History Books

Written as an allegory or perhaps a pseudo-fable, "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" is one of those rare finds that enables the reader to explore familiar territory in a new way and from a different perspective.

While we have (hopefully) all read or heard countelss Holocaust tales, this one is told from a new and indeed daring viewpoint - that of the naieve nine year old son of a Nazi Commandant, who has no idea the evils and horrors surrounding him. In fact, he can't quite understand why the people on the "other side of the fence" get to wear striped pajamas and play with each other all day while he's confined in his new home at "Out-With."

This is a novel for EVERYONE- I truly believe children as well as adults will gain so much from reading it, regardles of their race, religion, nationality or background. It is short and extremely fast-paced- the average reader should be able to read it entirely within a day or two, however it will continue to haunt you and invade your thoughts for weeks on end.

While some potential readers will avoid this one perhaps because it is so hard to read about the Holocaust, I can't stress highly enough that this is a "MUST READ" and one that will have you smiling and laughing along the way- a rare reaction to a story built upon the evils of the Holocaust. Furthermore, this story is not only about the Holocaust, but applies equally to all those situations in which there are groups of people on two sides of a "fence" - it is applicable to the current and past crises in Darfur, genocides throughout the ages, and even those less obvious ones found in our school yards or our own neighborhoods across the county.

I liked this book alot. I can't really describe it that well without giving it away but it's very good. It's well written and I like the approach John Boyne used on the subject.
This book is also being turned into a movie coming out in the US in November 2008. So if you like reading books and then watching the movie that goes with it....
But very powerful and just very good.

PS, its also sad

... in the negative meaning of the word.

After hearing a lot of good about this book and seeing on the cover it is "soon to become a major movie" I decided to pick it up before it would hit cinema. I wish I didn't.

Why?
1) The plot is very thin and you can see the end -dramatic as it is- coming halfway through the story.
2) The plot is also very unbelievable. Two boys meeting on a silent spot for over a year in a place like Auschwitz? And oh yeah, exactly on a place where there's a hole in the fence??
3) There are a lot of continuancy errors in the writing (e.g. on one page it is said that he has forgotten the names of all his friends, but on the page before that he mentions them all)
4) And this point is the worst for me (because of this it was impossible for me to feel one with the character and it kept irritating me througout the book): Out-with (Bruno, the 9-year old boy through whose eyes the story is told, thinks this is the name of the camp). It took some time before I realized what was meant with it. And why? Because I thought Bruno was a German boy. And there is no way a German boy would understand Auschwitz as Out-with. The camp would have to be called Ausmitz or something like that. So either Bruno is a bit deaf or he thinks in English.

The only positive thing I can think about this book is that it is easy reading and it will take only two hours of your time.

Thhis is the best book that I have read.
It gives a child's eye view of the holocaust.
I read it and then gave it to my son to read.
It creates a fabulous way to dialogue about a difficult subject.
Amazing read. A must Read.

A sappy story that tries to denounce the absurdity of the Holocaust by looking at it through the eyes of two children that, despite being as involved as children could be, cannot even begin to comprehend the situation. This book is really quite lame for adult reading; it never made me care enough about any of the characters. I think the right audience is probably kids in their early teens. Problem is, kids in their early teens probably don't know much about the Holocaust, so a portrayal from a child's view that can't even say Führer or Auschwitz properly is surely not going to help them understand. (The use of words by Bruno like "Fury" or "Out-With" to refer to those also didn't make a lot of sense to me, particularly because Bruno speaks German, not English.) I was gifted this book and had been told it was being praised by critics, but found it to be a total letdown.

This book is truly interesting in that it explains a process that many consumers thought that they were already familiar with.

This book will explain why:

1) it always seems the person at the register is being "trained".

2) kids flock to most fast food joints.

3) the fast food industry exploded with growth in the last 30 years.

4) This country needs an alternative to our current and growing feeding trends!

