Book Description
The best-selling classic of the power of love and forgiveness in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
Customer Reviews:
This is how Christianity is Supposed to Work.......2007-10-02
My wife and I had watched the movie a couple months ago (be warned: it is incredibly brutal) and been moved by the power of the story. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the book and the move are not the same story. In fact, other than the similarity of the major premise (a British officer in a Japanese POW camp during WW2), they had almost nothing in common.
However. . .
That was only disappointing insomuch as I kept waiting for certain events from the movie to show up. The movie had colored my expectations for the book, which meant I couldn't take the book on its own merits. Which is too bad, because, upon completing the book, I would say it is as powerful as the movie, perhaps even more so. But you have to let the book speak for itself. The story is truly miraculous, as this band of prisoners devolve into a wild bunch of animals at the hands of their captors, only to be transformed by the Spirit of Christ into a true Community of compassion and care. Somehow, in the midst of hell, these men found the power to love each other, to care for each other, to even forgive their Japanese tormentors. When people ask "Does Christianity work?", the story of this book says "absolutely!" And in a day and age of spiteful attacks, divisive language, polarized religions and selfish money-grubbing politicians and religious leaders, there is a real lesson here about what being a True Follower of Christ is all about.
Touching and profound!.......2007-06-10
This is one of the best books I've read so far... Though it may appear repetitive at times (there's really little else the author could write about beside what's happening in the POW camps along the Kwai), the reflection on the human condition and the supreme virtue of self-sacrifice in the footsteps of Jesus Christ is poignantly and profoundly written. With tour de force, the epilogue is a penetrating piece of criticism on the 'civilised' society the author returned to after the war. The reverse culture shock he experienced is a haunting reminder of how that still small voice can be so easily drowned out in the cacophony of modern society.
Inspiring, well told, and true story.......2007-01-10
It's a difficult, but true message. The author takes an unflinching look at the evil that men are capable of through his own personal experience in Japanese prison camps and carries you through the experience on to the brilliant hope on the other side of his own personal pain. The underlying truth you discover is the genuine potential to be found in one man's selfless, sacrificial care for another. It's an excellent read.
Hope Makes The Spirit Unbreakable.......2006-11-17
Formally published as "Miracle on the River Kwai" and renamed to coincide with a new movie. This book was written by Ernest Gordon a Scottish Army officer who served in the South Pacific During the war.
Back Story
During that time the Japanese advanced on Singapore, and Gordon and a few other officers try to escape on a chartered sailboat. After being captured at sea, he was incarcerated and sent to a work camp in Thailand, building the infamous railway of death, where nearly 80,000 prisoners lost their life in a little over a year. This railway and the Chungkai prison camp are the real back story to the Oscar winning film "Bridge On the River Kwai."
What the classic movie doesn't tell you is the horrific condition and constant death that the builders of the bridge met with on a daily basis.
The Book
The story is a recount of Ernest Gordon's experiences at the camp and his witness to that camps transformation from what he called "the worst that man could be" to the "best that man could be."
The book starts with Gordon laying in the hospital at Chungkai, called the "Death House" by the prisoners as there was very few he came back from the hospital. Gordon then flashes back to what led him here, and then continues from that point and tells of the camps transformation. Before Gordon wound up in the hospital the camp was very much "every man for himself" animal instinct and the law of the jungle dictated who lived and who died. During Gordon's stay at the hospital while he was suffering and near death with Beriberi, Tropical Ulcers, Malaria, and Amoebic Dysentery, he propped himself up, void of hope, and penned a last letter to his parents. That was his low point. He was nursed back to health by two other POW's Dinty Moore, and Dusty Miller. Both bartered for food and medicine, cleaned his ulcers, massaged his legs to reverse the atrophy and gave him encouragement to give him the hope he needed to recover. These two men became an inspiration to the rest of the camp, and like Ernest Gordon, many started to emulate their kindness willingness to help others. Dusty Miller a devote Christian also read the bible to Gordon which inspired him. Gordon then started to hold bible studies with other in the camp; they often shared bibles that men had smuggled in. This led to a spiritual revival of the camp, where men helped each other to survive. The camp changed from a group of individuals to a community that served each other with the same love that Christ had shown them in the bible. Many more survived the wrath of the Japanese as a result of the selfless acts of the camp members, in one part of the book one enlisted soldier, admits that he stole a shovel (which he didn't) just to save the lives of his co-prisoners, that soldier was immediately beaten to death, but his sacrifice as well as others, were what changed to mood of the camp.
The Legacy
This spiritual revival, not only led to many surviving the camp, but transcended into their life after the war. Gordon's epilogue was probably the best part of the book where he paints his perspective against the backdrop of the post-war error.
"We returned to a world divided by hatreds. We thought we had come home to a world at peace; instead we found a world already preparing for the next war. Having had as much reason to hate as anybody, we had overcome hatred."
"We had seen a vision of far horizons and caught a glimpse of the City of God in all its beauty and this vision seemed to be part of a different world."
Summary
Overall the book is very interesting, and is an intriguing story of suffering and hope. Gordon's style is very easy to read, almost like he's sitting next you telling the story. The descriptions of the people and the camp are genuine and I had no problem understanding and even "knowing" many of the characters in the book.
Editorial
It's one thing read about the word of God and the acts of Jesus, it's an entirely different think to witness it first hand as Gordon does and writes about with stunning detail. If found this to be an inspiring story of the grace of God that is given, by giving up selfishness. I have learned a lot about what true Christian's look like after reading this book. If you want my opinion, Christ looked a lot more like Dusty Miller and Ernest Gordon, than the face of modern evangelical minister today.
I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to see the how God's Grace can transform the most desperate situations
Moving.......2006-10-21
This is a story of ultimate forgiveness told firsthand by Ernest Gordon. The things he and his fellow prisoners of war experienced are near incomprehensible. ...and out of such despair comes the forever life-changing love they experience through Christ, Who is the example they start to follow in showing similar self-sacrificing love and kindness to their neighbors - even to their enemies.
I saw the movie before watching the book which may have been best, as I would've been disappointed had it been the other way around (ie. The book, as many books do, goes into more detail and describes other people encountered by Ernest. For time and format reason, the movie can't cover all of this.)
Also, the book is proof that such a powerful story can be told without foul language (which is present in the movie version).
Average customer rating:
- Common Humanity
- Empathy Without Borders
- All the Trappings of a First Novel
- History without pretenses; a riveting story that crosses all borders
- Slowly building to a moving resolution
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The Welsh Girl
Peter Ho Davies
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0618007008 |
Amazon.com
Following two widely praised short-story collections, Equal Love and The Ugliest House in the World, Peter Ho Davies's first novel, The Welsh Girl, deserves to be equally well received. It carefully examines two great themes, dislocation and cowardice, through the stories of a WWII POW camp built by the British in the remote mountains of northern Wales and Esther, the 17-year-old Welsh girl at the heart of the story. The POW camp, filled with Germans, is yet another national insult, as far as the Welsh are concerned, only one of many instances of prejudice between and among the novel's characters: Welshman against Brit and vice versa, Brits and Welshmen against Germans, Germans against Jews. Some of these enmities are age-old antagonisms; others are newly-minted political killing machines.
Davies introduces a Welsh concept--cynefin--for which there is no English equivalent. It means a certain knowledge and sense of place that is passed down the matrilineal line in a flock of sheep. They always know where they belong and never leave their own turf. It is a perfect metaphor for much of what takes place in this carefully plotted story, and for the displacement felt by many of the characters. Esther longs to escape her village, yet is devoted to the flock and to her father. She meets Colin, an English soldier, in the pub where she works. He is a rough sort and things end very badly between them.
