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Las Cadenas de Sultana (Biblioteca)
Jean Sasson
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ASIN: 0307274217
Release Date: 2005-06-07 |
Customer Reviews:
Admiration and anger.......2006-11-03
this book moved my soul to another level it was sad and frustrating at times but in the end you can see how a woman can survive in a world where she has no alies just the will to be heard and fight for her life.
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Las Cadenas De Sultana
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ASIN: 8497594266 |
Product Description
Titulo original: Princess Sultana My Struggles and my Victories
Book Description
"They don't build them like Frank Mundus anymore . . . The leathery, prank-loving charter boat captain who has become a legend earning the name: Monster Man.
This is his story. The story of a ceaseless, seagoing safari in search of monsters of the deep . . . especially the great white shark.
Hunting down monsters has been called the ultimate challenge. Mundus faced it with consummate daring when--a decade before "Jaws"--he caught the largest great white ever taken.
His story is brimming with adventure, danger, suspense and hilarity, and peopled with the most extraordinary characters you will ever meet." -- Robert F. Boggs.
With 16 full page illustrations by Frank Borth
**In the preface of this special edition, Frank updates readers on what he has been up to recently.
Customer Reviews:
A MUST READ FOR FISHERMEN AND NON-FISHERMEN!.......2001-05-16
BOOK REVIEW – By Capt. Ron Yoli
Capt. Frank Mundus: MONSTER MAN – Master Hunter of the Deep By Robert F. Boggs Abery Publishing Company - © 1976 & 2001
It has been 25 years since the first edition of Monster Man; and with the new 25th anniversary edition of this high seas - adventure-laden, yet hysterically funny book, a new generation of readers can now revel in the wild antics of the legendary Montauk, N.Y. based shark hunter, Capt. Frank Mundus.
Recounting the vast assortment of loonies that chartered his Cricket II over three decades in search of the largest predators of the deep blue sea - SHARKS - including the infamous Great White shark, you will find yourself completely unable to set this book aside once you read Capt. Frank’s two page preface to this “fresh off the press” edition.
All of us, even individuals that were not yet born at the time of its release in 1975, have either seen or at least heard of the blockbuster movie, JAWS, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, and Robert Shaw as the gruff, yet loveable Capt. Quint , skipper of the ORCA. By the way, the ORCA as seen in the film just so happens to be a virtually identical replica of Capt. Frank’s Cricket II
What many of us still don’t realize is that the character of Capt. Quint was actually based on Montauk’s legendary charter boat skipper, Frank Mundus. The film is based on the best selling novel, JAWS, authored by Peter Benchley.
If you are a fan of the movie, this book will make you understand the endless similarities between Capt. Quint and the “very real” Capt. Frank Mundus. However, in my opinion, this book is far more interesting - as every word in this book is fact, and not Hollywood fiction!
On page 211, you’ll find that Benchley interviewed Mundus for Newsweek magazine ten years before JAWS was released, and a year before its release, Benchley was aboard Frank’s Cricket II while filming an episode of The American Sportsman.
Monster Man is a book to be enjoyed by both fisherman and non-fisherman alike. Written in four parts, author Robert F. Boggs brilliantly transfers Capt. Frank’s exciting shark fishing career to the printed page. Frank Borth’s comedic illustrations throughout the book, coupled with Bogg’s infectious style of writing, bring this “non-fiction” account of the legendary captain’s experiences to life.
Monster Man covers the career of Capt. Mundus from his early days in 1943 through 1976. As many fishermen know, Frank was, and remains till this day, one of the most colorful and controversial characters that ever graced the docks of Montauk. With one big toe painted green, and one big toe painted red (so he “jokingly” would not forget the starboard side of the boat from the port side) Frank literally captured the hearts of millions worldwide.
Frank Mundus is the undeniable “King of Sportfishing for Sharks”, and has appeared on numerous television programs over the years, including, Late Night with David Letterman, Good Morning America, Larry King Tonight, and ABC’s Wide World Of Sports to name just a small few.
Frank’s endless practical jokes and pranks aboard his Cricket II throughout his career will have you reeling with knee-slapping, heart-felt laughter. My personal favorite is the time Frank was returning to port in a pea soup dense fog; Frank and his mate broke out a hammer and saw, and started banging nails and sawing old lumber they had brought on board so that following boats would believe they were too close to the beach.
