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- The Chaos of Berlin 1945
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- Unconnected but 3.5 stars
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The Good German
Joseph Kanon
Manufacturer: Picador
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0312426089
Release Date: 2006-10-31 |
Amazon.com
This compelling thriller is both a touching love story and a masterful portrayal of the struggle for geopolitical control of postwar Germany. Network correspondent Jake Geismar, who covered Berlin before the war, has returned to the devastated city, ostensibly to cover the Potsdam Conference but actually to find the woman he loves. Miraculously, Lena Brandt, Jake's wartime mistress, has survived. However, her mathematician husband is missing, and both the American and Russian intelligence services are hunting him. When the bullet-ridden body of an American soldier washes up on the shores of Potsdam in front of Jake's eyes just as Truman, Churchill, and Stalin convene the first postwar conference, Jake is plunged into a maelstrom of intrigue, corruption, and betrayal.
A brilliantly evoked portrait of a unique moment in history (the end of one war and the beginning of another), The Good German amply fulfills the promise shown by Joseph Kanon in his two earlier novels, Los Alamos and The Prodigal Spy. --Jane Adams
Book Description
Now a major motion picture from Warner Brothers, starring George Clooney, Cate Blanchett, and Tobey Maguire
The bestselling author of Los Alamos and Alibi returns to 1945. Hitler has been defeated, and Berlin is divided into zones of occupation. Jake Geismar, an American correspondent who spent time in the city before the war, has returned to write about the Allied triumph while pursuing a more personal quest: his search for Lena, the married woman he left behind. When an American soldier's body is found in the Russian zone during the Potsdam Conference, Jake stumbles on the lead to a murder mystery. The Good German is a story of espionage and love, an extraordinary re-creation of a city devastated by war, and a thriller that asks the most profound ethical questions in its exploration of the nature of justice, and what we mean by good and evil in times of peace and of war.
Customer Reviews:
The Chaos of Berlin 1945.......2007-08-26
Are there any good Germans left at the end of World War II? Put another way, who bears responsibility for the enslavement and slaughter of the Jews? Is it just those Nazis who actually participated in the final solution, or must we also include all those millions of Germans who looked the other way to protect themselves, their careers, property and family? And what can we possibly say about Jews who either failed in their duty to other Jews or even actively participated in the final solution themselves?
Although this perceptive novel is framed as a mystery when a young American soldier is killed at the start of the Allied Potsdam negotiations, it's also an exploration of morality. The many voices of the novel examine the problem of responsibility for genocide from various points of view. Jake Geismar, the American reporter who drives the story with his insistence on investigating the soldier's death, naively believes (at least at the start) that anyone he knew before the war when he lived in Berlin must be a victim, not a perpetrator. He is aided in this belief by the ruins of Berlin he sees all around him. Bernie Teitel, a Jew himself, is the Army's Nazi hunter, who studies the voluminous paper files kept by the Nazis looking for people to indict. Also on the American side are the scientist hunters, who want to bring the Nazi rocket scientists over to the US to exploit them for their knowledge, regardless of their complicity.
The German points of view are also well-represented: hausfraus who claim no knowledge of anything, scientists who claim their only interest is science, old men who maintained an anti-Nazi stance throughout the conflict and still managed to survive, Jews who hunted other Jews, gentiles who tried to protect Jews. Of actual German soldiers we hear little, probably because their case is so easy. And all of this is played out against the frightful ruins of Berlin, so appalling and ever-present they become a character in the story.
In the end the mystery is solved and in a sense the good guys win, but by the time you get there you are far less sure who the good guys actually are. And, if you're at all like me, you may find yourself wondering what you would do if you found yourself in the same desperate situation as the German populace under Hitler.
It's a fascinating and complex novel, although not one to read if you're looking for an escapist mystery.
Historical fiction.......2007-08-12
A great read and very informative of the aftermath of WW II and the history of the period of the Nuremburg trials.
It's well researched, creative and well written.
the book and the movie.......2007-07-13
the author of this book has obviously watched an old classic movie, 'the third man', then wore surgical gloves to goof it into his own creation with a little bit more twists. watching this movie, then watching 'the third man', you might find something quite true like what i've just seen in another pathetic movie, 'the last stand'. there's a piece of dialog in that movie that i'd like you to have it too, something like: 'in the stand-up comedy show biz, everybody stealing everybody's jokes...' the cunning ones know how to steal them and adapted them by adding more twists in it, the bad and lazy ones just steal them as they are.
with all said here, i got nothing more to say. no matter it's 'the third man' or 'the good german', they seem to be quite similar.
