As noted by another reviewer, this is first full scope biography in English of this significant figure in church history, especially that of the Reformation.

While many have heard much in the way of husband Martin's praise of his marvelous Kati, she certainly has been shortsuited in published works until this worthy volume.

Markwald's provide well documented primary and secondary source bio of this nun turned Great Reformer's wife. Going through the turbulence of life would be enough, yet add to that the pressure of keeping up with one who is at vortex of sweeping reform, with infamous Table guests and conversation and demanding family and church life as well.

Not only a significant support to her husband and family, this readable and informative work presents through letter correspondence a remarkable portrait of a strong believer with convictions of her own and an intensity of faith and contentment which only comes from the strongest of the saints.

Many will gain much from this read which hopefully might stimulate other contributions to this First Lady of the Reformation.

Rudolph and Marilyn Markwald have done the English speaking world a great favor by writing the first real biography in English of Katharina von Bora, Martin Luther's wife. (Sure, there are other titles in English concerning Katie, but they are historical novels rather than real biographies.)

The Markwalds have added their own original research to that of German biographers who preceded them. This was a challenge because there are only 8 letters of Katharina that are extant. Fortunately, there is substantial relevant material also available in Luther's letters, letters of other contemporaries, transcripts of the Table Talk, and convent and municipal records. The result is a well-researched and fascinating text which is both quite readable and accurate (supported by extensive footnoting).

The text covers Katharina's birth, convent life, escape from the convent, marriage to Luther, managing the Luther household and raising a family, hosting visits of important thinkers and theologians, nursing Luther through his health problems, coping with poverty after Luther's death, and her own accidental death while fleeing the plague.

Despite the plethora of books on Luther, until now there was not a good English biography of this strong, independent woman (sometimes called the Queen of the Reformation and the Balance Wheel of the Reformation) who supported, challenged, and encouraged the Great Reformer.

I highly recommend this book to all who are interested in Lutheran and Reformation history.

These novellas require readerly effort and patience. In what at first seems like a bit of a patchwork they tell a sort of blinding truth, in the tradition of Hasidic folk tales. God is not only a presence, but a character. In a mirror of the human mind, an assortment of worlds - places, times, emotional and mental states - somehow coexist. There are important yet homely recognizable details plucked from bourgeois prewar European life, but no quaintness in the descriptions of the characters' histories in Europe (mainly Germany, Hungary, Austria, Rumania) and then Palestine and Israel. For example, the protagonist segues quite reasonably from a consideration of an ice cream cone to the burden of his father's mental illness - in several paragraphs. Love among people (parents and children; men and women) is often a troublesome thing. "Women, Joseph thinks, yearn to embrace a man, and a man yearns to embrace his Creator [...]"

Patience is required, and rewarded. The presence of the several languages (German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Arabic and the English of the translation) is the tip of the iceberg, really, in these stories that attempt so much. Definitely worth reading.

This book contains two novellas - each excellent and unlike each other.

The Book of Joseph is written in a mix of poetry and prose. It follows, to varying degrees of detail, the lives of several individuals who lead intersecting lives. Don't consider this "just another Holocaust novel" - it is a significant and unique addition to the corpus of Jewish Holocaust literature.

Katschen is a very low key novella following the life of an orphan in Palestine - describing life through the very imaginative child's point of view. Katschen's view is a delightful mix of naivete, taking words literally, and a vivid visual imagination. His life is followed through care by an aunt, by an elderly uncle, thru a kibbutz, a friendly Arab, the police and finally by his father - a man confined to an insane asylum through most of the story.

Both tales include footnotes that translate the bits of German, Yiddish, Hebrew and Arabic that occasionally occur. This multilingual facet is the only trace of a scholarly background on the part of the author.

Yoel Hoffman is an author with absolutely stunning control over his story - an unerring sense of concrete detail in sparse prose. I have yet to find any of his work less than awe inspiring.

