Paris

It was difficult to wade through her tasteless anecdotes (mostly about her age) to find much substance. She seems more interested in trying to build a personal fan club than trying to give out great information on the truly wonderful shopping in Paris! Her "great deals" on hotel rooms are between US$200 - $300 a night, so beware that she's writing for those with beaucoup d'argent to burn.

I like books that I can carry with me for reference when I shop in Paris. It's nearly impossible to do that with this book because there is so much "chit-chat" included in the reviews of stores. It's very difficult to look up a specific area or kind of specialty store that you seek. You pretty much have to read the entire book to sift through her laborious writing to find what little helpful information actually exists. She includes one map of Paris which may be good for an overview of where shops are located, but a more detailed map is truly warranted.

This book is adequate if it's the only one to which you have access,... I'm sure Suzy has adequate experience of shopping in Paris, but her book needs some serious reorganization and brevity to make it more widely appealing to those who aren't as experienced as she is.

Bottom line: Not worth the effort to read it when there are far more informative books available. Sorry, Suzy.

What a great book for the truly shopping oriented trip. Suzy tries never to bog anyone down with nonshopping related tips or information, unless she is including a lunch or coffee/tea break...her review of the louve involves a rundown on the gift shops and her D'Orrsay recommendation involves only the Rotunda Restraunt. You have to admire her dedication.
Her hotel reviews are super snobby, she raves on about 5 star hotels and seems pained to review anything less. Overall, I loved this book!

Long live Suzy Gershman! This was the best, most helpful travel book I have ever bought and made this trip to Paris my most productive, happy and fun EVER. Every suggestion was right on target. Her taste is fabulous and her walking/shopping tours unbeatable. I will follow this woman anywhere.

There are more comprehensive guides available for less money (or free, even). It is printed on paper that is just a step above newsprint. Save your money for a more complete guide.

Compared to the free metro maps distributed throughout Paris, this one is a loser. While its large type makes it easier to read, it also makes it more cumbersome to unfurl while traveling. Its directions to tourist attractions are provided by any decent guidebook as well as signs and maps within the metro. Worst of all, the map is out of date. The new, ultra modern, Meteor line is not shown on this map. A waste of [....]

I bought this map along with the Paris Mapguide based upon the reviews here. It's an oversized metro map with mini-maps to 50 attractions. I never found a tourist destination that wasn't easily found from the nearest metro. You can get a free metro map when you buy a ticket or pass. Buy this only if you don't want to pull out your reading glasses to use the Paris Mapguide, but you'll still need a regular map to find the location of a restaurant or shop. Get the Paris Mapguide or the Michelin blue book instead. (To add insult to injury, there's a advertisement for the Paris Visite pass on the back, arguably the worst value for public transport in Paris.)

The good part is Ed McCabe gives a fascinating view into what has to be the most masochistic race on earth. While the author spends too much time describing his preparation, he also does a masterful job of detailing the amount of work required to even attempt this endeavor. The bad part is McCabe's personality - angry, arrogant, obsessive, perfectionistic. The ugly is the writing - there are some glaring errors and it looks like McCabe decided he could be his own editor. Wrong! A good editor could have made this a much better read - nonetheless it's still a fascinating first-hand description of a race only a maniac would enter. Most pathetic -- after a nearly a year of preparation and a penchant for obsession over details, McCabe blew it by running out of gas. Since his car eventually made it to Dakar it seems he could actually have run the course if only he'd topped off that morning.

As an owner of a 1986 280 GE Mercedes-Benz Gelandewagen, I had heard of this book by Ed McCabe. The pitfalls and the struggle just to run a race are tremendous----much less a race across two continents! The author spends quite a lot of the book telling you of his preparation and the red tape just to enter the race. The final third of the book details the actual race from the start in Paris to the finish in the deserts of Africa. To anyone who knows the capabilities of this vehicle, the book is an interesting account of the ruggedness and durability of the machine. The human wear and tear was also a good read! This vehicle is not nearly as refined as some of the others in the race, and yet the brute strength saw it through. An enjoyable book for the Mercedes-Benz enthusiast.

I am a huge fan of the P-D race and there is little written on it in the English language. Therefore this book is most welcome. The author/racer is not a fine human being but he is honest. I highly recommend this book to any motorsports or adventure fan.

This book was conceived and executed around a specific printing process, heliogravure. The original 1933 edition, if you could find it, which would be quite a feat, would look very much like the Pantheon edition published about a decade ago, and have many of the features of the current edition that some reviewers find objectionable: matte paper, black borders, strange tonality when compared to traditionally printed work. That's why the Pantheon edition, which some of the leading figures in modern printing and photography worked on, was such a landmark, and why the cheaply printed editions between the original and that one were junk -- and gave people a very serious misapprehension of how Brassai wanted his work to look.

