Book Description
Why is it that in the midst of a war, one can still find gardens? In the most brutal environments, both stateside and on the battlefield, they continue to flourish. Wartime gardens are dramatic examples of what Kenneth I. Helphand calls “defiant gardens” — gardens created in extreme social, political, economic, or cultural conditions. Illustrated with archival photos, this remarkable book examines gardens of war in the 20th century, including gardens built behind the trenches in World War I, in the Warsaw and other ghettos during World War II, and in Japanese-American internment camps, as well as gardens created by soldiers at their bases and encampments during wars in the Persian Gulf, Vietnam, and Korea. Proving that gardens are far more than peaceful respites from the outside world, Defiant Gardens is a thought-provoking analysis of why people create natural spaces.
Customer Reviews:
Inspirational.......2007-05-12
A review in the WSJ, caught my eye and I ordered this book. I sent "Defiant Gardens" directly to our daughter, who is currently in prison. Spoke with her today - this book is an inspiration. Women, other inmates, are lined up to read it after she's shared passages out loud with them...
She loved Nelson Mandela's words, "To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend and then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a small taste of freedom."
Or from the quote about ghettos and camps,"These defiant gardens were an attempt to create a kind of peace in the midst of madness and order in the prevailing chaos."
Kenneth Helphand has hit the mark with his insight. We are donating Defiant Gardens to the prison library so his words can be enjoyed by those who might appreciate it the most.
Dig In And Read.......2007-01-04
Gardeners, Veterans, psychologists, sociologists, folks who have lived through an encampment or been a prisoner can appreciate this book. Keep a hankie close by. You will be a better person for having read this book. It repeatedly illustrated resilience in people of all ages and races. People like plants, want to live. Even if it is a daily struggle to survive, it is worth it to have another day. Read this book. You will be grateful.
Book Description
When ZlataÂ's Diary was first published at the height of the Bosnian conflict, it became an international bestseller and was compared to The Diary of Anne Frank, both for the freshness of its voice and the grimness of the world it describes. It begins as the day-today record of the life of a typical eleven-year-old girl, preoccupied by piano lessons and birthday parties. But as war engulfs Sarajevo, Zlata Filipovi´c becomes a witness to food shortages and the deaths of friends and learns to wait out bombardments in a neighborÂ's cellar. Yet throughout she remains courageous and observant. The result is a book that has the power to move and instruct readers a world away.
Customer Reviews:
Great Book .......2007-05-25
Sheesh...this is the product of a child, not the work of a Pulitzer prize winning journalist. It is an excellent diary, an excellent primary source and an excellent text for a better understanding of the Yugoslav wars. Yes...it does only tell one point of view - hers - it is her diary! Some readers are offended because of the comparison to Anne Frank; a comparison that Filipovic and others make in the book. The comparison is totally fair. Both are intelligent children caught up in situations they have no control over during wars of ethnic cleansing and extermination. It is a testament to Zlata that she can make the connection to Anne Frank...obviously the rest of the world couldn't. They (We) abandoned the Jews sixty years ago and abandoned hundreds of thousands of Croats/Bosniaks/Serbs to genocide forty years later. Zlata remembered Anne Frank's words...the world didn't.
Good read.......2007-05-07
I remember reading this book as a child and picked it up again as an adult. It was a quick read, but really showed how a child deals with war. It made me think of how children in Iraq are feeling right now. Very interesting.
It's a diary, not a book........2007-05-04
To the reader who wrote comment "we all had our delusional moments when we were teenagers"...you should be ashamed of yourself. This "delusional moment" was war and struggle for survival in besieged city of Sarajevo.
Why don't you try and write a book, and/or diary, sitting in a basement without food, water and electricity for four years. All that while granates and bombs are raining on your city. In the meantime, one by one, all of your neighbors and friends are gone six feet under...
How about that for delusional moment...
Zlata's Diary.......2007-04-20
Zlata's Diary is about a young girl's diary named Mimi during the war in her town of Sarajeavo. She writes of the hardships of being a war child. She tells of the changes of her world during the war such as her parents may have grown older one year but looked ten years older. She is constantly hearing of people being shot and wounded. And how might I know this? She was asked if she had a diary. And guess what she did and it was sent to be published. I think this book was over all pretty well written. I would recomend this book to you if you liked the book The Diary Of Anne Frank. So to find out what happens pick up Zlata's Diary.
-Christine Lanier
Zlata's Review.......2007-04-18
Taylor (Lanier Middle School)
Zlata's Dairy is the real life issue of how an eleven year old girl struggles to stay alive during a civil war in Sarajevo, (1991-93) but more importantly trying to cope with the pain friends and family leaving to escape the war. During the whole process she decides to keep a diary which then later becomes published in the years 1992 and 1993.
This book tells a story of family, friendship, and most of all courage. Though a war might be going on, Zlata Filipovic still manages to go to school. Zlata lives in an average sized apartment with her mother and father.
The life lesson in this book is that no matter how hard things get you will always have your family there with you. And that thing's in life will get though, but eventually they will get better. Also never dwell on the bad things, but the good.
I personally do not like this book. The fact that this is a diary is one of the reasons I don't like this book, it skips around and does not tell you everything that happens.It also repeats everything, so all you are reading is what you read before.I would recamend this book to all, even though I did not like it, does'n mean you don't.
Book Description
When the Iraq war began, conservationist Lawrence Anthony could think of only one thing: the fate of the Baghdad Zoo, located in the city center and caught in the war's crossfire. Once Anthony entered Baghdad he discovered that full-scale combat and uncontrolled looting had killed nearly all the animals of the zoo.
But not all of them. U.S. soldiers had taken the time to help care for the remaining animals, and the zoo's staff had returned to work in spite of the constant firefights. Together the Americans and Iraqis had managed to keep alive the animals that had survived the invasion.