Outstanding You: Discover, Design and Achieve Ultimate Fitness

This book should be required reading at all American schools. The purpose behind this book is not to convert people to vegetarian/vegan diets, but instead to educate them about the disastrous state our food supply is in. Though I use this book for information to support my vegan/vegetarian diet, I found it incredibly detailed and thought provoking. Highly recommended for anyone seeking more information on where their food comes from.

Ron Betta
Author - Outstanding You

received the book quicker than expected. the book was in excellent condition. I highly recommend this seller

The author offers reader a book behind the fast food industry which mushrooms around the county with their joints which the majority of working class rely on for their quick meals.

His research on the growers, suppliers, processors, laborers, politics and health issue behind the smiling teenager order takers leads reader to the composition of the hamburger in blood, tears and sweat from thousands of cattle, handled by the chain of workers before going to your mouth. It also makes you wonder who is eating the steaks and leaving the "residue of fats, noses, ears, trims" grounded into a mixture enhanced with artificial favor - a virtue"100% beef".

Does fast food industry cost you an arm and a leg? By eating the cheap fast food, we may pay a dear price for healthcare later!

This book illustrates the Tao of food: good and bad, healthy and junk, natural and artificial, slow and fast, traditional and modern, real and illusion.

Who program the population in acting "the allegiance to the flag of fast food industry, one fast food nation under God with franchises around 50 states in offering cheap hamburgers and freedom fries for all"?

I'm a vegetarian who doesn't eat at fast-food restaurants. I thought this book was going to be an interesting expose of the fast-food industry. Instead, it was a series of meandering stories that weren't all that compelling. I got about halfway through the book and realized there was really no point in finishing it.

I noticed that whenever someone was portayed negatively, the word "Republican" invariably cropped up. When one meatpacking company owner became less sympathetic to workers, Schlosser goes out of his way to let the reader know that he went from being a liberal Democrat to a conservative Republican.

It's this kind of political posturing (Schlosser is obviously a liberal Democrat who can't keep his disdain for Republicans out of his writing), along with the fact that Schlosser just isn't that good of a writer, that helps to sink this book.

I kept wondering when I was going to learn something interesting that wasn't obvious. All I learned was what I already knew. Fast-food is a giant industry that pays teenagers low wages and uses a lot of potatoes from giant agribusiness companies and beef from giant cattle companies. Oh yeah, and they use flavorings from companies in New Jersey.

Stop the presses.

This book may save your life's savings. Please read it. Kudos to the courageous author for writing this remarkable book, and for giving common people timely and fair warning for what lies ahead. We need more people like Mr. Arnold, who makes this world a better place.

You do not need an economics background to write a book like this but the ability to construct a logical argument or a knowledge of history would help. The author ignores even the most basic understanding of monetary supply, fractional reserve banking or GDP. An annoying book demonstrating the authors ignorance and little more.

The basic thesis, that there will be another Great Depression, seven times worse in fact according to the author, rests entirely on one premise: the number of 45-54 year olds peaking and declining precipitously will cause the Dow Jones (the economy) to crash just as hard. I must admit, the 80+ year correlation between the inflation-adjusted DJIA and the 45-54 year old demographic is astounding. But as we all should know, correlation does not equal causation. In fact that correlation unraveling as we speak, the Dow was sluggish at around 11,000 until 2006-2007, turned highly volatile, peaked in 2007 at over 14,000, and declined since then to well below 12,000. We are now in a bear market if not a recession, and All while the "big-spender" demographic skyrocketed, which will continue until 2011! Where is the boom? The Dow should be on its way to 26,000 and eventually crash to 5000 according to the author. Although this was not the first time the two graphs diverged, he seems to have an explanation for the other divergences (e.g. the New Deal, birth control, etc.). If the New Deal could turn things around, how come this time he says the government will not be able to do anything about it? This book leaves the reader with more questions than answers.

