Book Description
This powerful look at the French Foreign Legion explores the authors' experiences with the brutalities, adventure, destruction, danger, and criminal encounters over his five years of service in this dehumanizing regime. Well known as the most notorious, bloody, and ruthless band of mercenaries in the world, in 1998 the Legion accepted Tony Sloane at the age of 18, inviting him as an elite member of this secret and mysterious fighting force. The legend and the myths of the Legion captivated Sloane and he quickly learned that life as a legionnaire was not just about physical training, but also about pledging mind and soul to the missions and operations.
Customer Reviews:
The Naked Soldier: A True Story of the French Foreign Legion.......2007-05-08
Great book for those of us who thought about running off to join the Legion. Very sobering for the hopeless romantic.
Very real stories from his experiences; no Rambo tales.
A great read.
The darker side of willpower and the combat mindset.......2007-05-04
This is an interesting book, if nothing else because of a fascination with the idea of the legion. But let's just say, if you aren't interested in the darker underside of civilization this book isn't for you. It can best be described as a walk on the wild side. At worst it's an example of minimalist behavior on the part of hardened men. If you can't handle that then don't read this book. Reality, isn't found at a StarBucks coffee house.
I can understand, due to some of my own past, some of what these men seek. You'll never be more alive when you are close to death. You'll never understand the meaning of brotherhood until you've stood with other men like a stone wall.
We should be grateful for the knowledge these men go where others would not dare. As George Orwell said, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
Je ne regrette rien.
Making Monsters.......2007-03-29
A straightforward, apparently factual account of how a naive British youth joined the FFL, endured unbelievable physical hardships, emotional abuse and cruelty, lost all of his innocence, and became a hardened soldier.
The world may need soldiers -- to fight other soldiers -- but releasing these kind of people back into the real world outside the army seems like a bad idea. Sloane's summing up in the last chapters is chillingly cold-hearted and inhuman, and the fact that he returned to fighting for other armies (in the UK and in Desert Storm) only goes to prove his statement that he became "inept for civilian life."
The book was well-written (probably ghost-written) although there is almost no analysis of any of the political situations mentioned above (by reviewer Dimitrios). This is most definitely not a book about world politics or even the French Foreign Legion; it's strictly the story of one self-centered little bully and how he was turned into a self-serving militaristic monster.
Brilliant - Must Read Book.......2007-03-24
The Naked Soldier is a must read book, for everyone who has a little legionaire inside themselves, or if you just want some REAL action! The book is rather easy to read, and I asure You, that from the first page, you can't put it down. Buy it, read it and make up your mind. It's worth it all.
Captivating!.......2006-12-31
After reading reviews on various other foreign legion books, I decided to get my husband this particular book for x-mas. He's not much of a bookworm but he can't put it down! He says the writing is great and the story flows very nicely. It HAS to be interesting for my husband to get so involved with the story.
Book Description
Written by a team of leading scholars, this richly illustrated book, with over 200 colour and black and white pictures, presents an authoritative and comprehensive history of the Crusades from the preaching of the First Crusade in 1095 to the legacy of crusading ideas and imagery today.
Customer Reviews:
Historical facts. No more........2006-11-09
This is a very important book for people who want to know the facts without stories of romance and chivalry. It is very well organized with chapters dedicated to all the aspects of life from the time of the Crusades, aspects ranging from the military orders in various periods of time to the evolution of crusading literature. I recommend this book for people who need an overview of the period of the Crusades. It is also advisable, in order to comprehend the whole picture of the Crusades, to read opinions from the Muslim side. A very good book in this region is "Arab Historians of the Crusades" (The Islamic World Series) by Francesco Gabrieli.
High-gloss paper w/ a straight-forward approach to the Crusades.......2006-03-24
This is an intro book to the Crusades.
What I liked about The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades was it's very 'neat' look at history. It is a clean-cut array of events in prose form, with several pictures and illustrations, without moral position taken. This way, the reader can use the information given and put it into a context of discussion and a wider analysis of the time period covered. The only down-side was probably that, having used it in a classroom setting, I felt almost as if it were too 'story-book', too illustrative. The information, however, is substantial.
An excellent tome on the crusades to begin your historical journey!.......2006-01-10
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades introduced me to several aspects of the military campaigns and enduring influences they had which I had never been exposed. I have read other books on this topic and have learned a great deal, however, additional topics such as poetry, song and architecture were items which up until my reading of this book I had not even considered. After reading this book you will realize as perhaps as I that one has merely scratched the surface of Crusade history. I highly recommend this source if you would be interested in getting a bigger and better picture of this often misunderstood and oft-maligned period of history in western civilization.
