Radical Self-Love A guide to Loving Yourself and Living your Dreams by Gala Darling

Radical Self-Love A guide to Loving Yourself and Living your Dreams by Gala Darling is a book published by Hay House and it is tremendously stimulating if you search for self-improvement and if, after a difficult moment you need to re-charge your batteries and you don't know where to start with. Confusion, sadness, not sufficient self-esteem can let you think that your life is not so important.

Why don't you re-start by...Yourself starting to love yourself...Radically?

Please, pick up this book and read it.

It's a wonderful, energetic blanket for your soul with tips, advice for falling in love again first of all with yourself, because if you love yourself also other people will love you. If you don't appreciate yourself, it is difficult that other ones will fall in love for you in every sense.
Radical-Self Love is plenty of drawings, and positive vibes for every kind of woman.
Divided in three sections:  Loving Yourself, Loving Others and Daily Magic, you will be helped in every sector of your existence to re-connect yourself with your true self and with...other people and life.

You will receive wagons of tips for avoid that toxic friends sometimes you could be surround by attracted by your sufferance and negative vibes. Other people who brought negativity in your life and put you down.
The author will help you to discover how to make new and positive friends if you forgot it after a long moment of sufferance, but also how to interact with family in a new and more positive way.
Taking care of yourself is fundamental if you want to live a satisfying life plenty of success.
The author invites of writing-down what you want to become in this life, your expectations, your successes and ask of treating yourself with great respect and appreciation.

Love yourself for later being a radiant human being for all that people close and distant of your life!

Highly recommended to all women of this world!

I thank NetGalley and Hay House for the digital copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

London Curiosities The Capital’s Odd and Obscure, Weird and Wonderful Places written by John Wade

Are you planning a vacation to London and you don't know what to see apart Buckingham Palace, Saint Paul Cathedral and some other famous locations suggested in a common touristic guide?

Don't desperate: bring with you London Curiosities The Capital’s Odd and Obscure, Weird and Wonderful Places written by John Wade and published by Pen & Sword and once you will return home you will have wagons of pictures to share with your friends, and many interesting anecdotes and places that you will have visited and other tourists, unfortunately...no!

London is one of the most obscure, curious city of the world. Apparently it seems like another European capital but looking better, leaving the surface alone, it's a city hiding a lot of secrets and hidden spots. Being also pretty old (it was a Roman and catholic city in the past) remains are many.

So: if you have available time, if you are curious, and you don't want to lose anything, if you think that common tourism can be boring, start to search for this London plenty of curiosities, histories and facts.

Your friends will be so surprised, because close to the most common pictures taken close to Buckingham Palace you will also live the real London's story. And what a story this city will whisper to you in a fascinating way.

Are you ready for this trip?

OK: there are some remains of a very big, huge post office, the so-called Britain’s General Post Office headquarters. St Martin’s Le Grand  the area. It was a so big monument later completely destroyed but you still can find some beautiful remains.

Curious to see where most people fell sick because of cholera in the remote past? Of course, you are!
People in the past didn't imagine that cholera was transmitted via water and so they searched for a miraculous pump in grade to keep them healthy and once discovered it they declared that there wasn't another water as good as this one. The fact was, ahem that they all fell sick thanks to that water and they died.

You will see a replica of the pump located in Broadwick Street in Soho. The original one is in a pub so later, you can stop by there for a beer, and another pic with the original pump.

Have you got nose?

Good, you will want to search for some installation of noses, 35 in total on walls...

If you have some children in love for tanks don't forget to visit the Russian Tank in South London.

Do you want to see the last kilt in London? You will discover it like you can admire the first Metropolitan Drinking Fountain.

If you love houses don't miss the Narrowest one! the oldest, or the littlest police station of the city or the littlest building of the city. Wait, you, wait: smile! Yes: great pic!

Ok, now let's enjoy one of the few medieval building that you can still see: the Winchester Palace Rose Window.

Did you read The Old Curiosity Shop by Dickens? Don't you remember? Yes? Maybe? OK, it's fine there is not a correct answer, relax.  The shop realistically exists and you can visit it although it doesn't sell any curiosities or postcards or souvenirs. Sorry.

You will find also a plaque from the Embassy of Texas somewhere, can you believe it?
If you love to visit cemeteries, don't miss  the London Necropolis Railway. Singular story for a very important cemetery.

OK, move on now.

You can't lose this visit: the one at the church of St Peter because of the three devils wanted by the architect because of the problems caused by the vicar during the building of the church, eheheh.