Babylon's Ark chronicles the zoo's transformation from bombed-out rubble to peaceful park. Along the way, Anthony recounts hair-raising efforts to save a pride of the dictator's lions, close a deplorable black-market zoo, and rescue Saddam's Arabian horses. His unique ground-level experience makes Babylon's Ark an uplifting story of both sides working together for the sake of innocent animals caught in the war's crossfire.
Customer Reviews:
Tragedy to Triumph.......2007-10-02
I truly enjoyed reading "Babylon's Ark." The news is often full of disheartening examples of man's inhumanity to man and to animals. It's wonderful to see examples of courage and love that show us man's great humanity. Such is the case of Lawrence Anthony, a conservationist from South Africa, who felt compelled to rescue the animals in the Baghdad zoo.
Anthony pulled many strings to be able to enter a war zone in his eagerness to save these animals, but he was unprepared for the terrible condition of the animals and the places they lived. I loved his philosophy " whatever happens finish the task you start." It was his ability to concentrate on one task at a time that kept him from being overwhelmed.
The stories of individual animals are sometimes tragic and sometimes heartwarming and always interesting. And when Anthony set out to do the impossible, others joined in. A great story!
Truly Inspiring.......2007-07-26
This book was impossible to put down. It was more gripping than most fiction I read and even more fascinating given that it's a true story.
I felt many emotions while reading this book -- it was very moving, frustrating, funny, and sad -- but above all, learning about one man's gritty determination to save the animals, against all odds, was truly inspiring.
Riveting.......2007-06-11
The author's passion for animal welfare at the expense of his own safety is extraordinary. His regard for Iraqi counterparts reflects personal sacrifice and humility in the face of real danger. Unlike Matthew Bogdanos (author of "Thieves of Baghdad"), Lawrence Anthony and Graham Spence hold the reader's attention throughout "Babylon's Ark" due to a coherent writing style. Major players are identified and fully integrated into the context of the rescue mission. Also, the authors suspend political judgments. However, an astute reader can discern the foolhardiness of the Bush administration's ill equipped shock and awe campaign. This is one of those rare books that you don't put down until the last page is read!
Save a zoo! Save the world! Lawrence Anthony is a leader for us all!.......2007-05-25
I'm not much of a nonfiction reader, but after hearing about Lawrence Anthony's book on the CBS Sunday Morning News I had to have it. Ever slowed down the car to let a squirrel or goose get out of your way? Ever caught a small bird or mouse in your garage and taken it outside to set free? Although your animal-loving efforts are certainly appreciated, you will never believe the conflicts Anthony faced to save the Baghdad zoo.
Arriving on the cusp of the war, Anthony discovers most of the animals have died of starvation or been stolen by looters. With only 36 animals left, guns firing in the distance, food and supplies stolen, and only a handful of people for a staff, Anthony questions whether he should shoot the animals to end their misery or do what he came to Iraq to do. Save the zoo!
As an outsider, Anthony paints an amazing picture of a war-torn country, surrounded by American troops, but his focus stays on the animals. The story he tells of the animals that have survived, either because they have sharp claws or teeth (or both) and could defend themselves, is just haunting. His struggles to provide food, water, and safety are a never ending battle. It was also good to read how many American soldiers helped provide aide. Some soldier's bought an entire flock of sheep with their own money for Anthony to use as food for the carnivores.
Lawrence was also responsible for setting up an Iraqi SPCA which closed down a black market zoo and rescued tons of animals that were in even worse conditions. They also went in search of Saddam's million-dollar Arabian horses after they came up missing from Saddam's palace, and they rescued a pack of lions from Uday Hussein's abandoned palace. The stories and struggles are never ending, but Lawrence's determination will definitely inspire you.
So far, this is the best book I've read all year! I doubt any other book of such strength and will could ever come close! Animal lover or not, don't miss out on this story. It's a different side of the war that television and news deprives us of!
Great dedication to saving animals .......2007-05-20
I'm currently stationed in Iraq and work at the Baghdad Zoo and wanted to know what the first guys did to get this place back up and running. I heard about this book from a friend who had seen it on Amazon.com, so I thought why not try it. I began to read it and I could actually see all the stuff Lawrence Anthony was talking about. I went back to the zoo a couple days later and sat down with the director and discussed the book with him and asked alot of questions and he told me the same stories. I now have a great outlook on working with this place and the staff, thanks to this wonderful book. If it wasn't for people like Lawrence Anthony doing these amazing things the animals would have died and the zoo would no longer be a part of this city's future. I wrote to Lawrence Anthony after reading this book and told him thank you for all your hard work and dedication to the animals and now we comunicate often and he is planning another trip here to see what progress has been made. I would recommend this book to any animal lover who wants to read about the great lengths some people will go to save them. Thank you again Lawrence.
Sincerely,
SFC Herb Mowery
Baghdad, Iraq
Book Description
In 1940, Hans and Margret Rey fled their Paris home as the German army advanced. They began their harrowing journey on bicycles, pedaling to Southern France with children's book manuscripts among their few possessions. Louise Borden combed primary resources, including Hans Rey's pocket diaries, to tell this dramatic true story. Archival materials introduce readers to the world of Hans and Margret Rey while Allan Drummond dramatically and colorfully illustrates their wartime trek to a new home. Follow the Rey's amazing story in this unique large format book that resembles a travel journal and includes full-color illustrations, original photos, actual ticket stubs and more. A perfect book for Curious George fans of all ages.
Customer Reviews:
The timely WWII rescue that saved Curious George for posterity.......2007-03-08
This will be a present for my nephew George's 37th birthday. He loved
Curious George as a child, and still does. It's wonderful how someone
carries a love for a childhood toy, book, etc. throughout their life.
Such an individual eternally has a special spot in their heart
Kudos to Amazon for providing the book for $5.00 under market price.
The Journey That Saved Curious George.......2007-03-08
I enjoyed reading it and was surprised at all they went through.
