Eagle Reviews

I am a Yemeni Jew who was born and raised in the U.S. After my granparents left Yemen for Israel, they realized that they had made a huge mistake. In Israel, they were subjected to even more racism and bigotry than they had been in Yemen. Babies born to Yemeni Jews in Israel were sold to adoption agencies abroad. This book, although well writen, gives the reader the wrong idea. That is that Yemen was a terrible place for Jews, and that Israel was an escape from bigotry and racism. I would not recommend this book.

A commentary on the life of the Yemenite Jews after they had settled in Eretz Yisrael. It covers the spectrum of the immigrants' almost nightmarish experience from lowest paying jobs, race discrimination, poor housing, and having to adapt to a "European/American" secular Israeli culture. The Yemenites are possibly the most Orthodox of Jews, and for these people who have cherished and practised Judaism in its purest form for centuries at great personal loss, going to the secular country was a shock. Not withstanding, Yemenites have kept their profound admiration of the Torah while they proved to be "the most" upwardly mobile group considering that they had to start at the lowest of rung of the socioeconomic ladder. They are the most organised of the "oriental" jews and it seems that they have earned the respect of the other ethnic groups. "Proud Teymani."

This book is badly flawed because of the author's rabid Germanophobia,which practically drips off of neary every page.Stay away from this one.

This is one of the most amusing books I have read about fallen European dynasties. Extremely biased, but makes up for inacurracy with humor to spare. Not for serious academic research, but very entertaining. I highly recomend it for anyone who knows their history, and is looking for a few good laughs!

Using Native Indians like this is just another form of murder - cultural murder. What is it with these people who get it into their [bad] brains to convert the people from their ways? Have they not done enough harm. Native people must resist being used like this. It is a disgrace.

Dan Red Eagle has not only proven effective at reaching its original target audience of Native peoples in North America but is a great comic book in any case, regardless of race. Opops'kan leads his intended readers toward faith in Jesus Christ using their own style of language and familiar symbolism.

I have tried reading over a dozen Cassie Edwards books, and Lone Wolf is the last book of hers that I will waste my money on. The story was unbelievable, and repetitious. The plot was supposed to be about a slave girl and Indian chief falling in love. What Mrs. Edwards gave us was a story about a white heroine who was a slave[ that happened to have a black mother (who was also a slave) and a white father who happened to be the master]and an Indian chief who fell in love. The characters were undeveloped, the relationship between Zondras parents was nonsensical, a few facts were thrown into the story at random in a text book manner disrupting what little flow of the book there was. The dialog between the characters was laughable to say the least. I spent most of my time grimacing over the poor writing. The beginning, middle, and especially the ending of the book were pulled from left field. If Mrs. Edwards is going to do away completely with history she should tack a letter to the end of the book letting readers know that the story has little or no semblance to historical facts. In short I feel at least an attempt at research of her subject should have been made. Maybe that could have salvaged some portion of this book though I doubt it.

Why is Cassie Edwards allowed to write? I didn't like any of the characters in this book. I found them weak. I wasted my time reading this book. While reading the book's description I was suprised that the heorine was mixed who falls for an Indian. I'ved never read a book by a white author who had a semi black chartacter who the hero falls in love with. Only the premise is about that, the acutal story is about a white woman who falls in love with a Indian. Zondra knew nothing about her culture, except she was a slave, mom black. There is more to black culture than slavery, but I didn't read any of that in this book. Cassie Edwards could have done something truly remarkable by allowing the Indian to fall in love with a dark skin black woman. Black and Indian romance did occur.

In reply to the Virginia reader who wanted the very white heroine to call herself "black," let me say that the author's refusal to pin a "one drop" stigma on the heroine was the BEST thing about the book! Actually, Southern states in the antebellum period allowed various degrees of "black" ancestry into the "white race," and exceptions could be made for people who established a white identity in the community.

The major flaws of the book are a poor characterization of Zondra's parents, inadequate historical research, and a lack of comfort with the subject matter.

Ms. Edwards should have eliminated those off-stage "dark" siblings. They served absolutely no purpose in the plot and belied the image of Zondra's parents as a loving couple. I suspect that she included them and the nonsense about being "sold off" because she felt she wasn't making slavery look bad enough.

I appreciate Ms. Edwards' "mixed white" heroine and her Indian lover, but she should have put more emphasis on building strong major and supporting characters and left the preaching to abolitionist novels.