Unfortunately, an attempt to reproduce the characteristic look of heliogravure using a more conventional printing process is a pretty tall order. If you don't like the way this edition looks, and you very well may not, see if you can find a library that has a copy of the Pantheon edition and compare them. You'll be amazed that the aspects of this edition's printing that you found objectionable actually make _that_ edition beautiful and unique.

It is a shame that Amazon does not even list the Pantheon edition so that it cannot be searched for as a used book -- and that the current publisher deceptively printed an edition that looks superficially like heliogravure but is not.

One only has to compare the nicely reproduced dust jacket photo to the print of it in the book to see the amount of detail that is lost in the rest of these images. Even the thumbails in the back next to the writeups show more detail than the muddied out larger vesions in the book. Brassai's images are so great that even muddied up like this they are worth looking at, but what a shame the publisher didn't do better. Shame, shame, shame.

This book is very important. Paris By Night by Brassai is a book that is central in the history of photograhy.It has been a great inspiration for many photograhers (and others).
It is a shame, that this edition is very badly printed (loss of detail).
I am sorry to say, that therefore the book is too exspensive.
I bought the book anyway. Why?
Because I wanted to have it on my shell. To study it. And because it reminds me of the first time, twenty years ago, when I saw some of the pictures from Paris By Night, and found that photograpy could be a great art.

Although I agree with the other reviewers that the prose is awful, that was not my major problem with Mr. Thackara's novel. Instead, I found the behavior of almost all of his characters incomprehensible in one way or another. They have these strange reversals of positions that are not adequately accounted for; misunderstandings arise between them that would never occur if the characters were actually the people that they had initially been drawn to be; instead it seems Mr. Thackara justs molds them at will as necessary to suit his story. Hasty ex post rationales are then sometimes tacked on to explain their behavior.
In War and Peace, the echoes of which you can clearly trace in the characters and plot of Mr. Thackara's novel (and to which he himself pays homage to in the words of Baron von Sunda), all of the characters, e.g., Prince Andrei, Rostov, Natasha, Pierre, were real people whom I understood and felt for even when, especially when, they made tragic choices, labored in ignorance or doubt, or when, through great suffering, they were transformed. I did not buy The Book of Kings with the expection of encountering the art of Tolstoy but I did expect to meet human beings who I would care for and empathize with.
Beyond his gift with language, Tolstoy is a genuis because he could capture History, Fate, War, Tyrants and Slaughter as well as the blessed uniqueness of the indivudual.

After having read this book, I must take serious exception to the detractors that have given this book an undeserved thumbs down. It is frankly dirty pool to compare it unfavorably to War and Peace, one of the great historical novels of all times. It is likewise unfair to criticize the author as being full of himself, or unable to write in a manner in which people speak; that is what may be termed style. It is also disingenuous to admire the typeface as the only redeeming quality of the book. How about criticizing Proust as being wordy? That the prose is self conscious adds, to my mind, a kind of period authenticity. Much of the writing of the time was similarly stilted. Look, for example at Paul Scott's Raj Quartet, Robert Musil's Man without Qualities, or Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, each of which compares favorably to this book, and none gets such an undesrved bashing. Upton Sinclair won a Pulitzer for the Lanny Budd novels with this self-conscious prose and none of the substance herein. Thackery and Trollope were every bit as convoluted. It seems that the critics should cut Mr. Thackara some slack; just sit down and enjoy the journey.

The story traces four friends, two principally, through prewar and subsequently war-torn Europe, elaborately staged from drawing-room to battlefield. The prose is indeed ornate, but after all this was a time of demagogues and hyperbole. My sole criticism is that it is far from unexplored country. Like an old silver mine, all the nuggets have been carried away long ago. It is prettty derivative stuff. It is not a new idea that the reality of war makes disillusionment of ideals. Still, this is a story that needs to be told lest we forget. We watch Grand Illusion now, realizing that it is as compelling as it was more than a half a century ago, although the acting seems wooden and it is in black and white. We have not as a society had to face a loss of innocence for some time, and perhaps that is the best reason to read this period piece and be caught up in the hubris of a near forgotten past.

I can honestly say that this is the best book I've ever read. The bias I have in my opinion is that I read it while I was temporarily living in Germany. I read the book, and then went and visited the places I had just read about. The way James Thackara used real historical events and people, and then wrote his story around it was brilliant. You won't be able to put this one down.

major parts of the caribbean were left out, and hey!, some people prefer not to travel to the big resorts! stick with lonely planet or others that know their stuff!