Now, let's go in fascinating places for discovering Windmills and also the largest clock of London and then let's search for The Queen of Time, better not upset Her, and well don't forget Greenwich’s 24-Hour Clock and Time Ball.
London's tunnels are important, it's the fifth essence of that city, like also the so-called lost rivers. The one of Fleet Street emblematic. Remember: take pictures. There, lived Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Try to visit parks with special attractions. Don't forget memorials and find the one dedicated at Oscar Wilde. It's impressively beauty! Like the one dedicated to Churchill and Roosevelt.
A visit at the house of Samuel Johnson, lexicographer, writer, poet, the one who wrote  A Dictionary of the English Language indispensable like the homage at the statue of his cat sat on the dictionary.

Now: let's try to discover the Mayflower...Pilgrims, Massachusetts, 1621.

The lost locations are fascinating like The Bell Gate Tower, but there are also many Roman remains.

Your snickers are gone I see but you enjoyed this visit.

Oh yes: a great vacation. Hoping in good weather, close to you this book, you won't get lost and you will find a lot of wonderful and uncommon places to visit!


I thank Pen and Sword and NetGalley for this eBook.

Anna Maria Polidori

Letters from the Trenches The First World War by Those Who Were There by Jacqueline Wadsworth

Letters from the Trenches The First World War by Those Who Were There by Jacqueline Wadsworth published by Pen and Sword is symbolic of the Great War and what it meant for British soldiers, their country and their beloved ones, families, children, this war.

The author confesses that she didn't imagine she would have found all the material she later discovered. Letters, postcards! so many! It was customs to send wagons of postcards from soldiers, and then journals, diaries.

The story starts from Bristol because there lived also the author's grandfather and his brother, Edwin and Fred Wood.
British soldiers were sent in every corner of the world and we will assist so at a real reportage of events, different customs and traditions, but there are also scenes of a never-ending horror were soldiers assisted at the departure of their beloved friends passing away with impotence.
There are letters that I can classified as "stressed" because of the shock of the moments lived.

Someone wrote: "I dreamed I saw him last night poor kid but he lies among his thousands of fellow comrades who have given their lives for their king and country."
A man describing the trenches: "I came out last night after being in 4 days. You have no idea what 4 days in the trenches means and neither has anyone else who hasn’t had it. The whole time I was in I had only about 2 hours sleep and that was in snatches on the firing step. What dugouts there are, are flooded with mud and water up to the knees and the rats hold swimming galas in them...We are literally caked with brown mud and it is in all our food, tea etc."

It was possible in these conditions to fall ill.
Holidays like Christmas spent in the trenches put soldiers down like not receiving any letters from home for a while. Sometimes it was the opposite: families sent letters but they waited a long time before to receive an answer from their relative.

Love was a powerful connection and strong, beautiful love-letters were sent to girls, plenty not just of romanticism but hope for the end of the war and the beginning of a life spent together.

Someone later developed another trendy idea:  taking pictures of soldiers, printing them in postcards for let see to the families their relatives in war and...in uniform like also taking pictures of ruins of places destroyed for the creation of stunning postcards to send to the beloved ones at home.

Cards started to become a business for every moment of the year, they were produced by individual regiments and soldiers could pick up the proper one for the proper occasion and for the meaning that they wanted to give at their message.

Soldiers sent also pressed flowers.

Problems were never-ending. The end of the war caused a surplus of women and a lack of men so most of women remained  unmarried for this reason.

The book later treats also the problematic of married men at the front and their thoughts for their domestic life like also what it meant for a family the arrival at home of the news of the death of soldier, first of all a son, a husband, a boyfriend.

This book gives the perfect idea of what happened during that years in UK and in the rest of the world thanks to the written words of soldiers, wives, relatives and it is a real treasure to keep.

Highly recommended.

I thank Pen and Sword for this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori

Ten Reasons You Feel Old and Get Fat... and How you Can Stay Young, Slim and Happy by Frank Lipman M.D.

Ten Reasons You Feel Old and Get Fat and How you Can Stay Young, Slim and Happy by Frank Lipman M.D. published by Hay House is one of the most interesting book you can pick up about the topic.
Aging is not beauty and everyone would want to remain efficient and splendid as when he/she was younger. For himself but also for his/her loved ones. What to do? And mainly: is it possible? And in case... What is it possible to do for trying to help mind and body?