Another theme visited again and again is the concept of cowardice. Is it cowardly to save one's life and the lives of others by surrendering to the enemy? Is death the price that must be paid to be considered brave? The German POWs debate this endlessly, especially Karsten, an intelligent, sensitive soldier who did surrender himself and his men when it was clear that all was lost. When he and Esther find one another under impossible circumstances, Davies renders their relationship perfectly: it is star-crossed, but desperately important to both of them, setting them both "free" in the truest sense of the word. The Welsh Girl is a beautifully told story of love, war, and the accommodations we make in the midst of both. --Valerie Ryan
Book Description
From the award-winning author Peter Ho Davies comes an ambitious and moving wartime romance in the tradition of "The English Patient and Atonement". "The Welsh Girl" begins with a provocative but little-known fact of World War II: the British held German POWs in camps in remote Wales, a proud land with age-old antagonisms toward England. Davies?s beautifully written novel imagines the unexpected and perilous romance that blossoms between a secretive local girl and a German prisoner, and explores the indelible bonds of love and duty that hold us to family, country, and ultimately our fellow man. The Welsh girl of the title is Esther Evans, seventeen, the daughter of a shepherd in the rugged Snowdonia Mountains, who works at the local pub. It is 1944, and the war comes to her village just after D-day in the form of a new POW camp. Although the presence of the English guards is only grudgingly tolerated at the pub, the arrival of the German captives brings the entire village to the hillside above the camp. At first Esther watches from a distance, but her attention is soon caught by one of the soldiers, Karsten Simmering, a troubled young man who has begun to question what he is fighting for. One evening, as Esther lingers by the camp fence, she is astonished when Karsten calls out to her in English. The fates of these two become inexorably entwined when their relationship takes a treacherous turn that calls into question all their assumptions about national and personal loyalty.
Customer Reviews:
Common Humanity.......2007-09-07
The story of a half jewish German national reluctantly forced by his mother to flee to Britan in the 1930s where he becomes an interrogator of German prisoners for the British forces as World War II is ending. He believes his ancestry to be of no significance but it renders him bewilderingly ineffective while interviewing the notorious Rudolph Hess. Sent, in consequence to work at a prinsoner of war camp in Wales his life intersects with well-drawn characters who too find that llife is what is lived and not what is imagined or planned. That the vanquished can be kind and the victors rapists are just two of the many textures of life that Peter Ho Davies brings warmly and ruefully to light. That German hated the Jews and the Welsh hated the British discouragingly means, I suppose, that our common humanity requires that we hate or feel superior to someone.
Empathy Without Borders.......2007-08-21
This gem of a novel is not designed for those who prefer action books with linear plots; it's as real as life itself. From the start, I believed in these characters -- Esther, the Welsh girl...Karstan, the German POW...Jim, the young English boy.
The Welsh Girl can be read in so many different ways: as a story of connections that span boundaries and defy expectations. Or it can be read as a novel of identity. Peter Ho Davies write: "We have something in common, you and I. The same dilemma. Are we who we think we are, or who others judge us to be? A question of will, perhaps."
By the end of the novel, each character will wrestle with this question. The POW will learn the true meaning of "to surrender." The young English boy will find out what "courage" is all about. And the Welsh girl, at the center, will discover about cynefin -- a Welsh quality that has no English translation, but loosely translates to the flock knowing its place. And each will define himself or herself further by comparison with a presumed dead Welsh soldier, whose identity seems to be in the eye of the beholder.
I was enchanted by this novel, the first by the author of Equal Love, a fine short story collection. I'd recommend it wholeheartedly for true readers who are fascinated with love, family, loyalty, and national identity.
All the Trappings of a First Novel.......2007-07-13
Not to harp, but this book had all of the unfortunate qualities of a short story writer attempting the fateful first novel. As a first, it's good enough, but not more than that, and hardly "luminous" or compelling as penned in other editorials.
The primary plot of the book does not even get going until well into the novel, and we are not even introduced to Karsten, one of the main characters, until several chapters in. The writing borders on poetic at times, particularly with Davies' capture of the countryside and life in a rural Welsh village, but such is not the stuff of a great novel. It smacks of good short story writing, and that's all.
Another disappointing aspect of The Welsh Girl is the failure of its subplots. At the outset, the text seems to want to focus on a British soldier named Rotherdam, and his interrogation of Rudolph Hess; Hess has been held captive in Wales for some time. Rotherdam and Hess appear again in two subsequent chapters, but their narratives are never fully linked to that of Esther and Karsten, nor does this "subplot" ever truly enhance or highlight the main narrative. It has the feel of a separate story being mashed into another.
Lastly, I was extremely disappointed in the ending of this "novel." In point of fact, it did not really have an ending. The closing chapter is simply a summation of what those in the village are doing after the war, we get a snapshot of Esther alone, raising her child, and the loose knowledge that Karsten stayed to help her and has since gone off. There is some suggestion that maybe he is unable to return, since he went home to Soviet-occupied Germany, but there is no satisfactory explanation of what really happened. The book ends abruptly and pointlessly, with no real closure.
Overall, I found this underwhelming. It had the possibility of being a wonderful piece of historical fiction, but in the end, I think the author fell into the mistake of thinking a novel is just one long story.
History without pretenses; a riveting story that crosses all borders.......2007-06-27
I bought this book on a whim; prompted by the amazon.com-Gods.
If you know anything about the UK geographical divisions, or even if you have only seen photos of the picturesque countryside, you will be enthralled by this story. If you are intrigued by human stories of WWII, you will be intrigued by this story. If you have ever been misjudged in a situation, you will relate to this story.
Peter Ho Davies creates three characters : they are brought to life by circumstances and his narrative descriptions. You come to appreciate all three for who they are.
It is a page-turner to be sure - as the reader waits to discover how three unlikely people will happen upon one another in a world torn by war, prejudice, hatred, and nationalism.
Although the book has been finished for weeks now, I am still thinking on their fate....
Slowly building to a moving resolution.......2007-06-25
A few years ago I came across a short story from a new writer called "The Ugliest House in the World." Set in a small Welsh town, the story was simple, clear, and incredibly moving; I've never forgotten it and I have often wondered if he wrote anything else. Just recently, I read a review of a debut novel by the same author, Peter Ho Davies. Delicate, lyrical, and quiet, the novel slowly opens up and pulls you in. Set in the wanning days of World War II, the story centers around the titular Ethel Evans, a young barmaid who helps her aging father and his flock of sheep, a German P.O.W. named Karsten, and a town of nationalistic Welsh miners, young English evacuees, and a whole community that while on the periphary of war are no doubt touched by it.
Book Description
FLYBOYS is the true story of eight young American airmen who were shot down over Chichi Jima.Seven of these young men were captured by Japanese troops and taken prisoner.One was rescued by an American submarine and went on to become president. The reality of what happened to the seven prisoners has remained a secret for almost 60 years. After the war, the American and Japanese governments conspired to cover up the shocking truth. Not even the families of the airmen were informed what had happened to their sons. It has remained a mystery-until now. Critics called James Bradley's last book 'the best book on battle ever written.' FLYBOYS is even better: more ambitious, more powerful, and more moving. On the island of Chichi Jima those young men would face the ultimate test.Their story-a tale of courage and daring, of war and of death, of men and of hope-will make you proud, and it will break your heart.
Customer Reviews:
a great book.......2007-06-28
I thought this was a great book. It details the interesting background of Japan, covers coditions that military men had to face, and provides vivid details of the daily activities of the Flyboys themselves. This is the first military type book I've read, and I plan to continue reading them and hope they read somewhat like this one. This has done nothing but increase my interest in war stories. I look forward to reading Flags of Our Fathers shortly.
Flyboys Review.......2007-06-13
"We scorched and broiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night of March 9-10 then went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." This is a quote of General Curtis LeMay talking about the firebombing of the Japanese city of Tokyo.
This book is about WWII in the pacific, mostly the Americans fight against the Japanese. It is a book about 8 American flyboys that are shot down over the Japanese island of Chichi Jima. They were held as Japanese POWs until their executions at the hands of the Japanese. The fates of these 8 men were classified and unknown by everyone, even their families, until now. The book takes place mostly from 1941 to 1945. These were the years that America was involved in WWII.