I rather did not like this book - I think I did a better job researching online, through travel agents, brochures, and family travel forums. There were a number of Caribbean destinations not mentioned in the book. Moreover, the information that was there seemed like abstract info. after my research. I was definitely disappointed that Cancun, Cozumel, and the Riviera Maya of Mexico (all hot spots for family travel and on the Caribbean Sea) were not included - obviously, if you are trying to research all options of where to go in the Caribbean, no stones should be left unturned.
Bottom line - this book is maybe okay if you are not looking at Mexico at all, but if you're online and have a little time to look - invest some time. There is more complete info. out there.

I rather did not like this book - I felt that I did a much better job researching places online, through travel agents and brochures. Moreover, I was a bit disappointed that it didn't cover the east coast of Mexico - Cancun, Cozumel, and Mayan Riviera - all on Caribbean Sea and hot spots for family travel!!
What I did read was basically abstract info. that I had already gotten online - especially through family travel forums. I found that there were also some destinations missing from this book (that I had heard about elsewhere).
So, this book is maybe okay if you are not interested in Mexico and not a heavy price to pay (to lose?) but just not too complete.

Meyer continues his version of Sherlock Holmes with a tale of Holmes' lost years after the "Moriarty Problem." Holmes becomes a violinist for the Paris Opera and through the intervention of Irene Adler, becomes involved in the strange case of the "opera ghost." There are many problems with this novel. Watson's presence is sorely missed and efforts to replace his role with characters from the opera are unsuccessful. Irene Adler's inclusion is an uneccessary distraction and is used soley to comment on Holmes' sexual repression. The case itself is so familiar to the reader that only the inclusion of Holmes changes the basic story, thus there are no surprises.(who doesn't know the basics of Laroux's Phantom?) This was a very disappointing sequel to Meyer's other Holmes' novels and wasn't owrth the wait.

I liked this book because it combined my two favourite characters: the phantom of the opera (Erik) and Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock stayed the remarkable genius that he is(even though he blundered miserbly sometimes-but,hey,YOU try to do better). But I was really disappointed with the treatment of Erik. Meyer calls him 'the creature' and makes him more insane than even in the original book! Personally, I the most appealling thing about Erik is that he IS a sympathetic character hopelessly in love with Christine Daae. This is why I 'liked' the Canary Trainer, not 'loved' it. (P.S.-Having Gaston Leroux as the music instucter was a creative touch)

I've read all three of Nicholas Meyer's Sherlockian pastiches, and oddly enough, this one's my favorite. Yes, it lacks Watson, yes, everyone already knows the story of the Phantom of the Opera, and yes, Meyer stupidly describes a real-life character as dead when he was actually very much alive - but the plot is fast-paced, and Holmes makes a good enough narrator that Watson's absence doesn't hurt as much as it might. Although it has Irene Adler in it, Meyer knows better than to turn the book into a romance. In fact, Holmes' reaction to Adler's presence is nicely ambiguous; while he's clearly attracted/fascinated by "the woman," he just as clearly wishes she'd go away and leave him alone! Get it from the library and see if it appeals to you before you buy it.

This guide is so poorly done that I wasted valuable time and missed out on some wonderful experiences while on a short vacation to Paris. All the writer needed to do to make things easy was to include the arrondissement or section of the city when recommending a destination. I spend too much time scanning the maps, looking for the subway stop provided. Do not waste your money on this book.

If being irreverent is stating that Parisian waiters can be rude, then I've missed the point of this book somewhere. Everbody KNOWS that Parisian waiters can be rude. Just be rude back!

I can't help feeling that Alexander F. Lobrano (Heidi Ellison in the first edition) have just dug around to exaggerate the things they don't like, and played down (or even omitted) the good things. For example, in a section marked 'Secret Gardens', how can Parc Andre Citroen be considered secret and Jardins Albert Kahn completely missed? It makes a mockery of claiming to be a true guide. Much better (if you're French-speaking) to get yourself a copy of 'Paris inattendu' by Michel Dansel. You get the truth AND a lot of fresh information.