I do believe we are in for some rough times ahead, but demographics is not the reason. The credit and housing crises, combined with high oil and food prices (really just a commodities bubble that has popped), has been hammering away at the economy for the past year or so, and things may still get worse before they get better. Stagflationary recession is likely if we are not already in one, and it may be longer and deeper that expected. But a 13-year depression? The only things that could do that (given all the safeguards we now have in place thanks to FDR) are a) Peak Oil happening suddenly, b) a major war or severe terrorist attack, or c) The Fed. Even Bernanke admits the Fed turned the mild recession of 1929 into a full blown depression through overreacting and using an outdated playbook (i.e. raising rates before and during a deflationary recession).

As for Japan, their 13-year malaise was caused by their own housing and credit crisis, plus the stock market (Nikkei) bursting. Combined with the BOJ raising rates. And like us, the correlation between the Nikkei and demographics has parted ways since 2007, when it declined again.

The ideas in this booklet have some ground. I wouldn't swear by the correlation between demorgaphics and Dow Jones Index, but there is some sense. Worth reading to be better prepared for the upcoming events.

This is a great little book that you can read in less than an hour. It's based on the work of Harry S. Dent in Mr. Dent's excellent book The Next Great Bubble Boom. I believe the concept. I think demographics is the most important factor in the economy of the future. The demographics of the United States is very bad. You can't replace 78 million boomers with 48 million Gen Xer's. The Xer's will already have jobs and careers. The numbers of the generation after the Xer's is not good at all. Who will replace the boomers when millions start to retire? Who will replace their spending? Bonds? The author Daniel Arnold talks about bonds on page 47 of his book The Great Bust Ahead. Long term bonds? Nuts! Bonds are just a promise backed my nothing. It's the generational bonds that will be broken. The old people of the future will not be related by blood or race to the young people of the future. Overall, I agree with the author and his computer models, once the huge bulge of the middle aged boomers move through the system and start retiring, markets can only go down. Regards, Keith Renick, Peachtree City, Ga.

Interesting book; valid history of Scottish clan people, politics & activities. Large book; needs a good editing job. Excessive focus on sexual activities.

This is the start of the best series of books I have ever listened to.
It is very long, but keeps you wanting more. There is always tons of action, love, sex and humor. I highly recomend it for men and women.

This book is the type of book that always makes me think, "what if?" If you could travel back in time would you want to, do you feel you could survive without your family, friends and everyday conveniences? Would you use your knowledge of history to help people at the possible detriment to your own life or would you just live in the date and time and get by?

Claire has been rocketed back through time after a ritual at an ancient stone circle in Scotland. She lived in 1944 with her husband, Frank and now finds herself in 1744, 200 years earlier. She decides to tell the truth as much as possible without telling her actual circumstance. She is accepted by some, hated by others and questioned by many. Who is she, why is she there and where did she come from. She is thrown into Scotland during the time when England was battling for control. She ends up meeting an ancestor of her husband, Frank and learning what a bad person he was. In order to keep her freedom she is forced to marry a man she barely knows, Jamie Frasier. As time goes by, she falls for Jamie and he for her. When the time comes and she tells Jamie of her true set of circumstances and how she came to be there, he takes her back to the stone circle and tells her that he loves her enough to let her go. She realizes she can't leave him and decides to stay. They then begin a life on the run from Franks Ancestor, who has put a price on Jamie's head and would love to hurt Claire just because she is with Jamie.

I am a big fan of historical fiction, but this was my first (and last) foray into the romance novel. I bought the book after reading a couple of the glowing reviews on this site. I was looking forward to the promised "sweeping," "meticulously researched," "historical romance." Instead I got a disturbing, shallow, historically and culturally inaccurate disappointment. Typically, I can find the merit in anything and will compulsively force myself to finish a book regardless of my opinions. But with Outlander, I just couldna do it.

Claire, the heroine, is dim witted, over sexed and totally unlikable. The hero, Jamie Fraser, is a one dimensional super hunk who is just too dreamy to be true. Oh, well, aside from the fact that he beats the heroine "half to death" in a creepy, sadistic scene that reeks of what must be the author's British school girl fantasy. This is not history (some reviewers have excused this scene as "what they did back then"). To make matters worse, the supposedly strong-willed heroine turns around and decides that not only did she deserve the beating, but that she truly loves her attacker. Yuck. I felt embarrassed for the characters and myself after that chapter!