THE GOOD GERMAN.......2007-05-07
Our book club assignment was THE GOOD GERMAN. I quickly got on Amazon and recieved my order promplty. The book was in excellent shape. Thank you for the quick turn-around.
Unconnected but 3.5 stars .......2007-04-26
I read this book in anticipation of watching the George Clooney/Cate Blanchett movie - I'm not certain I'll watch the movie now. I can't say I enjoyed it, yet I can't say I didn't. It wasn't one of those books that left you so conflicted or so deep and resonating that it stayed with you. Rather, it was a book that tried very hard.
There were moral conflicts that tried to dig deeper into the human psyche and the times than it actually did. Jake Geismar, returned to Germany for a story on the post-war world. Yet he spends the majority of the book looking either for his wartime (married) mistress, or after her, or following the death of a Tully, very insignificant American officer with no story whatsoever. The two never quite intersected, but I was left with the feeling that they were supposed to on a grander scale than they brushed.
In a truly convoluted plot, filled with only one extremely interesting secondary character, Gunter, we travel across Berlin. And back. And over it again. While all this is appealing in the history of the city, the postwar scenery, the hopelessness and helplessness of the people, and the arrogance of the conquering heroes (American, British, and Russian alike), it's all randomness.
Victorious, the Allies are once more at a standoff with the Communist Russians and in a race to acquire all the German Scientists they could. We want Lena's husband, the Russians now have him, Jake wants the husband out of the way, Lena's barely a blip on the plot-radar, and there's still Tully to consider. The plot is a thinly disguised reason to expound on the history of Berlin (which really is well done, I can't say that enough), and the affair between Jake and Lena.
And there's still no story for Jake.
Customer Reviews:
The GSD - there IS no other dog!!!.......2006-08-27
Nice book. A really good intro to the GSD. Really, I like the fact that the authors mention that the GSD is a great all around dog that needs something to do. They stress training, not mean training, but positive training. This dog is the ultimate dog.
Very mediocre book. I expected more.......2001-03-15
Thin book with Good pictures, very nice words about GS dog very little obidience and not much about dog phsycology. No good examples. Very compact book. If you want more comprehensive info on GS dog look somewhere else. this book is just a touch up on most common topics.
The Good Shepherd is Great.......2001-02-03
This book contains just what the person contemplating getting a German Shepherd Dog needs. I've owned German Shepherds all my life and know a great deal about the breed. This book gives everything you need to be a successful and proud GSD owner. Easy to read and understand. Great book for experienced GSD owners too. Pete Brevik
I couldn't put this book down!.......2001-01-12
I have been looking at getting a dog for the last six months and have just recently focused on the German Shepherd Dog. There are a ton of available books out there, and I'm sure there are many very good ones. This one caught my eye, however, becuase its co-written by "Uncle Matty", who I first saw on his PBS show "Woof! It's a dog's life". The care and love he showered the dogs on the show, especially the ones with "behaviour problems" endeared him to me from the start. He brings the same warmth and compassion to "The Good Shepherd", and includes loads of useful info as well. He is also very practical about what kind of dog the GSD is and what kind of person the owner needs to be. Honest and perceptive, this book convinced me that the German Shepherd dog is the right best friend for me!
It is about German Shepherd Dogs!.......2000-01-30
Many reviews I read for other books about breeds criticized them for being very generic, with barely one chapter about the breed itself. This entire book is about the German Shepherd! The book's table of contents illustrates what I mean. 1)Meet the German Shepherd Dog 2)A Bit of History 3)Amazing German Shepherds 4)The Shepherd Bond 5)Shepherd Gear (What Your dog Needs) 6)Feeding Your dog 7)House-Breaking Your German Shepherd Dog 8)Obedience-Training Your German Shepherd 9)German Shepherd Behavior Problems 10)Keeping Your German Shepherd Dog Healthy 11)Canine Medical Conditions 12)Medical Problems Common to the German Shepherd Dog 13)Home Medical Care 14)The Most-Asked Questions About the German Shepherd Dog Appendix: Guide Dog Schools
Book Description
One of the very few accounts in English of German idealism, this ambitious work advances and revises our understanding of both the history and the thought of the classical period of German philosophy. As he traces the structure and evolution of idealism as a doctrine, Frederick Beiser exposes a strong objective, or realist, strain running from Kant to Hegel and identifies the crucial role of the early romantics--Hölderlin, Schlegel, and Novalis--as the founders of absolute idealism.
