Terry Hamburg'sGrand Entrances is an informative and compelling survey of attractive, artistic retail storefronts in San Francisco provides a closeup color portrait of some of the city's most colorful creations. Over eight color illustrations and photos capture everything from signage to murals and exceptional presentations. Art and architecture schools with sections on commercial art will find this a 'must'.

This book has heart and soul. The imagination and humor these storeowners and artists display is amazing! I especially appreciated the captions which tell the story of each storefront. The details are unexpected and funny. I also liked the Introduction which gives a great history of how San Francisco came to have so many "grand entrances." I know which book I will be giving to friends and family this holiday season!

Grand Entrances opens the door to the whimsy that is in the heart of San Francisco. The superb photographs capture the spirit of the artists, the shopkeepers who proudly display the creations, and the climate of the people who live in the area. This book rather reminded me of the children's book about the man who painted his house purple in a neighborhood where all the houses looked alike. However, in this case, everyone painted his or her storefront with wild imagination. Indeed, looking at the photos and reading the background about this era, I wondered if people at that time appreciated the beauty and creativity of the times. Personally, I savored the diversity of San Francisco. San Francisco encompasses all kinds of spirits, and this book captures that unique strength. Grand Entrances was fun!

Martin Middlebrook's series of books is a must for anyone interested in the strategic bombing campaign over Germany in World War II. Although most of his books cover raids that did not go well for the Allies (Nuremberg, Schweinfurt-Regensburg, and the Battle of Berlin), this book covers one of RAF Bomber Commands biggest successes (the US Eigth Air Force also carried out daylight raids as part of the Battle of Hamburg but they were not so successful). Middlebrook explains how "everything came together" for the RAF, most especially the introduction of "Window" which rendered the German defenders' radar useless; and the weather which made the incendiary bombs particularly effective in starting massive fires which lead to the horrific firestorm that caused so many fatalities. Middlebrook not only describes the attacking force, but also the defensive measures taken on the ground by the Germans and the experiences of the civilian population caught up in this nightmarish experience.
The author points out that regarding the bomb-load mix in this raid, the ratio of incendiaries to high-explosive bombs was no different than usual and it was the combination of circumstances that lead to the massive destruction (incidentally-he also points out that the Germans used incendiaries in their bombing raids on London and Coventry in 1940 and 1941 so the RAF can not be blamed for starting this type of warfare)
This book, like his others, is highly recommended.

In late July and early August 1943 Bomber Command, with the cooperation of the USAAF, launched a series of heavy raids against the German city of Hamburg. The objective was to paralyse the city and demoralize its inhabitatants so that its role in the war effort would be diminished, if not nullified. The Battle is best remembered for the Firestorm that engulfed much of the eastern section of the city (after the second RAF raid) and resulted in the death of approximately 40,000 people, mostly civilians. For hundreds of thousands of survivors, the raids made the true horror of modern war a reality, and the city's industries in many cases were temporarily disrupted. But in the end, the raid was only a partial success in that the will of the German people was not broken and the city did continue (although to a lesser degree) play its vital role in the German war-effort. The Firestorm has since become a controversial subject, but it must be understood that it had not been the intended outcome, as has been suggested. While many of the bombers did drop incindiaries on the city, the proportion in relation to high explosive bombs was not much different from previous raids.

The Battle of Hamburg is what one expects from Middlebrook; extensively researched and relatively objective, it is written in a manner that allows the reader to get a fair sense of what the Battle had been like for the various participants and witnesses. It is a fascinating read and a truly important study of a pivotal phase in the Allied bombing campaign against the Third Reich.

This story of the Allied bombing of Hamburg, Germany begins 30 years before the actual attack with a description of the origin of stategic bombing. The book narrates the development of the technology that culminated in that nightmare of firestorm and destruction. It is also the story of the Allies's attempt to end the war by annihilating certain German cities.

On the night of July 28, 1943, a firestorm occurred, the result of the British "area bombing" method used in the attack on the city. The center of the storm, which covered a 4-square-mile area, is estimated to have reached a temperature of 800 degrees Centigrade. Survivors said the storm sounded "like the Devil laughing."

Middlebrook includes eyewitness accounts.American and British flyers described what they saw, heard and felt. German survivors describe the horrors they endured.

The author is a conscientious researcher and compassionate historian. He confronts issues that affect the political relationships of the USA, Britain and Germany; the bitterness that some Germans still harbor because of the bombing of residential areas, and the anger that victims of the Reich still have against the Germans. This book studies all viewpoints.

Books like THE BATTLE OF HAMBURG add valuable pieces to the puzzle of historical perpsective that we all need when we make political decisions at the ballot box.

Martin Middlebrook does his usual thorough research job, which includes excellent Order of Battle information, planning and operational details. Excellent diagrams for each raid shows where each aircraft was downed and where bombs were dropped. This is the story of four RAF and two USAF bomber raids on Hamburg between 25 July-3August 1943, in the first example of "round the clock bombing". This is also a useful case study to examine the British concept of night area bombing versus American daylight precision bombing. A total of 100 British aircraft were lost, as well as 552 airmen killed and 65 captured. The USAF lost 17 bombers in Hamburg raids, with 46 killed and 114 captured. The RAF dropped about 8,300 tons of bombs on Hamburg, the Americans about 300 tons.