My favorite part of this book was when the Japanese were fire bombed and a lot of the city of Tokyo was destroyed. This was my favorite because all the troops were really excited about it. They all saw it as revenge for Pearl Harbor. This really let me get inside the soldiers heads and figure out how they felt.
The main theme of this book is war and how it affects people. All the violence in the pacific affected everyone. It affected the natives because their homes were being destroyed n the chaos. It affected the families of the flyboys because they were shot down and the families had to hear the bad news and were devastated.
This was an excellent book. It teaches a lot about the history of Japan and the war in the pacific. Most importantly however, it tells the tales of those 8 brave pilots that gave their lives for our country.
My review on Flyboys .......2007-06-05
I thought that this book was a great story. It had a good story line, and the whole book made sense with its flow. This book really intrigues me because I am into alot of the military or shooting books. I love to read a book with a lot of action in it. Truly a great book.
a hidden secret for years..........2007-04-26
what happened to some American flyboys on the island of Chichi Jima was kept top secret for years. James Bradley in a courageous book tells us what happened. Talk about destiny, one of the few pilots that was actually saved was a young George W. Bush. The brutality of war is never easy reading, here, torture, cannibalism and secret rituals will punch you in the gut. Bradley does a good job of presenting of both sides of the story as he tries to present an even handed account of culture differences and the atrocities of war.
Flyboys was a strange title for this book.......2007-03-26
First let me say, that I enjoyed reading Bradley's book "Flags of Our Fathers". I was expecting the same professional and unbiased research in his latest book "Flyboys".
After finishing the first several chapters of "Flyboys", I had to check the dustjacket to make sure that it was applied to the correct book. "Flyboys" is a strange title for a book in which almost half of the book appears to be a personal apology by Bradley to justifiy the atrocities committed by the japanese from the 1930's on toward the end of WWII in 1945.
Once the reader finally gets to the chapters dedicated to the actual title of the book, it is nearly impossible to accept as plausible even the facts Bradley presents about the american pow's on Chichi Jima.
I find it beneath contempt that Bradley uses the story of what occured to american pow's on Chichi Jima as blatant attempt to bring attention to his own biased and distorted world view. Bradley almost singularly blames much of the atrocties committed in recorded history on "Christians" which he clearly identifies as the culprit several times in the first few chapters of his book.
High-minded revisionism is not a tool used by legitimate historians and "Flyboys" clearly indicates that James Bradley has schemed to try to present his on political agenda disguised as a historical book on WW II.
What Bradley does present in his book about the american naval aviators who were taken prisoner on Chici Jima easily could have been presented as a short story.
The publisher could have saved themselves the trouble of wasting a lot of good paper on more PC revisionism.
An example of Bradley's failures as a historian is his attempt to blame the loss of the war on the fact that the japanese didnot place enough value on the "third demension" - a phrase Bradley uses for air-warfare - when in fact, the japanese were actually way ahead of the United States military in that "demension" as early as the late 1930's. The japanese placed much value on aerial warfare and it took the concerted effort of all the industrial resources of America to eventually catch up to and surpass the japanese in the aerial...oops, "third demension" (Bradley seemed to like using that phrase a lot).
I was considering recommending this book based only on the facts presented in the book about the Chichi Jima atrocities but there's already a much better book out there already on the subject titled "Sorties Into Hell: The Hidden War on Chichi Jima" by Chester Hearn so I won't even do that.
Unless one is curious about how to write a book dripping with politically correct biased revisionism presented as a historically factual work, don't bother with this one.
Book Description
George Weller was a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter who covered World War II across Europe, Africa, and Asia. At the war’s end in September 1945, under General MacArthur’s media blackout, correspondents were forbidden to enter both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But instead of obediently staying with the press corps in northern Japan, Weller broke away. The intrepid newspaperman reached Nagasaki just weeks after the atomic bomb hit the city. Boldly presenting himself as a U.S. colonel to the Japanese military, Weller set out to explore the devastation.
As Nagasaki’s first outside observer, long before any American medical aid arrived, Weller witnessed the bomb’s effects and wrote “the anatomy of radiated man.” He interviewed doctors trying to cure those dying mysteriously from “Disease X.” He typed far into every night, sending his forbidden dispatches back to MacArthur’s censors, assuming their importance would make them unstoppable. He was wrong: the U.S. government censored every word, and the dispatches vanished from history.
Weller also became the first to enter the nearby Allied POW camps. From hundreds of prisoners he gathered accounts of watching the atomic explosions bring an end to years of torture and merciless labor in Japanese mines. Their dramatic testimonies sum up one of the least-known chapters of the war—but those stories, too, were silenced.
It is a powerful experience, more than 60 years later, to walk with Weller through the smoldering ruins of Nagasaki, or hear the sagas of prisoners who have just learned that their torment is over, and watch one of the era’s most battle-experienced reporters trying to accurately and unsentimentally convey to the American people scenes unlike anything he—or anyone else—knew.
Weller died in 2002, believing it all lost forever. Months later, his son found a fragile copy in a crate of moldy papers. This historic body of work has never been published.
Along with reports from the brutal POW camps, a stirring saga of the worst of the Japanese “hellships” which carried U.S. prisoners into murder and even cannibalism, and a trove of Weller’s unseen photos,
First into Nagasaki provides a moving, unparalleled look at the bomb that killed more than 70,000 people and ended WWII. Amid current disputes over the controlled embedding of journalists in war zones and a government’s right to keep secrets, it reminds us how such courageous rogue reporting is still essential to learning the truth.
Customer Reviews:
Uncover the truth of MacArthur's post-war Japan........2007-09-19
Mr Weller's journey was remarkable in that so little is known about the witnesses and survivors of the atom bombs. His courage and determination to thwart MacArthur's press restrictions should be praised and followed as a journalistic template in the 21st century, in Iraq or anywhere secrecy is used to gag to blind the public to the consequences of our actions.
The striking conditions of the POW camps where prisoners were human shields and disposable slave labor is appaling. In Nagasaki the idea that "thick soled shoes" will block gamma rays and his skepticism of Japanese doctors and authorities, even the victims of the mysterious "sickness", is therefore obvious. Heinous war bred
numbing crimes on both sides.
My father arrived in Nagaskai harbor in September '45. He still refuses to discuss what he witnessed(as did Cindy Franks father in "My Father's Secret War")except for his recollections of resistance to the occupation by
the Black Dragon Society and the huge toll lost in disarming the minefields of the Sea of Japan. This book has
contributed to my understanding of and appreciation/discomfort in the use of the atom bombs. I probably wouldn't exist as Dad was part of the Navy's first wave of the proposed invasion.
Finding out about post-war Japan is like scything through a glacier, thank you Weller family for the clear light.
Required reading.......2007-04-12
I was 13 at the time the Nagasaki bomb was detonated and have always wondered about it all. Even when I was in USAF Pilot Training classes 10 years later,the Classified training which covered these weapons was mostly "How it Works" but nothing memorable about what it does to humans or structures. Now 40 some years later I have a first hand account from someone who was there shortly after and talked to survivors.
A disturbing but beneficial bonus is the accounts of the Allied POW's tribulations while in Japanese hands. Those were awful times, at best.
And last but not least, the accounts of censorship during that time are eye-opening.
Highly recommended, especially to the historically deficit younger generations.
Not what I expected.......2007-04-01
Based on the title, I expected this to be an account of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. There is certainly some of that. But it's really a book about the author/war correspondent. The book reiterates countless times how the author was the first American into Nagasaki after the bomb. That's impressive (although later in the book we read about someone who got to Hiroshima earlier)-- but the book doesn't contain much substance about Nagasaki. The rest of the book is a mish-mash of other aspects of the war, and it gets repetitive about how merciless the Japanese were to our prisoners. Toward the end the book tries to become political and focus on censorship, which wasn't very interesting.