Traditionally, German idealism is understood as a radical form of subjectivism that expands the powers of the self to encompass the entire world. But Beiser reveals a different--in fact, opposite--impulse: an attempt to limit the powers of the subject. Between Kant and Hegel he finds a movement away from cosmic subjectivity and toward greater realism and naturalism, with one form of idealism succeeding another as each proved an inadequate basis for explaining the reality of the external world and the place of the self in nature. Thus German idealism emerges here not as a radical development of the Cartesian tradition of philosophy, but as the first important break with that tradition.
Customer Reviews:
tous philosophous sozein (saving the philosophers).......2003-03-28
Among the silliest of the many silly ways of criticizing something is to complain that it is not what it has no pretense of being. The title of Beiser's book, as well as its length and its rather hefty price, make it sufficiently clear that it is not intended as a general popular introduction to all German Idealism. Rather, it is scholarly inquiry into a phase of German Idealism that, while not altogether neglected, is too often regarded as merely a preparation for Hegel's triumphant system. That Beiser's study cuts off at 1801 relieves him of the need to deal with Hegel apart from his relation to Fichte and Schelling, and it no doubt reveals the bias of the reviewer from Cambridge that, seemingly having missed this point, he does not also accuse Beiser of neglecting to speak about Schelling's essay on the Human Freedom, his philosophy of Mythology and Revelation, Fichte's later systems, or perhaps even Solger's aesthetics, all of which also fall within the fold of German Idealism.
Granting the self-imposed temporal constraints of his inquiry, Beiser's aim is not to exclude or marginalize Hegel and deny his significance for German idealism, but rather to rescue the singular originality and grandeur of moments within the history of German Idealism that have fallen into the shadow of the leviathan to which they gave birth. While this very effort is somewhat compromised by Beiser's epistemological orientation, and I do not entirely agree with his ultimate reading of German Idealism as a neo-Platonism anticipating the Neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen and Ernst Cassirer, I nevertheless admire the rigor and clarity of this work, and would strongly recommend to all those who have a more than dilettantish interest in German philosophy.
Beiser is a careful reader -.......2003-03-27
The review below which claims that Beiser says that Hegel is "tendentious" is not correct. Beiser's text reads, "Hegel's history of the period, which interprets it as a progression culminating in his own system, is tendentious philosophically, and anachronistic historically" (ix). This is certainly not the same as claiming that Hegel is tendentious. In addition, Beiser's criticism is quite correct; Hegel's history of philosophy is quite tendentious.
Another reviewer claims that Beiser omits Kant from this text. This is an absurd claim. The first section of the book, which spans 200 pages, is about Kant.
A general study of German idealism that omits Hegel?.......2002-09-07
Beiser notes, almost nonchalantly, that "this study of German idealism omits Hegel, and it is indeed a reaction against the Hegelian legacy" because he regards Hegel as "tendentious" and "unoriginal" (claims, of course, that can be made for any well-known historical figure). Setting aside the question whether ignoring Hegel in such a work is useful or even valid (I personally don't), attempting a general introductory text on German idealism using this approach is simply absurd. I could never recommend this book for someone wishing to gain a better understanding of German idealism, since it would be so misleading as to be false. If it wasn't the author's intent to write such an introduction, then he should have structured his work differently (including using a different title, such as "German Idealism Before Hegel"). If the reader clearly understood that this work was far from being a general overview, then it could be read with beneficial results. The way it stands, however, it would be like claiming to write an introduction to Greek philosophy, but to not include Plato and Aristotle, since their only value was to bring together and recapitulate the major ideas of the Pre-Socratics.
Average customer rating:
- Good story
- A fast read that I couldn't put down...
- A 300 page screenplay
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The Good German
Joseph Kanon
Manufacturer: St. Martin's Paperbacks
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
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Hitler's Peace
ASIN: 0312942109
Release Date: 2006-10-31 |
Book Description
The bestselling author of Los Alamos and Alibi returns to 1945. Hitler has been defeated, and Berlin is divided into zones of occupation. Jake Geismar, an American correspondent who spent time in the city before the war, has returned to write about the Allied triumph while pursuing a more personal quest: his search for Lena, the married woman he left behind. When an American soldier’s body is found in the Russian zone during the Potsdam Conference, Jake stumbles on the lead to a murder mystery. The Good German is a story of espionage and love, an extraordinary re-creation of a city devastated by war, and a thriller that asks the most profound ethical questions in its exploration of the nature of justice, and what we mean by good and evil in times of peace and of war.
Customer Reviews:
Good story.......2007-08-23
This is not the great American novel by any means but was a good, involved story that kept my interest through the entire book. Also contained some good insights regarding Berlin immediately following WWII.
