Curious Creatures: Snakes (Reading Success Series)

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Polish roots

Great for everything except shopping!

A comprehensive guide to Poland

Without this book Poland wouldn't have been so much fun!

Very good Poland travel book

Lonely Planet Poland
Tom Parkinson , Richard Watkins , and Neil Wilson
Manufacturer: Lonely Planet Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books
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Lonely Planet Polish Phrasebook: With Two-Way Dictionary (Lonely Planet Polish Phrasebook)

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The Rough Guide to Poland 6 (Rough Guide Travel Guides)

ASIN: 174059522X

Book Description

Stroll the white sand beaches of the Baltic coast, hike the trails of the spectacular Tatra Mountains and explore historic city centers from Karkow to Warsaw. Whether you're here for urban pleasures or in pursuit of nature, this inspiring guide will help you connect with Poland in all its guises.

• GET AROUND with detailed maps and itineraries from the Great Masurian Lakes in the north to the Alpine national parks in the south

• REST EASY in country cottages and Soviet workers' hotels - reviews to suit every taste and budget

• FIND ADVENTURE - we show you where to hike, ski, raft, ride, sail and much more

• HIT THE TOWN - our listings cover cozy cellar bars and cafes, traditional restaurants and Polish 'milk bars'

• TALK THE TALK - our practical language guide helps you chat to the locals - na zdrowie!

Customer Reviews:

Polish roots.......2007-05-13

My wife's maternal grandparents hail from Poland, so when planing a Eurpoean vacation for this summer, Poland it was. As independent travelers, we have always favored Lonely Planet travel books in the past. Once again Lonely Planet delivered the goods. Detailed descriptions of things to see & do, places to stay, and various methods of transportation. Additional internet rescources for finding more hotels than the ones reviewed. I would recommend this series of travel books to all from young backpackers to mature (myself) travelers.

Great for everything except shopping!.......2006-11-07

Lonely Planet has been known for covering EVERYTHING in it's books. Thie one really does have a big flaw. Sites are quite OK and hotels are good too - though sometimes choices may be strange. However shopping is done dreadfully - at least in Warsaw. If your happy with the souvenirs you bought using this book, then you are quite lucky. Many shops with fine hand craft, genuine Polish hand-made are unlisted. Also shops with Jewish memorabilia, getting more popular after turbulent history tend to be missing. And when you come to normal shopping its a complete disaster! You wanna hang out in a mall or buy clothes a lot cheaper then in western Europe? Sure... Tourists and Ex-pats do it. But for sure NOT using Lonely Planet. The ever popular Arkadia Mall (biggest in this part of Europe), a place where English, German, French, Spanish and other languages are often heard as often as Polish is missing. So is the not much smaller and also popular with expats Galeria Mokotów. And what mall do tehy list? The dull out-skirt Sadyba Best Mall with a few stores, the usual fast-food joints and a few crappy stores. And it's lonely planets best tip on shopping? Come on! Almost no one goes there, except primary school trips (it's only attraction is the IMAX cinema).

I am puzzled by teh Warsaw shopping chapter. You can't come to the city and not here of Arkadia or Galeria Mokotów. If you see them, you can't recommend the crappy Sadyba Best Mall. So either someone didn't reaserch shopping at all (and just went to SBM) or Lonely Planets standards are dropping and the choice was made in some different dark ways. I just hope the ownership was not an issue. SBM is the only American mall. Arkadia is European, Galeria Mokotów - Jewish and most others French... What other thing could have provoked such a choice?

A comprehensive guide to Poland.......2006-11-06

As a Pole living abroad (but frequently visiting) I have the dual perspective of "a local" but also that of a tourist. This book is easily the best source of background information on all sites and places in modern Poland, from the well-known tourist attractions to the small villages off the beaten track. I was pleasantly surprised at the depth of historical, ethnographic and cultural information about many of those places.
Thanks to this book I managed to discover some interesting places in Poland that I should have known about, if not visited before. Once I got there, I found that relying on the information in the book (especially on "how to get there" or "where to stay") proved more reliable than the information available to the visitor "on the ground". My short trip to the Jura National Park, north of Cracow, was a perfect example of a trip I would not have done if it was not for this guidebook.
Thoroughly recommended to anybody planning to spend an extensive holiday in Poland, or for repeat trips; if your travel is limited to the main cities like Warsaw, Cracow or Gdansk you may find other guidebooks, specific to those locations, sufficient.