A little short on Nagasaki.......2007-03-29
I liked this book very much, and devoured it in about four days. I was disappointed, though, that there was very little about the atomic bomb and its aftermath itself. I suppose that I was hoping for something along the lines of John Hersey's "Hiroshima". Much is written here about the Japanese brutalaity toward their captives. For those reviewers who find this brutality "unforgivable" one should note that the Japanese at that time were taught that they themselves had value only as tools for the Emperor, and that *their* lives were valuable only for its sacrifice in the service of the emperor.They were terribly burtal to themselves. Since they didn't value their own lives it is almost too much to expect them value a foreigner's life, especially the life of an enemy soldier who comitted the terrible shame of *surrendering* rather than killing himself.I recommend a wonderful book by Kappa Senoh "A Boy Called H". The author was a schoolboy during the time of Imperial Japan. I am also not sure that our practice of fire bombing japanese cities and starving the country with a program of unrestricted submarine warfare would not qualify as "brutal". Overall I found the book to be very interesting.
An extremely important addition to the historical record of World War II........2007-03-15
It was perhaps the most underreported story of World War II. Very little has ever appeared in print about the incredibly inhumane treatment of American soldiers and civilians in Japanese POW camps. Until now. In the days immediately following the surrender of the Japanese empire, Chicago Sun Times reporter George Weller, who Walter Cronkite charactorizes as "one of our best war correspondents" slipped quitely and without authorization into Nagasaki, Japan to see for himself the legacy of the atomic bomb that had been dropped just four weeks earlier. In terms of press coverage of this horrifying and historic event Mr. Weller was indeed "First Into Nagasaki".
Upon his arrival in Nagasaki George Weller immediately embarked on a tour of the devastated city. What he saw shocked him. There was devastation everywhere. He learned from various officials that at least 21,000 people had already died and that thousands more were injured. He saw first hand those people who were suffering from what he referred to as "Disease X". These doomed individuals were destined to die a slow and painful death due to atomic radiation. George Weller reported his findings in a series of dispatches to his newspaper. Unfortunately for him General Douglas MacArthur was not particularly disposed to having any negative news coming out of Japan. Unbeknownst to George Weller, his reports were being 100% censored by the United States military. After completing his tour of the city proper Weller moved on to a number of the POW camps in the city, among them Omuta and Izuka. He interviewed scores of American POWs along the way. These former POW's told Weller of the inhumane and sadistic treatment they had received at the hands of their Japanese captors. Once again, Weller sent another series of dispatches to the Chicago Sun-Times only to have them totally censored by our own military! For a host of political and security reasons, the American people would never hear the troubling stories George Weller was trying to tell. His reports it seemed had been lost forever. He had made carbon copies of all of them but these too seemed to have disappeared. After George Weller died in 2002 his son Anthony was sifting through some of his dad's papers in an old trunk when lo and behold he came upon those tattered and yellowing copies.
And so now, more than six decades after these historic events took place "First Into Nagasaki" finally presents George Weller's compelling dispatches for all to read and digest. This is powerful stuff folks. Over the decades much has been written about the atrocities in Nazi POW camps. Curiously, very little has ever been disclosed about the inhumane conditions that existed in Japanese POW camps. "First Into Nagasaki" does much to set the record straight. This is an extremely important book and one that should prove to be a real eye opener to those like myself who were born after the end of World War II. It might be useful to conclude this review by quoting George Weller on the subject of censorship: "The moment when it could have been understood politically is missed, surpressed. The possibility of comprehension will never again return...And the porcelain men of history will pose forever in these lying attitudes. The aim of well-timed censorship is to instill this simple idea: it probably never happened." Highly recommended!
Book Description
Filip Muller's firsthand account of three years in the gas chambers. One of the few prisoners who saw the Jewish people die and lived to tell about it, Muller has written one of the key documents of the Holocaust. A very detailed description of day-to-day life, if we can call it that, in Hell's inmost circle...jammed with infernal information too terrible to be taken all at once. --Terrence Des Pres, New Republic
Customer Reviews:
Tough but necessary read.........2007-09-21
It is hard to read this book because the subject matter is so grim. It is not written especially well but the unique view of the author makes this an important document. It is clear that the Nazi plan developed over time and it was truly a murder machine. This story from inside the machine is sad and ultimately worth reading and remembering.
Most graphic and gripping.......2007-09-02
Since my tour of duty in Augsburg and Schwaebish Hall W. Germany (mid-60's) I have read fifty books trying to undersand the holocaust. I found the German people warm and generous, thus was unable to put the two continums in the same world.
This book does not help you understand the reasoning behind that most powerful historical event, but it does give you an extremely graphic picture of HOW it was done on a day to day basis.
Filip Mueller, saw things that Hoess (Commandant of Auschwitz) did not see first hand and he tells it all.
Great read.
should be read by everyone.......2007-06-12
Highly recommended. Gripping, suspenceful. Manages to unnerve, shock, without hysterics--and this is the best type of approach for something this gruesome.
How did the author live through it? How would you have dealt with it? How would I?
Get it. Read it.
And for those who think by simply saying NEVER AGAIN that it won't, couldn't happen again, are only fooling themselves. Humans never learn a damn thing from history. Why? Because we're basically retarded.
It could happen again, and in fact, it has happened--to a lesser degree. I say any time a Hitler or Saddam wannabe rears his ugly head--you better believe there are a few of them out there even right now--confront
the control-hungry pissant to keep him from attaining enough power to reach his objective.
Sad but True .......2007-02-18
As I am an avid reader, and am highly intrested in WW2, I bought this book, not to be disapointed. It literally took me only two days to finish because of my intregment. It is a very good read, giving you the true story of what innocent people went through as a result of racism. The book is very graphic, interesting, but terribly sad at the same time. Overall, is a must-read. I highly recomend this book.
Bone Chilling.......2007-01-29
Read this and live the horror of the Holocaust. You will cry but come away the wiser.
Amazon.com
China has endured much hardship in its history, as Iris Chang shows in her ably researched The Rape of Nanking, a book that recounts the horrible events in that eastern Chinese city under Japanese occupation in the late 1930s. Nanking, she writes, served as a kind of laboratory in which Japanese soldiers were taught to slaughter unarmed, unresisting civilians, as they would later do throughout Asia. Likening their victims to insects and animals, the Japanese commanders orchestrated a campaign in which several hundred thousand--no one is sure just how many--Chinese soldiers and noncombatants alike were killed. Chang turns up an unlikely hero in German businessman John Rabe, a devoted member of the Nazi party who importuned Adolf Hitler to intervene and stop the slaughter, and who personally saved the lives of countless residents of Nanking. She also suggests that the Japanese government pay reparations and apologize for its army's horrific acts of 60 years ago.
Book Description
In December 1937, the Japanese army swept into the ancient city of Nanking. Within weeks, more than 300,000 Chinese civilians were systematically raped, tortured, and murdered--a death toll exceeding that of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Using extensive interviews with survivors and newly discovered documents, Iris Chang has written what will surely be the definitive history of this horrifying episode. The Rape of Nanking tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved almost 300,000 Chinese. Among these was the Nazi John Rabe, an unlikely hero whom Chang calls the "Oskar Schindler of China" and who worked tirelessly to protect the innocent and publicize the horror. More than just narrating the details of an orgy of violence, The Rape of Nanking analyzes the militaristic culture that fostered in the Japanese soldiers a total disregard for human life. Finally, it tells the appalling story: about how the advent of the Cold War led to a concerted effort on the part of the West and even the Chinese to stifle open discussion of this atrocity. Indeed, Chang characterizes this conspiracy of silence, that persists to this day, as "a second rape."
Customer Reviews:
The veneer of civilization is exceedingly thin.......2007-08-21
The bestial massacre of Nanking is by any standards one of the worst evil deeds in the history of mankind. Hundreds of thousands of men, women, children and babies were brutally slaughtered in a few weeks. For those who will (or can) not read this book only one example: babies were impaled on bayonets and thrown in boiling water. Even the dead didn't receive a human treatment. Their bodies were thrown to the dogs as food.
