european

I have several cookbooks in my home. This one is my favorite of all! Everything I have prepared from this book has been a hit with my friends and family. In addition to making the dishes tastes "soooooo good" he really does allow me to cook soooooooo easy. Mr. Ginsberg, you have made St. Patrick's Day alot more fun at my house (my Irish ancestors would be so proud)! I get to wow my friends with recipes from other foreign countries, too. You make me look like a great cook even though I am just a mere novice in your shadow! Thank you for making cooking fun!

If you are looking to learn how to cook, look no further! Mr. Food cookbooks are the best I've ever tried. I am a teenager and am just starting to build up my cooking skills, and Mr. Food makes it so easy and fun. I can impress my family with dishes that seem like they took a lot of time but really took no effort. So don't hesitate in buying Mr. Food, this one especially. It's my favorite. So far!:-)

This is a must have book for anyone interested in euro-centric outlook towards India and Indic traditions.

Sadly, this tendency is still prevalent in many areas of scholarship on Indic traditions.

Kudos to the author and the publisher for a path-breaking work.

In this very scholarly and gripping account of the Western stereotyping of Indian art and culture, the author demonstrates how very little has changed in the last 700 years since the first written accounts of Indian culture appeared in the writings of the travelers to India. The main problem seems to be that Westerners do not have an appropriate framework to objectively assess and apppreciate the pluralistic themes and the rich textures that Indian art and culture represent. Consequently, the early writers had to resort to narrow Christian medievalism for their distorted vision of India, and more recently, to myopic rationalism and pretentious scholarship--all of which have contributed to the total "failure" in the Western interpretation of India. This is a great book that exposes Western (especially American) superciliousness that continues to plague the Westerners' intolerance for other cultures.

SdB wrote a book on Sade entitled Faut-il Bruler Sade? (Must We Burn Sade), and the title of this collection comes from hers. Sade is a great concern among the French left. Somehow they think that he is an important moralist (this is how SdB closes her book on him, and why she says we mustn't burn him, but must read him, and hold him close to our hearts).

I've read a lot of Sade's work, and a lot of this collection, but am left wondering whether once you dispense with God, whether this is all that's left.

Feminism has always struck me as institutionalized sadism. It burns men, and destroys them. This is the essence of it. Sade is a great justifier of acts as he puts a moral spin on what is the equivalent of getting fun out of hurting other people.

Women in recent years have turned towards Sade as a great explicator and justifier. This is why men on average are living five years less than women. It is all the things they do to us, and have always done, but that are now institutionalized. The feminist-sadist guru is Simone de Beauvoir, who loves the Marquis de Sade, and considers him to be a great moralist.

Read this book and smell the burning flesh of the concentration camps of the universities, the high schools, and the elementary schools. Sadism is the centerpiece of the left, and the very centerpiece of feminism. It is the black heart at the center of all the piety and self-importance, a black hole of rage that gets satisfaction through the humiliation, torment, and destruction of men and boys.

Sawhney's unique collaboration with renowned Sadean scholars provides us with an invaluable tool to learn and understand the enigmatic faces of the Marquis de Sade.

Sade's infamous reputation as a perverse and immoral philosopher is delightfully teased apart as we enter into the depths of the libertine's mind. Must We Burn Sade? captures and explores this most interesting figure of the Enlightenment by discussing how Sade's philosophical writings continue to influence our modern age of uncertainty and how he correctly prophesized our current state in history.

After reading the volume, I feel as if Sade, in the words of the introductory chapter, "remains our closest companion." A must-have anthology for any scholar on Sade.

I love the perseverance demonstrated in this story. Based on the life of Feodosia Ivanovna Belevstov, the author's mother-in-law, who was born in pre-Revolutionary Russia in 1907, it is one of survival under harsh conditions. The story takes place during the Russian revolution, when the Whites (Mensheviks) lost to the Bolsheviks (Reds), Stalin's 1930s purges and World War II. Belevstov and her husband, who by then had an infant daughter, were captured by the Germans and forced into slave labor. Belevstov emigrated to the U.S. following liberation in 1947. This is a story of hope.

It also offers a tender treatment of the Romany people. As a child, the author's mother-in-law once saw a caravan of Gypsy wagons drawn by tired horses through the first snow. A man and his wife and infant stopped for water, which the child ran to get. She begged her mother to let the family stay the night with them. The young Gypsy woman somehow knew that while the child had a good heart, she was often ill, and told her mother, "Tonight is the first snow. It is a time of healing. Let me try to help her."

