5 comments about The Magic of Provence: Pleasures of Southern France.

1. The author makes the colors, flavors and warmth of Provence so vivid to the reader. I have never been to Provence but will definitely make the trip. I also will refer to this book again for the great recipes that were included and also to reread and savor the many neat stories shared by Yvone Lenard. I've given my copy away to friends just returning from the regiion to enjoy and will be purchasing another for my library.



2. I struggled quite a distance into this book because I love France, but finally I gave up. I found the author to be a poor writer, found her stories to be so farfetched that I decided that she was not being truthful, found her values to be very superficial, found her to be describing things that were not worth reading about--e.g., the car trip to St. Tropez, and her apparent fixation on sex--e.g., her negative descriptions of the way females dress and act in St. Tropez, and her imagings about her husband's indiscretions with the Prince's wife and his dalliance with the girls in the village. Who cares if it happened! Who cares what the author imagines about her husband! You might think her husband would care and the Prince and the Princess would care. I doubt that there even is a Prince and Princess. And if the picture of the author half in a shadows, on the book cover is an example of her professional photographer husband's work, forget it.
   
   With the car trip to St. Tropez, I couldn't take anymore. I took the book back and got a refund.



3. This west-coast American has just returned from cutting an ambitious swath through France and Spain. While in Provence we took a day trip out of Aix to sightsee a random grabbag of villages on the southern slope of the Luberon range. At one particularly handsome and substantial hill village we made our way up the usual array of steep narrow streets and steps to a grand chateau that seemed in rather good, livable condition. We passed through an arched portal, under a heavy steel lattice gate operated by chain and counterweight, and into an inner courtyard with a view that went on forever. We were in luck, for within seconds a tour of the chateau was about to begin. However, luck did not extend to local language skill needed to tag along. The gracious host suggested we could perhaps find a better use of our time. Somewhat puzzled at the exchange I stepped back out into the sunlight and the door shut behind me. Having been relieved of any effort to accomplish something touristy, my mind relaxed and drifted. And it drifted to a book I had read a couple years back that I found rather entertaining and well written. A book about the trials and pleasures of moving to Provence, but with a rather welcome deviation from the smugness of the Mayle formula. The author impressed me enough that I followed up with another one of her literary works. Could this village and these people be from that book? Standing there in the courtyard of the chateau I reviewed the evidence, pondered the possibilities, considered the coincidences. Yes, it seems that we had blundered onto the pages of one of my favorites, Yvone Lenard's Magic of Provence.



4. The author's barely concealed condescention towards her Provencal neighbors is annoying enough, but her lack of any charm or distinction relaying her experiences is really a bore. Read Peter Mayle instead --or ANYONE ELSE FOR THAT MATTER,and save your money. You wouldn't want to live next door to this writer, in Provence or in Bel Air California -- her other home. Not exactly your average tourist! And oh my,the recipes! At the end of each chapter is a recipe of food vaguely mentioned in the text. Tasteless, trite recipes bound to fail since they lack any semblance of detail, even, sometimes, the baking temperature. Obviously the lady was trying to cover all bases. Too bad she struck out on all of them.



5. The author is like my father-in-law when he describes the fish he caught: he lies about their size and the quantity, but I couldn't care less about fishing anyway.
   the author is self-important and pretentious.
   
   some of the stories were amusing, but I also had impressions that the most interesting ones weren't true. And the beginning when the author is aristocracy-struck and tries to curtsy, is laughable but not in a funny way. She comes across as simple-minded.
   I mean, the woman believs in ghosts and ouiji board!
   
   I didn't analyze the receipts because I cook from real cookbooks, I just skipped the pages.
   The only parts which were interesting where the ones I knew she was making her stories up. Perhaps she should try her hand at fiction?
   I was hoping for a true account of life in Provence but found instead a collection of fables.

No comments about Wallpaper City Guide: Warsaw (Wallpaper City Guides) (Wallpaper City Guides (Phaidon Press)).

4 comments about The Essential Driving Guide for Italy (Essential Guide to Driving in Europe) (Essential Guide to Driving in Europe).

1. I'm planning a trip to Italy with my college girlfriends. We liked this book because we want the flexibility of driving as opposed to taking trains or a bus tour. Thinking about driving in a foreign country made us feel a little intimidated at first, but the book gave us lots of practical tips and actual driving routes to take...so now we have more confidence. We also thought the routes in this book would be less crowded than more mainstream publications...



2. We loved loved loved this guide! Outstanding! We have been to Italy several times and decided to go off the beaten path for this trip. The villages and towns that Orv Strandoo recommends are NOT to miss. Way less crowded and much more charming than the other guide book itineraries. Also, the explanations of road signs and laws were invaluable. A must for every tourist who loves the Boot.