How (was) is it possible that part of mankind sank bank into such unlimited barbarism?
The author sees different reasons:
Religion: the emperor was a god and `next to the emperor all individual life was valueless.'
Politics: Japan was an unchequed authoritarian regime dominated by the military.
Racism: the Japanese considered themselves as a master-race, with a virulent contempt for the Chinese.
Education (military) and indoctrination: teenagers were molded into killing machines.'
As one soldier put is: `In Nanking everyone became a demon within three months.'
What happened in Nanking was received jubilantly by the jingoist Japanese press. Newspapers even published the outcome of a decapitation contest. The events were also covered internationally, but it was `frightening to see how easily mankind can accept genocides.'
In sharp contrast with the unmoved international community, a courageous group of foreigners created a safety zone saving thousands of Chinese lives.
Japan has a moral obligation to present at least an official apology for what happened during the war. `Nanking was only a fraction of the totality of the atrocities committed.'
The culprits received pensions and benefits, while the victims who survived continue to suffer shame, poverty and chronic physical and mental pains.
This book is a truly exceptional illustration (also graphically) of how the thin veneer of civilization can be broken.
Highly recommended, but only for those with a strong stomach.
As disturbing as it is shocking.......2007-07-02
Iris Chang has close personal ties to the Nanking Massacre - her parents narrowly escaped the orgy of violence that ensued in 1938 - 1939. This raises questions of objectivity, which Chang clearly struggles with, hence the four stars. However, the book is well-researched and credible sources are cited - a necessary point given the accusations made.
Chang begins with a brief history of modern (since the Meji restoration) Japanese history, seeking to provide some explaination for the barbarity that happened in China during the Japanese occupation. This provides some critical background information before the catalogue of atrocities are presented in gruesome detail: gang rapes, the desecration of corpses, torture - the savagery and brutality of which appalled me. The primary sources used in researching this are irrefutable to the serious historian.
Chang then goes on to talk about the aftermath of the "Rape of Nanking" begining with the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (the "Asian Nuremburg" trial) concluding with an excellent analysis of why so few were punished and what the long-term consequences of not addressing the larger issue of Japanese war crimes are, especially in light of her claim that what happened in Nanking was deliberate Japanese policy; in fact, she goes on to write that the Nanking massacre was "a metaphor for Japanese behaviour during the war." The book concludes exploring why the Holocaust in Europe is much more familar than the atrocities committed in Asia.
To some Japanese, Chang's claims are exaggerations or fabrications. (See Tanaka Maasaki's "What Really Happened in Nanking" for this perspective.) The historical record, however, clearly supports Chang's account. What struck me most deeply, however, was the similarity between the accounts of 1938 China and Yugoslavia in the 1990's, particularly the contest over whose story is told (and which history is written) and who is punished. There are lessons to be learned here larger than a single event. Recommended reading for armchair historians.
Powerful Account of a Very Tragic Wartime Catastrophe.......2007-06-25
Iris Chang's "The Rape of Nanking" is a horrifying and gruesome account of the infamous "Rape of Nanjing" where in less than a two month span from 1937-1938, an estimated 200,000-450,000 captured Chinese civilians and unarmed, surrendering solders were massacred and/or raped in cold blood by the Japanese Military during World War II. It is also about the aftermath of the massacre in a historical sense, and the toll it has had on the victims, historians, and the world, especially Sino-Japanese relations.
Chang's writing is intense, emotional, detailed, and thought provoking. Given that her grandparents were from Nanjing and narrowly escaped their own fate from the hell of what happened there, we must read this with an understanding that Chang is inherently biased in her accounts and at times comes off as extremely emotional in her contempt of the Japanese in certain passages.
Despite her bias, she desperately tries to stay objective in her accounts, though not always successfully (the passage, even despite the cited references, on Japanese being cannibals of murdered chinese male's genitalia seemed highly questionable and speculative).
Chang makes strides in her discussion of historiology by pointing out the cancer of how history is manipulated by politics, government intervention, propaganda, radical Conservatism/Liberalism, diplomacy and political events. Because of the "Cold War", "Sino-Japanese relations", WWII itself" and "US-Japanese allegiances", the events of Nanjing have been eerily and perhaps permanently distorted at the expense of 100's of thousands of innocent victims.
The book is well organized and informative although I question her premise which nearly implies that American society and that even Japanese society is ignorant of the events that occurred in Nanjing in 1937-1938. In her premise for writing the book, she attempts to imply that there was nearly no literary English reference to the Rape of Nanjing and provided only two literary accounts in English (both written 50 years after the "Rape") of this massacre. However, she failed to site the well documented account of this Massacre in the famous military television documentary seen by millions of Americans and Europeans in the 1970s, "The World at War" where Sir Laurence Olivier made a very clear historical historical reference while footage was shown of the massacre including General Matsui's march on horse through the streets of Nanjing and footage of tied Chinese captives murdered execution style while on their knees and hands tied behind their backs:
"It was here that Nanking in December 1937 that the Japanese perpetrated what was until then, one of the worst atrocities of this century when their troops massacred more than 200,000 Chinese in cold blood.
There is also a minor question statistic she references with respect to the number of Americans killed in the Korean ar which she noted 34,000. In Washington DC, the memorial noted over 54,000 Americans dead. But, to Chang's credit, as I've learned in this book, accounting for the number of dead is never an absolute accuracy. For example, is a person dying of a disease or out of accident during war considered having been killed in a war? That's highly subjective. An American bias would count that death as a casualty of war whereby Pro Chinese or North Korean source might not accounts for that death. Both have case to include or exclude that number from the number of casualties.
The most interesting passages relate to Chang's discussion of the acts of humanity during this catastrophe, specifically of the spectacular irony of how John Rabe, an educated German who even held a stron Nazi fervor (the Nazi's were allies of Japan during the war) was responsible for saving the lives of over 300,000 Chinese by setting up a miniscule 2.5 square mile safety zone within proximity of where the Rape and Massacre happened.
My favorite passage in this entire book was on her research of what happened to John Rabe after he left Nanjing. It was beautifully written and had me reading copiously to find her resolution on what happened to thsi "Schindler of Nanjing."
Poignant also was her research on the outcomes of other European and Americans who were in Nanjing during the siege and how politics ostracized these heros whose humanitarian efforts went unnoticed.
In her introduction, Iris Chang mused that her "greatest hope is that this book will inspire other authors and historians to investigate the stories of Nanjing" and that it will "stir the conscience of Japan to accept responsibility for this incident.
This book should really inspire the world to skeptically evaluate their own histories with a fine tooth comb given the Japanese Government's attempt to undermine what happened in Nanking.
On a side note, this book also inspires me to read more of the Jewish communities who fled Nazi Persecution Europe to live in Shangahi, which had been coincidentally the starting point of Japanese occupation prior to the capture of Nanjing. This book also inspires me to research the horror of the Bataan Death March and of the mass burials that occurred in Hong Kong, other areas of China, the Phillipines and other areas that had been seized by the Imperialist Japanese forces during WWII.
Disturbing, enlightening, and thoughtful.......2007-06-07
The Rape of Nanking is an amazingly easy read considering the dark subject that it addresses. Chang did an outstanding job of compiling absolutely airtight, irrefutable information about the atrocities committed by the Japanese military in 1937, but this book is far more than simply an endless recitation of that evidence. When I first picked up this book I feared that it would simply be 200+ pages of stories about atrocities. But as Chang herself noted early in the book, doing so would simply be monotonous and would eventually numb the reader. Instead, she discusses several different and important aspects about the Rape of Nanking, beginning with an historical overview of the roots of imperial Japan and the culture that allowed an entire generation of young men to become cruel, inhumane butchers. She goes on to inform the reader about the conflict between Japan and China, and eventually of course relates specific facts about the savagery committed against so many hundreds of thousands of Chinese in Nanking. But the book does not stop there. Chang goes to great lengths to describe the heroic efforts of a handful of westerners who were able to save hundreds of thousands of Chinese from certain torture and death. She concludes by discussing the aftermath of the Rape of Nanking and how it remains an incredibly sensitive topic for so many people. This is an absolutely outstanding work of nonfiction that everyone should read. The reviewers here who have disparaged Chang and her effort to ensure that the world never forgets about the evil that occurred in Nanking should be ashamed of themselves. People like that only illustrate how important it is to keep the memory of Nanking alive and never surrender to those who would bury the truth because they are too cowardly to face it.