A fast read that I couldn't put down..........2007-01-09
First I must tell you that I don't typically read books like this one, but I love it! It is fast-paced, based in historical fact, suspenseful, and romantic. The imagery really takes you back to 1945 Berlin as it struggled to find its way, despite the ravages of war. You can empathize with the soldiers (both Russian and from the Allied Powers), and the German citizens as they dealt with death, distruction, poverty, guilt, and violence. In every chapter there is something to keep you reading and wanting to know more. I highly recommend this book.
Since reading it, I have passed it on to two other people who have loved it as much as I did.
A 300 page screenplay.......2007-01-02
Kanon has no pretensions to be a literary genius. He tells a good story, though, and this tale of mysterious-goings-on in post-war Berlin is educative and fast-moving, even if the ending is a little convenient and too delayed (perhaps the book should be shorter). It is written in that personal present-tense screen-play style which is not everyone's cup of tea. Still, the film is out there (a Clooney production) and the book is worth a read if you liked the film and probably vice-versa.
Product Description
The title "The Good Old Days" ("Schone Zeiten" in German) comes from the cover of a private photo album kept by concentration camp commandant Kurt Franz of Treblinka. This gruesomely sentimental and unmistakably authentic title introduces an disturbing collection of photographs, diaries, letters home, and confidential reports created by the executioners and sympathetic observers of the Holocaust. "The Good Old Days" reveals startling new evidence of the inhumanity of recent twentieth century history and is published now as yet another irrefutable response to the revisionist historians who claim to doubt the historic truth of the Holocaust.
Customer Reviews:
The vanilla ice cream was exceptional and the company very civilized. Oh, by the way... we also liquidated some 200 Jews..........2007-09-12
This book is as difficult too read as it is necessary. It shows how inane the argument is according to which everybody was obeying orders and therefore was not responsible for anything. Whether belonging to the SS, the SD or the regular military (Wehrmacht), they all had a hand in those gruesome murders and, worse, they were all acting in a cool, professional and chillingly efficient way. All the more so as the book stresses an important point: you did not risk anything by refusing to carry out an order to kill Jews; you were just assigned another duty by your commanding officer...
The book is a sum of personal documents, journals, comments, photo albums, "lovingly" compiled by officers and also the rank and file of the German army, all of whom were active in the liquidation of the European Jews during WWII. What strikes the reader is that, in almost all of these texts, the main events (i.e. the killings) always remain in the background, whereas the perpetrators of the crimes prefer to dwell on the petty events of their mediocre lives (they miss their girlfriends, they attend social events, enjoy a good vanilla ice cream).
The book actually asks many uneasy questions, the most disturbing one being, in my opinion: what would I have done under such circumstances?
Going along for the ride.......2007-08-19
Those numerous moralizers who are concerned to reduce the enormity of real offenders by displacing guilt onto non-offenders often resort to the trope: There but for I . . . or, in the circumstances, anyone might have done the same . . . or, we are all guilty.
That's particularly rancid baloney, and here in "The Good Old Days" is the proof.
From contemporary reports and diaries, from letters, from interrogations, Ernst Klee has set forth, without comment, what the murderers of Jews (and gypsies, commissars etc.) thought about it.
Not much, to hear them tell it.
"Somebody told me to go there, so I went there" pretty much sums up a lot of the statements. And, if you believe cold-blooded murderers, when they got there, nobody was in charge. Things just happened.
Given the German reputation for thoroughness and deference to authority and hierarchy, I think we can dismiss all those sorts of reports as lies.
More interesting are the contemporary reports of those who were, to hear them tell it -- and here they are more credible -- repulsed, horrified etc. (Curiously, none reports vomiting. Perhaps they did not, although any civilized person would have. But they were, after all, Germans.) Not, at any rate, indifferent.
But did they take action? No. Not unless the murders might have created a scandal. The worst such incident recorded in "The Good Old Days" concerns 90 children, whose parents had been slain, who were left alone in a house. Two German chaplains inspected, were appalled and took action.
Not to save the children, or even to succor them before death but to hush up scandal. The children were murdered. The chaplains made bishop after the war.
Several of the criminals offered, later, as evidence that they really did not like what they saw or were doing that they were "fathers themselves" or "Catholics."
A few had the decency to go mad, but their stories are not here.
Civilized people will never really understand Germans. All we can do is take in information and note it. We can store it but we cannot process it. Hannah Arendt, who wrote about the banality of the German evil, and others who tried different approaches, were all on the wrong track.
