The Thirty Years War (New York Review Books Classics)27 reviews C. V. Wedgwood NYRB Classics, 2005 A Panoramic and Poltically Sophisticated History + Detailed and thorough + Wedgwood's "Thirty Years War" is the Best History Available + One of the great books of the 20th century             Moura: The Dangerous Life of the Baroness Budberg2 reviews Nina Berberova NYRB Classics, 2005 Over the Samovar You've got to take this one in the right spirit. Berberova isn't a terribly good writer--discursive, disorganized, fatally susceptible to digression from almost any direction. Morever she doesn't seem particularly to like her subject--a failing perhaps more common among biographers than you might ...             Classic Crimes (New York Review Books Classics)6 reviews William Roughead NYRB Classics, 2000 The Holy Grail of True Crime Literature + A must for fans of historical true crime + His Cousin + Delicious Derelictions + Great tales in an unsatisfactory edition             Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda (New York Review Books Collections)6 reviews Thomas Powers New York Review Books, 2004 A trip down American security policy memory lane + informative + An Excellent Collection of Reviews from Powers I'm writing this to counter the troglodytish review posted by the unnamed reader from Alexandria, Virginia. My career was in the national security establishment--defense industry and State Department. I, along with Forrester, also have "no connection or history within the intelligence world." The ...             The Bog People: Iron Age Man Preserved (New York Review Books Classics)4 reviews P.V. Glob NYRB Classics, 2004 Glimpse into Iron Age life and ritual + Peat--a great preservative! + A reminder of life in the past. + "The dead and the sleeping, how they resemble one another"             The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership (New York ...5 reviews Harold Cruse NYRB Classics, 2005 He pretty much says it all. + *Warning* Stay Away from New Version with Stanley Crouch intro + The book that changed my intellectual life period + necessary for budding minds...             The Origins of the Inquisition in Fifteenth-Century Spain9 reviews B. Netanyahu New York Review Books, 2001 Even less confusion + Enlightening + The Theory and Practice of Intolerance + The Inquisition as a crime of racism             India (with CD): A Mosaic3 reviews New York Review Books, 2000 Bleeding Heart Essays Tunku Vardarajan in the India today says, India: a Mosaic is a con job. The word "mosaic" suggests a variety in the book. Instead the book talks about "bleeding-hearted" essays. According to him, the articles in the book were published elsewhere and are "profoundly stale." From my reading of the ...             American Humor: A Study of the National Character (New York Review Books Classics) Constance Rourke NYRB Classics, 2004 Stepping out of the darkness, the American emerges upon the stage of history as a new character, as puzzling to himself as to others. American Humor , Constance Rourke's pioneering "study of the national character," singles out the archetypal figures of the Yankee peddler, the backwoodsman, and the blackface minstrel to illuminate the fundamental role of popular culture in fashioning a ...             Looking Back Russell Baker New York Review of Books, 2002 Russell Baker is one of America’s most distinguished and best-loved journalists and commentators, famous not only for his long-running, wryly humorous syndicated column reflecting on national issues but for Growing Up, his memoir of his early years in rural Virginia. Baker has been observing American politics and culture for decades, and his years of experience shine through in these commentaries ...             From Heaven to Arcadia: The Sacred and the Profane in the Renaissance Ingrid Rowland New York Review Books, 2005 From the revelations of classical statuary pulled from the Roman soil as the popes began rebuilding the city in the fifteenth century, to the myth of serenity that Venice constructed to conceal its physical and political fragility, to bloody yet cultured Florence under the Medici, Ingrid Rowland traces the worldly, unworldly, and otherworldly strivings of artists, writers, popes, and politicians ...             The Moro Affair (New York Review Books Classics)2 reviews Leonardo Sciascia NYRB Classics, 2004 Second story in the book This book includes a shorter piece, "The Mystery of Majorana", which is a gem. It gives an explanation for the disappearance of the enigmatic and brilliant physicist Ettore Majorana. The story may or may not be the best researched explanation for what happened to Majorana, but the perspective ...             The World of Odysseus (New York Review Books Classics Series)12 reviews M.I. Finley NYRB Classics, 2002 Unanswerable + Good Scholarship + Talented Author = Great Read + A classic on classics + Solid Scholarship + Solid scholarship             War and the Iliad3 reviews Simone Weil, Rachel Bespaloff NYRB Classics, 2005 Historic Rescue from the Sands of Time + Sublime Masterpiece - Not the best translation + The Hedgehog and the Fox Besides being thankful to the New York Review of Books for publishing some of the most intelligent and expansive literary criticism around, we can now be grateful for one more gift from the series of New York Review Classics. This one, two essays ostensibly on the Iliad by Simone Weil and Rachel ...             The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren (New York Review Books Classics)2 reviews Iona Opie, Peter Opie NYRB Classics, 2001 Rhymes and reasons + Anthropology of a world like ours (but not quite) Most of the material for this book was gathered fifty years ago in British schools, but I'm sure readers in all countries, for all time, will find it amusing and revealing. When I'd finished it, I felt I had a greater insight into children's minds and concerns, which they express, of course, in the ...             Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties (New York Review Books Classics)1 review Murray Kempton NYRB Classics, 2004 Essential reading to understanding Communism in the U.S. Picked this one up through reference in a biography dictionary on Communism in the United States. Glad I did. This is a hidden gem. Mr. Kempton does not approach the issue from a philosophical or principle orinted point of view. He doesn't discuss Communism and its ideals or compare and contrast ...             Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (New York Review Books Classics)7 reviews Alexander Berkman NYRB Classics, 1999 Beyond Terrorism + One of the Best Books I've ever read... + the best anachist memoir + "Inhumanity is the keynote of stupidity in power" (p. 299) + Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist             The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (New York Review Books Classics)4 reviews Nirad C. Chaudhuri NYRB Classics, 2001 NCC's Masterpiece + Three In One + Interesting perspective from an era gone by..... This is a must book for all those who've seen Rural Bengal/Bangladesh in its true form with its summers, rainy season and winters with the human face. Description is vivid and also the dreams about Foreign Land (Bilet). NCC with one of his best novels however, with his usual opinionated and often ...             To the Finland Station (New York Review Books Classics)13 reviews Edmund Wilson NYRB Classics, 2003 Become a fly on the wall + Takes time to read it, but pays off tremendously + At once an excellent and dismal overview of socialism of Marx's study. That's how this book makes you feel. Wilson's mastery of prose, artistry of language and clarity of vision draws you into the lives of his subjects so you feel you're there. You can almost smell the smoke from Marx's pipe as he writes, feel the boils on his butt, and hear his ...             A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (New York Review Books Classics)44 reviews Alistair Horne NYRB Classics, 2006 Positively 6 stars + Masterpiece + Excellent, but... + A Slightly Slow, yet Very Good Analysis. + You want a better understanding of what's going on in Iraq?