Christopher Marlowe is a genius. This thorough, Oxfordiancompilation of his best known plays contains Tamburlaine the Great parts one and two, the Tragical History of Doctor Faustus in its original A-text and its later B-text, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II. The beauty of these dramas lies in the fact that they're short but powerful reading pieces. In five acts Marlowe was able to generate a story complete with action, classical allusions, and a bawdy humor one might not expect from otherwise generally classified stuffy English Renaissance drama. This book contains an exhaustive introduction that explains many details of the publication dates of the plays and the differences between versions (Faustus). It also contains a thorough section for notes that further explain the texts. Finally, it contains a glossary of the commonly used words from the texts. The bottom line? This book is a great read--it's funny (I can't begin to stress that enough), and you will appreciate Marlowe's wit and talent just as much as William Shakespeare did. Buy it today!

This series of legal documents, decrees, orders, instructions or live accounts describes better than any litterary form the progression in horror which our Jewish parents, brothers, sisters, nieces, and nevews had to suffer from April fools' day of 1933 when waring the David star was enforced to this community until the end of the second world war in mid 1945.

As a Christian I was surprised to discover that the trauma resulting from the horrifying murders is so deep in the Jewish community that, for most, its members if they do know about the holocaust, actually don't have a real view of it. Naturally the massive and sadistic aggresion against the Jewish people screens, in this book, the fate of the ones who shared their fate for having protected them or for having fought the Nazis.
After all Jewish people suffered between two third and three quarter of the enormous human non-military losses under surrealistically inhuman conditions.

This book should be handled with the respect normally due to religious books: it represents the steps of the martyrdom of the Jewish families under Nazi madness.

The content of the book should be remembered in details by every western culture including Israel's right wing (after all "Nazi" represents the danger of mixing nationalism and socialism...) Americans should learn from this book that being more powerful doesn't mean being better. Europeans could find in it how non elected "public servants" laugh at democratically elected representatives (elected ones disappear over the time, bureaucrats remain and never have to respond for diffused results).

For the content of this book to be fully meaningful, it should be enlightened by Milgram's explanation of how "Obedience to authority" made it possible for these horror to happen.

A major book which supplies everything Jewish and non Jewish need to know. A reedition with a lot of proper photographs of the murders by the Einsatzgruppen, of the Gettos and of the concentration camps conditions would be welcome.

I bought this book to help me choose furniture for my own doll's kitchen. I am very pleased! The large, detailed pictures tell you more about doll kitchens and full sized kitchens than books about historical interiors. If you are planning a victorian dollhouse, skip the history books and get this one instead! My only disappointment is with the title. It really should be "Doll Kitchens, 1860-1980" because the information pre-1860 was scanty. The author covers those sixty years too quickly, then goes into great detail about the 1860's onward.

This first-person account of a girl growing up in Berlin during the Third Reich provides the flesh on the bones of this part of German history. The author recounts the story through the innocent eyes of childhood, the remembered details especially poignant because a child's memories are of a world not judged, but accepted as it is. The author begins her story with her first days of school, singing hymns. Gradually school changes. The hymns become martial Nazi songs, the teachers become agents or resistors of the Nazis. Life includes complications such as avoiding Nazi service and ideas. She spends an obligatory year at farmwork. As the author grows older, the skies contain not clouds but bombers. She is almost crushed to death in the rush to enter an air-raid shelter. And at the end, as the Russians enter the Berlin suburbs, the war comes into her home in a new and personal way.

Karl Donitz began his career as a Naval officer at about the age of twenty, being commissioned just prior to the outbreak of World War I, where he quickly earned an Iron Cross Second Class and his own command. He finished the war a British POW. Unlike other senior Nazis (Goring for example) Donitz never played socialite; he was a naval officer at heart and in deed from the age of twenty until the last days of World War II when he was appointed by Hitler just prior to his suicide to take his position as Chancellor of the Third Reich. He is best known as the commander of the German U-Boat forces during the entirety of the war and later (beginning in January, 1943) as Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy.
Padfield's biography is excellently researched. It is a detailed portrayal of Donitz as both man and officer and also presents a throrough review of naval (especially U-boat) strategy during the second world war. What's more, Padfield illustrates a strong link between the personal Donitz and the often fatal strategic decisions he made. There is evidence of Donitz's complicity in Nazi war crimes not seen in many other sources describing him.
Read this book if you are interested in the facts behind one of the deadliest aspects of the war in Europe (30000 of 40000 U-boat officers and men lost their lives) or if you'd like to know more about a key figure in the Third Reich not often remembered alongside more prominent names like Goebbels or Himmler. If you are hoping for a book that portrays Donitz as he was seen during his life, an officer who did his military duty and kept his hands clean of the atrocities of the Nazis, try another. Padfield is very harsh in his judgement of Donitz. If you dislike lots of statistics and are looking for nothing more than biographical data, I would try Donitz's memoirs.
In all, it is a vivid portrayal of Karl Donitz and a good read for Naval Enthusiasts.