These raids were unique in several respects. The first British raid used "Window" to successfully disrupt the German night-fighter defense. The second British raid created a firestorm that killed over 40,000 civilians in Hamburg. The two American raids were hampered by cloud cover and inflicted only minor damage on the U-Boat construction yards in the city. The Luftwaffe lost more than 13 aircraft defending the city and the defenses improved considerably in the course of just one week. Although the raids failed to disrupt U-Boat construction or erode German morale, Middlebrook feels that the raids did help to "grind" Germany down and force them to devote more resources to the defense of their cities. I find that Middlebrook's claims for the RAF bombing campaign somewhat exaggerated; they rarely bombed within 3 miles of their target and their bombers were shot down fairly easily (with few survivors).

There is a tremendous amount of detail in this volume which makes it well worth reading, even if aviation history is not one's primary interest. The full, ugly face of aerial bombing is also revealed, probably in more stark contrast than other works, since Middlebrook spends as much time describing civilians faced with firestorms as bomber crews going down. At the end, Middlebrook asks whether area bombing - specifically targetting civilian housing - was justified. His answer, that it was consistent with the mores and circumstances of the Second World War are somewhat questionable.

I own the very old version of the same book in Spanish (ASTRONOMIA SIMPLIFICADA), 1955, 1963, and I always have found this book very clear and very complete; with very easy to understand explanations. I like it so much that I am ordering this new versiion from you, so that I have an up-dated version.

I have read this book..The author is a very special woman who is interested in the past history of Jewish life in Hamburg.My Grandmother attended english classes in this girls school,with the intention to be able to speak english to her grandchildren with the hope of coming to New York during the holocaust period. Unfortunately she only made it to Auchwitz.
The author has captured the hope and dreams of the girls who did attend this school who,were deported,never to return again to their beloved school.

Heartfelt prose and beautiful photographs capture the essence of love and commitment.

This book by an eminent social historian of Germany tells the story of the cholera epidemic in late nineteenth-century Hamburg. Using an excellent mixture of local politics, history of science, traditional political history, and demographics, Evans shows how the attempts of local politicians to resist pressure from Berlin during the years of unification led to thousands of deaths in Hamburg due to an outdated water system, while residents in bordering Altona were spared. The story shows the interaction of politics with the history of science and technology, as rival theories about cholera -- the environmental "miasmic" theory and the infectious disease theory advocated by Robert Koch in the Prussian ministry of health -- were debated. A state-of-the art work of historiography that's also a gripping read, written in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic. It's really too bad that the paperback went out of print

The Beatles have said much about Hamburg, including that they believed that it was there that they did their best performances, and it was there that they really learned how to be a band.

Astrid Kirchherr and Klaus Voormann were kids growing up in Germany, whose early memories included all the chaos that Germany went through in the last days of the Third Reich and the aftermath of the war. As college students, they rebelled against the old order, and came upon a band that seemed to bring with it something entirely new - The Beatles.

They all became friends, so much so that Astrid got engaged to Stu Sutcliffe and took the first professional photos of the band, and Klaus would later design the covers for the Beatles' albums "Revolver" and "Anthology" as well as play bass on albums of Ringo, George, and John, after the Beatles' breakup.

This two-volume set is absolutely gorgeous. The first volume, besides photographs and documents, goes into the story of what kind of state Germany was in after the war, and why it was that the Beatles' type of music attracted many young people to it, as well as telling how the band came to get there, and what kind of conditions these very young men were willing to put up with in order to pursue their passion of music. Most of the text is by Voormann, but George Harrison and Paul McCartney also wrote short pieces to go into this book.

The second volume is a collection of art pertaining to the Beatles done by Voormann. I saw Voormann and some of these pictures at Beatlefest 2001 in Chicago, and these are interesting too, as something that belongs in part of this collection.

The main problem with this book is that it is a prohibitively expensive limited edition. However, it is a perspective of the era and the Beatles that is carefully done by people who have known the Beatles since this time, and were qualified in putting a project like this together.

Ingeborg Hecht. Invisible Walls and To Remember is to Heal. Translated from the German by John Brownjohn and by John A. Broadwin. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1999.

Most people have heard about Hitler's Nuremberg Laws. But few are aware of their actual significance. Ingeborg Hecht's book Invisible Walls and To Remember is to Heal shows in detail the impact of the laws on the everyday life of her family, her Jewish father who got divorced before the laws were promulgated, her Aryan mother, and her brother and herself, the half-Jews. History comes alive in her book: The exact wording of a legal passage (given with its date) is followed by the descriptions of the results of these orders. But there are also glimpses of human compassion, the revolt against dehumanization. And at the end, she does not shy away from looking critically at the reparation efforts by the new German Federal Republic. The importance of Ingeborg Hecht's book is also shown in its second half which gathers responses to the first half which was published by itself a few years before this new edition.

This book has all kinds of neet stuff,(art,mummies,and alot of other cool stuff).