"Recipes" proposed by mr. Lipman are simple but great. First of all eating well, less sugar, not too many carbs, for keeping slim and efficient our body and our brain as well.
Intoxicating a body means a big problem at many levels, and not just organically.
Brain can be heavily affected by a wrong diet as well.
Then healing your gut! and keeping your weight under control another step for finding a great balance like also rebalancing hormones for restore energy and improve sexual function.

Movement, yoga, in particular will keep you slim and efficient. A chapter will take in consideration stress and the damage that this temible sometimes "good tension" can create with the time if problems not healed.
As everyone know sleeping well is the secret of youthness or one of the main ones because while we sleep body is in modality: recharge.

You will also discover the anti-aging supplements and energetic ones like also an harmonic community in grade to being supporting and lovely.

Ten chapters for discovering a way for staying young, efficient, happy, following also mr.Lipman's two week revitalize program.

I thank NetGalley and Hay House for the digital copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Dialogues Conversations About the Nature and the Universe by Clifford V.Johnson Foreword by Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek

It's an absorbing, captivating, funny, beautiful, stimulating graphic novel
The Dialogues Conversations About the Nature and the Universe by Clifford V.Johnson Foreword by Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek published by MIT Press.

Why this graphic novel?

For encouraging everyone to speak of physics, tells the author.
Physics should be a topic treated not just at school and not just by a niche of people but by everyone.
After all we live in a world where every action is dictated by some physics law.
We don't notice it, we don't know it maybe, but it is true.

This book won't never permit you a second of intellectual rest or peace if you will search for it but it will be a stimulating tool for your brain and your thoughts like also for intelligent future conversations, as the protagonists of these stories starts on trains, café, public spaces, their houses.
Some of them are physicists, other ones common people, but all of them are searching for an intellectual conversation, for trying to define some doubts and trying to answers to ancestral questions.

The result? A complete full-immersion in the most recent physics, and in the most profound, spectacular meaning of life after all.

Is world a casualty? Will God if exists a superior entity and the Universe die one day? God exists or not? What kind of connection is there between life and death?

Starting innocently, from the chat of a boy and a girl speaking during a costume party about the importance of science and what science is doing for better the existence of people we will learn that physics is a topic constantly in motion and that past and present, Newton and Einstein can live well together, because some physics laws are still the same ones elaborated centuries ago.
Physics implements and integrates and there is a chapter where it is hypothesized that thanks to social media and more connections maybe it will be possible to unify all brains for giving more impulse to physics.

We will learn the life of stars and we will understand that their life is not different from the one of another creature existing in this world. They live much more, this is true, millions of years in comparison to an animal, a plant or a man and what it happens when they collapse, die,  for create new life or the opposite, a "eater of matter" as I call it: a black hole.
Fusion between life and death is not just a thematic of our existence but it is primordial and an aspect pretty vivid in the Universe.

This graphic novel won't leave alone any kind of thematic, from the Big Bang Theory and the first expansion of matter in the Universe before the primordial explosion called Big Bang, from black holes and the meaning of them, examining also what would happen to a man if he wants to travel close to a black hole. The story is fascinating. You will see. It will be a story mainly of Time.

Then, time and space, waves, string theory, quantum gravity, multiverse, passing through intelligent anecdotes of daily-life.

I read this book as a passionate of the topic.

These theories let me dream and I would suggest this graphic novel to all that people curious of physics,  world and the Universe.
Don't be intimidated.
The author will give you all the best directions at the end of every little graphic novel chapter,  they are eleven, so that you won't be left alone with your doubts.
If you will experience some perplexities you will find a lot of suggestions, including other books and  materials for discover much more.

Highly recommended.

I thank MIT Press for the physical copy of this book.


Anna Maria Polidori

American Travel Literature, Gendered Aesthetics, and the Italian Tour, 1824–62 by Brigitte Bailey

American Travel Literature, Gendered Aesthetics, and the Italian Tour , 1824–62 by Brigitte Bailey is a fascinating book through literature, travels, paradisiac places, poetry, perceptions.


Italy and later the European Grand-Tour started to be a priority for the so-called elite, writers, poets, from the USA in search for inspiration and a new perspective in the past centuries.

Not only Americans loved to spend in the Bel Paese months when not years but once returned home they published great books thanks to their journals, sketches, giving to everybody an idea and perception: that Italy was for every one.

With the time they also invented a new profession: the one of travel-writer.

