Index
General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
Strangers in the House: Coming of Age in Occupied Palestine
The Scalpel and the Silver Bear: The First Navajo Woman Surgeon Combines Western Medicine and Traditional Healing
Uprising of Hope: Sharing the Zapatista Journey to Alternative Development (Crossroads in Qualitative Inquiry)
Monique and the Mango Rains: Two Years with a Midwife in Mali
Men's Business, Women's Business: The Spiritual Role of Gender in the World's Oldest Culture