3. I found this book to be a waste of time and money. I expected it to be more explicit and helpful. Don't bother buying it. See if it's at your library and spend 10 minutes reading it instead.



4. Being a first time driver in Italy I found this book extremely helpful. I was hesitant about renting a car but this book gave me all the basic info I needed as well as some great itineraries. Looking forward to my next trip!

2 comments about Poland's Jewish Landmarks: A Travel Guide.

1. What can you say about Jewish Poland in 264 pages or less?
   This is a subject for volumes, not for a thin paperback.
   I suppose that if I had to describe Polish Jewry "on one foot" (as they say) this book would be it. This is the book in your backpack when you travel to Poland. It opens with the Kaddish. You'll need that often, as you travel through the country.

   It then goes on to list some of the Jewish landmark events in a "Chronology of Jewish Presence in Poland before and after WWII" which starts at 860 AD. That's just to give you a taste of how rich the Jewish heritage was in Poland.

   There are several short chapters on the history of the Jews in Poland, and an introduction to Polish Jewish culture. But the most interesting and useful information in this book is the reference material. The book contains maps of various sorts, showing not just geography but also demographic information. There are lists and photos, diagrams, and names, names and more names.

   So many contributed to the rich Jewish life in Poland that they are too great to mention. The section on famous figures and their contributions is simply a list of names
   and their contributions. This hardly does justice so giants like Shalom Aleichem and Isaac Bashevis Singer, each one line entries under Yiddish and Hebrew Writers. Imagine that.

   Almost a third of this book is a glossary of Polish Jewry. Here you will find an alphabetical listing of some of the most significant locations and a paragraph on each.
   Though some of the entries are very thorough, I was disappointed in the number of items missing from this 100-page section, particulary the religious references.
   
   The chapter on major Jewish centers in Poland, focuses on Cracow, Lodz, Lublin, and Warsaw. The book has an interesting chapter on tracing ones roots in Poland. It discusses the types of documents that are helpful for tracing family members and the repositories in Poland where they can be found. There is a list of modern day congregations and synagogues, striking in that it is two sides of a single page. There is another section on current Jewish organizations, recommended reading and an index.

   I suppose if such a rich topic as Poland's Jewish Landmarks had to be summed up in a portable paperback, this book does the job. But readers of this book should take the recommended reading section seriously, and use this book as just the start of a fascinating study.




2. This stand alone volume is a wonderful beggining of an index of Jewish sites in Poland and is a worthy addition to any traveller going to that country to examine its Jewish past or his or her Jewish roots there. Although it claims to begin in the 9th century AD the sites do not date back so far. Nevertheless the index provided is extensive and interestaint as it is diverse and gives the reader a true taste of the great wealth of the heritage of the Jews of Poland.
   
   A must have for anyone interested in the Jewish history of Poland.
   
   Seth J. Frantzman

No comments about Cool Spots: Cote D'azur (Cool Spots).

5 comments about The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine.

1. A very thorough account of the collectivization of farms in Ukraine and the resulting starvation of the families who grew the food that got shipped elsewhere by order of the communist authorities. It's a more heady and academic read than I would like, but certainly worthwhile as a history of that time and place.



2. This book shows just how bad things can get when the realities of economics are ignored. When people have no incentive to produce, they will not produce. This is a message that I wish were better understood by those who persist in thinking that we can solve poverty by giving out handouts.



3. Years ago I attended a 2 yr. technical school, which required taking a speech class in addition to electronics classes. The text of my 15 minute speech was extracts from 'Harvest of Sorrow.' I knew the speech was having an effect of sorts, for a class full of fidgety post teen guys slowly moved their attention from hand held games and car magazines to me, with their mouths hanging open. I finished my speech and left, thinking nothing more of it.
   The next day, a teacher from another class approached me, saying, "Do you know that you are now famous? The speech teacher raved on and on at our lunch after the class, saying that you had the entire class riveted to the floor with that subject! He said that after 14 years of teaching speech, your effort forced him to give his first 100% grade for a speech!"
   It strikes one to think that there is so much WW II stuff on the History Channel that it is now called the Hitler Channel, but they will barely give one hour a month for a far greater demon (Stalin) and a far worse system (Communism.) Why?



4. This was the first thorough Western documentation of what happened in the Communists' collectivization famines in the Ukraine and just how many people died - 10 to 15 million, more than died in the Holocaust. This is one of the more important conservative books of our time, because it documents in copious detail one of the worst crimes in history, one which the Left has continually sought to cover up or downplay.
   
   Ukrainian peasants were murdered, starved or deported to slave labor and death in order to turn their rich farmland into collectives. As Ukrainians they ran up against the supposedly internationalist but really Russian nationalist Communist regime, and as peasants they were officially regarded as a uselessly reactionary class unreceptive to revolution, by the proletariat-favoring Party.
   
