No comments about A Handbook for Travellers on the Continent: Being a Guide to Holland, Belgium, Prussia, Northern Germany, and the Rhine from Holland to Switzerland. With map and plans.

1 comments about Berlitz Pocket Guide: Bruges & Ghent (Berlitz Pocket Guides).

1. My wife and I found this book to be quite useful when we visited Belgium. It really enhanced our visit, including us finding the little-known Jeruselem Church at the edge of town.

No comments about Sofia (Falk Plan).

No comments about Zwinger Palace, Dresden (Travels to Landmark).

3 comments about The Rocket Team.

1. This book is a retrospective account of the development of the V-2 rocket in Germany during the second world war at Peenemunde by Werner Von Braun and his rocket team. Frederick Ordway draws upon interviews with the engineers and scientists involved, many of whom came to the US under "Project Paperclip" after they were captured by American troops during the end of the war in Europe. The book's attention to detail is excellent, although at times the detailed specifications of the various technologies is why I only give it 4 stars instead of 5.

   I first heard about this book in the early days of the net (before the Web when you could read all messages posted to usenet in an afternoon!). It was recommended in the sci.space FAQ as the best treatment of the early days of rocketry that culminated in the V-2 for Germany and became the seed crystal for NASA in the US.

   Recommended for all space buffs.




2. The author provides an interesting insider's view of von Braun's rocket team. However, the book suffers from poor editing: names of cities in Germany and Belgium are quite simply incorrect. It also seems to me that the measurements of the missiles mentioned in the book cannot possibly be correct; they are given as metric, but are no doubt recalculations of English engineering units. The results are ludicrous. Range of the A4 is given as a convenient conversion of miles; engine diameter is a conversion of 1 foot, etc. If you are interested in a good read you will find lots of hard to find historical anecdotes in this book, but for me the story is spoiled and seriously flawed due to the aforementioned inconsistencies. Unfortunately this is not atypical for these kinds of histories. Some serious editing required!



3. This book gives an accurate account of the Development of one of Germany's secret weapond in the second world war, the V-2 rocket, from the Germans scientist's point of view that developed it. It accurately describes the experiments, the tests and shows what the scientists behind Germany's V-2 rocket program were really like.
   
   I recommend this book to all that are intrested in the seeds of space travel or World War Two.

No comments about The Ridgeway (National Trail Guides).

4 comments about Let's Go Map Guide NYC (3rd Ed) (Let's Go Map Guide New York City).

1. PLEASE DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK (OR ANY LET'S GO BOOK). Professor Gerald Cohen and I solved "the Big Apple." There is a Big Apple Corner street sign & plaque at W. 54th & Broadway, and we've been in other travel books. The book has the old jazz "Big Apple" theory and never mentions horseracing and John J. Fitz Gerald, who popularized the term in the 1920s. Buy other guides instead.EN



2. What we found most useful in the guide is its geographic listing - after attending an event or touring NYC, one can flip through the guide and find one of the many great restaurants in a nearby neighborhood, use your cell phone to call and make a reservation. The ratings and reviews of the food and ambience appear to be more accurate than other guides. We had so more more luck eating in great restaurants using Marcellino's book. Looking for 1999's version, and keep 1998's until then.



3. The map guide is a nice compact New York City-only version of the larger Let's Go guide for the USA, plus some very handy laminated maps. Its easy to carry this one around and not look like a tourist. The sights picked, often have a good local sensibility about them, in that they may not be typical touristy places. All the Map guides are great, but this one dissapointed because it never listed cross streets for addresses (a must for most new york cabbies)



4. This map is terrific for getting around Manhattan and using the subway system. Very easy to use and read.

No comments about The Thames Path (National Trail Guides).

2 comments about The German Comedy: Scenes of Life After the Wall.

1. I started reading this book several months ago and now have slowly wandered my way to the end. It is a book best read an essay at a time. Otherwise it seems to jump around too much. A movie in the Seattle International Film Festival, "No Place to Go (Die Unberuehrbare)" reawakened my interest in the book. In the movie, a leftist writer struggles to discover how to survive after the Berlin Wall has fallen and all her hopes for a socialist Germany have been dashed. She has become an anachronism moving across the landscape with nowhere to go. This book is much lighter in tone, a series of good-humored irony-laden essays about life in Germany in 1989 and 1990 in the absence of the legendary Wall. Schneider points out various paradoxes such as West Berliners becoming less enthusiastic about the Wall coming down as the probability of its demise approaches. Also, the book is full of interesting historical footnotes, such as that most of the Wall has disappeared as people have hacked off bigger and littler pieces of it as personal momentos and much-in-demand tourist items. For someone as little aware of recent German history as me, this book was very informative and leaves me wanting to read more about recent German history to find out what has happened since 1991.



2. A nice series of essays on what life was like after the fall of the Wall. East Berlin and East Germany become part of the Federal Republic. East Germans face a new society as they seek to integrate into the Federal Republic and Western Europe. This shock produced by the fall had many unsettling results. Schneider tells these stories in a series of essays addressed to German readers.
   
   There are some interesting situations described here. The East German policeman pursuing a Vietnamese into West Berlin so as to deport him. Poor Polish merchants peddling goods in a walled off West Berlin portion of the city. Questions whether the greater Germany will pose a threat to Europe. The costs of bring East Germany up to West German standards. There are many fine points to discuss here.
   
   This is an OK read for those interested in the division of Germany. I wish I could have read this book when I visited the remains of the Berlin Wall in April, 1990. Germany and Berlin are now united, but the Germans will be working through the problems of the separation for many years to come.

1 comments about AA Big Road Atlas Germany (AA Atlases).

1. I am little bet dissapointed. when I first sow the cover of this Atlas everything was in English, it gave me the impressionn that most what was inside is in English ( exept names ), but it was pure German.