Having been to many doctors, all of whom were unable to treat the child's strange headaches, her mother cried in joy at the unexpected offer of assistance. The story goes on, "She bathed my temples with the water from the snowflakes.... She sang to me in her calm, deep voice. The song was old, old. I did not know the words, but they were soft and sure and rocked me quietly with their sound." The next morning the girl awoke to the sound of Gypsy bells as the caravan left the town, and ran after them to say goodbye.

Ten years later, another caravan arrived, this time bearing a fortune-teller who predicted that the girl, now married, would some day cry out for a crust of bread, pray to endure one more hour, take every step in pain. Of course, with the revolution and World War II, all this came to pass, and the rest of the story is framed lovingly around the fortune that the Romany woman told.

The vibrant illustrations evoke the quality of Russian folk art. Alyssa A. Lappen

This is a beautiful bedtime story for all children, and a must for anyone descended of European immigrants. The story is the story of my relatives and my friends' relatives who travelled before, during, and some after, WWII, braving many dangers before bringing us safely to America. As the oral tradition of passing on these stories dies away, it is important to have reminders of our history and what our parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents went through to ensure our freedom and safety. It is a tale that also reminds us of the strength and courage of the human spirit, as well as the love and compassion that we all share for each other, even as strangers in foreign lands. The children I have shared this story with have become fascinated with the adventure (both light and dark sides), and enchanted by the drawings and motifs that are caught somewhere in between folk-art and eastern European designs.

A wonderful children's book that tells the story of a young boy lost from his mother. Throughout the book he searches and the eyes of everyone but him see beauty in a different way. The eyes of love, however, see true beauty. I read this book to my daughter when she was small and I am now looking forward to reading it to my granddaughter!

This is a charming story of a child lost and reunited with her peasant parents. When I was a children's librarian I used to read this to my first graders who all thought that their own mothers were beautiful. Now that I teach in high school I use it as an comparison for a Japanese story by Kawabata. It is the perfect explanation of "looking through the eyes of love."

Pasternak's poetry is better than his prose. Why he is still often better known for the latter baffles me. I suggest this or any of his collected poems to the reader looking for creative, quality poetry. Pasternak certainly ranks as one of the greatest amongst the group of very talented Russian poets that emerged during the first quarter of the 20th centuary. His poems deserve just as much (if not more) recognition as his novels.

While Pasternak is known in the United States mainly for his novel "Dr. Zhivago" - or, more to the point, the film based on "Dr. Zhivago" - he was quite an accomplished poet. A better poet, I think, than he was a novelist. Although I've never read Mr. Rudman's translation - or, for that matter, any translation at all - "Sister of Mine-Life" keeps to its bosom a host of beautiful poems.

Rather than try to explain Pasternak's incredible gift for metaphor and detail, his absolute love of words - he was a decent translator of Shakespeare and others - I'll roughly approximate my favorite poem, from it's original Russian. It is untitled.

***

My friend, you ask, who ordered
That the holy idiot's speech should blaze?

***

Let us trickle words
As the garden drips amber and lemon
Absently and generous,
Gently, gently, gently.

And there's no need to explain
Why there is such ceremony
Of madder and of lemon
Scattering on leaves.

Who made pine needles rush
On a long stick, like music
Through the locks of Venetian blinds,
To the bookcase.

Who reddened the rug of mountain ash
Rippling beyond the door,
Written through with beautiful,
Quivering cursives.

You ask, who orders
That August be great
To whom nothing is small
Who lives in the finishing

Of maple leaves;
Who, since the days of the Ecclesiastes,
Hasn't left his post
And is hewing alabaster?

You ask, who orders,
That the September lips of asters and dahlias
Shall suffer?
That leaves
Should fall from stone caryatids
To the damp gravestones
Of autumn hospitals?

You ask, who orders?
--Omnipotent God of details,
Omnipotent God of love,
Of Yaigails and Yaidvigas.

I don't know, was it decided,
The riddle of the road to the afterlife,
But life, like the stillness
Of autumn -- is details.

I can't quite transmit the pine needles rushing through the Venetian blinds as boats through a sluice, but I'm sure Mr. Rudman could. Even through my approximate translation, it's possible to see what a man of detail Pasternak was. In my edition, the introduction begins: "With Pasternak, you must hurt" -- as great ideas are, the editor notes, painful.

Pasternak certainly took painful care of his words, his thoughts, his beauty. And "Sister of Mine-Life," one of his earlier collections - (the summer of 1917) - is beautiful, detailed and pained.

***

As a post script, I prefer "Sister of Mine-Life," to "My Sister-Life" because the construction "sistra maya" - rather than "maya sistra" stresses that she's my sister.