Not a book for the general public.......2005-07-04
On the back cover you can read: "written by a team of leading scholars, this richly illustrated book.....presents an authoritative and comprehensive history of the Crusades from the preaching of the First Crusade in 1905 to the legacy of crusading ideas and imaginery today".
In fact it is a book written by scholars for scholars only and it is very different from the other many books about the Crusades that follow a cronological description of the history of the events that took place.
The book is composed of 15 chapters, written by different authors, that have little or no coordination at all, so it is no informative. The contents are very descriptive of the orientation of the book: ... Songs of the crusades, Architecture in the latin east, Images of the crusades in the 19th and 20th centuries, Revival and Survival (the orders today). As good scholars they authors also plague the book with a lot of fashionalbe, weird and mislead theories, very much repeated along the book like that the spanish reconquista was part of the crusades.
The book has many pictures, and some of the articles-chapters are interesting because they focus more deeply on a given issue, but it doesn't treat adequately the history of the crusades, the fears, pains, feats and ambitions of the crusaders, the way of life on the Holy Land, and the daily relationships between the several clashing cultures.
After reading the book you will not have a true picture about the flow of events that lead to the Crusades and their outcome. At the most it is a book for those that already have many other books on the subject, and want to have a look to its pictures and know a particular point of view of some of its authors.
Definitely not worth buying for the general public as one of the first readings.
Review of Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades.......2004-03-19
By:Jonathan Riley-Smith
Reviewed by:D. Wang
P.5
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades is a book about you want and don't want to know about the crusades. The book's opening chapters aren't about the actual military action at all. It's about the minds of the crusaders, the songs of the time, the Latin East. It's not until chapter nine that military orders, movements, and actions are mentioned. The book concludes with a comparison of modern day events and the crusades.
I liked this book because of the sheer amount of information. on page 86 it says "Men and women, including elderly crusaders, came to Jerusalem to end their days. The charnel chambers in the Hospitallers' ruined twelfth-century cemetry-church at Alcheldamach, just outside Jersalem, are still filled with the bones of pious Christians." It is extremely doubtful you will find this variety of information in a textbook.
This book really took the effort to find all the information possible. An entire chapter of the book is devoted to songs about the crusade. There are not many books about a series of wars where an entire chapter is devouted to songs. The book puts a lot a information and visual material in 436 pages. It is very easy to be overwhelmed, and the authors should have made it easier to comprehend.
My favorite part of the book is the last chapter. "In a surprising development, however, the theology of force that underpinned crusading has been revived, especially in Latin America, by a militant wing of Christian Liberation." It is amzing how we humans fall from the same things over and over again, and this chapter previews of what might come. I like to compare our present to our past because it makes you realize how many times we've made the same mistake over and over again. Sometimes we just fail to take the past into consideration.
Amazon.com
From 18th-century fortifications to nuclear submarines to guerrilla combat, The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern War is a thorough treatment of how warfare has evolved over the last three centuries. The bulk of the book focuses on the 20th century, but it also effectively shows how the past influences the present and may affect the future. A well-chosen illustration on almost every page makes this an exceedingly attractive volume. The list of contributors is heavily English (what else would you expect from Oxford University Press?), and this slightly colors (or, perhaps more accurately, "colours") some of their interpretations--but certainly not in a bad way. Make some extra room on your shelf for this one, right beside books by Karl von Clausewitz and John Keegan.
Book Description
How has war shaped modern society and vice versa? How has it changed over the centuries between the introduction of firearms and the invention of the atom bomb? How is war waged today? This excitingly illustrated book examines the techniques, technology, and theory of warfare from the `military revolution' of the seventeenth century to the present day. The expert contributors explore major developments and themes, including the extraordinary achievements of Napoleon's armies; the role of nationalism in battlegrounds as various as the American Civil War and the former Yugoslavia; colonial wars; the concept and reality of `total war'; guerrilla warfare and `people's wars'. The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern War offers a comprehensive overview of military conflict over several centuries, with fascinating thematic chapters covering air and sea warfare, combat experience, technology, and even opposition to war. Contributors... Jeremy Black, University of Durham John Bourne, University of Birmingham John Childs, University of Leeds Jean Bethke Elshtain, University of Chicago Alan Forrest, University of York David French, University College London John B. Hattendorf, Naval War College, Rhode Island Richard Holmes Richard Overy, King's College London Douglas Porch, Naval War College, Rhode Island Adam Roberts, University of Oxford Mark Roseman, Keele University Philip Towle, Queens' College, Cambridge Charles Townshend, Keele University Martin van Creveld, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Book Description
In a remarkably concise, readable, and accessible format, John Iceland provides a comprehensive picture of poverty in America, He shows how poverty is measured and understood and how it has changed over time, as well as how public policies have grappled with poverty as a political issue and an economic reality. This edition has been updated and includes a new preface.