"The Good Old Days" is not sufficient to begin processing the Holocaust. But as a document, it gets closer to the immediacy of the event than any secondary history.
Very interesting.......2006-01-05
This book is a very interesting read, featuring first hand accounts of the Holocaust. The fact that the book is entirely primary source materials makes it all the more interesting. These are the words of the men who did the deeds and their reaction to it. The book uses letters, diaries, interviews, reports, and all kinds of other materials for sources. It is an interesting read, but the only reason I give it 4 stars instead of 5 is although it is a great source, some of the chapters are rather dry, but overall the book is well worth the read.
German precision and exactness to the ultimate extreme.......2004-03-15
"The Good Old Days" is a haunting and disturbing glimpse into the Holocaust. This book chronicles a number of events associated with the Nazi attempts to exterminate the entire Jewish people from the globe. Certainly any story of the Holocaust is disturbing to a rational person but "The Good Old Days" presents these events through the words/tales of people who were there - soldiers, killers, non-Jewish citizenry. Most of the events described are related through several people (making the reading a bit tedious) and in all cases the stories, while slightly different in detail - and almost always apologetic when told after the passage of time - would make my stomach wrench at how indifferently the waste of human life was taken. This is especially true in cases where stories are supported by diaries written at the time of the events. It is a oft used generalization that the Germans are a people of exactness and precision. This has never been more true than in assiocation with the Holocaust. The SS and its minions went about their gruesome business with the efficiency stereotypically expected of the Germans - they kept exacting notes, approached it impassively as to not become emotionally attached to the situation (or they were removed from the situation - generally voluntarily, or so it is claimed), and strove to generate more efficient, quick and "humane" ways to dispose of those felt inferior. The passages in this book are presented without any candy coating and thus this text is not for the faint of heart. Yet in doing so the reader is truly left with a feeling of collective human guilt that any culture could perpetrate such acts and in such a detacted fashion. To say that no one in Germany cared about what was happening is unfair, yet it is fair from this text and others on the subject that many were active participants and while some revelled in the experience - which is disturbing enough - most acted as murderers out of duty to service, comrades, Fatherland, and/or their Fuhrer - and this is a TRULY DISTURBING thought. How far mankind is capable of sinking.
This is a solid 4 star effort. It is only the repetitive nature of the text that keeps it from being a 5 star book. Having said this, it is clear why the editors chose to present each story multiple times from several sources: for impact by showing that these were not simply acts of a few that no one knew about or that were ebing acting fought against - in short to show the impassive brutality and collusion of cause. "The Good Old Days" is recommended reading for anyone trying to understand the Holocaust and how such an event so pivotal in the history of man could have happened. Yet beware of the content going into it - it is highly disturbing and often graphic.
An absolute necessity in Nazi war crime literature.......2003-02-23
The title suggests this book is comprised of reminiscing reflections from sadistic, self-satisfied Nazi war criminals. In fact, most of the observations in written and spoken testimonies, diaries and documents, suggest the ýPerpetrators and Bystandersý were appalled. Frequently, however, they were only bothered by the manner of the beatings and executions. Those whose material contributed to this book had to see starved women beg for their lives-- soon to be corpses pulled from gas chambers by hooks on sticks inserted into their mouths to make for easy dragging-- Nazi mass executions of Jews by bullet in which many near dead tumbled into communal graves begged to be shot again, or even crowbar execution beatings by SS-supervised Ukrainians, and so on, before returning to enjoy their privileged lives away from real military action.
In a section on the camps, an SS Doctor, Johannes Kremer, Mengele-like, describes how he ýreservesý certain starving prisoners who are particularly interesting to him medically, for warm disections. On the next entry of his diary he says: "ýThere was roast hare for lunchýa real fat legýwith dumplings and red cabbageý" His remark, chosen for the title of this chapter: "Food in the officersý mess excellent."
There are a number of photographs throughout the book, which were taken in spite of it being forbidden.
For those of us born after 1945, there is an impenetrable membrane between us and a proper sense of these important recent events. (If you visit Auschwitz/Birkenau you may be struck by how modern everything looks. It was not that long ago.) We may ask how it is possible for civilized people with families to commit and tolerate such affronts to humanity, and then quietly return to their lives with a clear conscience. Hauntingly, there is an even worse question, if I had been born in the right time and place, and had been fed the right propaganda, could I have done it? In some way, am I doing it now?
Such books as this make me mournful and trouble my sleep. I consider this necessary reading for anyone hoping see a little deeper into this terrible odyssey shared by perpetrators and victims.
I also recommend Nazi Hunter, the Wiesenthal File, by Alan Levy, which is by no means similar in style or perspective, but contains a wealth of information.
