Larry Wolff

Whilst the blurb claims that the book focuses on these high profile child abuse cases, the author seems desperate to take any excuse to write about anything else. Long, rambling diversions into the careers and ancestry of any public figure who can be referenced along with lengthy descriptions of Viennese life and culture are occasionally punctuated by short passages on the abuse cases that the book is supposedly about. Coming to this from a true crime rather than Viennese history interest, I was bored and frustrated into a DNF. If 'Freud's Vienna' interests you this may be your thing but if you were interested in these crimes primarily, forget it.… (mer)

Definitely a tough read even if you know lots about modern Eastern Europe. By the time you get to the chapter on Voltaire, the picture is already clear and a bit repetitive. Eastern Europe was backward and largely unknown, the people barbarian and uncivilised, yet not exotic as 'the orient'. This conveniently helped to define western Europe as 'civilisation as we know it'. Some similarities with the criticisms of The west made by Edward Said.

However some good stories and the intrepid women travellers were interesting

… (mer)

Adam moves to San Francisco to start his new teaching job, moving into the flat of his old college roommate Huck with whom he got back in touch with by accident shortly before. Also living there is Christopher, Huck's young son. Huck's friends and life in San Francisco in general seem more colourful than Adam maybe had expected, and he's certainly surprised by how much he likes having Christopher in his life. And there are women he's having affairs with, Lucille and Amy; one of his students is having a crush on him, letters to his mother and ex-girlfriend are being written, and Christopher's mother is lurking in the shadows. I really enjoyed this book.… (mer)

A history of how the continent of Europe came to be conceived as divided into Western and Eastern Europe. ‘It was Western Europe that invented Eastern Europe as it’s complementary other half in the eighteenth century, the age of Enlightenment’ (p. 4).This book is an investigation of late eighteenth-century western ideas of Eastern Europe, ideas which persist today. The Enlightenment ideas of Eastern Europe as barbaric and, uncivilised and failing to ‘evolve’ to the same extent as the 'scientific west' were often written by authors who had never visited the countries they were writing about. In one of Wolff’s discussions about an essay written in 1914 he states; ‘the whole vocabulary in which the issues of Eastern Europe were defined was that of the eighteenth century: barbarism and civilisation, wildness and the frontier, the picturesque and the instructive, and finally an ingenuous note of surprise that the people were white’ (p. 366). Included are extensive notes and an index. This is a valuable book for those studying the idea of Eastern Europe which has persisted even without the Iron Curtain.… (mer)