It goes on from there. I put the book down for good around page 600 or so. I have no problem with sex or violence in a book, but not when it's as poorly written and contrived as Outlander. Don't be swept away by the positive reviews. If you're looking for intelligent, captivating historical fiction (with or without romance) this isn't it.

Outlander is a title that I've had several people tell me I need to read, but I just put it in the back of my mind as a dated historical romance until this tag. I wish that I had read this book when it first came out (granted, I would have been nine years old), because then the novelty of time travel would have been fresh, and I wouldn't have felt the weight of every other romance I've read over the years with that theme that have cribbed from Outlander. Claire is a wonderful, absolutely non-stereotypical, character. Her dilemma of loving and marrying two men in two different times makes her fascinating as well. There was only one time I wanted to smack her: In Wentworth Prison, instead of watching Jamie and the brute fighting each other, she should have had the forthwith to smack Randall and take care of him before he woke up!! That made me want to tear my hair out a bit. The middle did drag a bit, and for awhile it felt like the book would never end. I enjoyed it, but it was loooong! I have already added Dragonfly in Amber, the sequel, to my wish list. It's got romantic sex without being pornographic. Lots of amazing historical detail. Jamie is awesome! How cool is it that for once the MAN is the virgin! Gabaldon turns so many romance stereotypes on their head. Even in a book that 26 years old, she makes the genre new again.

Everyone should read this book.Find who is getting a free lunch and most are only getting table scraps!

This book is probably best read in small portions, as the average person will become incensed at the greed that takes from the less and gives to the more. Fortunately, each chapter covers a specific rip off of the taxpayer, and is not too long. It might raise the blood pressure of the average person to read too many chapters at one time.

Yes, the wealthy and connected have rigged the system to flow the riches to themselves.

If there is one theme to the book, it is the Adam Smith's advice that government should not favor one endeavor over another is deaf to the people that continually use Adam Smith as the reason for government getting out of the way. It is not free enterprise when government takes one side, which is what the wealthy and well connected have the government do.

A good companion is Hostile Takeover by David Sirota (available on Amazon Kindle).Hostile Takeover: How Big Money and Corruption Conquered Our Government--And How We Take It Back

His prior book, Perfectly Legal, is a good primer, although a bit dated as to how the wealthy avoid taxes. In Free Lunch, it is how the wealthy get subsidies. Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else

An excellent, well-documented and readable investigation and analysis of how the whole system of American government, at Federal, State and Local levels, has been used for the past 30 years or so to tax the poor and the middle class in order to enrich the already wealthy. If you think this sounds like the system in France in 1788, you are absolutely right. If you are not angry already, you need to read this book. If you are angry already, you still need to read this book in order to confirm all your worst suspicions. There is something rotten in the States of America, and if the infection of our body politic is not dealt with soon, it will turn to gangrene and kill democracy completely.

Very well written book. It's very sad, especially since you read it and don't have any power to do anything about it, but it's very well written.

A very informative and straight-ahead book revealing, anecdote by real-life anecdote, how, during the Bush/Clinton/Bush administrations, our public commons -- in other words, our tax dollars -- increasingly have been routinely commandeered by a tiny and superrich elite for their own exhorbitant profit. In the form of public subsidies for private developers and retailers, such as Cabelas and Wal-Mart, and through privatization of our utility companies starting with Enron's massive rip-off of our public commons, Johnston shows how the wolves (greedy privateers) have not only gained entrance into the henhouse of our national treasury but, through intensive lobbying efforts, are exercising too much control over our elected officials today, basically funding the rewriting of our national laws to ensure their own dominant position and ongoing aggregation of riches.