They haven't been the first ones to visit Italy, enchanted by this country.
No.
Italy was visited by Goethe and other influential people in grade to report the best of this country with its paradisiac views, his artistic treasures, stunning panoramas, characteristic people, little towns.

This book offers perspectives from the history of art, and the study of tourism from 1824 to 1862 "read" under an American response thanks to a study of many books published about this theme during this historical time.
It was a great moment, a moment in which a new culture of tourism was blooming.

The perceptions of Americans regarding Italy? Three ideas: a classical site of republican values, a Gothic site of violence and sexual danger and an Arcadian landscape.

The author mentions a nice anecdote. While she was writing this book talking of this project with her parents, they shared with her their precious scrapbook that they keep as a precious jewel of an unforgettable past of their vacations during the 1950s in Italy plenty of pictures and postcards.

What do we search in a trip in fact if not answers, escapism, discovery of new places, people, foods, atmospheres, freedom, art, culture?

While Irving loved to portraying an aesthetic Italy thanks to his sketches, journals, books, with the time Italy will start to be idealized as a female in the American's imaginary perception.

Forten, an American woman's traveler will idealized Italy and in particular Rome. Rome a place of "genius" and "beauty" where she could be just herself without any kind of pressure, color of skin.
She was fascinated by the book written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh where the protagonist will be after all in grade to concile her english and italian traits.

Cooper and Cole scrutinized Italy under an aesthetic perception, enjoying the stunning italian landscapes. To them these wonderful scenarios were also reasons for the creation of a social harmonic society thanks to the feminine traits of Italy.

But who was the first Grand Tour traveler of Europe? He was 18 years old, his name was Bayard Taylor and he sailed for Liverpool with two friends and commission for travel essays from the Saturday Evening
Post and the United States Gazette.
To Taylor, this desire of searching for Europe and the Old World a dream since he was very little.
Maybe suggests the author this youngster the first American tourist to backpack through Europe.
He spent more than two years in Britain, Germany, France and Italy for the joy of his readers and his own :-) I guess and a brilliant career in various existential sectors.

Wonderful book if you plan a visit to Italy and if you want to look at this country with the privileged lenses of a literary tourism in grade to open new dimensions.
Not only: these writers will "read" with originality and love their own Italy giving a personal interpretation under many aspects of our country.

Highly suggested to everyone and first of all to the travelers of this world.

I thank Edinburgh University Press for the copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

Flu and other stories

Well yes flu adores me and I am not yet back to the normality after 20 days because flu was back again thanks to fresh air and warm.

Plus these past weeks frenetic because of the baptism of my niece's daughter. I was her Godmother. It was beautiful but not being OK I spent terrible days not being at my best.

It is true that when we travel and we are not OK sensations are not as bright as they should be.
I post here some pictures.

The mass for the baptism in a locality called Lanuvio.

Enjoy pictures.           



We ate in a restaurant called Turcotto, located in Anzio and created in 1816.Stunning location, the name of this restaurant is curios isn't it true? Well maybe the family that opened it had some turkish origin and once they settled in Anzio opening this restaurant they also imported some traditions in terms of culinary tastes to their customers.



  










Anna Maria Polidori

Kafka, Einstein, Kafeinski and Me by Kurth Hartmann

Kafka, Einstein, Kafeinski and Me by Kurth Hartmann  is a remarkable, intelligent book about the lives, existences and works about Franz Kafka and Albert Einstein.
No one knew if these two Jews shared some conversations together when Einstein lived in Prague.
The author of this book, mr. Hartmann is a physicist and he imagined probable conversations between Kafka and Einstein with the time. These friendship and these encounters and the following conversations  between these two brains, Herr Kafka and Herr Professor the most elevated ones. Never banal inspired by thematic like Einstein's theory of general relativity, but also art, books. Kafka seen sometimes to my point of view as a learner, enchanted by the visionary new ideas developed by Einstein.

At the beginning the book opens with another story in part pretty sensual. Frederick Kafeinski and the narrator are in Berlin during the Communist Wall that maybe for youngsters doesn't say anything but  de fact divided in two parts the city of Berlin during the Cold War between Russia and USA. If you tried to pass in the other part soldiers would have killed you in a second.
The atmosphere we meet is intense. The author introduces Berlin in a wonderful way, with its most succulent italian restaurants, atmosphere, monuments, cafè, cultural life. History, current events, love, friendship, a beautiful, intriguing woman called Ursula, sexual temptations, old love still strong at the passage of time, will be the main thematic of this first section of the book.