Thinking that they heard the sounds of house construction, and not wishing to wash up on the beach, the other captains changed course quickly, circled endlessly, and pondered their own navigational skills for awhile. These captains were of course quite embarrassed to say the least, when word quickly spread through town of how they were duped into their confusing predicament!
Capt. Mundus is not only credited with pioneering the concept and various techniques of shark fishing for sport; Frank was also instrumental in helping to initiate the first shark-tagging programs for scientific research, along with government marine biologist, Jack Casey, in the early 1960’s.
In addition, Frank was also the first to reveal to marine biologists that sharks apparently did not ever carry any form of cancer. He was initially ridiculed for this finding by many members of the “scientific community”, but eventually proven absolutely correct in his observations by marine biologist, Eugenie Clark.
Capt. Frank has been retired since 1991, and now resides in Hawaii with his wife, Jenny, and pet wild boar, 350 pound “Arnie”. This is a book to hand down from generation to generation – especially for those “fishing fanatics” in your extended family!
Capt. Ron Yoli
The real life Quint!.......2001-03-28
Anyone who enjoys the water, sharks, Jaws, adventure and getting a good laugh will enjoy this quick and highly entertaining read. It's filled with interesting, funny and punchy stories about the day in and day out adventures of Mundus and his "idiots". It can be read in just a sitting or two but the nice thing about it is that you can pick it up and put it down at your leisure. The "short story" concept allows for "reading in 10 minute snipets" if thats all you have. Highly recommended from this lover of Blues, Striper and all the calssic "fish story" books.
Book Description
Every college major has special qualities that equip students with valuable skills and training. This training is perfect for a wide range of careers. The Great Jobs series helps students to make the most of their major, with help to:
- Assess talents and skills for a job
- Target the perfect career
- Perfect the job search
- Explore a wide range of career options
- Present college majors as workplace assets
- And much more!
Book Description
The PMZ Way: Strategies of Highly Successful Real Estate Agents contains valuable insights from the head of one of California's leading real estate companies. It also features many successful real estate agents who share their strategies for success as well as the real life struggles it took to get them where they are today.
Customer Reviews:
Not just for Real Estate Agents, Insights for any Career.......2006-07-18
Excellent book with insightful stories. This book helps you manage your real estate career and provides examples from a start-up as a single agent to building your own team. It goes beyond the day to day business activities to discuss what other things you should do, not only to develop a successful career, but ensure a successful life!
terrific!!!!!!!!.......2005-07-21
I thoroughly enjoyed reading the stories of successful realtors working at PMZ Inc. The inside look at what a career in residential real estate is really all about was so helpful for someone like me who was really interested in a career change. This a great book by an obviously brilliant business executive who spends 85% of the book on allowing other people to tell their stories. How refreshing is that? Buy it...it is a fun, informative read.
INSPIRATIONAL & PRACTICAL!.......2005-07-20
What a great read! I am a business student in the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and stumbled upon this book as it was listed on the "suggested supplementary reading" list distributed by the professor in my upper-div real estate investment elective. I loved this book from beginning to end - I think that it especially provides a realistic point of view into residential real estate, with great tips on how to get started, networking and important keys to success. It is clear that this author knows what he is talking about and I love how he combines useful business tools and tactics with personal accounts of the real-life application of these tools by real estate agents. If I could give this read 6 stars, I would. It has really inspired and moved me in an incredible way!!
Impressive and Insightful!.......2005-03-29
This is a terrific read for anyone interested in the field of real estate. Take tips from the pros who are actually out there practicing and learn lessons from the man who runs the company! A Great read!
Book Description
On sale 1/20/04! In this honest, hilarious, fiercely intelligent memoir, journalist Susan Shapiro dares to do what every woman dreams of: track down the five men who'd broken her heart and find out what really went wrong. Between the ages of thirteen and thirty-five, Susan had plunged into love, heart-first, five times. One bad breakup was more hurtful and humiliating than the next.
With insight and daring, Susan chronicles her six-month-long journey back down a road strewn with romantic regret. Although for years she'd blamed her boyfriends for their flagrant infidelity, ludicrous faults, and immature foibles, to her shock she can now suddenly pinpoint the exact moment where she herself screwed up each relationship.