   Nearly every aspect of the Holocaust 10 years later, is on display here - starving people to weaken them, looting their wealth before killing them, waves of deportation over several years, and shipping them in boxcars to concentration camps with no hope of return. It gives rise to this stunning question: did Hitler model the tactics of the Final Solution on this?
   
   That this work wasn't done in the West for nearly half a century is itself criminal, allowing the left to argue for coexistence with a "peaceful" and "progressive" Soviet Union. And the academic silence tells you all you need to know about the state of today's academy. Conquest documents the willing burial of the facts by Western liberals, most importantly New York Times writer Walter Duranty who knew about it but didn't publish it, meanwhile continuing to glorify the Socialist Revolution in print.
   
   When you read about this, you'll wonder, "Why haven't I heard about this before?" Good question.



5. The black earth
   Was sown with bones
   And watered with blood
   For a harvest of sorrow
   On the land of Rus.
   - _The Armament of Igor_.
   
   _The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivizaton and the Terror-Famine_, first published in 1986, by historian Robert Conquest is an excellent accounting of the horrors of the Soviet state unleashed upon the Russian peasantry by the Soviet Communist Party between 1929 and 1933. Robert Conquest is a British historian who early on joined the Communist Party and fought in World War II; however, after seeing firsthand the horrors of Soviet communism he became an anti-communist. In this book a detailed accounting of the more than 14.5 million deaths (more than the total number of deaths from all countries involved in World War I) that resulted directly from policies sanctioned by the Soviet Communist Party is detailed. Such policies as dekulakization, collectivization, and the "terror-famine" in the Ukraine had drastic consequences for those living under this oppressive and horrendous regime. Further, many Western intellectuals turned a blind eye to these atrocities because of their support for this horrendous and ungodly ideology. Even today many continue to deny such crimes occurred among the communists, while at the same time a repeated accounting is made of Nazi and fascist crimes. For those who believe that Soviet communism was a just and noble endeavor, a book like this is certainly sobering. Through painstaking research, Robert Conquest unveils the horrors behind Soviet communism.
   
   Conquest begins by noting the importance of Ukrainian nationalism, feared by the Soviets, and comparing the atrocities of communism to those of the other totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, Nazism and fascism. To begin with, the Soviets long regarded the peasants as backwards and reactionary, clinging to their traditions and religion, and thus "counter-revolutionary" and a threat to human progress. Such hatred for the peasant goes all the way back to Karl Marx, the founding father of Soviet communism. Lenin also denigrated the peasant as a threat to the creation of the Soviet state. Conquest traces the development of Ukrainian nationalism as it contrasted with Leninism and Soviet communism. For example, as Engels commented, "Now you ask me whether I have no sympathy whatever for the small Slav peoples, and remnants of peoples . . . In fact, I have damned little sympathy for them." During the years 1917 - 21, the revolution broke out sponsored by the Bolsheviks. At the same time the peasant war and famine broke out. Repeated famines were common in the history of the Soviet regime, showing the utter failure of the Soviet economic system to provide food for its people. Such famine was so bad at times that many Russians even had to resort to cannibalism in their efforts to stay alive. Further, during this time and following, the Soviet state began a series of purges against "counter-revolutionaries", those who stood in the way, the religious, and those who did not sufficiently truckle to the powers that be. The NKVD and secret police were formed to rid the state of dissenters. The League of Militant Godless, a band of militant atheists, formed which sought to purge the state of religious and ransacked the Orthodox churches. At the same time, purges were made of kulaks (and suspected kulaks), largely middle-class peasants who could afford to hire labor or lenders. Frequently the individuals accused of being kulaks were very poor, and hardly the rich exploiters they were portrayed to be. Indeed, the accusations and railings of individuals such as Josef Stalin against the kulak bear an eerie resemblance to those of Hitler. At the same time, the free peasantry was abolished and the land was laid to waste. So inefficient were the Soviet agricultural methods that millions starved. In particular, children faced a horrific fate under the Soviet regime and frequently starved or were left to die as orphans. All the while massive purges continued and the state officially denied any problems existed (afterall the Soviet state was supposed to be a utopia). Conquest sums up the death toll as follows:
   
   Peasant dead: 1930 - 37 11 million
   Arrested in this period dying in camps later 3.5 million
   TOTAL 14.5 million.
   