Important, necessary, courageous and seminal book........2007-05-27
Chang's account has inspired a 2007 expensive and carefully-marketed documentary film of the same title, and that is the book's chief value--as an awareness-raising event that exposes our frequently "selective" focus on incidents of man's inhumanity to man (Rwanda being one such incident of selective amnesia). The book is an essential artifact, and Chang should be applauded for her conscientiousness, diligence, and courage in producing what has already proven to be a seminal work, producing ground-shaking tremors throughout the international community.
For many, if not most, readers, the Introduction and Epilogue will most likely prove sufficient to convey the author's intended purpose and effect. Those who take pleasure in marking the historical circumstances of war and its aftermath, along with reading graphic descriptions of sensational, specific incidents of torture, etc.), will no doubt wish to read the entire account. For others the aforementioned two sections, an account such as the one on Wikipedia, and the two-part video on Youtube, "The Rape of Nanking" (ignore the transparently weak rebuttals), should be sufficient.
Some readers will appreciate Chang's simplification of the atrocity and the reasons for it. She issues a disclaimer in the Introduction that "Japan bashing" is the farthest thing from her mind, but the ensuing account is one that paints the Japanese--from the ancient Samurai/Bushido code to the 20th-century expansionist mentality to the deification of the emperor to the robotic school system to the cruel and inhuman training of its own military youth to the enforced slavery of "comfort women" to Japan's continual and continuing denial of the past--in broad, culturally incriminating, stereotyping strokes. A reader, therefore, needs to exercise some counterbalancing skepticism--for example, toward the account of the Samurai, who represented an ideal, much like the knights of Camelot or the radical individualists of the American frontier, from which modern Japan deviated rather than suffered. Also, it has been shown that the "comfort women" were also supplied, following World War II, to thousands of American troops, and with the cooperation of the American post-War military command.
In answering the all-important question of "why," Chang is quite convincing with her limited, though largely undeveloped, list of reasons--ranging from "transference of oppression" (what we might refer to as the "wife-battering syndrome") to the herd mentality of losers suddenly cast in the role of conquerors to an entire culture's utter conviction of following a divine imperative in the best interests of China as well as Japan. Chang hits hardest on the genocide that occurs because nations who should know better (the U.S., for example) are content to remain disengaged from whatever doesn't affect them directly. But her most compelling reason, to my mind, is cultural-racial pride, a theme that during the American Civil War produced suffering and death exceeding by far anything that occurred at Nanking.
Chang even suggests that because the Japanese and Chinese were so similar in skin color and physical appearance, the racial antagonism was intensified. Not possessing the verifiable demarcation of lighter or darker skin color, the Japanese were all the more zealous to proclaim their superiority. So again and again we're brought back to the deadliest sin of all--from Greek tragedy to Biblical writings to Faulkner's accounts of the tragic fall of the Old South: hubris, arrogance, or just plain pride, which unfortunately is exclusive to no individual human being or nation.
By now, you'd think we'd begin to get the message. And it's not about the Japanese.
Book Description
Selected as one of USA Today’s 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Century, this astonishing autobiography tells the gripping, heroic story of the early life of Jacques Lusseyran, an inspiring individual who overcame the limitations of physical blindness by attending — literally — to the light within his own mind. Through faith in the connection between vivid inner sight and outer events, he became a leader in the French Resistance and survived the horrors at Buchenwald.
Customer Reviews:
The Power of Positive Thought and the Power of Poetry.......2007-08-24
This is the autobiography of a blind hero of the French Resistance during WWII. Lusseyran lost his eyesight as a young boy through an accident at school, caused by a bully. But instead of sinking helplessly into darkness he gradually developed his other senses to extraordinary capacity.
When seventeen,while interviewing volunteers, willing to join the Resistance, he perceived colors when they answered questions. These colors revealed to him whether they could be trusted or not. Once, however,his friends disagreed with his recommendation. They all were taken prisoner and sent to the Concentration Camp.It was there, that the 18 year old found his second calling: Poetry. Reciting poetry by heart, he assembled the prisoners daily. The imagery had life-sustaining quality for them and a moment of renewal to all that participated. His experiences and observations there, later led him to choose to study philosophy and literature at the Sorbonne.He lectured at the various American universities until his death.
recommended additional reading by Lusseyran: "Against the Pollution of the I"
A classic.......2006-10-10
A classic study in overcoming adversity and finding hope in hopeless situations. If it were a work of fiction, we would doubt the author's credebility - but this is not fiction, this is the real life of an ordinary individual made extraordinary by the light of his saviour. It is an inspirational book and adventure action novel all in one. Rarely do we find a hero so authentic and humble as Mr. Lusseyran - and only he could share the story because only he has access to that light so necessary for the complete telling.
A light not his own.......2005-09-30
I enjoyed Lusseyran's story as a blind person who came up with a way to cope without sight. I can't imagine his life if he had remained sighted as he used his blindness to such advantage.
My favorite part is the history teachers role in the resistance. True education!
light unto the darkness.......2004-06-30
"in 1935 in a lycee in Paris..our work was divided into two equal parts: the world of today and the world of yesterday, the dreams of the ancients and the dreams of the modern man. I can't believe that was a bad thing. At least we were not in danger of falling into absurdity, so common nowadays, of confusing the era of Sputniks and Polaris rockets with the era of Genesis".
It is hard for me to categorize this book; it is a spiritual book, illuminating one man's relationship with the Spirit; it is a profound meditation on the nature of truth, morality and friendship, and it is a priceless analysis of human nature. Blindness was no impediment to Lusseyran - on the contrary, he learnt to use his senses with an uncanny precision to represent facts by creating visual imagery, to identify the motives that drive people and countries and to establish contact with the transcendental essence of all Being. "People were not at all what they were said to be, and never the same for more than two minutes at a stretch. Some were, of course, but that was a bad sign, a sign that they did not want to understand or be alive, that they were somehow caught in the glue of some indecent passion. ... It is strange that when laws men make are so ticklish in matters concerning the body, they never set limits to nakedness or contact by voice. Evidently they leave out of account the fact that the voice can go further than hands or eyes in licit or illicit touch."
This book is very valuable for its insights on the nature of blindness and sensory-emotional reorganization that accompanies it. "Blindness works like dope, a fact we have to reckon with. ...Like drugs, blindness heightens certain sensations, giving sudden and often disturbing sharpness to the senses of hearing and touch. But, most of all, like a drug, it develops inner as against outer experience, and sometimes to excess" (p.49).
I just cannot help myself from quoting from this book, it is so full of unforgettable passages. This is from the time he was caught, as a member of the Resistance, by the Gestapo: (p. 245): "One small piece of advice. IN a spot like this, do not go too far afield for help. Either it is right near you, in your heart, or it is nowhere. It is not a question of character, it is a question of reality. If you try to be strong, you will be weak. If you try to understand, you will go crazy. No, reality is not your charaqcter which, for its part, is only a by-product - I can't define it, a collection of elements. Reality is Here and Now. It is the life you are living in the moment. Don't be afraid to lose your soul there, for God is in it."
As you can see, this book was written by a remarkable man, who could "see" life and truth and humaneness better than many of his fellow men. Now, when our times in some ways resemble the late 30ies and we again seem to be descending into the darkness of ignorance, when the world is run by corrupt, greedy and cynical men who value their comfort above and beyond the dignity of their souls and happiness of their fellow men, Lusseyran's book provides a ray of light and a courage. I salute this amazing man.