Without this book Poland wouldn't have been so much fun!.......2005-07-23

I'd wonder how much time and frustration it would take finding out all this in depth information about the country and it's attractions myself. Especially since we didn't know much about Poland in the first place. It was a true blessing having this book around, especially since many Poles at places you need it most often don't speak English or German. Only price information should need some adjustment (which might have something to do with EU membership related inflation?). I used the print which was updated in Jan 2005, but some prices already doubled!

Very good Poland travel book.......2004-11-12

I recently went to Poland for the first time and found this book to be an absoutely wonderful guide to Warsaw, Krakow, and the Auschwitz concentration camps. All too often guide books that cover an entire country lack the kind of detail a traveler needs, but this book did not suffer that problem at all. The section on Warsaw was actually better organized and contained more detailed factual information than the DK book dedicated solely to that city. This was the only book I needed to help me get around Krakow and Auschwitz as well. I can't speak for the hotel and restaurant recommendations in the book because I never used any of them, but as far as information about historical sites and points of interest this is an outstanding book.

Update: In planning for my second trip to Poland, I recently purchased the Rough Guide to Poland, and I have to say it is even better than the Lonely Planet book because it includes quite a lot more detail. If you only buy one book, get the Rough Guide. But if you buy two, the Lonely Planet book is also very good.

Lonely Planet Best of Krakow (Lonely Planet Encounter Series)

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Lonely Planet Best of Krakow (Lonely Planet Encounter Series)
Richard Watkins
Manufacturer: Lonely Planet Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

Lonely Planet | Guidebook Series | Travel | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1741048222

Lonely Planet Krakow (Lonely Planet Travel Guides)

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Another User Unfriendly Lonely Planet Guide

Lonely Planet Krakow (Lonely Planet Travel Guides)
Krzysztof Dydynski
Manufacturer: Lonely Planet Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | Travel | Subjects | Books

Guidebooks | Reference & Tips | Travel | Subjects | Books

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Lonely Planet Poland

ASIN: 0864426984

Book Description

Kraków, a city of proud traditions and rich history, is unveiled in this comprehensive guide by one of its own citizens. Explore labyrinthine salt mines, marvel at religious icons and relax in medieval cellar bars with this book as your indispensable companion.

13 detailed maps including full colour city maps
essential information to get you around Kraków
background to the symbolism and magic of the Wawel Castle
maps and details of excursions to national parks
notes on the Schindler's List movie trail

Customer Reviews:

Another User Unfriendly Lonely Planet Guide.......2000-04-04

Despite having numerous bad experiences using Lonely Planet guides in the past (India, Nepal, Colombia etc.), I was recently forced to buy the LP guide on Krakow. I had previously promised myself that I would never again waste my money on a L.P. guide. However, due to the absence of any other guides for Krakow, I was forced to break down and buy this "guide".

I believe that L.P.'s popularity is based on the fact that they have a virtual monopoly on guides for some obscure travel destinations and they have no incentive to improve. I doubt that many travellers rely on LP guides for travel in France, since so many better options are availible. However, if you are travelling to an exotic travel destination, you are stuck with LP.

In any event, the Krakow guide confirmed my negative view of L.P. guides. As usual, the history portion of the guide was very informative and made great reading during my train trip from Prague to Krakow.

However, upon arrival the flaws of the L.P. format became painfully apparent. The font was (as usual) tiny and required a magnifying glass to read. The information regarding sights was overdone for minor sights and woefully lacking for important ones.

For example the portion of the guide dealing with Wawel Castle (one of the top sights in Krakow) was completely unorganized and indecipherable. The cathedral had many things in it which looked interesting but were not commented on in the guidebook. After whetting my appetite to check out the famous Wawel Chokra, the guide did not give information as to locating the thing. Ultimatly, I tagged on to a tour group to get the information which should have been contained in the guide!

Another weak point are the lousy maps. They do not conform with reality and are utterly useless. The maps are located in the back of the book. As a result, in order to use the maps, the user has to flip back and forth between the maps and the sections regarding the location you are trying to track down. This is irritating when you are walking along trying to find something.

