Superb.... A perceptive; suspenseful account. --The New York Times Book Review"Dunn demythologizes Elizabeth and Mary. In humanizing their dynamic and shifting relationship; Dunn describes it as fueled by both rivalry and their natural solidarity as women in an overwhelmingly masculine world." --Boston HeraldThe political and religious conflicts between Queen Elizabeth I and the doomed Mary; Queen of Scots; have for centuries captured our imagination and inspired memorable dramas played out on stage; screen; and in opera. But few books have brought to life more vividly the exquisite texture of two women’s rivalry; spurred on by the ambitions and machinations of the forceful men who surrounded them. The drama has terrific resonance even now as women continue to struggle in their bid for executive power. Against the backdrop of sixteenth-century England; Scotland; and France; Dunn paints portraits of a pair of protagonists whose formidable strengths were placed in relentless opposition. Protestant Elizabeth; the bastard daughter of Anne Boleyn; whose legitimacy had to be vouchsafed by legal means; glowed with executive ability and a visionary energy as bright as her red hair. Mary; the Catholic successor whom England’s rivals wished to see on the throne; was charming; feminine; and deeply persuasive. That two such women; queens in their own right; should have been contemporaries and neighbours sets in motion a joint biography of rare spark and page-turning power.
#404730 in Books Random House 2000-03-21 2000-03-21Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.50 x 6.75 x 1.75l; #File Name: 0375502408558 pagesGreat product!
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58 of 58 people found the following review helpful. Authenticity at last.By Dr. Margret PoppI devoured the roughly 1500 pages of Victor Klemperer's diary 1933-1945 in the German original in four consecutive days and nights. What grips one is the question how Klemperer; an identifiable Jew; could have survived the Third Reich in the face of the horrendous persecution of the Jews which his diary shows closing in on him from all sides; and still be alive at the end of the Second World War viz the second volume of the book.What saved him was favorable coincidents -- so many of them that they would appear improbable in a work of fiction. On some occasions; his marriage to a Christian wife; a concert pianist; worked in his favor; on others; the courage of friends of the family; like the dentist; who dared to hide Klemperer's completed diary pages in her home - despite the danger of Gestapo raids - to save them for posterity; at other points the leniency of an official helped (Klemperer's World-War-I-medal for bravery; or his renown as a Professor of Romance Philology tended to summon respect).In this second volume; it is shown how humiliations for Jews went from bad to worse as the War climaxed. Jews e.g. were no longer permitted to use a seat when they rode in a tram. On one occasion; when Klemperer was on a tram-platform (where he was permitted to stand); the tramdriver addressed him in a sympathetic fashion saying: "What a relief to see your yellow star. At last someone to talk to openly in this moronic madness of a War." By a near miracle; Klemperer and his wife survived the Dresden air raid in February 1945; and his wife pulled the yellow star off him; he then survived the remainder of the war by posturing as an "Aryan" who lost all his identification.My mother used to say: "No matter what I can tell you about the Third Reich; you won't be able to realize its real atmosphere. Life under that dictatorship is not transmittable by mere words." The sensation is that Klemperer's diaries do transmit that atmosphere; and in enormously precise words. The authenticity of the account arises from the peculiar perspective of a diarist; who; at any given point; possesses neither a privileged view of the future; nor easy hindsight-cleverness.An example is Klemperer's poignant account of the deportation of the Dresden Jews. Trembling he might be with the next transport; he was at pains to gather all available information; but with little success. The fate of the deported was strictly prohibited knowledge; and rumors were ineffectual in this era of universal mutual distrust. Klemperer surmises; no sooner than three years into the War; that they probably all get killed. Auschwitz especially; he suspects; must be a slaughterhouse. But only after the end of the war he learns that the number of victims runs to the millions; that some people were read out for immediate destruction at the trains' arrival ramps; that people were purposefully annihilated by forced labor and hunger; by medical experiments; and gassings.Klemperer's portrayal of the non-Jewish Germans permits no easy generalizations. By at least as great a number of his German compatriots was he shown friendliness as unfriendliness. The behavior of the civilians was frequently tolerable; the chicanery and humiliations typically coming from the uniformed representatives of the