Curous George is Saved!.......2007-01-12
This is a great book with historical information. I really enjoyed reading about the authors struggles and survival.
Their journey on bicycles with their children's book manuscripts among their few possessions is recounted here with pictures.......2006-04-11
Curious George is beloved and known by adults and kids around the world - but few have heard of the history of his creators, Hans and Margret Rey, who had to flee their Paris home as the Germans invaded. Their journey on bicycles with their children's book manuscripts among their few possessions is recounted here with pictures, flare and drama. Borden uses primary resources, including Rey's own pocket diaries, to tell their tale in The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape Of Margret And H.A. Rey, with Allan Drummond's drawings and vintage black and white photos throughout enhancing the biography and action.
A Book for All Ages.......2005-11-08
Voila! It was there! A book that I had been waiting to read. On my desk I found The Journey That Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H. A. Rey by Louise Borden, illustrated by Allan Drummond. Oooh, it was a nice looking book!
Everyone remembers Curious George, the mischievous monkey of picture book fame. If we did not read the books as children, we read them to our children. As a parent, I grew rather tired of them. Still, I wanted to read this book about an episode in the authors' lives.
Margret and H. A. Rey were living in Paris at the start of World War II, and being Jewish, were very concerned for their safety. Both had been born in Hamburg and had become a citizen of Brazil, but they had been in France for four years working on children's books. Two manuscripts were ready for publication, one about a penguin names Whiteblack and another about a monkey named Fifi, but the European publishers no longer had paper. The couple's preparations to flee Paris became more serious when the Germans crossed through Belgium and the Netherlands. Getting all the paperwork completed was maddening.
Louise Borden heard the story of the Reys' escape years ago and wanted to know more. She visited de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi to find the Reys' papers, wrote to people who had known the Reys, and traveled to Paris and the towns through which the couple escaped. She enlisted Allan Drummond to illustrate the story.
The result is a fine book for youth and adults. I enjoyed looking at Drummond's rich illustrations, showing the Reys on their bicycles in Paris, with people in their scarves and berets reading newspapers, crowded onto buses, carrying babies, all fleeing as Nazi planes dot the sky. Photos of the Reys, their passports, their day calendars, and other artifacts and illustrations of Curious George and Whiteblack also decorate the pages.
The penguin is really cute. I should read Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World soon.
Book Description
An affectionate and informative look at women on the Home Front in the 1940s, Grandma's Wartime Kitchen presents more than 150 classic recipes (updated for today's kitchens) along with anecdotes, advertisements, advice, and archival recipes from a unique and defining period in America's history.With details and personal voices that make the material come to life, the book covers: * The U.S. government's food rules and ration books * Substitutes for rationed sugar, and the delicious dessert recipes they inspired * Stretching butter, meat, coffee, and other staples * Cooking and baking for the troops abroad * Wartime entertaining including Defense Parties, progressive parties, and a traditional Thanksgiving dinner using wartime commodities * Monday Meatloaf, Mother's Fried Chicken, Macaroni and Cheese, Apple Dumplings, Vermont Johnny Cake, Honey Apple Pie, and many other recipes. At a time when America is saluting the soldierswho fought in World War II, this one-of-a-kind collection offers a portrait of the courageous (and delicious) contributions of the women who stayed behind.
Customer Reviews:
wartime recipes.......2006-11-06
This book brought back many childhood memories for me. I found recipes that my grandma used to make and I enjoyed. I thought of our victory garden and the canning that my mother and grandmother did. We made lots of sacrifices and didn't complain. I wonder why we didn't have to make
any sacrifices for this present war? --like gasoline!
This book has great recipes!.......2006-10-03
Recently I served as a cook at a weekend training event. The cook staff tried 7 recipes in this book and everyone loved them. We made several cakes, muffins and the No Knead rolls. The Crybabies were a great hit. The other cooks on the staff are planning to get their own copies.
Just what I wanted.......2006-01-15
I am writing a book sent during WW2, and I needed a good sense of day-to-day life in the era. This book provides that with authentic recipes and loads of other information about food purchasing and cooking tips that help to explain the era. I think this would be a useful and fun book for students of the era, regardless of their age.
The Greatest Generation of Cooks.......2001-02-02
Those of us living in this age of plenty have no idea what it was like to cook during World War II when sugar, butter, meat and oh, so many canned foods were rationed. I was a very little girl then and didn't understand so many of the hardships my mother endured. This book answers so many of the questions left unanswered and for me it is a joy to read. I do remember many of the recipes included here and for old times sake, I plan to give many of them a try. This book is a must for anyone interested in food or food history. We may not cook this way today-- we don't have to. But these old make-do recipes can teach us all a lot.
A look back in time to our "home front".......2000-12-27
I just purchased this book for my mother as a Christmas present, as she was born just before the USA's involvement in WWII. I gave it to her yesterday at our family gathering. Once she saw the cover, it was VERY difficult to get her to stop looking through it...she had to force herself to put it away!
I did check it out before I wrapped it...like Mom, I enjoy reading cookbooks in general, as well as being an American history buff. I don't know if I would actually try any of the recipes in this book (just not the kind of stuff I usually eat these days) but the chapters on food rationing and wartime entertaining (usually just glossed over in most books about the era) were very interesting! I just gave this book three stars since I would have liked more historical photos, as well as pictures of some of the completed dishes. If you enjoyed this book, I would also recommend the "Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook" which was first published in the 40's, as another view of American cookery at that point in time.
Amazon.com
Paul Fussell, a distinguished literary historian, served as an infantry officer during World War II, and the experience has haunted him ever since. It has also informed his books, among them
The Great War in Modern Memory and
Wartime, a book that is part memoir, part cultural-critical study, and that is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of conflict. Fussell conjures the small details of battlefield experience -- the way a bird's song falls silent just before an artillery barrage, the curious plunking sound a spinning bullet makes, the drift of smoke over an obliterated village; he also evokes the Zeitgeist of the war years, an era when hometown grocery stores bore signs like this one: "Did you drown a sailor today because YOU bought a lamb chop without giving up the required coupons?"