Customer Reviews:
Misleading.......2006-10-31
This is a very misleading book. There were many points that I would criticize, but it would take an entire book to do that. So I'll pick out three important issues and focus on those.
Issue One: Welfare and Out of Wedlock Childbirths
One example is the effect of welfare on out of wedlock childbirths. On page 59 Iceland criticizes the theory that welfare payments are responsible for increased rates of out of wedlock childbirths. Iceland points to the fact that inflation-adjusted welfare payments have declined, whereas out of wedlock childbirths have increased. But single mothers are available for other assistance programs such as food stamps, public housing, and Medicaid. When the full package of benefits is included, the total aid available to single mothers has kept up with inflation.
On page 136 Iceland cites Robert Moffit's 1992 research showing that welfare has only caused a slight increase in out of wedlock childbirths. But after other researchers such as Mark Rosenzweig and the economists Jeff Grogger and Stephen Bronars found a large connection, Moffit reexamined the issue. His more thorough methodology and found that welfare did cause a significant increase in out of wedlock childbirths. Moffit reported this in 1998. Why did Iceland mention his 1992 research but not his 1998 research?
Issue Two: The Color of Poverty
One problem is that Iceland documents the fact that poverty statistics show that most of the poor are white. On page 38 he criticizes the fact that most media reports tend to show pictures of blacks when discussing poverty, thus creating a false perception. But as Iceland discusses, most poverty is short term, usually from a divorce, a death, or a lost job. On page 49 he mentions that black children make up a majority of the long term poor.
I would submit that when people think about poverty they think about long term poverty, not brief poverty spells. Like it or not, Americans have to grapple with the fact that entrenched, generational poverty is disproportionately black.
Issue Three: Cause of Poverty
The biggest problem with the book is its analysis of the cause of poverty. It concludes that out of wedlock childbirths are a minor cause relative to the inequality embedded in a free market, capitalist society. But the way it reaches that conclusion is through a statistical analysis in which possible causes are each treated as independent variables to see which explains the greatest amount of poverty.
But supporters of the theory that poverty is caused by out of wedlock childbirths do not blame the out of wedlock birth in itself. After all, college educated single mothers show that an out of wedlock childbirth is not necessarily a ticket to poverty. The problem is the lost opportunity in terms of the chance of graduating high school and college. Page 422 of the bipartisan policy book The New World of Welfare documents the fact that while most out of wedlock childbirths happen to women in their 20's, half of all *first* out of wedlock childbirths happen to women in their teens (fortunately this is on the decline). This is early enough to interfere with the mother's education, and makes it much more likely that she will drop out, or not go to college. The lesson is that the other factors that cause poverty, such as education, are dependent upon family breakdown. They are not independent variables, and any statistical analysis that treats them as though they were independent will come up with flawed results.
There is another problem. Even if Iceland is correct that out of wedlock childbirths do not cause poverty, the research of Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur in their landmark book Growing Up With a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps documents the fact that children of single mothers are more likely to drop out of school, abuse drugs, suffer from depression or low self-esteem, have lower lifetime earnings, and are more likely to have out of wedlock children themselves. Furthermore, only about half of this gap can be attributed to poverty itself. Fatherlessness is an independent contributing factor.
I would instead recommend that interested readers check out The New World of Welfare edited by Rebecca Blanks and Ron Haskins. It is a bipartisan collection of essays on welfare and poverty representing the left and right. It is interesting that none of the "liberal" contributors disagreed with the "conservative" claim that family breakdown is an important cause of poverty. And on the other side, none of the "conservatives" disagreed with the liberal claim that although welfare reform has been successful, there have been some women who are worse off. The liberal theory could be put this way: "family breakdown is an important cause of poverty, but we need to find a way to both provide aid *and* fix the family." The only differences are on policy prescriptions, not analysis. It is a refreshing bit of consensus in an otherwise acrimonious debate. I would also recommend Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality by Thomas Sowell and The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families by James Wilson.