Later, after a lot of years without contacts Kafka will search again for Albert Einstein when in Berlin. We will discover that Kafka is seriously ill, Einstein an affirmed but also sometimes discriminated scientist.

The third part sees the phantoms of Einstein and Kafka reunited again after 100 years so that they can speak of their past lives  what happened after their departure trying to resolve also a mystery.

If you want to understand physics, if you are a fan of Franz Kafka this book is for you! I can tell you that.


Highly recommended.

I thank Troubador for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori

The Weeping Time Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in America History by Anne C. Bailey

The thematic of American Black slavery in the USA has always been important to me since I was little and that was why I requested at Cambridge University Press The Weeping Time Memory and the Largest Slave Auction in America History by Anne C. Bailey, published last October 2017, ISBN: 9781108140393, price 19,90.

We all know a lot of stories of Black Americans imported and then sold as beasts to owners of large plantations in the South and in the North of the USA.

What this book does wonderfully well, with pathos, sentiment and with a captivating, engaging narrative writing-style is this: to tell the largest auction of black people, 440 from the so-called Butler Plantation Estates trying to discover what happened emotionally to most of these families divided sometimes forever because of this event or united  vice-versa thanks to smart actions like for example a wedding the day before the auction.
The Weeping Time opens with the auction on March 2 and 3 1859 of 436 people in total including 30 babies to people from New York to Louisiana. This auction largely publicized in Southern's magazines and newsmagazines. Butler, who had inherited these properties was constricted to sell most of his slaves because of financial problems. A difficult separation this one for people who felt a strong story and connection with that land. It was a story of habits, life, a land that they loved, cemeteries where they buried their loved ones. It was like to cut their roots.

I don't know why I thought ironically that this auction was a sort of "swan song", the end of a system known since there and brought at the extreme consequences. It was 1859 and wild winds of war were whispering everywhere.

Later this book will discover how it was and it is possible to find out the lost origins for the newest black Americans thanks to researches including the use of DNA and specialized websites.

That auction a trauma removed from the mind of the ancestors,some young black people didn't know and maybe still don't know their  oldest family history. No one of their ancestors felt the desire of remarking that at some point for some of them a terrible destiny changed forever their existences.

The history of these slaves, men and women, girls and boys in love,  babies, children or old people was simple: they were all born, grown-up in the Butler's estates.
That one was  their history.

A place that they could call home.

They were slaves, they were not treated well but that one was what they could call home.

It wasn't a case, as wrote by the author, that some of them, seven returned home once they were set free and slavery abolished.

There is to say that once black people became free they didn't know at first how to re-organize their reality and their new condition as free men disoriented them.
Butler was constricted to ask for Chinese workers because black ones didn't want to work anymore for him as in the past. Butler had plantations of rice and cotton.

Wonderful reconstruction of Butler's family, the humus where Pierce Mease Butler grew up in, his wife Fanny Kemble and their fights regarding slavery, this man wasn't a common one, but part of the Founding Fathers, although he didn't neglect the use of black people in his many properties. Mr. Butler lived in Philadelphia but his business and his estates included the South of the USA.


Abraham Lincoln started to set free black people in 1863 remarking with more power his words with a new amendment in 1865. Slavery abolished only after his death.

Highly recommended to everyone.

I thank Cambridge University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori




   

Novelties from Books for Dogs Charity

Angela Nutt one of the British ladies of the Books for Dogs Committee informs all the people interested that in their charity store at Umbertide "We have been having a bit of a Spring clean and there are some very good new books on the shelves and more being put in in the next few days." Sounds tremendously interesting for a book addicted like me, but novelties are not just these ones.

Angela continues: "We are in Bar Giardino on a Wednesday morning with our DVD rentals.  As always, we do ask for any unwanted DVDs for the rental side and also any other items, clothes, and so on which could be sold in the shop." Angela remembers that if you have large quantities of books to donate it will be indispensable to contact her directly to arrange collection.
"We ask this because space in the shop is a bit limited."


 Anna Maria Polidori

The Tea Party and the charity Books for Dogs

Do you live close to Umbertide and you want to spend a paradisiac afternoon? If the answers are both yes, please join the ladies of Books for Dogs for their biggest charity event, their annual superb Tea Party on April 29th.

This year the party will be organized again at Penny Radford's house, founder of the charity. If you love wonderful landscapes, peace, and a stunning view of the Umbrian countryside you can't miss this event.