Book Description
Winner of both the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, Paul Fussell's classic The Great War and Modern Memory remains one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. In its panoramic scope and poetic intensity, it illuminated a war that changed a generation and revolutionized the way we see the world. Now, in Wartime, Paul Fussell turns to the Second World War, the conflict in which he himself fought, to weave a more intensely personal and wide-ranging narrative. Whereas his former book focused primarily on literary figures, here Fussell examines the immediate impact of the war on soldiers and civilians. He compellingly depicts the psychological and emotional atmosphere of World War II by analyzing the wishful thinking and the euphemisms people needed to deal with unacceptable reality; by describing the abnormally intense frustration of desire and some of the means by which desire was satisfied; and, most importantly, by emphasizing the damage the war did to intellect, discrimination, honesty, individuality, complexity, ambiguity, and wit. Of course, no book of Fussell's would be complete without serious attention to the literature of the time. He offers astute commentary on Edmund Wilson's argument with Archibald MacLeish, Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine, the war poetry of Randall Jarrell and Louis Simpson, and many other aspects of the wartime literary world. In this stunning volume, Fussell conveys the essence of that war as no other writer before him has.
Customer Reviews:
understanding World War II.......2007-09-07
Cynical, skeptical, and above all ironic, WARTIME explores -- from a social, cultural, literary, and psychological point of view -- what one might call the underbelly of World War II, that wide world beneath the myths of the "good war," the "greatest generation," and "band of brothers." Fussell, who gave World War I similar treatment in THE GREAT WAR AND MODERN MEMORY, strives not so much to malign as to understand, to put events in perspective, to seek the truth through all the propaganda and distortion and cant and outright lies, to find the reality of the war.
One need not agree with all of Fussell's arguments nor share his cynicism to enjoy the book. Indeed, it's difficult to agree with such an overwrought description as "Japanese soldiers were being massacred on New Guinea and Guadalcanal." Understanding and truth-seeking require making distinctions, and there's nothing shameful in finding American troops -- despite the atrocities which they committed and which do deserve more attention -- more humane on the whole than their Japanese counterparts.
Still, WARTIME is a useful corrective to popular (and bromidic) accounts of the war that often imply that everyone marched off to war willingly and gleefully, that everyone was united in support of the war and the way it was waged, that everyone high-mindedly fought for freedom. Yes, there were heroism, courage, and nobility, but there were also nastiness, brutishness, cruelty, and dishonesty. By exposing the latter, Fussell says, we elevate the former. He concludes the book with the statement Eisenhower prepared in case the D-Day invasion failed. In it, the general takes full responsibility for the failure, a gesture Fussell calls "a bright signal in a dark time" -- a gesture that means nothing if we believe all the many millions of men in uniform would have done the same thing.
The luxury of a safe view.......2006-11-07
While Paul Fussell does an outstanding job of recreating the wartime tricks and habits that kept the war effort humming in the USA and England, he writes as if the entire war was an unnecessary, even childish distraction from more serious business. And perhaps to some extent the war was optional for America. But national survival hung in the balance for dozens of other countries, who didn't ask for the war, but once in, had to find ways to survive - an aspect of war some might find of interest. True, the war demanded that money be raised, industry retooled, soldiers schooled, workers motivated - and all quickly and without the elegance or finesse that Fussell would have preferred. So he meticulously documents the entire war effort, and especially on the home front, as puerile, incompetent, self-contradictory, fatuous, superficial. So if you want a good "anti-war" read to convince yourself that wars are stupid, this book is for you. But don't look for sympathetic insights into how countries have to cope once caught in the crossfire.
War ain't no picnic........2005-04-09
Fussell attempts to capture what it was like being a combat soldier during WW II. He stresses the horror of the real thing as compared to the heroic, sanitized version that most people like to talk about. His tone is bitter, though, and also pro-British at the expense of the American soldiers. All of this, I think, is meant to shock us, but it's so heavy-handed that it doesn't, really. Fussell is a good writer, however, and this book is well written.
Excellent .......2004-09-26
One of the best books I have read about the psychology and mindset of soldiers (or for that matter, all people). The best chapter is Chicken S***.
Fussell returns to the Second World War.......2004-04-09
I read this book for a university History class. My professor's take on the book? Not a good history, and not even an effective piece of literature. Gee, then what is it? What my professor did admire about it is that it attempted to strip away the myths romanticizing the war experience.
My own personal take on the book? Having read The Great War and Modern Memory, I had some serious doubts about whether Fussell would be capable of writing a book like Wartime adequately. He is an English professor, not a historian. The Great War and Modern Memory, indeed, was a sophisticated study on WWI literature, but as a history it was flawed. Wartime, on the other hand, is categorized only as a history. Reading the book, I indeed noted one nearly fatal flaw. Many of Fussell's observations are not referenced, and many that are are referenced to fictional works. Still, Fussell being a veteran of the war, I suppose he would have been able to pick out what in the fictional works stood out to him as real. Wartime, then, reads better as a memoir, but even that is tricky since Fussell rarely refers to himself. I have no idea what battles Fussell even fought in, though I believe he was in Europe.
The book sheds some light on what conflict was like in WWII. At least one other reviewer has said that people already had a general idea of the realities, but the fact today is that a new generation lives in an age of cruiser missiles and embedded journalism, and it's hard to think of "precision bombing" in WWII without thinking of the 1990-1 Persian Gulf and 2003-4 Iraq Wars. I respected Wartime for its blunt honesty, and for the times when it seemed like a sequel to The Great War and Modern Memory for tying general war experiences with the depelopment of war literature. Some have complained the chapter on readings in the war was tedious. In fact, I sympathized with his take on the publication Horizon, since my enjoyment of the arts is mostly limited to a similar compilation of works. I also found his despription of comic book clubs sympathetic. This is a time, after all, when fan base for Lord of the Rings is soaring.
