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Thieves of Baghdad

Matthew Bogdanos, William Patrick

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 23 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

He's a spit-and-polish Marine, a competitive boxer, a classics scholar, and an assistant DA in Manhattan. New York tabloids call him “pit bull” for his relentless prosecution of high-profile defendants like Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs and the “baby-faced butchers” of Central Park. When Baghdad fell, Colonel Matthew Bogdanos was in southern Iraq, tracking down terrorist networks through their financing and weapons smuggling—until he heard about the looting of the museum. Immediately setting out across the desert with an elite group chosen from his multiagency task force, he risked his career and his life in pursuit of Iraq’s most priceless treasures.
Thieves of Baghdad takes you from his family’s flight to safety at Ground Zero on 9/11, to his mission to hunt down al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan, and into the war-torn streets of Baghdad on the trail of antiquities. Colorful characters and double-dealing are the norm as Bogdanos tries to sort out what really happened during the chaos of war. We see his team going on raids and negotiating recoveries, blowing open safes and mingling in the marketplaces, and tracking down leads from Zurich and Amman to Lyons, London, and New York. In an investigation that led to the recovery of more than 5,000 priceless objects, complex threads intertwine, and the suspense mounts as the team works to locate the most sensational treasure of all, the treasure of Nimrud, a collection of gold jewelry and precious stones often called “Iraq’s Crown Jewels.”
A mixture of police procedural, treasure hunt, wartime thriller, and cold-eyed assessment of the connection between the antiquities trade and weapons smuggling, Thieves of Baghdad exposes sordid truths about the international art and antiquities market. It also explores the soul of a man who is equal parts hardened Marine, dedicated father, and passionate scholar. Most of all, it demonstrates that, in a culture as old as that of the Middle East, nothing is ever quite what it seems.

Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views (Garland Reference Library of Social Science)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Very useful 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This is a great book for a student who is looking for an overview of genocides from around the world. It is a good first step in holocaust and genocide education.

Editorial Review:

A summary of the major atrocities of the 20th century, which looks at the historical context of genocides, and how they were perpetrated. Eyewitness accounts form the basis of the reports which range from the Khmer Rouge massacre of Cambodians, to the annihilation of the Hutu in Burundi.

Guantanamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power

Joseph Margulies

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The detention system established by the Bush Administration at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba is like no other in our nation's history. Joseph Margulies traces the development of this detention policy from its ill-conceived creation in 2002 as "the ideal interrogation chamber" to its present form, where most prisoners are held without charges in a super-maximum security prison, even though the U.S. government has acknowledged that many have been cleared for release and most of the others are not even alleged to have committed a hostile act against the United States or its allies.

Margulies, who was the lead attorney in the Supreme Court case Rasul v. Bush, writes that Guantánamo and other secret CIA and Defense Department detention centers around the world have become "prisons beyond the law," where the Administration claims the right to hold people indefinitely, incommunicado, and in solitary confinement without charges, access to counsel, and without benefit of the Geneva Conventions. Weaving together firsthand accounts of military personnel who witnessed the interrogations at Guantánamo along with the words of the prisoners themselves, Margulies exposes the chilling reality of a "war on terror" that masks an assault on basic human rights -- rights to which the United States has always subscribed.

Unit 731 - Testimony

Hal Gold

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A must read about Japan's secret Nazi human medical experiments and America's complicity 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

It is very short and easy read. Also there is a lot of information about Unit 731 on the web. The author points out the irony of the benevolent role that the Japanese doctors played during WWI. There is another similar book called the Rape of Nanking (Nanjing) by Iris Chang, who recently committed suicide. Most people are familiar with Germany's role in WWII but, not the extent of Japan's. I lived in China and have a good friend from Changchun, the city where these gruesome human experiments took place. I also have another close friend from Japan. The Chinese are still very bitter about these atrocities, even their youth express contempt. What adds insult to injury is that the Japanese continue to deny their war crimes. The younger generation is not to blame, but in order to move forward Japan needs to at least acknowledge it and America needs to come clean about its complicity. I still am not sure why the US felt a need to grant immunity to these Japanese Nazi doctors in order to obtain their data on germ warfare. There were also some American POWs who were victims of these vivisections and other experiments. It seems there should have been some way to prosecute as well as obtain the illicit data. When Germany and Japan knew they were going to lose WWII they tried to destroy all evidence of their death factories. They were both unsuccessful; there was too much evidence and too little time to dismantle and destroy it. There were also too many witnesses.