Plus: your presence will be precious. You'll help the dogs of various realities that these ladies support.

The Tea Party as said will take place on April 29 from 15 to 18. Like all the other times it will be necessary to pay 10 euros at the entrance.

The ladies this year will organize the "Take and Give." It is beautiful.

If you want to throw away something unwanted, it can be a dress, some books, DVDS, puzzles, souvenirs, old PCS, radio players, whatever you want, feel free to bring them with you and let them see to new potential owners. You can take at the same time all the stuff you want and you need for your house or your personal exigencies brought by the rest of people.
It's all for free. Of course you could donate some money for "thanking" but it is not indispensable.

What will you find at Penny's house?
Apart a great hospitality, Penny is a great host, a lot of tea, if you are interested to prosecco you will be largely satisfied, coffee, water a lot of sweet cakes and snacks for all tastes.

Angela Nutt one of the ladies of the Committee promises other surprises: "We will sell  seeds and little plants donated by two affectionate supporters of Books for Dogs."



Anna Maria Polidori

Emilia L'Elefante by Arto Paasilinna

Well you know when you read a book by Arto Paasilinna you know that you will recognize more or less immediately his powerful irony and his  narrative style without forgetting the surrealism of situations he will create slowly slowly. His writing-style is not quick, but lazy, focused, detailed, like the one of the deepest person observing from an outside and privileged perspective the absurdity of life with its funny characters.We live in this world and it won't be difficult for anyone to recognize most of the situations created by Paasilinna because simply, this one is the stage of the existence with miseries, triumphs, falls, victories and there is no escapism to it.

In this new book published by Iperborea Emilia L'Eelefante, Emily the Elephant we meet a new heroine, a pretty weird heroine. No, she is not slim; no she is not invisible: simply, she is an elephant.

Her name is Emilia, Emily, and she is a cute female elephant, with the  typical common characteristics of this animal: good temper, great memory, incredible fork! I wouldn't never believed that an elephant ate so much! in a day.

She is a great entertainer, being born in a circus, but when Finland decides of banning animals in 1986 from Circus and ten years later situations more depressing, the urgency of...escape away becomes real.

Lucia Lucander the owner of Emilia can't permits a bad end for this pretty animal and she will find a lot of people and men in grade of being helpful.

She will marry a  Russian, great description of the nuptial feasts, sumptuous  for later move on.
Desperate, at some point she desired of killing Emilia. Incredibly funny the description of the arrival of the guy...An enthusiastic butcher was waiting for this big animal imagining wagons of great meat, tons of meat for all necessities. Ah! What a paradisiac situation that one! Lots of money, wagons of people eating all happy this meat.

Lucia will be oppressed by a man constantly too in love with alcohol and  with the desire of wanting something more from her. Desperate, she will run away followed by the wife of that man.

These two ladies will steal food for Emilia but, once discovered, they will be lucky enough to find help and love thanks to a connection of good men. These men will be helpful also when  Lucia will decide of giving back Emilia to her homeland: Africa where she will continue to live happy and free. 

Adorable book plenty of irony and real life.

Anna Maria Polidori 

The Nazi Officer's Wife How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust by Edith Hahn with Susan Dworkin

Last Wednesday I stopped by at Books for Dogs' second hand book store located in Umbertide. A title attracted my attention: The Nazi  Officer's Wife How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust by Edith Hahn with Susan Dworkin.
Gill one of the volunteers said me that she read it and found it very well written.

A special, tender, dreaming narration in first person re-builds the personality of Edith, giving us her most sincere portrait. She had to be an extraordinary and wonderful, sunny lady.

The character of the protagonist, "captured" by her own intense emotions. Edith lived a life made of big emotions and intensities.

I adored her so badly because of this high component of dream, open-mind and a vision: that all chances are possible in a life of a person. Yes: including the most unthinkable ones.

Edith was a Jewish and she lived during a problematic moment: the last second world war conflict, when all Jewish tried to emigrate, tried to escape for not being deported in Camps and where there was peril just to saying that the ethnicity was that one.

In this sense this book is a great lesson because it will give you the perfect mirror of what happened to little microcosms, common Jewish pacific families perfectly integrated with families of other religions and the change of wind caused by racial laws wanted by Hitler.

Edith was born in a conservative Jewish family, where marrying a catholic meant a terrible disgrace; imagine what it would have meant for her dad (dead in the while) to discover that her beloved daughter fell in love for a  Nazi with which she got married with having her only daughter, Angela.