   The record of the West in responding to these atrocities was equally horrendous, particularly among intellectuals who frequently harbored communist sympathies. In particular, individuals such as Sidney and Beatrice Webb and Walter Duranty denied such occurrences. Further, the reports of such individuals (which could be likely classified as nothing more than official propaganda for the Soviet state) were accorded places of prominence among leading Western sources. However, others did catch on to the evils of the Soviet regime and began speaking out against it as well as providing aid. Following this, Conquest attempts to assign responsibilities for such atrocities. Certainly, we cannot forget these horrors and a full accounting must be made, even and especially if such an accounting happens to undermine one of our most favored ideologies. Conquest ends by discussing the aftermath of such terror and the Soviet Union up to the present time. This book was written before the fall of the USSR.
   
   This book is to be highly recommended for those who want to know the truth about Soviet Communism. The official Soviet line denied such atrocities occurred under their regime. The twentieth century is likely to be remembered as an era of totalitarian regimes, and the Soviet Union remains one of the worst such regimes ever known to man. Nevertheless, there exist those who continue to deny that such things ever occurred because of their support for such an ideology. Indeed, Conquest himself has been much vilified by a largely pro-Communist Left that refuses to face up to its own atrocities while at the same time preaching constantly about the horrors of "right wing fascism". That is why a proper accounting such as that made in this book is all the more important.

2 comments about the Food and Wine Lover's Companion to Tuscany.

1. Carla Capaldo has updated her book originally published in 1998, giving readers a "New, Updated Version" with over forty new entries. That's an average of ten a year, which seems a bit light to my mind.
   Her book-- regardless of the edition-- is a mix of restaurant recommendations, leads to wineries and enoteca, cheese shops, and also fattoria (farms) that offer such goods as olive oil, honey, etc. All well and good, but unless you are travelling all around Tuscany, over 95% of this book will be of little use.
   That said, much of its value will be as armchair reading-- and here too, I have some problems, particularly with her organization. As might be expected, the entries are organized geographically-- but by a system that most readers will find baffling. For instance, San Gimignano appears in the section on Siena (it is in Siena Province) while its neighbor fifteen miles away, Volterra, appears in the same section with Pisa, many miles to the north. But many of the villages in the province of Florence, such as Panzano, Radda, and Greve have their own section-- Chianti Classico.
   If it stopped there, one might eventually be able to discern what is where, but alas, the Index also compounds the confusion by listing entries alphabetically and then by offering, so we have Beekeepers, Bakeries, Candymakers, Chocolate Makers, Pastries, Biscuits, and Cakes, and Pastry Makers and Shops. Pity the person who is trying to recall where he/she had a nice pastry and coffee, followed by a gelato and perhaps a candy for the child!
   Another cavil-- in the '98 edition, one entry includes this sentence: "By the time you visit,...may have completed their extension: the 'little shop' will be enlarged to add a tasting room 'for friends." That same sentence, verbatim, is also in the 2002 edition. Granted, renovations can take a little while in Italy, but I strongly suspect that the author simply neglected to revisit the shop in question, and revise her book accordingly!

   If you are ONLY going to Tuscany, then this book may be of some use. If your travel plans include other regions of Italy (and they should), Faith Heller Willinger's "Eating in Italy" is far superior (though older) and there are several superior guides for serious enophiles.




2. I wrote this book, and would like prospective buyers to know that hundreds of people have written to me to say how much they have used and appreciated it when travelling to Tuscany. I'm glad, as it took three full years to write the first edition, and another 8 months to revise it, living on the road all around Tuscany as I did the research. Revising doesn't mean rewriting every entry: it means checking to see how things are after 2 years. If things have remained unchanged, I don't need to rewrite the entry from scratch. I also added 80 new places - my publishers wouldn't allow more - and removed others that had either closed or become less interesting.
   The focus of my work is to write about the artisan food and wine makers that Italy is so rich in -- about their lives and products -- and to help travellers to find them. Necessarily many of these dedicated and hard-working people live in out-of-the-way places. That makes finding them more difficult, but makes the visiting more interesting, as it takes us to all corners of this wonderful region.
   The Food and Wine Lover's Companion to Tuscany was shortlisted for Food Book of the Year in the UK. I have recently also published The Food and Wine Guide to Naples and Campania, fruit of three more years living and working in this fascinating southern region. I hope you will enjoy them!
   Carla Capalbo

1 comments about Passport Italy: Your Pocket Guide to Italian Business, Customs & Etiquette (Passport to the World) (Passport to the World).

1. I think this book was helpful regarding some of the cultural differences between how Italians and other cultures might do business. I think it could be very helpful to business persons doing work overseas. I don't think it's necessary reading for a tourist/traveler.

1 comments about Splendor of Malta.

1. I bought the Splendor of Malta thinking it was going to have lots of photos of the country and buildings from the outside etc. It's absolutely packed full of pictures of insides of different buildings and has tons of history and information. It's a very good book, just not what I thought I was getting.

No comments about Portugal (Eyewitness Travel Guides).