Editorial Review:

Among the most disturbing atrocities of World War II were the shocking human experiments performed by Japans notorious medical unit 731, chronicled here by Hal Gold. Bacteria development for bombing raids; vivisections on living prisoners; injections of pathogens; and life with the clinic rats are vividly and painfully related by former unit members themselves. These testimonies are evidence of the unhealed wounds left by this cruel period in Japans history.

Letters from Nuremberg: My Father's Narrative of a Quest for Justice

Christopher Dodd

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

For some sixty years, the Nuremberg trials have demonstrated the resolve of the United States and its fellow Allied victors of the Second World War to uphold the principles of dispassionate justice and the rule of law even when cries of vengeance threatened to carry the day. In the summer of 1945, soon after the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, Thomas J. Dodd, the father of U.S. Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, traveled to the devastated city of Nuremberg to serve as a staff lawyer in this unprecedented trial for crimes against humanity. Thanks to his agile legal mind and especially to his skills at interrogating the defendants—including such notorious figures as Hermann Göring, Alfred Rosenberg, Albert Speer, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and Rudolf Hess—he quickly rose to become the number two prosecutor in the U.S. contingent.

Over the course of fifteen months, Dodd described his efforts and his impressions of the proceedings in nightly letters to his wife, Grace. The letters remained in the Dodd family archives, unexamined, for decades. When Christopher Dodd, who followed his father’s path to the Senate, sat down to read the letters, he was overwhelmed by their intimacy, by the love story they unveil, by their power to paint vivid portraits of the accused war criminals, and by their insights into the historical importance of the trials.

Along with Christopher Dodd’s reflections on his father’s life and career, and on the inspiration that good people across the world have long taken from the event that unfolded in the courtroom at Nuremberg, where justice proved to be stronger than the most unspeakable evil, these letters give us a fresh, personal, and often unique perspective on a true turning point in the history of our time. In today’s world, with new global threats once again put-ting our ideals to the test, Letters from Nuremberg reminds us that fear and retribution are not the only bases for confrontation. As Christopher Dodd says here, “Now, as in the era of Nuremberg, this nation should never tailor its eternal principles to the conflict of the moment, for if we do so, we will be shadowing those we seek to overcome.”


From the Hardcover edition.

Unholy Trinity: How the Vatican's Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets

Mark Aarons, John Loftus

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

The Vatican, the USA and the UK collude with Nazis to fight the Commies 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

There are already several excellent reviews of Unholy Trinity on Amazon, so I will try to bring up some additional points about the book and its authors.

The original title of this book is "Ratlines". Ratlines, a nautical term, is used in this context to describe the method by which Nazi war criminals escaped from Germany and Austria to a first point of safety (usually Italy) and thence to points beyond in Europe, North America, Australasia, and especially to South America. These escapes were facilitated by the Allied powers, but would not have been possible without the help of the Vatican.

This newer edition is titled "Unholy Trinity", and features the portraits of Pope Pius XII, Hitler and Stalin on the cover. The subtitle is "The Vatican, the Nazis, and the Swiss banks". Then why is Stalin on the cover? Also, when describing the ratlines, one cannot omit the USA and Britain. Unholy Pentagon? I think the newer title was invented by the publishers who thought that it was catchier than the original, but "Ratlines" remains a much better way to encapsulate the book. That said, the most intriguing character of the book is a Russian spy, Prince Anton Vasilevich Turkul, described by the authors as "arguably the greatest professional spy of the twentieth century".

I found the central chapters of this book heavy going due to the complicated nature of the narrative, the great number of Central European characters with similar looking names, and the alphabet soup of acronyms for what must be dozens of organizations. The book could have benefited from a cast of characters and an acronym guide. I recommend that readers make their own list of acronyms as they read, because most of them are not indexed.

Co-author John Loftus is a self-proclaimed Irish Catholic. I have heard him describe himself as such several times on Dave Emory's 'For the Record' radio programs. I mention this because one of the detractors of Unholy Trinity labelled the book anti-Catholic propaganda. The authors are not anti-Catholic, rather they are anti-Vatican. By the same token, I might criticize the government of the USA, but that doesn't mean that I am anti-American. I sensed that the authors were very disappointed and perhaps surprised by the unethical actions on the part of the Vatican elite. I suspect that as a Catholic himself, Mr. Loftus expected more from the Catholic church hierarchy than non-Catholics might expect.