This book is undoubtedly the definitive work on Reinhard Heydrich. As can be seen from the title, it focuses on both the brutal career of this so-called "Nazi Martyr" as well as his assassination, which has been hidden behind inaccuracy ever since it occured over fifty years ago. The book sheds very informing light on Exiled Czech President Eduard Benes and his government exiled in London, who sponsored the assassination, codenamed ANTHROPOID, for the main purpose of showing post-war world powers that the Czechs had attempted to strike out against the seemingly invincible Nazis that combined brutal measures and their seemingly immortal power to Germanize Czech soil and incorporate it into the Greater German Reich. Yet, Benes seemed to be pig-headed enough to continue the operation, despite his knowledge of the brutality of Nazi reprisals, especially when it came to killing a high-ranking official of grand importance. And then there is Heydrich himself, the ideal Nordic Man, a cold, calculating manipulator that worked his way up to the top in the SS. He had created the SD, or "Sicherheitsdienst" (Intelligence Service), the RSHA, or "Reichsicherheitshauptampt" (Reich Main Security Office), and had organised the infamous Wannsee Conference, in which the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was planned to the finest detail. He was also in charge of the "Einsatzgruppen," or the Mobile Killing Units which operated in Nazi-Occupied territories in the East. In late 1941, he was appointed by Hitler to be Reichsprotektor of Bohemia-Moravia. In this he excelled and was determined in smothering the remnats of the Czech Resistance. His successes grew, and so did his reputation within the Nazi regime. During this time, two young members of the Czech Brigade, Jan Kubis and Josef Gabcik, were trained for the sole purpose of killing Heydrich who had now come to be known as the "Butcher of Prague." On the morning of May 27, 1942, at a suburban corner in Prague, Heydrich was being driven by his chauffeur, Klein, in his open Mercedes to the airport where he was to fly to Berlin to meet with Hitler and discuss Nazi occupation policy, the two assassins managed to mortally wound the Nazi--by a whisker. What followed was a brutal rampage: thousands of Jews and Czechs deported, the relatives of Kubis and the ANTHROPOID team's lookout man, Josef Valcik, killed, and the destruction of the two Czech villages of Lidice and Lezaky, in which the majority of the population was killed. The three team members, along with other parachutists, fought with the SS in the Karel Boromejsky Church where they had been hiding from the Gestapo for days in a crypt beneath the church. They fought for six hours and at the last minute, all of them used their last bullets to commit suicide rather than be taken alive. A captured Czech parachutist, Seargeant Karel Curda, had been caught a while before and had led the Gestapo to discover where the assassins were hiding. He received one million marks for his contribution and his mother and sister were saved. He became a Gestapo agent and married a daughter of an SS man. After the war, he stated to his prosecutor, when asked at how he could have betrayed his comerades, "You would do the same for one million marks." He was hanged for treason. Embarrassed by the enormous amounts of reprisals that followed Heydrich's assassination, Benes denied all responsibility for ANTHROPOID and stated that it was the work of the Czech resistance in Prague and London had nothing to do with it. This is just a part of the vivid episodes that the reader will encounter while reading Callum MacDonald's impressive and awesome account of the life and death of "the man with the heart of iron," Reinhard Heydrich. Get it and read it before it dissapears for good!