A successful freelance writer living in Manhattan, Susan Shapiro was in the midst of a midlife crisis she called her “no-book-no-baby summer.” Married for five years to Aaron, a workaholic TV comedy writer always on the road, she was beginning to wonder if she'd remain book- and babyless forever. Then the phone rang, and it was Brad, a college flame who'd become a Harvard scientist with a book coming out. Susan offers to interview him, and she winds up launching into all the intense, invasive questions she'd always wanted to ask him. To her surprise, he answers them! This ignites a spark that sends her on a cross-country jaunt back through her lust-littered past.
While Brad is still single, she finds that Heartbreaks Number Two, Three, and Four are not. George, a theater professor, and Richard, a music biographer, are happily married with children. Tom, a handsome blond lawyer in L.A., is getting divorced. Just as it's becoming easy to worm her way back into her exes' good graces, she crashes head-on with David, a wry Canadian root canal specialist. ("It’s the equivalent of what you did to me emotionally," she tells him.) She then gut-wrenchingly relives the agony of splitting up with her first love all over again. Yet somewhere between the tantalizing what-ifs and bittersweet might-have-beens, she finds what she's been searching for all along.
Part relationship manifesto, part confessional, and part valentine to the males in her life she adores,
Five Men Who Broke My Heart is for anyone who has ever wondered what became of their first love. Or second, third, fourth, or fifth…
Customer Reviews:
Reading this book made me review my own realtionships.......2005-03-17
I could not stop reading this book, i did not want to put it down. The whole time it made me think about my own life and review my past and present relationships. She is a great writter who speaks about real life issues. I loved this book and it has inspired me to read more of her writtings.
Brave!.......2005-02-04
An awesomely brave woman, this Susan Shapiro. And to write it all down and splay it all out for the public; bravery at its finest. This is the kind of book that I just did not want to end.
What you bring to the table.......2005-01-25
So much of what you find in a book is what you bring to it when you read it. I liked this book a whole lot--enough to recommend it to several friends because I thought it was a good example of looking honestly at your past to see how you got where you are now. Several times I wanted to shout at the young Susan, "Grow up and quit being so melodramatic!" But that's what I wish I could shout back through time at my own young self, as well. In the end, you are what you are, and what you've done has made you into the person you are today. I identified with Susan's propensity for choosing the wrong man and for shutting down good relationships for bad ones. She does grow up, though, and this walk through her youth was honest. She doesn't pull any punches, even for herself. It was very well written, if sometimes a little frustrating (it's really hard to watch people make mistakes in slow motion). If I had a daughter, I'd give her this and "He's Just Not That Into You" as good instruction manuals.
Author revisits exes and probes why's of relationships.......2004-08-24
What a wonderfully zany idea--revisit your exes to probe the why's of your regret-filled relationships. I thoroughly enjoyed this book--laughing often, appreciating Ms. Shapiro's skipping along, witty style, and looking forward to her next roller coaster escapade.
Ms. Shapiro demonstrates exceptional emotional courage by revisiting her past loves in the first place, and then revealing the unraveling of her dilemmas in public. She is a gifted storyteller, artfully narrating the intimate, analytic story of her mid-life crises in a series of engaging, seriocomic vignettes.
Like most guys, I seldom read this type of book, so I can't make comparisons. But the premise sounds totally original and Susan Shapiro's candidness is remarkable. "Five Men..." is a treat, and seems a natural for a film.
Frank Schwartz
Fiercely funny and honest .......2004-08-01
Susan Shapiro is as fiercely funny as she is honest. In her re-visits with ex-lovers, she takes us on a journey we all have fantasized, but few would have the guts or emotional stamina to actually pursue. In reconsidering how the the men in her life jive with who she's become, what really emerges is a portrait of how we are all the sum of who and why we love. I began reading this book late one night and could not stop. FIVE MEN WHO BROKE MY HEART flows like an urgent, late-night phone call. Shapiro confides heartfelt dilemmas as if you're her most trusted friend, whom she'd rather cheer than burden. I highly recommend this lively tale of an indefatigable young romantic as she goes reeling towards maturity.
Book Description
In this honest, hilarious, fiercely intelligent memoir, journalist Susan Shapiro dares to do what every woman dreams of: track down the five men who'd broken her heart and find out what really went wrong. Between the ages of thirteen and thirty-five, Susan had plunged into love, heart-first, five times. One bad breakup was more hurtful and humiliating than the next.