At first we found Edith studying for becoming a lawyer, and later seeing all her dreams interrupted at just an exam from the end because of racial laws.

All her family's life changed abruptly. Her beloved friend Pepi, for not being captured by the SS became for order of her mom, Catholic. And not only: the presence of Jewish people like her to Pepi's mom became intollerable.

But Edith continued to see Pepi, because profoundly attracted by him.

Later Edith's life lived a lot of changes as well...She went in a camp working hard per hours and hours but later...
When she changed identity becoming an Arian she met Werner Vetter, a handsome man, member of the Nazi party. She fell in love for him, for his culture, his love of art and his passions.

The marriage didn't collapse as you can think because Edith was Jewish and Verner a Nazi, but because this man once the war was over wanted to restore the beloved role of housewife Edith played with great efficiency during the war. Edith in the while re-started to work as an attorney and to this husband unacceptable.

It's a book of women's conquests, it's a book of cultures if we see it closely. A book of independence and choices, of beloved children and hopes, of dreams and memories kept away but after all shared for being enjoyed by everyone and for leaving a mark.



Anna Maria Polidori

The Box How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson

The Box How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson is an illuminating, entertaining, interesting, compelling book published by Princeton Press about the role taken by containers  in our society and what it meant this change of strategy for economy.
The book reconstructs the story of containerization with that first trip when in April 1956 a refitted oil-tanker carried 58 shipping containers from Newark to Houston.
An innovation this one of the second half of the 20th century in grade to change business in the world, re-thinking global economy projecting it in a new system and permitting to find more items everywhere in the Globe.

Highly recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori

Pretty Gentlemen Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World by Peter Mc Neil

Pretty Gentlemen Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World by Peter Mc Neil is an exquisite new important volume soon published by Yale Press. A fusion of history, elegance, food, caricatures, objects, suits, real portrays of most prominent representatives from policy to "showbiz" passing through art of the so-called Macaroni Men in grade to mark history with their unique, elegant, exquisite way of introducing themselves in the society, imitated by everyone. For thirty years from 1760 to 1790 Macaroni Men dictated  a way of living in various countries.
The Macaroni existed 30 years before the so-called dandies, (esponent of dandies was Oscar Wilde.)

This study is a social, sexual and general cultural history of the Macaroni.

The richest representatives of this "movement" bought textiles in France and Italy and were spectacularly elegant although their role didn't end there.

We will discover reading this book that history is also written when fashion meets grace and elegance. This volume divided in seven chapters testifies it.



Anna Maria Polidori

Mumin e la Vita in Famiglia by Tove Jansson

Mumin e la Vita in Famiglia or in english Mumin and the Family-Life by Tove Jansson published by Iperborea, tells in this book created in comic strips the story of a family of trolls Mumin, so nice, cute, sweet and distant from the common imagine we all have of trolls that I am more than sure you and your children will fall in love for them all! and their eccentric friends and relatives.
There is a mother Mumin, a dad Mumin, a son Mumin, a girlfriend of Son Mumin. There is Tobacco a traveler-friend and a profound connoisseur of the world, Sniff, Shadow, a philosopher called Joint, and many other funny characters.

The creative mother of Mumin is Tove Jansson. Born in 1914 in Finland, she grew up in Helsinki and in a little Finnish island. Her dad was a sculptor and her mother an illustrator. Tove became with the time a painter, illustrator and cartoonist like also writer for children's books paying attention also at literature for adult people.

She won with Mumin the Prize Andersen and an endless fame. She disappeared on 2001.

At first in Italy these books were proposed largely in 1958 by Vallecchi and later by Salani (the italian publishing house of Harry Potter) while these comic strips appeared for the first time on the magazine Linus at the end of 1960s.

Well what can we say of this comic strips book? That it is very funny!!! 21 comic books strips in this one  a lot of funny situations that will let you laugh  but that also defines the problematic lived in and by a common family.

At first Son Mumin is lost and thinks that maybe is better, not having a family giving up with life but then he meets his parents again and he remembers them and the meaning of family and  he thinks that after all living a plenty life is better than giving up.

Mumins are characterized for being friendly, nice, opened with everyone and they create special connections with every creature they meet without difficulty because they are socials.

They're excited by the novelties and Mumin Dad a bit tired of the common life sometimes. Ahem, these comic strips were written when the world was not yet living so many abnormalities and when normality could be boring :-) Just, my little point of view.

Mumin family would want to live some exciting adventures, maybe becoming criminals for some hours.