The book makes sense of a lot of things that were not adding up to me when looking around our current landscape -- like why my electric bill has skyrocketed in the last couple of years (thank you, Kenny Lay), or what kind of business "sense" was behind that monstrous box store of Cabelas on Rte. 78 in Hamburg, PA. Or even why oil and gas prices are going through the roof right now. It's not supply and demand at all, it's sleight of hand and basic greed and power-grabbing. Johnston shows how the scales of supply and demand no longer balance the markets, as the PR mavens would like us to believe. When private companies are subsidized with public funds, Adam Smith-type free market competition proves but a chimera, a smokescreen behind which privateers hide, avidly sucking our economy dry and bankrupting our society. Read the book.

Brooks' revision of the beloved classic tale of the March family fills in the gaps that Alcott could not provide: the devastating effects of war on both the soldier and the family members waiting at home. I disagree with other reviewers that the book spoils the beauty of the close-knit March family we know from the original tale. Instead, I believe both narratives can exist side by side. Brooks has written a hauntingly beautiful book that you will think about for a long time.

I previously read Geraldine Brook's 'People of the Book' and 'Year of Wonders'. 'Year of Wonders' is one of my all time favorite books. I really enjoyed this story as well.

Brooks has created a moving account of Mr. March's experience during the Civil War. Mr. March is the father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.

This was our book club's book choice for September. I had every intention of reading Little Women before I started reading March. I never read Little Women and I thought I should have the back story before reading about Mr. March's. I checked out Little Women from my local library and started to read about the four March sisters but I didn't make it very far. I think with books, like many other things in life, 'timing is everything'. Little Women is clearly written for young girls and I am not a young girl, I feel certain that I missed my chance to love Louisa Alcott's classic by about thirty years or so.

And from the sound of the reviews from people who loved Little Women, perhaps my experience or lack thereof helped me enjoy this story better than I would have if I had read Little Women. I didn't have my own ideas about Mr. March and how perfect he was and so, I didn't feel betrayed or disappointed by anything he did.

I thought that Brooks painted a vivid picture of the complications that a man like Mr. March would endure as a chaplain during the civil war and as an idealist.

I thought the characters Brooks brings to life were realistic with both their strengths and weaknesses portrayed. Many times we think we understand these characters and their motivations only to discover we were wrong.

I enjoyed March's narration and perspective. I thought it was very clever of Brooks to give Mrs. March a chance to narrate and give us her perspective, there are two sides to every marriage and I was interested in hearing hers.

I found it to be a moving and insightful story that I would recommend to fans of historical fiction and I would say this would be a great choice for a book club that enjoys intellectual discussions.

excellent historical novel with recognizabile lead character. worthy of the pulitzer that it won.

The "horror", "shock" and "dismay" by reviewers who found March an aborhent departure from the classic that inspired this beautifully conceived novel seems more aptly suited to pre-teens than mature adults. Is it really so amazing that a decent man can be flawed? That a happily married man might, in extraordinary circumstances, stray and break a wedding vow? Or that an idealist's certainty may crumble under the grim reality of war's carnage.

This is fiction people. It uses the skeleton of a story to add flesh and bones to a character who is "the absent presence" in Little Women. It is the novel Louisa May Alcott might have written if she were not constrained by 19th century convention. If one wants that convention perpetuated, I suggest sticking to the "sequels" to Gone With The Wind and Pride and Predjudice. I for one don't care to know what a balding Rhett or a Darcy with arthritis might have been like. But I do greatly appreciate a nuanced portrait of the 19th century with all its idealism and venality. It seems to be a century very much like our own.. And that is historical fiction at its very best.

I had very high expectations for this book given her other book. Both my wife and I could not finish it and gave up half way through it. it is extremely well written, but I got to the point that i just did not care what happened to the main character.

This book was needed for a college course I am taking and I never got it. I just hope the one I purchased for the second time gets to me before I need to read the book.

People often associate comic books with childrens' fiction, as if the medium itself is inflexible. Some of us the comic lovers know that is not the case. And case in point Persepolis - where the emotions of a little girl in the politically and socially charged Iran takes us through what would have been a blind journey. I think pictures don't necessarily paint a thousand words, it paints many, and it leaves the number to the reader. While written words force a description on your mind, a picture leaves a lot to your imagination. It lights the spark with the image, and the image takes on its own life in your mind. This is what I felt while reading Persepolis, where just with two shades, Marjane Satrapi gives us enough fodder to ruminate in the visual fields of our imagination. I could see the drastic transformation of one of her neighbours going from a mini-skirt to the veiled burkha.