With insight and daring, Susan chronicles her six-month-long journey back down a road strewn with romantic regret. Although for years she'd blamed her boyfriends for their flagrant infidelity, ludicrous faults, and immature foibles, to her shock she can now suddenly pinpoint the exact moment where she herself screwed up each relationship.
A successful freelance writer living in Manhattan, Susan Shapiro was in the midst of a midlife crisis she called her “no-book-no-baby summer.” Married for five years to Aaron, a workaholic TV comedy writer always on the road, she was beginning to wonder if she'd remain book- and babyless forever. Then the phone rang, and it was Brad, a college flame who'd become a Harvard scientist with a book coming out. Susan offers to interview him, and she winds up launching into all the intense, invasive questions she'd always wanted to ask him. To her surprise, he answers them! This ignites a spark that sends her on a cross-country jaunt back through her lust-littered past.
While Brad is still single, she finds that Heartbreaks Number Two, Three, and Four are not. George, a theater professor, and Richard, a music biographer, are happily married with children. Tom, a handsome blond lawyer in L.A., is getting divorced. Just as it's becoming easy to worm her way back into her exes' good graces, she crashes head-on with David, a wry Canadian root canal specialist. ("It’s the equivalent of what you did to me emotionally," she tells him.) She then gut-wrenchingly relives the agony of splitting up with her first love all over again. Yet somewhere between the tantalizing what-ifs and bittersweet might-have-beens, she finds what she's been searching for all along.
Part relationship manifesto, part confessional, and part valentine to the males in her life she adores,
Five Men Who Broke My Heart is for anyone who has ever wondered what became of their first love. Or second, third, fourth, or fifth…
Download Description
In this honest, hilarious, fiercely intelligent memoir, journalist Susan Shapiro dares to do what every woman dreams of: track down the five men who'd broken her heart and find out what really went wrong. Between the ages of thirteen and thirty-five, Susan had plunged into love, heart-first, five times. One bad breakup was more hurtful and humiliating than the next.
With insight and daring, Susan chronicles her six-month-long journey back down a road strewn with romantic regret. Although for years she'd blamed her boyfriends for their flagrant infidelity, ludicrous faults, and immature foibles, to her shock she can now suddenly pinpoint the exact moment where she herself screwed up each relationship.
A successful freelance writer living in Manhattan, Susan Shapiro was in the midst of a midlife crisis she called her "no-book-no-baby summer." Married for five years to Aaron, a workaholic TV comedy writer always on the road, she was beginning to wonder if she'd remain book- and babyless forever. Then the phone rang, and it was Brad, a college flame who'd become a Harvard scientist with a book coming out. Susan offers to interview him, and she winds up launching into all the intense, invasive questions she'd always wanted to ask him. To her surprise, he answers them! This ignites a spark that sends her on a cross-country jaunt back through her lust-littered past.
While Brad is still single, she finds that Heartbreaks Number Two, Three, and Four are not. George, a theater professor, and Richard, a music biographer, are happily married with children. Tom, a handsome blond lawyer in L.A., is getting divorced. Just as it's becoming easy to worm her way back into her exes' good graces, she crashes head-on with David, a wry Canadian root canal specialist. ("It's the equivalent of what you did to me emotionally," she tells him.) She then gut-wrenchingly relives the agony of splitting up with her first love all over again. Yet somewhere between the tantalizing what-ifs and bittersweet might-have-beens, she finds what she's been searching for all along.
Part relationship manifesto, part confessional, and part valentine to the males in her life she adores, Five Men Who Broke My Heart is for anyone who has ever wondered what became of their first love. Or second, third, fourth, or fifth....
"A delightfully kaleidoscopic autobiography of an impulsive and passionate woman who comes of age with style.... Shapiro's often funny and always heartfelt recollections of past relationships are so entertaining, it's a shame she doesn't have an endless supply of material."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Customer Reviews:
YAWN!.......2007-08-17
...Shapiro, self-obsessed and boring. Some small gems but you had to dig way to hard to find them. There has to be more to her life than her mirror? Would have made a great Cosmo article but falls short as a book!