I know that I now view the fighting in WWII in a less romantic light, more like Vietnam. The book is similar to Saving Private Ryan in that way. Other reviewers of Wartime have bashed that movie as romanticism paying lip service to war-is-horrible, but I viewed it more as a way of saying "These soldiers have sacrificed all of this for you. What are you doing to earn this?" I still think WWII was a just war (just think about an Axis victory), but it was by no means an adventure.
Product Description
U.S. M1 Carbines, Wartime Production, 5th edition, revised and expanded, by Craig Riesch. ISBN-13 978-1-882391-43-1. The 5th edition of this best-selling bible of the World War II M1 Carbine has been completely revised and expanded. The author, Craig Riesch, has compiled twenty years of surveys and research into this new 237 page volume. The book contains 38 charts and 212 photographs, and fourteen drawings. The book provides a history of the M1 Carbine s development, manufacture and use during World War II, as well as through the Korean War and the war in Vietnam. The M1 Carbine is analyzed and described by its ten manufacturers, model and serial number range. The U.S. Army Ordnance Department required that virtually every part of the M1 Carbine be marked with a manufacturer s or subcontractor s code. Riesch has unraveled the manufacturer s and subcontractor s codes by serial number range and eliminated many spurious codes. Every major and most minor parts can now be conclusively identified by manufacturer and serial number range, making it possible to examine an M1 Carbine to determine its authenticity with a high degree of confidence. Using the charts and photos the collector can identify the manufacturer and period of use for the receiver group, barrel group, trigger housing group, stock group and their component parts. Butt plates by the various manufacturers are shown in full-size photographs for easy identification. All variations of the M1 Carbine are discussed M1, M1A1, and M2 by manufacturer. The aspects that make up the two types of true M1A1 folding stock paratrooper carbines are described and photographed. Serial number ranges for original manufacture of the M1A1 are also included. Reproduction folding stocks are shown and points of difference are identified. The book is divided into six chapters and ten appendices. Each chapter describes a major subgroup of the M1 Carbine: receiver, barrel, trigger assembly, and stock. Chapter six covers
Customer Reviews:
U.S.M1 Carbines, Wartime Production,5th Revised and expanded .......2007-08-21
may be his best effort yet on this subject.enjoyed the pictures.could use more information on the odd ball stuff that the average buyer will never see[t-3,expirmentals, various proto types] and a little more history after WW11. still a great book.
Book Description
Through the eyes of a young girl comes this wartime memoir--an unforgettable, timeless story of courage, dignity, and a mother's love.
When the Germans laid siege to Leningrad in 1942, Elena Kozhina, then a child of nine, fled with her mother to a Cossack village in the heart of the Russian Steppe, where they hid in dangerous proximity to nearby occupying troops. Her account of the years until their liberation is a singularly compelling story of exile and survival, of a mother's courage and dignity, and a young girl's infinitely poignant education in the sorrows of war.
Offered reluctant shelter by the Cossacks who viewed the cosmopolitan Leningraders with only slightly less suspicion than the Nazi soldiers who terrorized their villages en route to the front, Kozhina and her mother forged an uneasy truce with the locals as they tried to convert a ramshackle garden shed into a habitable home. Through her simple yet remarkable acts of kindness and bravery, her mother managed to offset the horror and struggle of their wartime lives and instill in those around her a lasting appreciation for her enduring humanity and courage.
As affecting as an historical novel, Elena Kozhina's jewel of a memoir is poised to become a classic of the genre. Already drawing comparison to similar works by Tolstoy and Gorky, Through the Burning Steppe reveals a natural writer of unerring grace.
Customer Reviews:
Outstanding.......2000-07-18
This is a wonderful piece of writing. It is is written in clear and sparkling prose, testimony to the way in which Ms. Kozhina carries on the great Russian literary tradition of such writers as Gorky, Chekov, and Turgenev. The book, in its simplicity, yet power, reminds me of that great French movie, "Forbidden Games", about children orphaned during World War II. Time after time, as I read through the book, I would stop and look at the picture of the author; in a way I was unable to believe that one could go through such terrible times as she describes, and yet still survive with such great depths of humanity. This is literature at its very best!
A gem - on many levels.......2000-03-20
Elena Kozhina's Through the Burning Steppe: A Wartime Memoir is so much more than a highly compelling narrative of the horrors and heroism experienced by a young Russian girl and her mother during World War II. It is also a revealing glimpse into the realities of life in the Soviet Union, not just during the war, but from its earliest years to its final decade. It is a chronicle of a young person's growing literary, artistic and cultural awareness. And it is, ultimately, a timeless story - not simply of good and evil, or of simple joys amid enormous tragedy, but also of human frailties and strengths, of ruthlessness and compassion, of islands of clarity in a sea of complexity. This gem of a book packs volumes of interest - and of insight - into its fewer than 200 beautifully written pages. I recommend it highly.
Amazon.com
Binjamin Wilkomirski (the name the author believes to be his, though he will never know for sure) was held in a Nazi concentration camp in Poland as a young child. Fragments contains the powerful remnants of his memory, the piercing shards of a child's recollections of unadulterated terror and the confusing horror of the camps. The sheer power of the author's story would be sufficient to explain the force of his words; his steady confidence in his childlike voice and memory adds even greater authority to this memoir. Capable of standing up against Elie Wiesel's harrowing masterpiece Night, Fragments evokes an awesome power through the memory of a child and the words of a courageously honest man who has refused to substitute "understanding" for the inexplicable events he experienced.