The main maps contain a polyglot of information which mixes hotels, restaurants and sights in no apparent order. Would it be too much to ask to have some kind of practical organization? Would it not make sense to put a map in each section with a simple key to the locales discussed? Say what you will about Frommer's, they do maps well! L.P. just gets you lost! I just don't see the adventure into complicating a trip with needless frustration caused by getting lost, especially in a simply laid out city such as Krakow.

In it's defense, the guide did give good recommendations regarding hotels and restaurants and was well done in the Auschwitz section.

Book Description

"A book of great importance…it surpasses all others in breadth and depth."—Commentary

If the past century will be remembered for its tragic pairing of civilized achievement and organized destruction, at the heart of darkness may be found Hitler, Stalin, and the systems of domination they forged. Their lethal regimes murdered millions and fought a massive, deadly war. Yet their dictatorships took shape within formal constitutional structures and drew the support of the German and Russian people.

In the first major historical work to analyze the two dictatorships together in depth, Richard Overy gives us an absorbing study of Hitler and Stalin, ranging from their private and public selves, their ascents to power and consolidation of absolute rule, to their waging of massive war and creation of far-flung empires of camps and prisons. The Nazi extermination camps and the vast Soviet Gulag represent the two dictatorships in their most inhuman form. Overy shows us the human and historical roots of these evils. 16 pages of illustrations.

Customer Reviews:

Highly Recommended.......2006-10-10

I have seen some criticism of this book, including from professional historians, but I don't see it. I found this to be an absorbing and fascinating look at both Hitler & Stalin, as the author cuts back and forth between their careers. The compare and contrast method really works quite well, and this book also gives Overy a chance to re-look at some of his work on Nazi Germany & Soviet Russia, after Soviet archives were coming available. I think this is a great work of history by a major historian- one who has proved his knowledge of a wide range of WWII matters. Not for the dilletante- its quite long, but for the serious WWII reader its a rewarding experience.

Very Informational, but a little too informational..........2006-07-10

The Dictators, of course, porvided a lot of information about Stalin and Hitler, but one thing was prevailant throughout the book: numbers. The facts Richard Overy presented to the reader left little to be doubted about his thesis, but also it was hard to understand them (and it blocked the flow). I rate this 4 stars because although my criticisms may be harsh, it taught me much about Hitler and Stalin, it will serve as a good reference book, and I may want to reread it when I have a fuller understanding of the two Dictators. (This is coming from a 10th Grade history enthusiast)

Outstanding.......2005-08-06

Overy is more than a scholar; he is a deep thinker. There is a world of difference. "The Dictators" is a seminal work comparing how the two greatest dictators of all time exercised control over their political, economic, and military systems all while laying out the implications of this control.

It is the painstaking comparison, often paragraph-by-paragraph, that gives this work its magisterial quality. But what really makes "The Dictators" work is how it builds on Overy's previous work, "Why the Allies Won," which assumed that the Allied victory was not a forgone conclusion in 1940 and asked, and answered, probing questions about comparative command structures, production economies, and capital sources.

Without this base, Overy's latest could have become just another book on Hitler and Stalin. And a boring one at that. With it, however, we get insights unavailable elsewhere. Having studied Marxism, Leninism, and the Soviet Union for forty years, I was deeply impressed.

The next step in this line of scholarship is to put it in the context of falling information costs. Wealth is created when increasing amounts of ever cheaper information can be substituted for other resources like land, labor, and capital. "The Dictators" describes how Hitler and Stalin did the opposite, systematically lowering the cost of information or themselves and raising it for everyone else.

Following Overy's reasoning in "Why the Allies Won" the question is, absenting world war, was the Dictator system sustainable? If so, for how long? This question is critical to understanding the future of China as it tries to contain falling information costs and keep some semblance of Party leadership. And critical to us in trying to manage our relationship with China. Next book Mr. Overy?

Editing: Five Stars. Comparing two systems across so many functions page-by-page and often paragraph-by paragraph can quickly become unwieldy and most would advise strongly against it. Better to keep each leader to his own chapter. But Overy carries this off and his editor wisely let him proceed.

Copy Editing: Five Stars

Very Good.......2005-07-31

In recent times libertarians following Hayek have suggested that the regimes of Hitler and Stalin were two sides of the same coin. Overy who has written a very good book on the reason why the allies won the Second World War examines the two regimes.