A fun and intriguing read.......2007-01-22
Who hasn't wondered why their relationship fell apart or what their exes were thinking when they broke up? Most people wonder forever, but Susan Shapiro took it further and actually went to find out why her relationships went south. Her journey to ex-boyfriend land was very insightful because who hasn't made the same mistakes in their relationships? I think seeing her relationship problems made me more aware of things I've done in my own. And it's nice to know that you really can learn from your past relationships so that you can improve your current one. Some great scenes in this book-particularly the scenes with her family. I love those!!! I can totally see this book as a movie, too.
Wonderful!!!!!.......2007-01-14
I immediately got this book after I read LIGHTING UP and I finished it in about 4 days... Susan Shapiro wrote this hilarious book venturing in past relationships... Tracking down old boyfriends, and and asking them questions she's always wanted to. This is a WONDERFUL & entertaining book, and I would recommend it to EVERYONE!!!!
Intriguing premise, reality-show results.......2006-11-18
This book visits similar terrain to the DVD "High Fidelity," except that this is a real journey and not fictionalized. The results are unflinchingly honest and will prompt many a reader to ponder whether they would be brave enough to similar revisit their past loves!
A must-read.......2006-06-18
Joan Rivers was right: Susan Shapiro IS hysterical. And she's an absolutely wonderful writer. In FIVE MEN WHO BROKE MY HEART, Shapiro pulls off the rare feat of entertaining the reader and imparting deep information at the same time. Of course this book has juicy details, just as the title promises. But it satisfies on a deeper level as well. The writer knows so much about relationships between men and women, and she's willing to share what she knows. She doesn't just tell the stories of her failed relationships with men; she describes her gradual transformation from girl to woman. It's not often that a writer is so obviously truthful in a memoir...Shapiro tells us everything we want to know about relationships, even when the truth doesn't reflect well on her. After reading FIVE MEN WHO BROKE MY HEART, I want to read everything Susan Shapiro has written. Hers is a voice that's smart and funny--it's a voice that I trust.
Average customer rating:
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Lincoln and the Tools for War
Manufacturer: Bobbs Merrill, Indianapolis
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000I9H6KA |
Book Description
Sixteen-year-old Richard Pipes escaped from Nazi-occupied Warsaw with his family in October 1939. Their flight took them to the United States by way of Italy, and Pipes went on to earn a college degree, join the U.S. Air Corps, serve as professor of Russian history at Harvard for nearly forty years, and become adviser to President Reagan on Soviet and Eastern European affairs. In this engrossing book, the eminent historian remembers the events of his own remarkable life as well as the unfolding of some of the twentieth century’s most extraordinary political events.
From his youthful memories of bombs falling on Warsaw to his recollections of the conflicts inside the Reagan administration over American policies toward the USSR, Pipes offers penetrating observations as well as fascinating portraits of such cultural and political figures as Isaiah Berlin, Ronald Reagan, and Alexander Haig. Perhaps most interesting of all, Pipes depicts his evolution as a historian and his understanding of how history is witnessed and how it is recorded.
Customer Reviews:
Lovely memoir of an extraordinary life.......2006-02-11
Those born into Polish Jewry did not expect or want extraordinary lives, but if they escaped the conflagration, as Richard Pipes and his parents did, they involuntarily gained such lives.
Pipes writes with his usual eloquence, such a rare trait among today's inept and jargon-fouled academics, and fascinatingly tells of the vanished multiethnic Poland he knew, acclimation to college in Ohio, and his distinguished academic career.
It is a shame that this page is being abused by paltry detractors -- undoubtedly resentful over the loss of their political dreams -- to attack him personally.
The best book I've read in a long time.......2005-10-26
I always admired Pipes for his excellent writing, amongst other qualities. Depite its hugeness, I've read his Russian revolution in one week. This time, I just could not stop reading this great memoir and my biggest problem is that the book is too short ! Please, Mr Pipes, expand it for another 200 pages for the next edition, especially the chapter 3 ! I wish I was an american student in Harvard when you taught there... Those kind of specialists are desperately lacking nowadays, especially in Europe. I thank God for saving you from certain death in Poland to share with us, simple mortals, all these inspiring books and ideas.