The Touch of a Master's Hand.......2004-02-15
I found Jacques Lusseyran in 1969 when he became my teacher and advisor in the graduate program of French at the University of Hawaii. He also became one of my dearest friends. I lost him two short years later when he and his wife were killed on a lonely French country road in a car wreck. The terrible irony of having survived the Nazi occupation of France, as well as his betrayal, capture, torture and the final years in Buchenwald becomes self-evident as one reads this book. But more than the irony, this book portrays Jacques' great capacity for joy and hope and faith.
He taught me to have faith and hope, in God and in others, as well as in myself and in those gifts which each of us possess. I have shed many tears because I lost him. I loved him and his wife, both for what they taught me and what they gave me: joy in life and living; faith that even in the worst of human pain and suffering there is still always hope.
I have also shed many tears since then of gratitude for those two brief years of my life. And I continue our conversations about all things good and joyful through reading And There Was Light. Jacques Lusseyran and his life have changed my life and I rejoice and am grateful.
Book Description
The "inspirational" and "extraordinary" memoir of one of the most courageous of the greatest generation, Louis Zamperini: Olympian, WWII Japanese POW and survivor.
A juvenile delinquent, a world class NCAA miler, a 1936 Olympian, a WWII bombardier: Louis Zamperini had a fuller than most, when it changed in an instant. On May 27, 1943, his B–24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Louis and two other survivors found a raft amid the flaming wreckage and waited for rescue. Instead, they drifted two thousand miles for forty–seven days. Their only food: two shark livers and three raw albatross. Their only water: sporadic rainfall. Their only companions: hope and faith–and the ever–present sharks. On the forty–seventh day, mere skeletons close to death, Zamperini and pilot Russell Phillips spotted land–and were captured by the Japanese. Thus began more than two years of torture and humiliation as a prisoner of war.
Zamperini was threatened with beheading, subject to medical experiments, routinely beaten, hidden in a secret interrogation facility, starved and forced into slave labour, and was the constant victim of a brutal prison guard nicknamed the Bird–a man so vicious that the other guards feared him and called him a psychopath. Meanwhile, the Army Air Corps declared Zamperini dead and President Roosevelt sends official condolences to his family, who never gave up hope that he was alive.
Somehow, Zamperini survived and he returned home a hero. The celebration was short–lived. He plunged into drinking and brawling and the depths of rage and despair. Nightly, the Bird's face leered at him in his dreams. It would take years, but with the love of his wife and the power of faith, he was able to stop the nightmares and the drinking.
A stirring memoir from one of the greatest of the "Greatest Generation," DEVIL AT MY HEELS is a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the power of forgiveness.
Customer Reviews:
Couldn't put this one down!.......2007-07-12
This tale reads like Candide or Forest Gump, but of course this isn't fiction. The life of Louis Zamperini is, in a word, incredible; it's no wonder that they know as the Greatest Generation. Anyone who is interested in WWII, military service, or survival tales will enjoy this story. This is a must read!
Worst Book I've Ever Read.......2007-03-16
This book has no plot and constantly repeats itself. He alo takes much of the time to promote the books of his other POW friends. The only touching pat of the book is one passge that lasts about a page. DON'T READ!!! I had to read it for a histroy class, but I had such a hard time staying focused on such a bad book!
Devil at My heels.......2006-01-23
Having received this book as a Christams gift from a buddy of mine , it is an absolutelly astonishing and wonderful read!
A great story of a one of what we now call "The Greatest Generation".
My buddy was a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association's crew that travels with a world war two bomber called FUDDY DUDDY, and while at Van Nuys California airport , he met Louis Zamperini personally and told me Mr Zamperini just kind of "hung out" with the FUDDY DUDDY crew in April 2005 for about three days and shared his stories with them.
So my buddy bought two copies from Louis Zamperini and asked him to autograph them, so I received mine for Christmas 2005.
What a great story and hope someday I can meet Louis Zamperini!
He is truly an American Hero!
This review written by
Edward DeBolt
Grabill, Indiana
Testimony to the Apex of Human Forgiveness.......2006-01-20
What More can be said or added to the astonishing account of survival by Louis Zamperini. After enduring forty-seven days in a life raft, being shot down in the middle of the Pacific, he prevailed for two more years as a POW in a Japanese prison camp.
Following his release and being welcomed home as a war hero, Zamperini sank into despair and heavy drinking,only to be rescued from the depths of hopelessness through the ministry of the great evangelist Billy Graham.
His story is at once extraordinary and inspiring-a powerful testimony to the stalwartness of the human spirit, particularly in light of the fact that upon revisiting the site of his tortuous existence he found it in his heart to forgive his brutal captors.
Even if one is only remotely inclined to revisit events that occurred surrounding US POW's in the Pacific during WWII,the reader will find this narrative the best of the best. This reader salutes you, Louis, and others like you for reminding us that the "greatest generation" continues to illuminate and enkindle.
a great story, a mediocre book.......2005-06-06
As you can see from the other reviews, Zamperini's story is absolutely amazing. The book is worth reading to hear it. Still, I couldn't rate the book very highly because it never really felt like Zamperini was the one doing the talking. I guess you'll get that feeling in almost any ghosted autobiography (except maybe Lance's "It's Not About the Bike"), but when Zamperini talks about some of his less-credible emotions, such as his absolute graciousness in defeat when he lost a race to Norman Bright, or his complete forgiveness for the guard, "The Bird", who sadistically tortured him in POW camps, I would find those much easier to believe if I knew I was getting it straight from Zamperini, rather than channeled through a professional writer who makes sure everything is pretty and organized.
There's a lot of great things about this book. As far as I can tell, it pulls no punches and tells the truth. Zamperini is not afraid to speak his mind. He admits his faults. He shares his innermost thoughts. The book paints a very real picture of a man. Even if the book had an ulterior motive, Zamperini goes about spreading his message in a very non-threatening way. I'm an atheist and I don't forsee that changing in the near future, but unlike most proselytizing, this book managed not to tick me off.
With the straightforward manner of storytelling and the "don't mess up your life like I almost did... you can get back on the right track" message, the best audience for the book is probably 14-year olds.
Book Description
Originally published in 1955, As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me has seen international success ever since. It has been translated into fifteen languages, sold more than 12 million copies, and is the basis for an award-winning German entry at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival. Recounting an incredible real-life adventure, it tracks the destiny of German soldier Clemens Forrell who, in the aftermath of WWII, was sentenced to twenty-five years of forced labor in a lead mine in the barren eastern reaches of Siberia. Subjected to the brutality of the camp and the climate, Forrell dreamed continuously of escape—and then daringly effected it. From East Cape across the vast trackless wastes of Siberia, for thousands of miles and three years, with fear as his most intimate companion, Forrell fled treachery and endured some of the most inhospitable conditions on earth. In a long series of taped interviews with esteemed German author Josef M. Bauer, Forrell unfolded his remarkable story of survival. Bauer not only reconstructs Forrell’s arduous journey to the Iranian frontier and freedom; he also poignantly evokes the emotional content of Forrell’s brave quest—emerging as an affecting portrait of a man who strove and triumphed against all odds.
Customer Reviews:
Don't even think of buying this junk.......2007-09-22
I was very, very dissapointed with this book. After having read the amazing story of Theodor Kröger (a German who survived not only the Tsarist prisons but also the communist gulags) I wanted more of this and so I ordered this book. But what I got was a kind of telegram-style book with so much ommisions in the story, that you wonder why did somebody write it at all. If you can't get the story right, then don't tell it. Also, this is supposed to be a non-fiction story, but the dialogues between the lead character and his captors and/or fellow-prisoners are put on paper like they were held yesterday. If you're looking for a Papillon story, you better look somewhere else. I didn't even finish the book, it was a waste of my time.
a wild ride.......2007-07-26
I found this book to be inspiring and motivational. It is the amazing tale of a daring escape and a treacherous journey across the frozen Siberian north. They only thing that disappointed me was that the ending was anti-climactic in my opinion. Just a simply amazing book, there is a reason why it has been translated in to 15 languages and sold more then 12 millon copies.