Customer Reviews:
A good tool for practicing German.......2005-04-24
If you like the Good News for Modern Man version and are learning German, this would be good for you. The Gute Nachricht is to German very much what Good News for Modern Man is to English.
Book Description
This book is an exposé of a secret American operation during World War II to seize 4,000 Germans from Latin America and intern them in camps in the Texas desert. Rather than Nazi spies and saboteurs, they turned out to be a broad range of German immigrants, even Jewish refugees, most of whom posed no danger to national security. Research in seven countries reveals the diplomatic intrigues and human impact of a misguided policy that offers important lessons about US relations with Latin America, the failure to rescue victims of the Holocaust, and the treatment of civilians in wartime.
Customer Reviews:
Learning from the past.......2003-11-20
Nazis and Good Neighbors is a meticulously researched account of U.S. involvement in Latin America during World War II. It lucidly explains the motivation of the United States in arranging and financing the imprisonment and deportation of thousands of Axis citizens who were legal residents in Central and South America.
Max Paul Friedman combines historical facts with an engaging style. The result is riveting reading. The impact this secret program had on Latin American governments and the people involved is clear. The parallel to U.S. policies toward "enemy aliens"today, is unmistakable.
Amazon.com
In November 1937, the Japanese Imperial Army took Nanking (Nanjing), the capital of China and home to 1.3 million people, and began an orgy of murder, rape, and looting. By the time discipline was restored two months later, hundreds of thousands of Chinese were dead, with hundreds of thousands more homeless, starving, and traumatized. The Rape of Nanking, as it is commonly known, still causes international controversy, as Japanese politicians refuse to apologize unequivocally to China and school textbooks continue to misrepresent the events.
Like Oskar Schindler of Schindler's List, John Rabe was an enterprising and fundamentally decent German businessman caught up in war. Head of the Nanjing branch of Siemens, the German electronics firm, he had lived and worked in China for almost 30 years. Rather than flee from the threatened city, he stayed to organize a safety zone as refuge of last resort for Chinese civilians. The Good Man of Nanking is his firsthand description of the terrible events and his ultimate success in saving perhaps a quarter of a million lives. The diary format provides a forum for the extraordinary power and immediacy of John Rabe's words, including his gallows humor, placing the reader there in Nanking as the bombs explode and the Japanese soldiers begin their massacres. Rabe's trials were not over when he returned to wartime Germany; diary entries that he wrote during the occupation of Berlin by the Soviet army form a fascinating coda to this book. --John Stevenson
Book Description
The Good Man of Nanking is a crucial document for understanding one of World War II's most horrific incidents of genocide, one which the Japanese have steadfastly refused to acknowledge. It is also the moving and awe-inspiring record of one man's conscience, courage, and generosity in the face of appalling human brutality.
Until the recent emergence of John Rabe's diaries, few people knew abouth the unassuming hero who has been called the Oskar Schindler of China. In Novemgber 1937, as Japanese troops overran the Chinese capital of Nanking and began a campaign of torture, rape, and murder against its citizens, one man-a German who had lived in China for thirty years and who was a loyal follower of Adolph Hitler-put himself at risk and in order to save the lives of 200,000 poor Chinese, 600 of whom he sheltered in his own home.
Customer Reviews:
Japanese history.......2007-09-01
This is a topic that must be handled gently. We are dealing with peoples emotions and emotions are delicate things. In all wars there are men on both sides who commit crimes. Only a fool would deny that.
"The Good Man of Nanking" is generating a lot of heat; that is why I think it is a good 2nd book to read if you're Japanese, not a good first book. I highly recommend the book (not the DVD) "To End All Wars" by Earnest Gordon. The book was written by a Scottish Army officer who was a prisoner in a Japanese POW camp. After you've read that book then I'd read "The Good Man of Nanking". Everything begins with a first step, including coming to terms with a controversial and sometimes uncomfortable past.
Chinese Holocaust.......2007-05-13
With The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang, this is essential reading for those who would like to know more about the Chinese Holocaust: millions of Chinese civilians murdered by the Japanese form 1931 on.
Such a great book.......2006-04-27
The book shows you what really happened in Nanking from a foreiger point of view. It's such a great book!! I have to salute to the author's courage and integrity.