Book Description
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award
An extraordinary memoir of a small boy who spent his childhood in the Nazi death camps. Binjamin Wilkomirski was a child when the round-ups of Jews in Latvia began. His father was killed in front of him, he was separated from his family, and, perhaps three or four years old, he found himself in Majdanek death camp, surrounded by strangers. In piercingly simple scenes Wilkomirski gives us the "fragments" of his recollections, so that we too become small again and see this bewildering, horrifying world at child's eye-height. No adult interpretations intervene. From inside the mind of a little boy we too experience love and loss, terror and friendship, and the final arduous return to the "real" world. Beautifully written, with an indelible impact that makes this a book that is not read but experienced,
Fragments is "a masterpiece" (Kirkus Reviews). Translated form the German by Carol Brown Janeway.
"This sunning and austerely written work is so profoundly moving, so morally important, and so free from literary artifice of any kind at all that I wonder if I even have the right to try to offer praise."--Jonathan Kozol, The Nation
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Customer Reviews:
Talk about "false memories"..........2006-04-04
After some investigative reporting by the media, it was discovered that this alleged "true story" of a Holocaust survivor was anything but. The facts? Binjamin Wilkomirski is actually Swiss-born Bruno Grosjean Doessekker, and his experience was about as real as that of the supposed "fellow survivor" who corroborated his story, Laura Grabowski.
How did Grabowski play an indirect role in unmasking the author? She claimed to be an orphan who suffered torture at the hands of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele and was later adopted by an American couple, only to have these stories be exposed as equally untrue (her childhood photos show a happy, healthy American girl w/not even hints of the emaciated sate commonly associated w/those who spent time in concentration camps). Additionally, she was revealed to actually be Lauren Stratford, author of the equally fictitious-but-presented-as-a-true-story "Satan's Underground", which detailed her alleged involvement in Satanism and the sexual abuse she endured from the time she was a young girl (something she'd also had a history of lying about since her late teens); as it turns out, "Grabowski" was actually the surname of her maternal grandparents.
Don't the Wilkomirskis and Grabowskis of this world realize that their exploitation of one of the most despicable events in history is not only self-indulgent and unbelievably selfish, but giving credibility to those misguided Holocaust-denying racist groups? Such lies will allow these scumbags to convince the lesser-informed folk out there that the attempted extermination of an entire race was also nothing but lies, which I'm sure never occured to these self-indulgent storytellers as they proceeded to betray countless REAL survivors, who have already suffered enough as it is.
If Lippy likes it, you know it's garbage.......2006-01-24
Just follow the money trail, the political bantering and incessant self-victimization (which always seems to lead into getting paid one way or another) and you'll see why the most powerful of the jewish lobby (yeah, I'm not afraid to say it) will still ENDORSE IT after it has been proven to be a complete fabrication.
And they wonder why the "extremists" have so much credibility even before people look at all the facts. I've read this book and got a great laugh out of the rediculous claims, and the writings of a man obviously an older version of someone whom would be on the Jerry Springer show today if faced with a different self-victimization issue.
I was already well informed this book was a fabrication in advance, so I can't say "I'm smarter than you all whom were fooled"...heck, even Elie "Weasel" fooled me the first two times around. Looks like his credibility is crap as well. I'mglad I have relatives that were on both sides of WW2; as camp munitions auditor, fitness/activity trainer (A Sergeant's job! He was denied citizenship in US but later came from Canada in about '80), a Luftwaffe infantryman whom both stayed at the conc camps, and himself taken POW when wounded in Belgium (yes many Luft Inf exist so stop emailing me, you don't know history) and a US liberator of Buchenwald...I'm glad REALITY doesnt match the whining stories of crybaby rich jews exiled after the war...so many millions of survivors all rubber-stamping eachothers stories about human soap and lampshades, all proven false by MAINSTREAM science. Like I said, follow the money trail...
Zero stars.......2005-01-15
When I read this book several years ago, I did not understand how anyone could have believed it. Having known several true Holocaust survivors, and heard their stories, I certainly didn't.
Now, there have now been several clear and thorough exposes of the fraud perpetrated by Bruno Grosjean Dossekker, who falsely claimed here to be one Binjamin Wilkomirski, a child survivor of the Holocaust. Stefan Maechler, The New Yorker, 60 Minutes and several other publications prove beyond any doubt that Wilkomirski is no such person and that Fragments is a fiction.
Every possible lead has now been followed; each detail in Dossekker's narration of "events" has been compared with historical records from such leading Holocaust scholars as Raul Hilberg and Lawrence Langer, accounts of other child survivors, interviews with members of the Dossekker and Grosjean families and more.
The strongest evidence, unearthed by Stephan Maechler, is the fact that in 1981, Dossekker/Wilkomirski contested the will of Yvonne Grosjean, whom, in a letter to officials in Bern Switzerland, he called "my birth mother." Dossekker/Wilkomirski received a third of her estate.
Other evidence includes Dossekker/Wilkomirski's use of Laura Grabowski to "corroborate" his story. Grabowski claims to have known him in a children's home in Krakow. In fact, Grabowski is an American citizen of Christian faith who has since her youth fabricated stories about her victimhood, the most well-publicized being a book called Satan's Underground.
The Social Security number of said Lauren Stratford is the same as that of Grabowski, who subsequently used it to make a false survivor's claim. Furthermore, Satan's Underground and this volume contain startling similarities.
--Alyssa A. Lappen
Memories of a Wartime Childhood.......2003-04-24
It is in Fragments now, a total hoax.
A Holocaust survivor memoir that has received prestigious literary awards and lavish praise has been exposed as a hoax.
In Fragments: Memories of a Wartime Childhood, Binjamin Wilkomirski describes his ordeal as an infant in the Jewish ghetto of Riga (Latvia), where his earliest memory is of seeing his father being killed. Wilkomirski also tells how he survived the terrible rigors of wartime internment, at the age of three or four, in the German-run concentration camps of Majdanek and Auschwitz.