Marjane Satrapi is gifted and trained no doubt, and it shows in the depictions of emotions that are otherwise hard to describe. You may also want to look for books by Dupuy and Berberian, that tell of personable tales in their lives or fictitious characters drawn with similar dexterity.

With Marjane Satrapi's animated film playing in theatres and available on disc, I almost jumped at the chance to read her book, the part-comic/part-memoir of Satrapi's childhood in Tehran, Iran.

To avoid confusion with more current events, `Marji' (as she was called as a child) recalls her upbringing in a Marxist family, the fall of the last Shah regime, the Islamic Revolution of 1979, and Iran's war against Iraq in the 80's. While Satrapi's words are powerful enough to get in your head and stay there, her simple black-and-white drawing style captures the laughter, the tears, and the raw emotion felt throughout the story. Though only an individual account, the story itself is quite vivid in describing how Iran had left a world of tyranny and chaos--only to wind up in another. Though controversial in its own right, "Persepolis" is still a riveting book for those seeking intelligent reading.

This comic is unrated: Violence, Adult Language, Adult Situations.

I feel I learned more about the history of Iran through the eyes of a little girl who was practically forced to become an adult by the age of 14 than most textbooks. Marjane Satrapi, or "Marji" captured my attention, thanks to the successful marriage of her "crudely-drawn" panels and approachable narrative. While I have yet to read the sequel, I feel I know this individual on a personal level as the book fills us in on her deepest fears and hopes and conflicts.

Although this book is written like a comic book, don't take it lightly. The story is a deep and meaningful one. It is a pretty fast read but not as fast as you'd think...I highly recommend it!

I can't review something I have not yet received. It has been over 30 days and the book has not yet arrived.

I really enjoyed the historical aspect of the book - Detroit through most of the 1900's, Turkey and Greece in the early 1900's. I also learned a lot and it made me much more sympathetic to gender issues brought out in the book. Having said that I wish it could have been about 200 pages shorter. I found myself plodding through it at times. I thought the story of the grandparents could have been condensed to about 50 pages but it went on and on and on. I also could have done without some of the detail at the San Francisco peep show. The ick factor at times was just way too high for me.

Kudos to the author on what must have been an incredible amount of research.

After hearing the mention of this book on Oprah's show, I decided to purchase it. I'm not a big book reader, but I couldn't put it down. I took it everywhere with me for two weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. Now, I'm trying to decide who I will pass it along too.

This was an amazing book. Eugenides tells a sprawling tale of the Stephanides family told from the perspective of a hermaphrodite (Cal) to explain the sequence of events that led him to become the person that he is. It is riveting from the second Eugenides begins in Turkey with Cal's grandparents childhood to the conclusion of the narrative in Berlin. At the same time funny, touching, and heart-breaking this book provides a level of humanity not seen in much literature today.

If you like incestual relationships, this may be the book for you. Half the book is family history and deals with the grandparents incestual relationship and then the parents semi-incestual relationship. It isn't described as a particularly bad thing that a brother and sister get married and you will even have to endure "sex scenes" between the two. It then insults people who actually are intersex by giving the impression that the incest is what caused the baby to be born that way.
The book doesn't get around to the story of Cal who is supposedly the main character. I was really looking forward to reading about Cal and his life which would have been fascinating. Instead I got a ton of boring family history that has nothing to do with the life of the main character, complete with a ton of useless crap, like the grandmothers ovulation and the fathers wierd relationship with his cousin in which he gives her thrills by touching her with his clarinet. It is actually a little disturbing.
I don't know why pulitzer or Oprah thought this book was so good. I am quite confused.