P.S. As for pnotley, the only intelligent remark you made concerns the too old source for the german casualties in Poland. Mr Pipes, please correct that. But even then, it doesn't change the picture: 45 000 casualties is much more important than the idea that is too often on people's minds about this episode. For the other stuff, you sound like a frustrated liberal. Cool off. This is an autobiography, which means the author has the right to express his views the way he wants, this is NOT a scholar work. He is entitled to his opinions, even he takes time to explain his generalization of the german spirit (see for yourself page 57). You're free to accept them or not, but this is the genre of the book. As for me, I think there's too much leftist historians of the USSR, and not enough people like Malia and Pipes.
Alive and kicking!.......2004-06-17
When Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union 'the evil empire', much of the western left stood up on its hind legs and howled in dismay - but today, after the Soviet Union had collapsed, people in Moscow commonly refer to their past as 'the evil empire'. Prof Pipes, a leading Russian expert, was one of few westerners who saw through the farce of communism and urged the hard and sensible line against the USSR, which ultimately led to its collapse. It is pathetic how some reviewers are still fighting an ideological fight they had lost - 'swinging their fists after the fight is over' to use a Russian expression - and viciously pan Prof. Pipes' beautifully written book.
The flaw of most memoirs is that they have a high point - usually the beginning or the middle, and then they trail off. Pipes is as alive and intellectually vigorous at 80 as he seems to have been in his youth and his autobiography is a pleasure to read to the last page.
His many asides are charming - on the academe, on the personalities in the Reagan White House, on the kaleidoscope of people he meets, works with, loves, hates. I wish I could have taken a course with him.
A Hero in his own mind.......2004-03-10
When I heard that Richard Pipes' memoir would be subtitled "Memoirs of a Non-Belonger", I thought to myself, great, another conservative who acts as though voting for the Republicans was an act of profound moral courage. And sure enough, whether it is his debates with the revisionists and the Sovietologists, or his stance as an arch-opponent of détente, or during his brief tenure as a member of Reagan's National Security Council, Pipes consistently portrays himself as an isolated figure armed with nothing but the truth on his side. One would not know from his account that for several decades Pipes was a prominent contributor to such eminently respectable journals of the centre as "Encounter" "The New Republic" or "The Times Literary Supplement."
Yet in a way that he would not appreciate, Pipes is a non-belonger. At one point he comments "Until adolescence, everything I experienced other than my own thoughts and feelings seemed to lie outside of me and to be not quite real." Reading this book one feels this problem did not go away with adolescence. The only son of relatively prosperous middle-class Polish Jews, Pipes says he was thoroughly bilingual in Polish and German from an early age. Yet he was unable to speak with his maternal grandmother, who almost certainly would have spoken Yiddish. Unlike most Polish Jews he is assimilated, so assimilated in fact that his family is not only able to escape Poland in 1939 but spend a surprisingly pleasant six months in Italy thanks to the intervention of the Polish ambassador there. (This incidentally is the best part of the book). But unlike most assimilated Jews he never doubts God's existence. Indeed while the Holocaust weakened his father's faith, Pipes says it only strengthened his. He describes himself as "non-observant Orthodox." Although he was 16 in 1939, Pipes showed no interest in the struggles within the Jewish Community between Bundists and Zionists, Communists and the Ultra-Orthodox. It is rather odd that he did not hear about the Holocaust until 1945. True, many other Jews were slow to grasp the truth, but then relatively few of them had been recently exiled from Poland. There is no realization that Pipes finds any of this odd or unusual. There is a certain isolation around Pipes, a lack of curiosity in and sympathy for other people.
How does this affect Pipes' stature as a historian? Early on Pipes proudly argues that the Poles killed 91,000 Germans and wounded 63,000 more in their brief war. Actually Gerhard Weinberg's seminal "A World at Arms" and Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler claim total casualties were only 45,000. But then they did not rely like Pipes did on statistics published in Communist Poland. Later Pipes will quote Nietzsche out of context, apparently believes that before Columbus Europeans thought the Earth was flat and suggests, quite wrongly, that Yuri Andropov was involved in the attempt on the Pope's life. But this carelessness with detail is not Pipes' biggest weakness as a historian At one point Pipes says feminism "treat[s] all men as would-be rapists," and reduces Third World Revolution to the Soviets' promotion of "political subversion and creating economic dependence." Such opinions do not show a particularly open or generous mind. Indeed, he resorts to simple-minded chauvinist stereotypes: Palestinians are hate filled and destructive, Germans have no sense of humour and care more about hygiene than basic decency. Russians "require a `strong hand' to regulate their public lives." Nor is Pipes' dislike of Russia confined to its rulers. To visit the Soviet Union after a cruel and savage war and to say of Moscow's residents that they "were culturally and even physically the most backward elements of Russia's rural population" or "like barbarian invaders" who had usurped its urban civilization reveal not pity, nor sympathy nor compassion, but a heartless snobbery.