The antebellum mixed-white heroine and "pure" white hero used to be common in the Romance genre. I'd like to also see the same type of heroine matched with Indian, Latino and other exotic heroes. Let's hope that authors aren't being frightened off by the "politcal correctness" of the present day.

Cooper has strung together a string of selective facts and quasi-facts, with the obvious intention of creating anti-Polish feelings in the reader who is unfamiliar with the full scope of events in Polish-Jewish history. He tells, for instance, of the decades-old boycott of Jewish businesses in prewar Poland without mentioning at least the possibility that this was provoked by Jewish businesses banding together to put Polish gentiles out of business. He mentions the numerus clausus, at Polish universities, without considering that, using today's parlance, one group's numerous clausus is another group's affirmative action (in this case, getting more Polish gentiles into traditionally Jewish-dominated fields such as law, medicine, finance, etc.).

Cooper focuses on the szmalcowniki (blackmailers) who denounced Jews without also noting that they also betrayed Polish gentiles to the occupying Germans. He dwells on Polish collaborators' preventing more Jews from being saved with hardly a word said about the Jewish collaborators--the Judenrate. It was members of the Judenrate who played the main role in sealing off the ghettos, murdering the fellow Jews who tried to escape or who did escape, and discouraging further escapes (and revolts) by spreading untrue assurances about the safety of the Jews in German hands. (For an extensive and balanced account of BOTH Polish and Jewish collaboration, see Piotrowski: POLAND'S HOLOCAUST).

Cooper half-acknowledges the fact that many Jews were Communists, but then gives the familiar rationalization that they did so only to protect themselves from the Nazis. But this will not wash: Extensive Jewish involvement in Communism, which provoked Polish antagonism, long preceded the Nazis and continued long after their defeat. In fact, Cooper (p. 219) later gives the store away by noting that many Communist leaders were Jews.

Cooper's ignorance of the basic conditions under German-occupied Poland is nothing short of astounding. For instance, he tries to deflect charges of Jewish passivity by alleging that the Polish gentiles were even more passive. Nothing could be further from the truth. When, for instance, the Germans began a campaign to uproot large numbers of Poles from the Zamosc region in 1942, sending them to concentration camps, and replacing them with German settlers. The Polish peasants vowed: "We won't be taken as you took the Jews!" and began a guerrilla war. Despite the brutality of German reprisals, the Germans suffered so many losses that they called off the operation until after they won the war, which of course never happened. Cooper's rehash of charges that the Polish underground did not do much to assist the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 ignores, among other things, the fact that guerilla actions were generally expected to be locally-sufficient. Thus, for instance, Polish gentiles living in eastern Poland had to form their own defenses against murderous Ukrainian nationalists. They did not expect, and generally did not receive, substantive assistance from Polish-gentile guerilla groups located in the western part of German-occupied Poland. Cooper notes that Jews were usually not accepted into Polish guerilla organizations because their physiogamy gave them away, and insists that this proves that Poles were prone to turn Jews in. Yes, as if Germans were incapable of recognizing Jews by their features!

Space limitations forbid discussion of many more errors and omissions of inconvenient facts by Cooper. Other facts listed by Cooper can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, Cooper estimates that only 2% of the Polish population was involved in rescuing and hiding Jews, and uses this to "prove" Polish anti-Semitism. But, considering that the death penalty was given by the Germans for assisting Jews, and that heroism must by nature be exceptional, one could argue that 2% is a very high percentage.

In conclusion, both Polish anti-Semitism and Jewish anti-Polonism deserve long-overdue deaths. Unfortunately, this will not happen as long as inflammatory and inaccurate books like Cooper's are published and passed off as fact.

This book offers nothing new. The author seems to forget, in his discussion of Polish anti-Semitism, that there has hardly been any nation on Earth where Jews were particularly liked, and where peoples of different cultures lived amiably. The umistakeable extensive Jewish involvement in Communism is also a fact that is insufficiently developed in terms of the provocation of Polish anti-Semitism. As for contemporary anti-Jewish feelings in Poland, Cooper does not seem to understand how offensive many Poles find it to be told that the murder of 6 million Jews by the Germans be immortalized, while the murder of 3 million Polish gentiles by the Germans be marginalized. Despite past Polish-Jewish tensions, Jews had it better in Poland, over the long haul, than just about anywhere else. No wonder that 80% of the world's Jews had at one time lived in Poland. And, despite the frictions and mutual prejudices, Polish society allowed the Jews, at 10% of the population, to acquire over 40% of Poland's wealth. Cooper fails to appreciate the fact that charges about Poles not doing enough to assist the Jews during the German occupation and Holocaust fail to take into account the wartime conditions--which included not only the death penalty for any Pole who assisted the Jews, but also the destruction of entire villages by the Germans in reprisal for ANY single Pole who assisted the Jews. In spite of this, more Poles are honored at Yad Vashem for hiding Jews than members of any other nationality.