Amazing .......2007-05-07
All the superlatives belong to this tale: remarkable, daring, unbelievable, amazing, incredible, beyond belief, extraordinary. That a person could 1. escape from a Soviet labor camp, 2. in the dead of winter, 3. from the farthest eastern point of Siberia, 4. after suffering from hunger and brutal treatment for three years, and still 5. make it home to Germany safely after another three years is a story for all lovers of survival dramas. The author expertly and faithfully chronicles Josef Bauer's account without glossing over the details of what it took to survive. I didn't come to like Mr. Bauer from this telling, however, I did feel a deep respect for his perseverance and stamina. Two other books of escape and survival that I recommend even more highly are: The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Slavomir Rawicz and We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance by David Howarth.
As Far as my Feet will Carry me.......2007-01-29
Incredible story of survival and the will to live.
This book was excellent, I couldn't put it down........2006-04-28
As for the other half negative reviews, like it being for a young reader, don't pay any attention to that. Obviously those reviews are written by people that can't look or think beyond their own egos nor actually try to imagine what it must have been like, what the permanent affects were after such an altering event, and obvious emotional scars that must have continued on and on... After I finished the book, I re-read the preface and understood why there seemed to be pieces "I" wanted answers to, but understood why they weren't there.
I recommend this book to anyone of all ages. It's absolutely an amazing account of someone accomplishing a journey home with EVERYTHING against him and the beckoning door of death at every turn. How he survived? It's beyond me....
Now, I will hunt for the DVD....if anyone knows where I can find the DVD, please find a way of letting me know. Thanks!
Amazon.com
Cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz was captured by the Red Army in 1939 during the German-Soviet partition of Poland and was sent to the Siberian Gulag along with other captive Poles, Finns, Ukranians, Czechs, Greeks, and even a few English, French, and American unfortunates who had been caught up in the fighting. A year later, he and six comrades from various countries escaped from a labor camp in Yakutsk and made their way, on foot, thousands of miles south to British India, where Rawicz reenlisted in the Polish army and fought against the Germans. The Long Walk recounts that adventure, which is surely one of the most curious treks in history.
Book Description
The harrowing true tale of escaped Soviet prisoners¿ desperate march out of Siberia, through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.
Customer Reviews:
Thrilling adventure, lousy history.......2007-09-26
I would have admired this book without reservation if it were represented as a work of fiction, but since its supposed to be a true story, I can't be as positive. Even without the information about the author uncovered by the BBC, which pretty much ends the debate regarding the veracity of this account, I would have questioned the authenticity of this story anyway.
I can believe most of the horrible things described about the author's arrest, interrogation, transport, and incarceration in a work camp (though the forced march seems less plausible, but we should never underestimate the cruelty of the gulag camp system). If anything, the way he describes the work camps sounds too tame in light of what we know about the gulag. He describes a work camp without criminals (most gulag inmates were classed as criminals, not politicals) and with very relaxed boundaries between the commandant and the inmates. This sounds more like Hogan's Stalag 13 than a real gulag. (read Anne Applebaum's remarkable book on the gulag.)
What seems most implausible to me is the novelistic quality of the book. First, there are the supporting characters - in true hollywood fashion, each of whom has a characteristic that distinguishes him or her from the others - toothless guy, the gentle giant, the wisecracker, and most implausibly, a beautiful young escapee who miraculously crosses their path amid the vast wastes of Siberia. Next, there's the dialogue (always recalled by the author verbatim), which reads more like a hollywood script than actual conversation between people (e.g., each of the wisecracker's quips is recalled verbatim). Finally, there's level of detail that no memory could recall, such as who found what kind of snake on which day.
Read this book side by side with real stories of survival, accounts of undisputed veracity (omit those written by journalists or authors who kept a notebook during their travels). Next to a book like Herzog's Annapurna or Worsley's book on the Endurance, the Long Walk reads like a very good novel, but not a true account of survival.
Frankly, I'm surprised that so many people have accepted its authenticity over the last several decades. Credit should go to the journalist who wrote the book with the help of the "author." The true story I would like to read is how a journalist and a Polish camp survivor cooked up this tale and sold it to the public. The author's tells us that he donated his time to good causes. I have to wonder if he was trying to ease his sense of guilt or rationalize his long involvement in this hoax.
A Maze Ing.......2007-09-11
What an amazing life. I was expecting another "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" or "Gulag Archipelago." But this story is different -- there is very little bitterness, very little savoring-of-the-details. Instead, it is cleanly told and incredibly true. It is a simple book, not much complexity, just human nature laid bare. Amazing.
Escape from the Soviet Union.......2007-09-05
There is some debate as to whether or not this story is true, but it is not at all improbable. Sentenced to 25 years in the Soviet gulag system, Polish cavalry-officer Rawicz was determined to escape from the remote Siberian labor-camp, somewhere north of Lake Baikal. The brutality Rawicz experienced at the hands of the communist government is typical of such accounts from this era. It reminds one of the memoirs of Alexander Solzhenitzyn.
Rawicz assembled a group of six other prisoners: two more Polish soldiers, a Latvian, a Lithuanian, a Yugoslavian, and ...an American! They made their break in early 1941, during a winter storm. Along the way, a teenage Polish girl also joined the party. The resulting narrative (if it is all true) is a harsh tale of survival as they trekked across some of the most rugged and dangerous terrain on Earth: frozen pine-forests, open plains, the Gobi Desert, and the mountains of Tibet.
Sadly, only half the party made it to the objective, which was India. Had they been less hasty in their trek once free of Soviet territory, the entire party could have survived. Had they planned more, traveled with caravans, and learned some basic survival skills, they could have brought everyone out.
The crossed Siberia, Mongolia, north China, and Tibet, cut off from all civilization and news of events abroad. They passed through lands where life was largely unchanged in a thousand years, and oblivious to the titanic events of World War II. Had Rawicz's party stopped in Lhasa, they surely would have met the famed mountaineers Heinrich Harrer and Peter Aufschneider (read "Seven Years In Tibet").
The most sceptical account, is a sighting of the "Yeti", while in the Himalayas. Did they really see some as yet unclassified primate? Who is to say?
Regardless, the story is profoundly fascinating...I hope its all true! The only improvement to the tale: what happened to the survivors after they left India? Unfortunately, thats where the story ends.
Book is a fictional account.......2007-08-22
I'm reading the book for the 3rd time and I question a number of items Rawicz mentions. For one, he says they walked during the heat of the day in the Gobi so as to follow a due south direction judging by the sun. Tempretures in the Gobi during the day run over 45C and coupled with walking, there is no way any human can survive without water for more than 3 days under those conditions. Rawicz claims they went as many as 6 and 7 days without water. Secondly, his party found Lake Baikal without any compass. Add to this the many references Rawicz makes about the geography of the area. He keeps mentioning Lhasa. Yet they enter the Gobi without any provisions for water. How is this possible when they had ample opportunity to prepare during their numerous encounters with the local tribesman as they headed into the Gobi? It's also interesting that the one person in his party who would easily be tracable is Mr. Smith - a fictitious name. Surely, after such an encounter and the bonding that takes place under such conditions, Rawicz would know the name of this man from the United States? Even later in life, Rawicz made no mention of this person's real identity. Sadly, I believe The Long Walk is a fictional account. I believe Rawicz suffered through difficult times, but he also fooled a generation of readers.
For those who would like to read a true account of one man's walk to freedom, then I highly suggest "Long Walk To Freedom" by Nelson Mandela. There's no doubt about the authenticity of this wonderful and inspiring book.
What a Story.......2007-07-16
What a great story of humanity's drive for pure survival and freedom. What this man and his friends encountered and went through to survive is nothing short of a miracle. It's one of those books that was hard to put down, and when its finished, you want to cry.
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