He cares little more for his colleagues. Rather strikingly in his acknowledgements to "The Russian Revolution," he did not mention or thank a single individual. Indeed he appears to have learned nothing from his professional colleagues and indeed is so ungracious as to complain that the poor style of his colleagues hampered the sales of the textbook he helped write in the sixties. One is reminded of how he preposterously accused Orlando Figes of plagiarism. He is cool towards his own students (they are illiterate and ill-informed), and does not mention any of his graduate students (we do see a picture of Daniel Orlovsky and Nina Tumarkin). His accounts of Sovietology and Revisionism are abusive caricatures where he damns his critics as appeasers and pro-Soviet sympathizers but does not bother to seriously criticize them. Conservatives may like this, but no fair-minded person will think he has refuted Raymond Garthoff, Frances Fitzgerald, Archie Brown, Stephen Cohen, Ronald Suny or Alexander Rabinowitch. He argues that anything less than his cold war stance was appeasement, and explicitly rejected both arm control and negotiation. How his cold war stance supposedly encouraged Gorbachev is not clear, since Pipes' main activity during his short government tenure was to push for sanctions that George Schultz quickly revoked. There is a smug self-righteousness that cannot bear too close an examination. It is striking that he can condemn Russians for indulging anti-Tsarist terrorism, while the assassins of Bernadotte, let alone those of Deir Yassin, escape his censure. He can conclude "Property and Freedom" with a screed against affirmative action and the welfare state: does he think the Israeli settlements that his son is a devoted apologist for arose because of the workings of a free West Bank land market? Ultimately, everyone who challenges his views or criticizes him is always wrong, whether it is Malia or Solzhenitsyn, or whether it is Haig or Schultz. The only historian who gains his unqualified admiration is himself.
Wonderful and thoughtful autobiography.........2004-02-18
..and it even has a little good humor thrown in. Most satisfying for me, as a political science Ph.D., were his attacks on the lefty Sovietologists who downplayed the sheer evil of the Soviet regime for so long. I only wish Dr. Pipes mentioned more of their names so they can be more thoroughly discredited. But they know who they are.
The other particularly interesting section was on his service in the Reagan administration during the height of the nuclear freeze/peace movement in the U.S. and Europe. Hmmm...a tough, principled President, domestic know-nothings, peacenik Europeans, undependable allies, rampant anti-Americanism...how little has changed! But of course we were right then, and we're right now. One point Pipes discusses repeatedly is the tendency of those in academia and government toward shirking away from confronting enemies and viewing the world as they wish it to be instead of as it really is.
The book also works as a great life story as well as an intellectual autobiography. Dr. Pipes truly lead an interesting life, one inspiring to many others. I'm particularly inspired by his unending and seemingly boundless curiosity. My only complaint is that he might have added a little more about his family life, particularly about his wife and sons.
I'm a little puzzled by the review of academician Ravitch below. First, it should be made clear that Dr. Pipes' "disillusionment" with service in the Reagan Administration did not stem from its aims but from bureaucratic politics and personality clashes, such as with Alexander Haig and Richard Allen. He wholeheartedly supported Reagan's desire to move beyond detente and adopt a tougher line toward the Soviets. Second, with regard to the Holocaust, Pipes states quite clearly in the book that while it had a great role in shaping his personality, thinking and religious beliefs, he refrains from writing more on it simply because so many others have done so, and there is not much he can add. Gee, humility from a Harvard professor! Pipes is indeed a wise man. Finally, I see no reason for attacking Dr. Pipes and/or his son Daniel as "uptight," "fanatics," or "crazy." These are personal attacks completely outside the scope of the book. How regrettable.
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- Louis XIV King of France and Navarre
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- Madame de Pompadour: A Life
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- MARRIAGE WITH MY KINGDOM, THE COURTSHIPS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH I
- Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, V1 & 2
- Mio, My Son
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