I bought the Irreverent Guide to London when I traveled to Britain two years ago, and I had such a good experience with that book that I bought this one for my upcoming trip to Paris. I have also read Fodor's and have done extensive research online, but I like the irreverent book because it's small, informative, and opinionated. I don't need another sixty pages listing the museums in France. What I need is for someone knowledgable to tell me which museums are worth the time and which ones aren't

I believe that it is the choice of women to have abortions if necessary however, I don't believe that using as a means of sacrifice is right. Modern day pagans and wiccans should have better morals than this. I am pagan myself and I find it offensive. True wiccans, if they go by the basic principals believe that you shouldn't kill. I think that it is an immoral and mis-informative book as far as the view on modern day wiccans and pagans. Personally I wouldn't use this book for firestarter. Don't Buy it. Please also note that real wiccans and pagans in today's socieity look down on this and that we don't believe in that or in satan. Thanks.

It is clear why so many women have flocked to abortion clinics. Abortion truly is a sacred thing, when viewed from a satanic perspective, it is quite clearly an offering to satan himself. Good men and women have nothing to fear from these pagans. Our enemies it seems, are killing themselves off.

This is a book that challenges you to think and to open your mind. I still don't know precisely where I agree and disagree with her, but many years after reading "The Sacrament of Abortion," I am still thinking about what Paris had to say still agreeing and disagreeing and that makes this book far more valuable to me than most books I have read.

Ginette Paris goes right to the heart of one of the scariest and most difficult issues in the world today: abortion. She shows a courage, bordering on recklessness in confronting the issue. Paris doesn't glorify abortion as a ritual sacrifice, she sees the decision about whether or not to carry a child as a sacred decision which involves life, death, love, motherhood, sexuality and the origins of each humans' existence on earth. Paris suggests that no one should take the decision lightly. Having an abortion without truly considering the weight and significance of the decision is wrong, a violation of a sacred bond - but so is taking the decision away from a woman. Abortion is not a sterile choice. When a woman has an abortion, something sacred - something of value is destroyed. Yet, sometimes abortion can be the right choice. For Paris, a woman who chooses to have a child - when that child will clearly and obviously suffer a damaged, limited and wounded life has made the wrong maternal decision. No one should decide for the woman according to Paris, but there is a moral obligation for the woman to choose wisely.

Paris says that debates about the viability of the fetus are far too materialistic. Viability means more than just the ability to live outside the womb, viability should be seen socially and relationally. If I am to be a mother, I should consider: is there a community ready to embrace this child? Is there a world that I can prepare for this child so that s/he will thrive? Who will name and love the baby?

Ginette Paris also comments on how comfortable many of us are with singing the praises of men who fight and kill in war, or fights for honor. Society honors wise men who decide when to kill another and when to spare a life... yet we are so uncomfortable with the idea that a pregnant woman might make the same kind of decision about the life growing within her that we can't think straight about it. It is either an evil murder of an innocent, or a choice about a minor surgical procedure. Paris says it is neither. The reception that her book received shows how hard it is for us to think straight about the issue.

The above detailed reviews all match my own opinions of this book,
and are generally better written than the book. What a ditsy dame!
The Hollywood frou-frou is from an old fan magazine, or some
such automatic input. Her perceptions of herself are just as
vague and silly. One would only read this in desperation to
try to find out more about Gene Kelly, genius of the dance.
Slim pickings indeed! And not even an "as told to" entry.
This book is without value on any level.

I loved, loved, loved this book, for several reasons.

First, it distinguishes itself from the hoards of Hollywood memoirs in that it is completely and uttlerly honest -- as honest as the day is long. Betsy Blair seemed bent on telling us a tale of fame, fortune and success, all without the hazy gauze so typical of Hollywood memoirs. Her eye is specific and sharp, her insights into people and places are clever and frequently dead on, and her honesty is so forthright, that she is able to freely admit she is the only one in the story who truly misbehaves.

Second it is a great theatrical tale. Blair, a talented and ambitious young woman, catches the eye of Gene Kelly, she was just 17, he was not much older, while hoofing it up at a New York nightclub. Their subsequent marriage and Gene's rise to movie stardom is magical and dreamy. But Blair knows this well, and she never loses her sense of self. Her ability to see her own life though her eyes, that of a hardworking and insightful actress, and not as someone who was born to win, lends an air of respectability and weight to the book that I very much admired. When the marriage fails, in part because of her of inability to live in such a wonderful cocoon, the sense of poignancy is deep, it also rare in such books.

Her later years, in Europe, as an actress and political activist, are some of the most interesting in the book. To leave one of the world's great movie stars is a feat in and of itself. To build a new and exciting life, as an actress. mother and then wife to one of the great realist film directors, Karel Reisz, makes it a thoroughly modern story, inspirational for all women who dream that both beauty and satisfaction in life can be there for the taking.

This is an absolutely brilliantly written book. If you're looking for a bio of Gene kelly, this isn't it. But if you want to read about an endlessly fascinating woman, run to the bookstore. Totally beguiling!