Academic affair depicting poverty in charts and graphs.......2005-06-19
John Iceland has taken a devout stab at analyzing poverty in the United States from an academic standpoint. In fact, this book is obviously a publishable doctoral dissertation clocking in at a scant 152 pages of readable text with the rest covering footnotes and references. Sure looks like a dissertation to me.
Its not that this book is bad, it's just fails to put a face on poverty. One can read the book and gather big picture analysis of the trend in American poverty and discover fodder for debating the policy issue, but one through reading the book doesn't come to know the poverty-stricken people any better. To do that through reading would require picking up a copy of "The Working Poor," by David Shipler or "Getting nickled and dimed in America," by Barbara Ehrenreich. Iceland's work reaches out to academics and policy-makers and helps them to understand poverty measures, characteristics of the poverty population (through statistics albeit), causes of poverty, and effect of poverty policy. Though, it's readable I would think it only reaches those who are students of poverty and not to the hearts and minds of the average American.
Go elsewhere for engaging books to help you understand the challenges of those living in poverty. But by all means pick up Iceland's "Poverty in America," if you have a term paper to write, are looking for data to back-up policy positions, or need to mine the issue and work in a service field to those in poverty. Iceland points out that relative poverty thrives in the United States today due to low wages and lack of wise public support programs. Though we are the land of plenty, many people still suffer, not gaining any benefit of living in a wealthy nation. It gives cause for thought.
--MMW
Average customer rating:
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Opciones Y Propuestas Estrategicas Para La Superacion De La Pobreza Y Precariedad Urbana En America Latina Y El Caribe
Manufacturer: United Nations Pubns
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 General
| Poverty
| Current Events
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Spanish
| Foreign Language Nonfiction
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Pobreza
| Sucesos de Actualidad
| No-Ficción
| Libros en español
| Formats
| Books
Ciencias Sociales
| No-Ficción
| Libros en español
| Formats
| Books
| Antropología
| Arqueología
| Asistencia Social
| Biblioteca y Ciencia de la Información
| Ciencias Políticas
| Comunicación
| Costumbres y Tradiciones
| Cultura Popular
| Demografía
| Emigración e Imigración
| Estadística
| Estudios Infantiles
| Estudios de Museos y Museología
| Estudios de los Medios de Comunicación
| Estudios del Género
| Folclore y Mitología
| General
| Geografía Humana
| Gerontología
| Grupos Especiales
| Investigación
| Lingüística
| Referencia
| Sociología
| Violencia en la Sociedad
ASIN: 9213228597 |
Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Children and Youth Services Review, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Description:
Average customer rating:
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Feeding Wild Birds in Winter
Clive Dobson
Manufacturer: Firefly Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Animal Care & Pets
| Home & Garden
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Ages 9-12
| Children's Books
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Birdwatching
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0920668178 |
Book Description
Feeding birds in winter appeals to everyone, but there are some simple ways in which it can become more enjoyable.
This book covers the basics of feeding birds in the city and suburbs, and in the country, too. It contains basic information for identifying birds that stay in cold areas throughout winter, and for each kind describes what they like and need to eat. There is information on how to make up mixtures of grain and suet for birds, how to build feeders, and the best kind to buy if you don't want to build.
This book deals with feeding problems and pest problems: squirrels and birds that "hog" feeding stations, mice and cats. There are recipes for food, tips on growing natural bird foods, hand feeding, sources of wild bird food, and projects for city parks. There is even a section on small projects for children, so that they can have fun feeding birds too.
Well illustrated, with drawings of birds, feeders, and diagrams on how to set up an inviting garden habitat for birds -- all year round.
Average customer rating:
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Feeding Winter Birds
Bob Waldon
Manufacturer: Voyageur Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Birdwatching
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
Reference
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
Ornithology
| Zoology
| Biological Sciences
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0896581667 |
Average customer rating:
- Great book albeit no color.
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Feeding Winter Birds in the Pacific Northwest
Bob Waldon
Manufacturer: Mountaineers Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Birds
| Field Guides
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
Northwest
| United States
| Regional
| Field Guides
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Birdwatching
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
Reference
| Outdoors & Nature
| Subjects
| Books
Ornithology
| Zoology
| Biological Sciences
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0898864054 |
Customer Reviews:
Great book albeit no color........1998-07-19
We checked out this book from a local library and were so impressed we are ordering it from Amazon. It is comprehensive on the subjects covered without getting technically boring. A must for bird lovers of the Pacific Northwest!
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