This is a book all Americans should read, but probably won't. Although stylistically undistinguished, it tells a vitally important story about the origins of the cold war. Few criticisms of the Soviet Union's diplomacy are more damning than the way it imposed dictatorship in Eastern Europe. What Eisenberg's book suggests however, is that the partition of Germany was not the result of Stalinist bullying, but American preference for it over a neutral social democratic state. Relying on more than 70 sets of private papers and files, Eisenberg shows how the United States subtly weakened denazification, decarterlization and the American committment to ensure the war-ravaged Soviet Union its share of German reparations. Gradually they decided that economic recovery and political security required an American allied Germany even if the Soviet quarter remained a Communist dictatorship. As Ambassador Walter Bedell Smith bluntly put it "The difficulty under which we labor is that in spite of our announced position, we really do not want nor intend to accept German unification in any terms that the Russians might agree to, even though they seemed to meet most of our requirements." With Truman having only a vague idea of the real issues, the United States ignored Soviet plans for reunification, forced plans for currency reform, and refused international proposals for mediation of the Berlin Blockade crisis. The consequences of this decision were incalcuably tragic for Central Europe and the world.

This intellectual biography of Jünger is a must read for anyone interested in European cultural history. Jünger is barely known here in the U.S., but Neaman's book will hopefully stir a dialogue about German fascist intellectuals. Neaman poses a provocative question: what if fascist intellectuals should be taken seriously and not dismissed as ideologues or sycophants? This book gives a number of complex and thought-provoking answers to that question. It is beautifully written and very sophiscated. First rate!

As a young boy, I had the privilege of knowing Maria Linke as a neighbor of her sister when she lived in the small town of Emlenton, Pennsylvania. She was an amazing woman. She shared her personal war time experiences with friends, neighbors, church groups and all who wanted to know the truth of wars devastating toll on humanity. Her book details the events of her life as a prisoner of the Russians during the war. It is a story of immense faith. After reading the book, you will wish that you had an opportunity to know her and her family first hand.

I can't judge whether Schwartzer got her facts right or not but, if so, then the book provides interesting psychological insight into the pair. The author emphasizes three big themes. The workaholic Kelly manages to lower the old ex-general psychologocally, making him no more than her baggage carrier and errand boy. As to why she needed to do this to Bastian?-no insight provided by the author, other than to lay some blame (without proof) on Kelly's grandmother. He's too weak to break away and even continues in his role, even after she starts sleeping with other men. The other theme, which no one in his right mind can disagree with, is that no matter how she manipulated him he had no right to kill her. The third theme is that it was crazy for the German media to call it a double-suicide (I read the Spiegel account years ago but have forgotten the content). She makes a good case. The book is well-worth reading. I did not have the feeling that the author was either unfair or careless (I didn't notice sparks from axes being ground) but, again, getting all the facts straight in a case like this is a Teufelsarbeit.

It's hard to believe that Hildegard of Bingen, world-wide hit phenomenon of the mystic nuns tradition, has only become widely popular since the 1960's. Now here is the first biography to do justice to her contemporary and arguably her soul-mate: Elisabeth von Schonau. This book puts our times in a great perspective, since Elisabeth, the spiritual daughter of Hildegard who was her friend and confidant, was actually more popularly received than Hildegard in those early crusader's times. Elisabeth's style was more dramatic and apocalyptic; she may have suffered from the lack of the freedoms that metaphorical readings of scripture can afford. However, she and Hildegard were curiously united at a distance in many profound ways, including the venerating of St. Ursula (Elisabeth was the expert here), and opposing the Cathars, who would have had the exemplary lives of the saints obliterated. This book is unique, well-organized, and all attentions it may receive would be we! ! ll-deserved.