The Japanese Nationalists just don't get it........2006-04-22
I came across this book when I'm translating first-person acounts of Nanjing Massacre survivors for a new documentary that's coming out in the US. I've read so many people raving about John Rabe, Minnie Vautrin and Father McGee, about how they saved the survivors' lives. I just don't get how there are so many Japanese still denying what had happened. How was it possible for the CCP to pay Rabe to make up stories like that? Some people are just unbelievable! I have several friends who did the JET program and taught English in Japan and they were shocked about how their students still thought Japan was a WWII victim. Many testimonies that I translated called John Rabe and Minnie Vautrin their saviors! Those are heart-wrenching stories, and heart-warming stories as far as how the foreigners in Nanjing really reached out for them. If you still can't open your eyes to the truth, go to the Nanjing Massacre Museum in Nanjing and see the grusome, disturbing photos for yourself - photos taken by American journalists. History is not there to invoke hatred. (Unless the hatred for some reason is there already, and then there's nothing you can do to change it.) History is there for us to learn from our past, so that the atrocity won't repeat itself one day. But if people are too stubborn or self-absorbed to acknowledge history, that's where the tragedy begins, all over again.
Nanking's Nazi Buddha.......2005-05-22
John Rabe was a German businessman, living and working in Nanking when the Japanese invaded and conquered the city in 1937. Rabe had lived in China for 30 years and had risen to the position of senior agent for the German conglomerate, Siemens. He was tasked with selling industrial equipment to the Chinese government, enabling the construction and maintenance of electrical, water, phone, and health care facilities.
As it became clear that Nanking would fall quickly to the invading Japanese army, most Westerners, including Rabe's wife, left for Hong Kong or other safer locations. Rabe chose to stay in Nanking, feeling it his duty to look out for the interests of Siemens and its local stafff. Realizing that Nanking was essentially indefensible and that the Japanese army was bent on ruthless behavior, Rabe and some others, mostly American missionaries, formed an organization to protect refugees and non-combatants.
Rabe was named the head of this International Committee and set out to build international support for the formation of a refugee zone. Ultimately more than 200,000 residents of Nanking were housed in this refugee zone, including about 600 on the grounds of Rabe's own home. Rabe fought the good fight with building support for the zone, communicating regularly with all the embassies and officials, even writing to Hitler at one point. Many attribute the International Committee's work with saving thousands of Chinese lives.
This book is primarily Rabe's diaries. He made entries nearly every day during the 4 months in 1937-1938 that he was in Nanking under Japanese domination. Some additional information to explain the historical context is provided by the author. Rabe quit writing diaries during the war, then restarted with the fall of Berlin.
Rabe spares no detail to describe the inhumane behavior of the Japanese army in Nanking, often including officers. The most horrible rapes, tortures, and murders became commonplace. Japanese soldiers raped young girls with their parents watching, then murdered the lot with bayonets. Nearly every building was looted several times, then frequently burned with the inhabitants inside.
Since Japan and Germany were already allied at this time, Japanese soldiers would give Rabe himself some respect, especially when he waved his Nazi armband and flew his Nazi flag. The other Westerners suffered more, as the Japanese showed no respect for the American or British flags or embassies.
Like many Germans living abroad in the 1930's, Rabe was a Nazi party member. He seems unaware of Nazi atrocities or vile actions, and joined the party primarily because doing so enabled German government financial support for a school that he helped establish in China.
The parallels to Oskar Schindler are clear. Both were party members who accomplished great humanitarian goals in a difficult time. One could draw the distinction that unlike Rabe, Schindler was aware of Nazi atrocities and probably benefited financially from his wartime activities.
Rabe came to regret his Nazi party membership upon his return to Germany. As a party member, after the war he was generally unable to work. At times, the Siemens corporation and individual excecutives would do small favors for Rabe. Very late in his life, he was de-Nazified.
Rabe also had terrible timing; he left war-torn China and made his home in Berlin, suffering under Russian atrocities and near-starvation starting in 1944. Ironically Rabe had been briefly imprisoned and questioned by the Gestapo after he wrote another letter to Hitler about Japanese behavior in China. Rabe received some aid from the Chinese Nationals when Madame Chang Kai Shek heard of his predicament in Berlin.
Overall, this is a very good read. The diary style is a little unusual, as Rabe was clearly writing for himself and his family, and not the general public. He is an excellent author with a keen sense of humor and his role in extraordinary times. The last part of the diaries, set in Berlin under Russian occupation show Rabe depressed and afraid, not knowing how he will support his family.