This book is both scholarly and riveting. It describes the controversial assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, originally Himmler's deputy at SS headquarters and later supreme Nazi commander of the Czech territories. No one will be shocked to learn of SS oppression of the occupied territories in Central Europe, but it is especially chilling to hear a detailed account. The book will come as a revelation to those who may never have heard of Heydrich, or who have encountered only scattered references to his name. In fact, at 38 years old, Heydrich was a rising star in the Nazi movement and one of its most brutal figures at the time of his killing. One especially shocking feature of the book is that Heydrich comes off as an even more vile character than Hitler, to whatever extent that is possible. The handsome SS-Oberfuehrer was actually an expert at manipulating Hitler, egging him on to some of his worst atrocities by falsely claiming that revolts were brewing in the occupied territories. Based on these generally illusory reports, Hitler would give Heydrich and the SS a free hand in using all possible suppressive tactics against the native populations. It was Heydrich who chaired the infamous Wannsee conference, which sealed the fate of European Jewry; afterwards, he was sometimes rumored to be Hitler's likely successor as the Third Reich stretched onward into the late 20th century. After finishing off the Jews, Heydrich planned to deport the entire Polish race to death camps, followed by as many as 60% of the Czechs (those who were deemed non-Germanizable.) The book argues that the assassination occurred in the following context. Czech intelligence was astoundingly good even before the Munich Conference in 1938. The main reason is that Paul Thuemmel (the mysterious Agent A-54), a high-ranking Wehrmacht officer, was spying for the Czechs for reasons that are still not clear. After the German invasion of their country, Czech intelligence fled to London, from where they broadcast news to their oppresssed countrymen and trained patriot commandoes in Scotland to undertake parachute raids in the motherland. Czech access to Thuemmel gave them an enviable position with respect to the British and Soviet governments, who first learned in this way of the planned Nazi invasion of Russia. But in February of 1942, Thuemmel was discovered and arrested by the Gestapo. This put Eduard Benes and his Prague exiles under great pressure to find other avenues to maintain their prestige with the leading Allied powers. They achieved this result with the killing of Heydrich, who had gotten off to a busy start in Prague with the summary execution of the city's student leaders, and with other brutal, cynical maneuvers. (One of the worst was Heydrich's proclamation tripling pension benefits for Czech citizens, knowing fullwell that he planned to gas most of them well before retirement age.) Two Czech soldiers who had parachuted back into the country in late 1941 attempted the hit on Heydrich on what was reportedly his very last day in Prague, on May 27th in 1942. His next stop was to have been France, where he would certainly have liquidated the French resistance by means of the despicable techniques pioneered in occupied Czechoslovakia. At the crucial moment, the gun meant to kill Heydrich jammed, but a bomb wisely designed as a back-up sent shrapnel into his spleen. The man often described as the model SS soldier died a week later in Prague, of blood poisoning (the Nazis did not have penicillin, which would probably have saved his life). Wicked retaliations followed. The village of Lidice, wrongly thought to be connected with the killing, had all of its males over age 15 shot on the spot. The women were sent to death camps, and so were the non-Germanizable children. The "best" children were put up for adoption in Germany, and tracked down after the war by the Red Cross. Furthermore, all political prisoners were immediately executed, and a special train of Prague Jews was immediately sent to Auschwitz, labelled with signs reading "The Assassination of Heydrich". The son of the family that had provided a safe house for the assassins was tortured for a full day without revealing any information. He finally broke down when the SS brought into his presence the severed head of his mother floating in a fish tank (she had actually taken cyanide earlier in the day to avoid interrogation). Having been broken in this way, he finally revealed the hiding place of the valiant assassinsРthe basemnt of a greek Orthodox Church in central Prague. After a courageous siege in the church, the assassins and their look-out men use their final bullets to take their own lives. The names of the assassins had already been supplied by a traitorРanother of the Czech parachutists who had turned on his compatriots, perhaps with the initial aim of preventing further German retaliation against innocent civilians. This traitor, Karel Curda, later went into the permanent employ of the SS, marrying the sister of a ranking official and posing as a commando in various parts of Czechoslovakia so that anyone offering him aid might be captured and executed. He himself was hanged after the war by his outraged countrymen after stating at trial, "You would have done it too for one million marks." Heydrich's deputy, a grim one-eyed Sudeten book dealer named Karl Frank, was also hanged after the war. The story of Heydrich is an amazing one in so many respects, and the author proivdes us with an exhaustive but readable picture of several key elements to the story: 1) the grim background of Heydrich's manipulative rise from cashieered Navy womanizer and SA street-brawler to Heinrich Himmler's ace hatchet man. We watch on in amazement as the lonely teen-aged son of an obscure Halle composer turns into a formidable customer matching intrigues with the shadowy likes of Martin Bormann and Adolf Hitler himself. 2) the remarkable tale of the birth of the Czech intelligence service. This story of the far-sighted Frantisek Moravec and his brilliant cultivation of a top agent within the German military would be worthy of a book in its own right. 3) the complicated saga of former Czech President Eduard Benes, stiffed by the appeasing allies at Munich in 1938. Benes is the picture of liberally-minded nationalism, but also of a ruthless politician willing to risk the deaths of hundreds of countrymen in his power-jockeying against the Czech Communist Party for eventual postwar influence. 4) the cloak-and-dagger tale of the assassination itself, one of the best real-life spy stories one could ever hope to read. The eventual assassins are forced to improvise following a disastrous parachute drop miles from their target zone and to indiscreetly debate the merits of the assassination with resistance workers concerned about the after-effects for the general population. 5) finally, the account of brutal SS retaliation against innocent Czech civilians in the wake of Heydrich's death. This part of the book offers one the best account I've ever read of Nazi atrocities OUTSIDE of the notorious death camps. In sum, the author gives us at least five compelling narratives woven into one compact account that will leave even ardent death penalty opponents (such as this reviewer) cheering in spite of themselves for the timely fall of Reinhard Heydrich.