First published in German in 1995, Fragments has been translated into twelve languages. In Switzerland, the country where Wilkomirski lives, the book has been a major best-seller. Two documentary films and numerous personal appearances by the author in schools throughout the country have helped promote the memoir.
The American edition was published by Schocken, an imprint of Random House, which heavily promoted the book with teachers' study guides and other supplementary materials.
Jewish groups and major American newspapers have warmly praised Fragments. The New York Times called it "stunning," and the Los Angeles Times lauded it as a "classic first-hand account of the Holocaust." It received the 1996 National Jewish Book Award for Autobiography and Memoir, while in Britain it was awarded the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize, and in France the Prix Memoire de la Shoah.
The US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC -- a federal government agency -- was so impressed that it sent Wilkomirski on a six-city United States fund-raising tour last fall.
This past summer, though, compelling evidence came to light exposing Wilkomirski's memoir as an literary hoax.
Although he claims to have been born in Latvia in 1939, and to have arrived in Switzerland in 1947 or 1948, Swiss legal records show that he was actually born in Switzerland in February 1941, the son of an unwed woman, Yvette Grosjean. The infant was then adopted and raised by the Doessekkers, a middle-class Zurich couple. Jewish author Daniel Ganzfried, writing in the Swiss weekly Weltwoche, also reports that he has found a 1946 photo of the young Bruno Doessekker (Wilkomirski) in the garden of his adoptive parents.
Comparisons have been drawn between Wilkomirski's Fragments and The Painted Bird, the supposedly autobiographical "Holocaust memoir" by prominent literary figure Jerzy Kosinksi that turned out to be fraudulent.
Reaction by Jewish Holocaust scholars to the new revelations has been instructive, because they seem more concerned about propagandistic impact than about historical truth. Their primary regret seems merely to be that the fraud has been detected, not that it was perpetrated.
In an essay published in a major Canadian newspaper (Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 18, 1998), Jewish writer Judith Shulevitz arrogantly argued that it doesn't really matter much if Fragments is authentic. Her main misgiving, apparently, is that the deceit was not more adroit: "I can't help wishing Wilkomirksi-Doesseker [sic] had been more subtle in his efforts at deception, and produced the magnificent fraud world literature deserves."
Deborah Dwork, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies at Clark University (Worcester, Mass.), and co-author of Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present (Yale Univ. Press, 1996), agrees that Fragments now appears to be fraudulent. At the same time, though, she expressed sympathy for Wilkomirski, saying that when she met him he appeared "to be a deeply scarred man." Amazingly, Dwork does not blame him for the imposture, "because she believes in his identity." Instead, she takes the publishers to task for having "exploited" Wilkomirski. (New York Times, Nov. 3, 1998).
Deborah Lipstadt, author of the anti-revisionist polemic Denying the Holocaust, has assigned Fragments in her Emory University class on Holocaust memoirs. When confronted with evidence that it is a fraud, she commented that the new revelations "might complicate matters somewhat, but [the work] is still powerful."
Daniel Ganzfried reports that Jews have complained to him that even if Fragments is a fraud, his exposé is dangerously aiding "those who deny the Holocaust."
American Jewish writer Howard Weiss makes a similar point in an essay published in the Chicago Jewish Star (Oct. 9-29, 1998):
Presenting a fictional account of the Holocaust as factual only provides ammunition to those who already deny that the horrors of Nazism and the death camps ever even happened. If one account is untrue, the deniers' reasoning goes, how can we be sure any survivors accounts are true ... Perhaps no one was ready to question the authenticity of the [Wilkomirski] account because just about anything concerning the Holocaust becomes sacrosanct.
Wilkomirski himself has responded to the new revelations by going into hiding, although he did issue a defiant statement describing the climate of discussion about his memoir as a "poisonous" atmosphere of "totalitarian judgment and criticism."
pass over the scramble to "fix" this into nonexistence.......2002-11-03
read this book before reading the spew about its "authenticity". don't concern yourself with where the pieces go in what you know, they don't belong to your understanding. to frame the story in history, geography, society, is to try and correct the narrative -- for whose benefit? "fragments" captures the essence of "screen memory" like no textbook on the subject possibly could; attempts to convey it by those who've come to terms with it for what it is rarely get past the attempt.
regardless of why the book was written, or how the authour came to possess these images; real, imagined, conjured, who knows, maybe not even the writer, the story of this binjamin doesn't unfold, it simply carries the ground of its own consciousness, in recollections of a childhood unmitigated by whatever closure of comprehension comes in adulthood. memories stored and recalled in items of the senses, intense and unfiltered perceptions with minimal coherent external context in which early cognative development makes distinctions, signifies, aligns, scales -- makes sense and story of memory.
the allegory is there in the book itself, plain as day, at least twice; in the beginning with the "big picture" abstraction in binjamin's persistent nightmare, and near the end, where the abstracted "big picture" manifests in a shared experience of total "incomprehension" of situation. what you know or can surmise is irrelevant, there are only these fragments.
Book Description
The orthodoxy regarding the relationship between politicians and military leaders in wartime democracies contends that politicians should declare a military operation's objectives and then step aside and leave the business of war to the military. In this timely and controversial examination of civilian-military relations in wartime democracies, Eliot A. Cohen chips away at this time-honored belief with case studies of statesmen who dared to prod, provoke, and even defy their military officers to great effect.
Using the leadership of Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion to build his argument, Cohen offers compelling proof that, as Clemenceau put it, “War is too important to leave to the generals.” By examining the shared leadership traits of four politicians who triumphed in extraordinarily varied military campaigns, Cohen argues that active statesmen make the best wartime leaders, pushing their military subordinates to succeed where they might have failed if left to their own devices. Thought provoking and soundly argued, Cohen's
Supreme Command is essential reading not only for military and political players but also for informed citizens and anyone interested in leadership.