Dr Cooper has compiled an extraordinary case whereby he claims that Poland was and is one of the most (if not the most) anti-Semitic countries in the world. Dr Cooper begins with a section detailing anti-Semitism in Poland before, during and after World War II. He puts forward the thesis that most Poles did nothing to assist the Jews in WWII, and instead were actively involved in collaborating with the Nazis by locating Jews in hiding and blowing their cover. This is quite a serious charge, and Dr Cooper seems to do his homework quite well. In fact he refers to an enormous number of books, newspaper articles, documents and oral evidence. Which brings me to an important point. A substantial amount of evidence presented in his thesis is obtained from personal experience and interviews with holocaust survivors. He himself admits that oral accounts may easily be modified and distorted over time. Nonetheless he insists that his own recollections and those of other survivors are relevant to his case.

From the very beginning of his book, it seems that Cooper has a personal bone to pick with the Poles. He relates many stories of his encounters with anti-Semitic poles that are portrayed as being equivalent to the Nazis. In fact almost 90% of his book is dedicated to putting forward evidence that incriminates Poles, whereas bits and pieces throughout the text refer to the very infrequent cases of "good" Poles. To be fair to Dr Cooper, he does devote one chapter to Poles that were commended for bravery and for saving a countless number of Jews (Poles are commended for saving the 2nd highest number of Jews in Europe). BUT...and there is a BIG BUT, he STILL picks fault in those Poles that risked their lives to save Jews. He speculates that many Poles were "in it for the money". Personally I believe that a little bit of compensation for risking one's own life is a small price to pay for an act of heroism. It is evident that Cooper's personal experiences have soured him to the extent that he is unable to present an objective and unbiased look at the Polish-Jewish situation. Furthermore, for most Jews, this book will be a "confirmation" of all the things that they have heard about or speculated on with regards to Polish-Jewish relations. In fact, due to the negative nature of this book it seems Cooper has gone a step in the wrong direction with regards to Polish-Jewish reconciliation. Having said all this, I still believe that the atrocities he has mentioned, such as the horrendous Pogrom at Kielce, definitely prove that many uneducated Poles were anti-Semitic, however on the other hand there were many brave and righteous Poles that should be acknowledged with greater vigor. All in all, Cooper's book is very powerful and is excellent reading even if it is quite biased.

This book doesn't faithfully reproduce the music as played by the band. Instead, each song features a chord progression and the lead part simply "tracks" the song's vocals as if your desire was to replace the vocals with guitar (ala Muzak). A complete waste of money and time for any guitarist who is an Eagles fan.

It seems Anastasia has almost thrown a bunch of articles together and called it a book. He is constantly restating stories that he told in earlier chapters. The book does not flow at all. It was almost like he needed to fill a certain amount of pages. The chapters are fun to read standing alone, but sit down and read this book and you will be bored. If you are an Eagles fan, buy it because the game by game descriptions are excellent. If you're not an Eagles fan, forget it.

As always, Locker has beautiful images. Unfortunately, the text he uses will not make sense to a toddler or young child. With such minimal text, this is a picture book... and metaphors are lost on toddlers. Your money is better spent on a Good Dog Carl book.

Mexican folklore is rich in tradition and in the hands of a gifted teller, it can draw in children. Madrigal's telling, however, is stilted and dry; the langauge, formal. The tales could be so much better; they seem to lack personality. The illustrations, though adequate, looked rushed and are not up to dePaola's usual standards. Overall, I was disappointed in this text and would recommend a pass.

As Christians, we must defend our rights and our nation from internal attack. When asked by the IRS to conduct an audit of your return, the very best thing to say is, "Is it mandatory or voluntary for me to let you see my private books and records?" Just watch, they will never answer - because it's VOLUNTARY! The courts have said so! It HAS TO BE voluntary, otherwise it would be a violation of your 4th and 5th amendment rights! You NEVER have to let the IRS see your records - even if they send you a summons, all you do is show up and claim the 5th each time they ask a question, or to see a document!! The book never tells you this!!