suppressors; as the Gestapo. Heinous behavior was shown by the Hitler Youth in toto; a group into whom the fear and hatred of Jews was drilled unremittingly from the tenderest age by the Party Youth organization; which often caused rifts in families where no such fanaticism had originally ruled.This is certainly an account of history from which one can learn - important both for Germany in particular and for mankind in general; as a portrayal of human behavior under a terrible dictatorship; in which the varnish of human civilization cracked; and man stood revealed as the beast he can be. The book's instructive power lies in its precision; it is the most authentic book I ever read about the Third Reich.43 of 45 people found the following review helpful. Volume Two Continues This Valuable Frightening StoryBy Barron LaycockAs with Volume One (see my review); the most disarming and appealing feature of this tome is its slow and ineluctable building of suspense and empathy as World War I veteran Klemperer steadily weaves the day to day details of his life in Nazi Germany in the 12 years of that regime into a portrait of a rogue state moving irresistably down the path to tyranny and terror. The reader is sucked into the vortex of what it is like to live under such circumstances; where an aging Jewish professor who has built a life of purpose and meaning based on scholarship; hard work; and the belief in the rationalism of the state begins to understand that it will all unravel around him.As the story continues here; the years of tyranny of National Socialism reach their climax; so that Klemperer; a Jew married to an Aryan woman; increasingly finds solace and relief from the growing insanity swirling around him by concentrating on his academic writing; which he continues against all odds. Even the most simple and basic freedoms are denied them; so his refusal to submit to the progressively more invective growth of lies; invectives; and accusations of the Nazi regime build into a quiet resolve to resist in the way he knows best; by maintaining an intelligent; insightful; and careful witness to the everyday horrors perpetrated with malice and cunning on the Jews as the scapegoat for all of Germany's post-WWI social and economic woes.One reads in horror as Victor and Eva continue to be persecuted and systematically stripped of everything of meaning to them; their house; car; telephone; typewriter; even their beloved cat. While he understands all too well the dangers for him and his family; he consistently resists the increasingly strident pleas from family members for him to emigrate primarily because he identifies himself first and foremost as a German; and he refuses to abandon the Fatherland to the beastial likes of Hitler and the Nazis. One's sense of horror is magnified by his careful attention to the day to day details of living in the regime; the difficulties in finding socks; or clothing; or a cobbler; or vegetables; coffee; tobacco (both he and Eva are smokers); dealing with increasingly restrictive curfews; the ordeal and shame associated with the enforced wearing of the yellow star of David; the progressive acts of enforced segregation from the general populace; the occasional experiences at degradation at the hands of a youthful crowd of Hitler Youth.Yet there is great humanity evidenced here; both within the Jewish community and without it. The pathos of ordinary people caught in the web of a totalitarian state is made quite clear; unlike other academics who recently have argued in belief of a generalized and universalized hate on the part of ordinary Germans leading to their willing complicity in the persecution of Jews; Klemperer offers almost daily testimony of the unending acts of kindness; generosity; and personal risks that everyday citizens take to help and assist Jews to survivie against the dictates of the totalitarian regime. Again and again he is given free food; extra provisions; someone looking deliberately the other way when they did so at personal risk.In sum; Klemperer seems to acknowledge that life in Nazi Germany was a hell for all of the citizens; Jew and non-Jew alike. He pointedly gives credit to all the Aryans who assit Eva nd him as they flee from the Nazis into the more anonymous countryside in the tumult and confusion caused by the firebombing of Dresden. This; like the first volume; is a book that should become required reading for college students in world history.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Contemporaneous diary by a Jewish professorBy Nancy PhillipsUnique contemporaneous account of life in Nazi Germany; by an assimilated Jewish professor who survived (barely) due to his marriage to an "Aryan" woman. His intent was to capture everyday life in Dresden and not events outside his direct observation. End-notes are selective; with the assumption that the reader has some basic familiarity with the history of the Third Reich. I would recommend reading the recent Richard Evans trilogy as an excellent general history of Weimar and Third Reich Germany.