Customer Reviews:
War is too important to be left to the generals.......2007-08-03
According to the appendix of the book, there is civilian control because military expertise may be isolated. There is a theory of objective control, but it doesn't suffice. The leadership of a Lincoln, a Ben-Gurion, a Churchill does not depend upon the separation of the military sphere from the civilian sphere. Tolstoy described strategic nihilism. Waging war is a different activity than the practice of other professions. An experience curve, routinization, is lacking. Calamities do not stem from incompetence, per se. Effective wartime leaders show ruthlessness, mastery of detail, interest in technology. The leaders cited in the book interfered with the military professionals. In Clauswitz's view there is no line dividing the civil and military areas of control. There are differences. In the military there are rules, in politics there are none.
Abraham Lincoln both found his generals, Grant and Sherman, and controlled them. Jefferson Davis had more military qualifications than Lincoln. Lincoln's war was driven by the rifle, the telegraph, and the railroad--new technology. Assaults on field fortifications proved ruinous. Lincoln's strategic plan had to be modified in practice.
Visits to the front betokened Clemenceau's wartime civilian leadership. In 1917 he was seventy-six. He served during the last year of the war and the negotiation of the peace. When Poincare called upon Clemenceau to guide France, it was experiencing a blood bath. In visiting the front, (Clemenceau had also done this as a senator), Clemenceau was practicing management by walking around. He acquired information and influenced events.
Winston Churchill had strength, humor, readiness to listen, (he thought outside of the box). His wartime leadership has been attacked by historians, but the writer of this book disagrees with such negative assessments. It has been charged that Chruchill had a deplorable strategic sense. The existence of a Churchill Society, evidence of popular acclaim, makes serious historians wince. Details provided by Lord Moran, Churchill's physician, have suggested impairments from drink and aging tending to hurt Churchill's reputation.
Notwithstanding what critics have said, Churchill had system and he was a glutton for work. Disciplined habits drove his career. He could see the relationship between the large and the small. He was unprepared to take military judgments on faith because he distrusted bureaucracies and remembered World War I. Churchill developed grand strategy, cultivating the Americans and the Russians in order to win the war. He excelled at holding together the alliance. He engaged in incessant close-questioning of his military staff. Churchill needed to goad his commanders into action. He mastered political rhetoric.
This book is a marvel of good arguments supported by telling details.
The theme is that greater exertion by civilian leadership ensures a better outcome in instances of last resort, i.e. nations finding it necessary to go to war.
Fully-vetted argument; could have been expanded.......2007-01-10
Eliot Cohen's work informs the current debate on the use of force to attain political objectives and the role of the statesman or politician compared to that of the soldier. His use of case studies is effective in proving his basic argument - that the normal theory of civil military relations is an inadequate explanation for success in war. But Cohen's poignant discussion does leave some questions unanswered on the military profession's place in a democracy:
- Understanding that Cohen's focus was on wartime leadership, the reader still could have gained benefit from a parallel discussion of the use of force in peacetime (e.g. U.N. Security Council Resolution enforcement, sanctions, show of force/posturing). In today's strategic environment, regional military personnel (combatant commanders) wield great power in peacetime foreign policy formulation. A treatment of the combatant commander's influence in foreign policy and the ethics of an unelected government official wielding such power would be valuable.
- Especially relevant today is a treatment of the retired military officer's place in a democracy: outspoken critic, advocate, or silent observer. Many, including Cohen apparently (see p. 171 comparing retired soldiers to "true civilians" in Israeli society), believe that for retirees to criticize a military strategy or the policy that guides the strategy degrades civil-military relations. I have the greatest contention with this thought. Military personnel, active duty or retired, have a stake in the outcome of the state's foreign policy machinations, and it is appropriate for them to state that opinion. As a former great citizen-soldier commented, "When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen."
The negative tone of this review should not detract from Cohen's excellent treatment of the subject. Supreme Command furthers the debate on civil-military relations and those in the defense establishment stand to gain from a careful study of this work, be they soldier or civilian.
Senior Military Leaders Must Read This Book.......2006-11-10
Senior Military Leaders Must Read This Book.
A must read for any military officer or civilian leader in the Department of Defense. Anyone interested in leadership will benefit from reading the lessons of leadership by great men during difficult times. 5 stars.
Scattered and loses focus.......2006-06-18
Eliot Cohen has an impressive background in policy work (OSD) and academia (Naval War College and Harvard). I had high hopes for this book because I thought his experience with the military combined with his academic work would produce a focused and well-grounded work. I was disappointed. I never really bought his argument that political leaders can lead war better than generals. He seemed to cherry pick leaders than fit his mold. I could not believe that someone who works so closely with the military would generalize military leadership in such a stereotypical way.
The article might have made a good article in a foreign affairs journal, but the author seemed to fill out the book with a lot of interesting but not really relevant historical stories and facts. The Lincoln chapter providing nothing that has not been stated numerous times in more detailed and focused work. The Churchill chapter was the best. Cohen obviously has extensively studied Churchill. His sections on how the historical view of Churchill have ebbed and flowed over the years was well done, thought not rally tied to the focus of the book. I learned the most from the Ben-Gurion, since I knew the least about him.
The book may be useful to an undergraduate class studying political leadership or foreign policy, but beyond that the book unfortunately offers little that is new or of great interest.
Square peg into round hole (or, stop after the 4 bios).......2006-02-26
This would have been 4 stars had I stopped after the individual chapters on Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill and David Ben Gurion. However, I unfortunately found out, in the subsequent chapter, that Cohen's REAL purpose was an end-around to attack American leadership during Vietnam (and, to a lesser extent, the Gulf War). For a book that focuses on leaders from England, France, and Israel, as well as the US, this struck me as a non-sequitor out of left field.
I do recommend purchasing this book. However, do NOT continue reading beyond the Ben Gurion chapter. You will become disappointed with your purchase.
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