After reading this book to my children i realized what a great book this is. If you want to teach your children about the war this is a very simple but powerful way to do it. This book should be read by children and adults of all ages. If this story is not passed on from generation to generation

This book is amazing, I learned so much from reading it. It is a great documentary of a childs version of the war.

...this is an extraordinary book in any number of ways, and ought to be widely read....it's a book that almost anyone could read profitably, even many times. It's complexity is quite astonishing, but it's not the sort of complexity that is off-putting. In fact, it is so well written, so well organized, that it's complexity is almost unnoticeable. Still, it is a confession as well as an indictment, autobiography as well as analysis, cooly restrained and deeply moving often in the same paragraph. It is objective while being prfoundly personal. It wears it's Jewish spectacles (a phrase from the book) very lightly indeed.... More often it is wryly funny. It is its own evidence of the degree of assimilation (and blindness to the terror that was being prepared for them) of educated Jews in Germany prior to the rise of Nazism. It further substantiates, from a different angle, Arendt's famous insights into Nazi behavior. It contains in its preface an extraordinary statement of love, which, once read, informs the entire book. It is heartbreaking without once being sentimental. Indeed, it is heartbreaking in part because it resists the sentimental....

A professor recommended this book by Victor Klemperer to me several years ago, before his 1933-45 Tagebücher were translated into English by Martin Chalmers. At the time, my apprentice German was not equal to the work in the original language, and I read it in its French translation, ably translated by Elisabeth Guillot. I have since reread it in German, and, on publication, read this English edition. As far as I can tell, Martin Brady has done a masterful job of rendering Klemperer's informal and easily parsed style into addictably readable English. Before his career in the academy, Klemperer was a journalist, and in all of his writing, this tone prevailed.

Klemperer wrote his "LTI: Notizbuch eines Philologen" in 1945 and 1946, mostly from notes he kept in the diaries that later became the wildly successful "Ich will zeugnis ablegen bis zum letzten" (I Will Bear Witness). He carried on his work despite the danger, and with an impressive amount of conscious objectivity. The work is an excellent, if impressionistic, study of the modes of Nazi language and their development in popular speech and culture. I would emphasize the _impressionism_ that colors this work, because Klemperer was only able to study a limited amount of presently accessible material; most of his work is based on the editions of newspapers, leaflets, and books that fell into his hands in Dresden during the war. He was a Jew in the Third Reich, and banned from possessing books written by "Aryan" authors. As well, over the course of the war the restrictions on Jews listening to radios, reading newspapers, and even talking in public became too great for Klemperer to realize any truly comprehensive study.