Also, because life and sister are both female in gender, "my sister" and "my life" are dually coupled in Pasternak's title. "My" could refer solely to sister, or it could be my life, as well.

Joseph Brodsky leaves his final legacy with these poems in tribute to Jesus Christ and the Grand Miracle of Incarnation of
God into Man. Several striking features make this a must-have volume for poetry lovers and those interested in the literature
of contemporary Nobel Laureates:

1)The original Russian/Cyrillic Alphabet version of each poem is included with the translation on the facing page

2)Most of the translations are by the author,retaining the spirit as well as the letter of the original poem

3)The remaining translations are outstandingly faithful to the original, by consummate craftsmen in their own right: Richard
Wilbur,Anthony Hecht,Seamus Heaney,Derek Walcott,Glyn Maxwell

4)All poems are focussed on one central event: the supernatural
miraculous birth of Jesus Christ,the Son of God as a cause for worldwide celebration. Brodsky takes great care not to digress
into personal analysis,self-introspection, or theological interpretation, but lets the impressions of the Incarnation on the world around him be the theme of his poems

5)A special bonus at the end of the book is a candid interview with Brodsky shortly before his death in 1997 which probes his religious faith (non-evangelical,uncertain 'quasi-Calvinist'), the difference between Russian Christianity and Russian Orthodoxy,
Christmas vs. Easter in terms of commemoration, reflections on various of his Nativity poems and insights into the mind of the world-renowned Nobelist(e.g. significance of the world's calendar being B.C.-Before Christ and A.D. -Anno Domini, even after 2 millennia).

Special highlights are the translations by Wilbur and Hecht.
Makes a great gift all year-round.

A remarkable collection of poems by Joseph Brodsky -- about "Time, eternity, and Love -- which span the life's work of a great poet."

Perhaps it was the time of year in which I read Brodsky's collection of poems (December 2001), with the years great tragedies, and the feeling of helplessness that many people may now share. Whatever may have drawn me to this book, it is a book that I will forever remember.

The poems are translated with great care so as not to lose the beauty of the original work of art. Brodsky has given the reader a genuine gift of the eternal truths of Christmas. His poem entitled "January 1, 1965" is sure to be a favorite for generations to come.

If you enjoy poetry of metaphysical reflection and individual consciousness, you will enjoy reading "Nativity Poems." Definitely a book for the poetry lover on your gift list.

Undoubtedly, few scholars, who have also served in government, capture the essence of NATO's Cold War evolution and its post-Cold War transition as Sean Kay does in the first edition of his excellent work, NATO and the Future of European Security. An increasing number of scholars and policymakers see the value of using this book as both a curriculum and reference tool. Yet, unlike so many works on NATO and European security, Kay's analysis offers both the theoretical framework for understanding the importance of NATO's post-Cold War transformation and the rich analysis of the complex and enormous changes the premier alliance endured during the past decade. As an updated edition most assuredly will demonstrate, NATO's crossroads in the aftermath of the Kosovo operation and additional mission on the ground in the Balkans promises to challenge NATO leaders well into the twenty-first century. Coupled with his recent spate of journal articles on key issues confronting NATO's credibility, Kay's work continues to provide the academic and policy-making fields with important questions to consider. This is required reading for student, professor, and policymaker, alike.

Professor Kay draws on his extensive Department of Defense and academic experience to produce a thought-provoking overview of the key issues before the Euro-Atlantic community. Always irreverent but challenging, Professor Kay has produced a no-nonsense volume which is a must read. John Borawski Director of the Political Commitee NATO Parliamentary Assembly 1987-1999

The subject says it all. I had to write an A-level coursework essay on Nazi Germany and this book was the most helpful thing I could possbily have had by my side. Thank you Mr Kershaw!

The fourth and latest edition of Ian Kershaw's book discussing the major themes and debates in the historical writing about the Nazi period. Kershaw's book covers the earliest descriptions of the the Nazi state from the 1930's to the present time.
An updated edition including an excellent bibliography.

This book is a treasure of neoclassicism in Sweden. It is supported by sensible (not gushy interior design talk) text and is logically sequenced.

The pictures and additional material is excellent; although the lighting in some of the photographs is less than perfect.

This is an inspirational reference for the topic.

This is another great book for Swedish decorative detail .A great asset in the decorative artist`s Library.A good source for Bolander`s beautiful wall murals. Great photography with excellent detail shots .A beautiful and knowledgable book. I am a decorative artist specializing in custom painted furniture for decorators and designers and have found this book to be a great resource and very helpful in my work.