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Re-Presenting the Good Society (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)
Maeve Cooke
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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A Secular Age
ASIN: 026203347X |
Book Description
Contemporary critical social theories face the question of how to justify the ideas of the good society that guide their critical analyses. Traditionally, these more or less determinate ideas of the good society were held to be independent of their specific sociocultural context and historical epoch. Today, such a concept of context-transcending validity is not easy to defend; the "linguistic turn" of Western philosophy signals the widespread acceptance of the view that ideas of knowledge and validity are always mediated linguistically and that language is conditioned by history and context. In Re-Presenting the Good Society, Maeve Cooke addresses the justificatory dilemma facing critical social theories: how to maintain an idea of context-transcending validity without violating anti-authoritarian impulses. In doing so she not only clarifies the issues and positions taken by other theorists--including Richard Rorty, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Judith Butler--but also offers her own original and thought-provoking analysis of context-transcending validity.
Because the tension between an anti-authoritarian impulse and a guiding idea of context-transcending validity is today an integral part of critical social theory, Cooke argues that it should be negotiated rather than eliminated. Her proposal for a concept of context-transcending validity has as its central claim that we should conceive of the good society as re-presented in particular constitutively inadequate representations of it. These re-presentations are, Cooke argues provocatively, regulative ideas that have an imaginary, fictive character.
Customer Reviews:
Updated version and based on original.......2006-03-13
This version is a letter sized paperback, with heavy, slick paper
used. It claims that the only other english translation is severely edited. Sarita Vendetta offers up her new illustration,
and are just as, if not more disturbing than ever. There is just a hint of Gorey
in her drawings. The latter part of the book offers drawings
"based" on the originals of Hoffman. So if you are looking for something old and something new this may be for you. Also the
Introduction by Jack Zipes gives biographical info on Hoffman
and his writing of Struwwelpeter.
Go for the Original, Not This.......2002-03-02
The original is a neat classic. This is a modern re-make (new drawings, "corrected" for a more modern audience), and strays from the quality of the original.
To it's credit, it has a copy of the original tacked on as an appendage.
Skip this version, and just get the original, and you'll have all you need, for less money.
Struwwelpeter.......2001-09-23
This is an excellent read. In reference to the advice of most readers of Struwwelpeter to NOT let children read this book, I would like to quote Terry Pratchet: "...it was much earlier than that when most people forgot that the very oldest stories are, sooner or later, about blood. Later on they tookt he blood out to make the stories more acceptable to children, or at least to the people who read them to children rather than the children themselves (who, on the whole, are quite keen on blood provided it's being shed by the deserving. That is to say, those who deserve to shed blood. Or possibly not. You never quite know with some kids.)"
As an educator and once-child, I would reccommend this book to children over the age of 10. Of course this reading experience, like any, should involve a discussion with the parents so they can understand the differences between being a child of the Victorian era and being a child now.
Give kids credit!!
Curious, twisted, with an interesting history..........2001-08-14
Although this was historically a popular book for children in the 19th century, I was not familiar with it until it was referenced in Grant Morrison's _Doom Patrol_. I don't necessarily recommend this for kids of today, however. Adults who enjoy quirky rhymes and disturbing pictures like Edward Gorey's should get a kick out of this. What struck me about this edition was the additional material -- a brief discussion of changing attitudes toward child-rearing and how children were viewed by society, a review of some of the work that Struwwelpeter inspired, and even the inclusion of the anti-Nazi work Struwwelhitler. It's a well-rounded volume.
Bad things always happen to bad children.......2001-05-02
This edition is definitely NOT for children--the gruesome pictures in the beginning are wonderfully drawn, but would probably disturb young children. Having said that, this is a great book. Dr. Zipes' introduction, which adds immense value, discusses the intended use of this book as an instructor of morality and how 150 years of middle-class Euro-American families have used different approaches to teach socially "correct" behavior to their children.
At the end of the introduction is part of a review left on Amazon in 1997 by a reader of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (a book compared by some to "Struwwelpeter"). The reviewer attacked the book as glorifying the murder and debasement of children, and even talked about being unable to eat any blue-colored foods for years as a result of trauma caused by the blueberry scene. I think this reader, like many readers of "Struwwelpeter", has kind of missed the point. This book is not about being cruel to children. It's about warning children that if they are horrid, horrid things will happen to them. If you play with matches even though mother tells you not to, you'll get burnt up. If you're dirty and smelly, no one will like you. The bluntness of the consequences of bad behavior just serves to ram the message home. I found it fascinating that the author originally wrote this for his THREE-year-old son, when he decided that all the available books on correct behavior were either too didactic or too sentimental. This is hardly the 19th century equivalent of a slasher film, with blood and guts randomly strewn about--all the bad things in this book could have been avoided, if only the victims would have listened to people who were wiser than them. Whether or not you agree with the social message, it's still a fascinating read.
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