I do not wish to seem like I am condemning the man with faint praise: Klemperer wrote the first postwar study of Nazi language and linked it directly with the operation of the regime. Subsequent researchers have borne out Klemperer's thesis: the euphemisms and barbarisms in the Nazi tongue exerted a considerable influence on popular culture and personal expression. It is not necessary to go back to the Forties to find this influence - it exists today in modern German. The contemporary quibbles over such words as "ausrotten" or "endlösung" mask the considerable reformation of German that occurred during the Third Reich.

Students of twentieth century history cannot ignore this book. It is a must read.

There is something addictive about this little book, filled with seemingly dull, commercial postcards from Germany. The heft and compact size of it make you want to pick it up again and again and dream about the modern Europe of the 60's and 70's. No words get in the way. The images are of autobahns, health spas, restaurants, apartment buildings...and the overall effect of seeing these tidy, newly built spaces--without people--is somehow poignant, hopeful, serene and surreal. Often, geometric shapes dominate a landscape or visual field, and the postcard becomes a reduced, abstract scene which may or may not have been photographed on earth. "Boring" postcards is strangely fascinating!

Yes, this is the best book I have ever read.

James Cross Giblin does a wonderful job of crafting the tale of Hitler's rise and fall. There is, of course, some bias since it expounds on Hitler's lack of compassion for those he deemed unworthy. Overall, he remains objective as he relates Hitler's life and how he lives on today through Neo-Nazis.

Some of the wonderful features the book offers are the array of photos, maps, and cartoons from the period. The book has an attractive format and is a straightforward read. It also contains an index, a glossary of German terms and phrases used, and an extensive list of source notes and works cited. The book would be a wonderful source for a paper or a jumping off point for a larger research project.

"There are no memorials to Adolf Hitler in Germany, the country he ruled with an iron hand from 1933 to 1945."

So begins THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER by James Cross Giblin, a book that provides essential information for young adults who want to understand the twentieth century. In writing a detailed biography of the most infamous human being of the last hundred years, the author has put together a fascinating story that never lets up. In doing so, Mr. Giblin also provides a clear overview of the events leading up to and through the second world war. Beginning with the haunting cover, the book is illustrated with large, clear photographs of the significant people and places we encounter, as well as several well-drawn caps to which I'd periodically refer as I read the book.

"To celebrate his triumph, Hitler planned a sightseeing tour of Paris, a city he had long admired but never visited. His favorite architect, Albert Speer, accompanied the Führer as he visited the ornate Paris Opera, drove down the broad Champs Élysées, stopped at the Eiffel Tower, and lingered for a long time at the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte. The three-hour tour through almost completely deserted streets--the French deliberately stayed away--ended on the heights of Montmartre, long known as a district for artists. Perhaps its narrow streets and outdoor cafés reminded Hitler of his youthful days in Vienna, when he himself had dreamed of being an artist."

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER does an exceptional job answering the questions of how Hitler was able to gain control of the German government, and how his forces and henchmen were able to succeed so horrifically and effectively before they were finally halted. We see how the long-term effects of the Versailles Treaty on Germany lead almost inevitably to the opportunity for Hitler's rise to power. We are reminded of the significant anti-Semitism in the US, Britain, and other countries that figured into their less-than-stellar response to Hitler's aggression and genocide. (I can remember how my friends' families still weren't welcome at some private clubs in the 60's!) And, of course, we see Hitler from birth to death: as a son, a student, an artist, a failure, and a homeless person who eventually finds a group in which to belong. Joining that organization, making it his, and changing the world forever--the lesson here is not lost on the author, who ends the book with a profile of some Neo-Nazi groups in existence today.

We also get a good look at many of the trustworthy men who turned Hitler's maniacal goals into reality:

"Neat and methodical, Himmler was a born bureaucrat. He worshiped Hitler and would carry out any order the Führer gave him, immediately and without question."

I thought that I knew all about Adolf Hitler. But from the vivid photograph of one of his watercolor paintings to the details of his final hours with Eva Braun and Joseph Goebbels, James Cross Giblin has illuminated the life of a madman and given me a real education.