If you've enjoyed any of Mr. Frost's other books about golf and golfers (Grand Slam, The: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf or The Greatest Game Ever Played: A True Story) you will enjoy this one just as much. It's hard to believe this match actually happened. Mr. Frost really brings the story to life, with his usual style, deftly using suspense and interesting narrative that makes you feel like you were right there with the guys during this (now) famous match. The research behind the story must have been a monumental task, especially since many of the principles are no longer living and the match was not broadcast at the time. It is clear that Mark Frost loves the game of golf; its history, the players, the competition, and the compelling stories that have arisen from this greatest game ever played.

i like to read about famous golfers of the past and their personal struggles as well as their excellence on the course .. this is an excellent book for those who enjoy that genre .

Enjoyable story about the match itself surrounded by historical details of the players' lives, Cypress Point GC, and the professional golf scene of the day.

This is a very interesting book about a little-known golf match between two famous golf pros and two amateurs. It is an easy read with some interesting historical facts about the evolution of professional golf in the U.S.

Talks about and brings back the birth of the excitement of Professional Golf. The facts about the personal histories of the early major players are interesting.Their personal stories bring back memories of these men who were major factors in making the game what it is today.One of the players in this "Match" is a personal friend and the story of his life makes you understand why he became such a great individual.The story of "The Match" itself is exciting to read and very hard to put down. For anyone with even a remote interest in the game it will make you a fan.

The book was in excellent condition. Looked brand new. Delivery was quick. I was exremely pleased.

Tedious and ponderous. Very poorly written. Simplistic plot with no development of characters. The story was not well integrated into the historical time period, and in fact, seemed mostly unconnected to it. The characters were presented within a 21st century pychological context. It simply is not possible to understand the story or characters unless it was placed in the correct cultural context. Putting 21st century charaters in skins among livestock does not make them even remotely historically authentic. The only historical item I gleaned was that women sat on straw during their periods.

This is a beautifully written novel, and it does an amazing job of transporting the reader back in time to a completely foreign culture, time, place, and way of life. The characters are all incredibly rich and detailed (yes, even the male characters, I think they were all as intricate as the female ones), and the story is deeply moving.
I was always disappointed whenever I would read the Bible and find that the stories mostly focused on the men; while the women would be off to the side, completely silent, often only mentioned in regards to the sons they had borne. This book turns the Old Testament narratives inside out, and describes the familiar stories from the womens' point of view, while celebrating the mystery and wonder of life.
A note for Christians, especially those who criticize the book because it doesn't completely follow what the Bible says regarding the events...this is a work of historical fiction written by a Jewish woman, and I don't think it was ever meant to be a work of Christian fiction. Take this book for what it is, an exploration of the historical period and the relationships between ancient women. The Bible never says that Dinah embraced her father's God.
I always wondered what happened to Dinah after the events in Shechem, and this book followed her story to the end of her life in ways I never expected. Diamant has a rich imagination, and is a skilled writer.

it's about time that orthodoxy in all its forms crumbles.

here is part of the crumbling of the weak mortar.

love it.

the overly patriarchic impulse needs it's own tent to cower in.

This is a fantastic imagining of the lives of women during the time period of the Book of Genesis.

It demonstrates how women can carve out a slice of power in a patriarchal society-- even though their roles were strictly defined by convention, that convention also allowed for them to play an important, if secondary role.

No one who reads this would think that it's ok for women to be subjugated in the manner that the book portrays, but it is an inspiration to see how the characters in the book handle the cards they've been dealt.

The book is extremely nuanced, exploring all manner of familial and societal issues while maintaining an intensely personal focus. The setting is so richly detailed, and so exotic, that it warrants the effort of reading by itself.

The writing itself has a matter-of-fact, flattish tone, which I found to be quite enjoyable. It wasn't as lean and fast-paced as it could have been, but it did succeed in evoking the "flavor" of the bible, which is a neat trick when writing a modern novel.

As a white american atheist male, I suspect I'm not the target audience for this "biblical chick-flick on paper," but I enjoyed every page, and wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who enjoys heady, thoughtful books.