At the same time they discover while in the sea with an adventure lived with Tobacco a chest. At first Mumin family imagines that maybe it contains whisky, but no...Oh God, just rude words. What to do with rude words? Mumins don't want them...Mmmm, maybe the best solution is sending them all at aunt Joan, a lady pretty rude with them and so who knows? Maybe in grade to appreciate them. They prepare a special package for the not so beloved relative and send it promptly.
Without to ruin the surprise we will see that aunt Joan will arrive  pretty quickly at Mumin's house with the intention of clarifying this story. That gift not accepted at all.

Enjoy and enjoy Mumin! for you and your children, it will be a tender adventure where everyone can recognize some part of himself/herself.




Anna Maria Polidori

Flu

Dear readers,
if you don't see me around too much these days it's because of a nasty flu and the desire of recovering as soon as possible.

Many thanks for your attention

Anna Maria

Polar Bear Postman by Seiko Kijima

Polar Bear Postman by Seiko Kijima is a book published by Museyon last November and suggested me through NetGalley.

Oh, it is an enchanting, lovely, cute, delicate and strong story, the one of Milk, a Polar Bear with a special work: the one of postman.

Just: one day,  strange he receives a postcard with an important message addressed to him. Possible? It was from a couple of red-crones birds. Their chick missing they don't know anymore what to do. May Milk be helpful? May Milk can asks if someone noticed somewhere their beloved creature?

Milk is very worried and he starts to asking at carnivorous animals if they had spotted a chick somewhere, but no, although tasty, they ate a chick a lot of time ago. Then he creates a big connection with animals of every sorta for trying to discover where the chick ended up...

A beautiful, tender children's book, where sadness at the end dissolved and replaced by a lot of joy and good news. It was great to read a happy end because this one is not a light thematic.


I thank Museyon Publishing House for the digital copy of this ebook and NetGalley.

Anna Maria Polidori

Affinities Potent Connections in Personal Life by Jennifer Manson

Affinities Potent Connections in Personal Life by Jennifer Manson  by Polity Books captured my attention because often, maybe in a daily base we meet people with which we feel affinities, attractions, or the opposite but our soul "can also be transported" in another time, in another moment of our life, eating a delicious dish, or just listening a song, one of the most powerful vehicles for positive or negative memories.

The book is articulated in three parts: Sensation of Living, Ineffable Kinship and Ecologies and Socio-Atmospheric.

Developing new depth at the sociological instances of the latest years this one is a work of great profundity and interest. It will embrace a wide range of thematic from daily-life connections to the connections established via internet, our relationship with animals and meat, passing through the story of "blood" and resemblances, not leaving anything out.

Regarding meat and animals I would want to write few lines.
Living in a countryside I have seen a lot of times chickens, rabbits, pigeons, pigs killed for being eaten as well.
What written  by the sociologist is correct but there is also another reality: who owns an animal or more establishes with it a strong connection and once killed a stronger connection, because that animals meant a story of sacrifice and love.
That animals although later killed for being eaten have been loved. I know that it is weird but it is the reality.

Telling the truth , and I am not a meat-lover at all, when I eat meat of animals that we didn't grow up I can't recognize the same taste. It's a story of affinities :-)



Innovative book, you will adore it.


Highly recommended.

Anna Maria Polidori

Putting it Together Again When It's All Fallen Apart 7 Principles for Rebuilding your Life by Tom Hollady

Putting it Together Again  When It's All Fallen Apart 7 Principles for Rebuilding your Life by Tom Hollady is a self-help book by WestBow Press E-Books. In this case the pastor will help you to rebuild your life in a time of crisis, when something went very wrong, starting from his own experience: a terrible flood in sunny California, years ago (now as it's possible to see more frequents episodes) in grade of destroying his house, but also the church and many other houses of his parishioners.
The seven principles created by mr Holladay will help you in many ways: in time of discouragement will be a balm for your existence and for living a best life.
But...
When there are big problems the common fear is this one: not being anymore confident in your own capacities. Don't worry, thanks to mr. Holladay you will learn how to start again. It is possible and this sunny eBook will help you step-by-step to do that with success and determination without forgetting the hand of God on your shoulder.
Stories of other people and how they sorted out their problems taken as vibrant examples like also many facts from the Bible.
The author suggests of sharing this eBook with others so that its powerful message can be spread more widely.


I thank BookLookBloggers for the copy of this ebook.

Anna Maria Polidori