One of the more interesting chapters is that dealing with the two economic systems. In some respects there were significant similarities. In the 30's both systems achieved amazing growth figures. The Soviet by around 100% the German by some 50%. In both economies growth was fuelled by massive investment by depressing living standards. In Russia the collectivisation policy allowed for the siphoning of farm income to fund machine imports. In Germany wages were regulated and kept at depression levels. The Soviet system allowed some private enterprise to flourish mainly in small plots and the German system had large state enterprises developing synthetic rubber and oil.

Many other aspects of the regimes were similar, the control of culture, the idealisation of the leader the means of repression. However there were also significant differences. Hitler believed in a sort of racial mercantilism where the key to prosperity of society was the geographic size of the country. To achieve wealth a country must have an empire. That empire was to be administered by those of the "German" race who operated a slave type system in the conquered territories. Inferior races were to be serfs denied education and citizenship. No one of course was going to voluntarily be part of that empire so that one had to have a strong army. In fact the key role of the government, in the Nazi State was to provide that army so that the country could achieve territorial expansion and safeguard the destiny of the race.

The Soviet system although having the same concentration camps, the same elements of repression was more a child of the enlightenment. Historically Russia had been a country that had celebrated the role of the "Russian People" in the development of the Czarist empire. Under the communists the country was not even known as Russia but the more abstract Union of Socialist Soviets. Broadly it was a repellent system but not a racist one. This meant that during the crisis of the Second World War it was better able to mobilise its resources and win. The Germans by their policy of racial exclusivity limited the potential size of their armies and were appalling at using the resources of their conquests.

The Red and the Brown.......2005-04-19

I found this book to be a good comparison between the internal structures of two societies that both careened off the road of civilization at about the same time. The author does seem to give too much credit to the formal, but unobserved, laws on the books in the Soviet experiment when comparing the two dictatorships. However, his chapter on the economic structure of both regimes helped me understand this aspect of Hitler's rule.
After a describing the worst of the camps, I think the word "evil" might have emerged from Professor Overy as one possible explanation of what occured.

Dictators Hitlers Germany Stalins Russia

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Dictators Hitlers Germany Stalins Russia
Richard Overy
Manufacturer: W W NORTON & CO @
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000TNCUME

$THE DICTATORS: HITLER\'S GERMANY, STALIN\'S RUSSIA$
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THE DICTATORS: HITLER\'S GERMANY, STALIN\'S RUSSIA
RICHATRD OVERY
Manufacturer: BCA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SEHQB4

Brothers under the skin: divided by dogma, Stalin and Hitler were united by terror.(Books & Arts)(The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia)(Book Review): An article from: The Weekly Standard

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Brothers under the skin: divided by dogma, Stalin and Hitler were united by terror.(Books & Arts)(The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia)(Book Review): An article from: The Weekly Standard
Henrik Bering
Manufacturer: News America Incorporated
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000ALPII8
Release Date: 2006-07-14

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Weekly Standard, published by News America Incorporated on April 25, 2005. The length of the article is 1576 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Brothers under the skin: divided by dogma, Stalin and Hitler were united by terror.(Books & Arts)(The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia)(Book Review)
Author: Henrik Bering
Publication: The Weekly Standard (Magazine/Journal)
Date: April 25, 2005
Publisher: News America Incorporated
Volume: 10 Issue: 30 Page: 37(2)

Article Type: Book Review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia.(Book review): An article from: The Historian

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The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia.(Book review): An article from: The Historian
Johnpeter Horst Grill
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

Russia | History | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This digital document is an article from The Historian, published by Thomson Gale on March 22, 2006. The length of the article is 569 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia.(Book review)
Author: Johnpeter Horst Grill
Publication: The Historian (Magazine/Journal)
Date: March 22, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 68 Issue: 1 Page: 194(2)

Article Type: Book review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia

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The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia

Manufacturer: BCA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HC59CK

Book Description

Comprehensive anthology depicts 205 boldly rendered creatures for royalty-free use by graphic artists and craftspeople. Extensive menagerie includes mammals (Barbary ape, Indian rhinoceros, more); birds (puffin, heron, other species); amphibians (salamander, newt, frog); fish ( barracuda, rainbow trout, etc.) and scores of other wild creatures.

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