Richie Partington

Mendelssohn is traced through his life as to influences, both spiritually, musically and elsewhere.

Raised in upper class surroundings, he and sister Fanny were certainly cultivated in rich musical and literary heritage. So no surprise that Mendelssohn honored his musical heritiage and was fond of Bach especially.

Climb to fame capsulated well in this biographical look with specific references given at appropriate times on musical and theological insights. This all culminates late in his life with tension over all his duties both musically and family and they take their toil.

Never happy living in Germany, persistently traveling which also for sure took its toll. Creative output continues to reverberate throughtout concert halls.

Truly a tightly written account of significant musical contributor.

With a smooth and easy-to-read style that is brimming with factual details and emotive feelings, Mr. Mercer-Taylor's writing provides a concise and highly articulate story of Felix Mendelssohn's life. Mendelssohn's many significant contributions as a composer, musician, conductor, teacher and adminstrator are presented in an interesting collage of personalities and historical events of the times. In particular, the author's description of Mendelssohn's music captures its essence perfectly. An extremely enjoyable reading experience.

A major innovation in the area of travel books occurred in 1957 when Arthur Frommer introduced his "Europe On Five Dollars A Day." It was more than a practical guide to tourist sites and reasonable accommodations. The book served as an encouraging companion which showed the traveler how to be bold and adventurous without getting lost or going broke.

Over forty years later, author Rachel Kaplan offers the traveler a more intellectual and rewarding kind of travel experience through her book "Little-Known Museums in and Around Berlin" (she has written similar guides to Paris, London and Rome). Here Kaplan leads the traveler to 30 museums in Berlin and the surrounding countryside. Yet, it is Kaplan's grasp of the artistry to be found, her passion for the history evoked, and her love of the panoramic landscapes that captures one's imagination. The traveler is not only led on an adventure, but is shown intellectually and spiritually how to get to the most from it.

Kaplan's enthusiasm reaches such a peak that Germany's extraordinary artistic heritage in architecture, sculpture, painting and industrial design comes alive throughout the book. Highlights are: her descriptions of The Bauhaus Archive-Berlin Museum which pays tribute to a school of art and design that revolutionized twentieth-century design; The Film Museum-Potsdam containing Marlene Dietrich's dressing room for The Blue Angel; the New Synagogue Museum which was once partially destroyed by the Nazis but is now restored as a center for the fostering and preservation of Jewish culture. About this structure, Kaplan writes of a police officer who halted the Nazis at gun point in their quest to destroy it on Kristallnacht (November 9-10, 1938). This museum is now one of the city's most striking sights.

With each passage, Kaplan may well remind the reader of a special friend whose insights evoke new horizons and stir the emotions, in this case, for the cultural and political past and present of Berlin. The book's gorgeous illustrations include self-portraits of Kathe Kollowitz from the museum that bears her name; the sculpture "Solitude" from the Georg Kolbe Museum; and the statue of Martin Luther from Luther's Hall Wittenberg.

Perhaps the most significant accomplishment of the book is in how it rediscovers Berlin, a city so often associated only with the Third Reich and World War II. Kaplan's rich portrait is powered by the contrast between the ugliness of Hitler's reign and the beauty born through Germany's legendary artists and achievers who existed both before and after.

Having lived in London and traveled in Paris, I already owned Ms. Kaplan's entertaining and accesible guides to those two cities. Although no trip to Berlin is on the horizon, I bought her latest book, too, to indulge my wanderlust from an armchair. Beautifuly written and impeccably researched these guides take you on a trip through history, culture and politics to share the story behind how these unusual museums came to be. I can't wait to visit the Pickle Museum.

The book covers all known Luftwaffe units and the planes that saw service. The book offers very comprehensive and detailed information on codes and markings. Rare pictures are included. To make it the perfect book on the Luftwaffe however it should have been printed in color.

This book identifies the operational codes for nearly every Luftwaffe fighter, bomber, transport, attack, and reconnaissance Gruppen. Photos and drawings show how the codes actually appeared on the aircraft