My next comment may not mean much to readers who are unfamiliar with the concept of the Nazi capital flight network, as detailed in Paul Manning's "Martin Bormann: Nazi in Exile". Please refer to that landmark book, reviewed on Amazon, and available as a free download if you look for it. Paul Manning's thesis was that Martin Bormann survived WWII, moved to South America via the ratlines, and exercised control over the Nazi flight capital, i.e., Nazi war loot, that was later used to create the "great economic miracle" that was the West German economy of 1948-51. My biggest disappointment with "Unholy Trinity" was the short shrift given to Paul Manning's thesis. They mention it briefly, but in such a way that I'm not convinced they fully appreciated it, even though it coincides with and complements their arguments.

Despite those few misgivings and difficulties with the book, I recommend it highly and rate it five stars.

Editorial Review:

The scandalous story of the Communists, the Catholic Church, and the CIA in the last years of World War II. The Unholy Trinity is a disturbing look at the disastrous effects of the Vatican-Nazi connection that may change forever readers' vision of the church's role in world politics.

The House on Garibaldi Street (Classics of Espionage)

Isser Harel

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The House on Garibaldi Street is the true story of one of this century's most audacious intelligence operations - the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina by the Mossad, Israel's secret intelligence service. In a daring operation which shook the world, a team of elite Mossad agents, under the personal command of the legendary Mossad leader Isser Harel, kidnapped Eichmann and smuggled him to Israel. Eichmann's trial received unparalleled media coverage, and brought home to millions around the world the horror of the Holocaust through its principal co-ordinator. Eichmann was found guilty of genocide and was executed two years later. Harel's account was first published in 1975 and won world acclaim, being translated into more than 20 languages and selling more than a million copies. This new edition has been completely revised and updated. For the first time the real names and details of all Mossad personnel are revealed, as are important diplomatic contacts which shed new light on the political acceptability of the kidnapping, the operation being officially sanctioned not only by Israel, but also by West Germany. Shlomo Shpiro who worked personally with Isser Harel on the preparation of this new edition is an Israeli scholar specialising in intelligence and security issues. The House on Garibaldi Street has all the suspense, action and drama of a classic intelligence story - it is also an engrossing account to rival the best spy fiction.

The Handbook of Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflicts

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Editorial Review:

This book offers the most up-to-date authoritative commentary and analysis of international humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict. While the past few decades have seen consistent development of the laws culminating in a series of International Covenants and Protocols, world events in recent years have made reassessment of the law both a timely and topical concern. In this new book, acknowledged experts restate the international humanitarian law applicable in armed conflict. The key statements were promulgated as the Joint Service Regulation for the German Armed forces in August 1992 and this book will serve as a work of reference for practicing lawyers and academics and as a work of legal instruction to armed forces.

Witness to Nuremberg

Richard W. Sonnenfeldt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An Important, Captivating Memoir 5 out of 5 stars.
24 of 24 people found this review helpful.

During 1945-46, Richard Sonnenfeldt, age 22, was the chief interpreter on the U.S. prosecution team at Nuremberg. In this role, he served U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, the chief U.S. prosecutor, and his interrogation team as the lead interpreter in the pre-indictment interrogations of many imprisoned Nazis, including all 22 who became Nuremberg defendants.

Sonnenfeldt actually was much more than the U.S. prosecution's lead interpreter at Nuremberg. Because of his German and English language skills, his smarts and maturity, and his surprising rapport with and control over many of the prisoners, Sonnenfeldt actually became a de facto senior interrogator. His work and successes as interpreter and interrogator are recorded in the many thousands of pages of interrogation reports that are central parts of the Nuremberg trial and historical record. At the end of the Nuremberg trial year, Justice Jackson saw to it personally that Sonnenfeldt received a military decoration for his work.

But that's actually not the half of it. In outline form, this is Richard Sonnenfeldt's quite amazing life story:
* born Jewish, son of two physicians, in Gardelegen, a town in north central Germany, in 1923;
* happy, assimilated boyhood until Nazism and Nuremberg laws change everything, including shutting down his parents' work;
* getting out of Germany, along with his younger brother, to a boarding school in England;
* being interned in England as an enemy alien once active war with Germany started in 1940;
* being shipped with other internees and German POWs from England to Australia;
* being paroled from Australia to India, and making it on his own there;
* getting passage from India to the U.S. (His parents, in a separate miracle, had made it from Germany to Sweden and from there to Baltimore);
* becoming, as his ship docked in New York, a media event because he was an unsupervised boy who had survived all of these "adventures";
* working, while still a teenager, as an electrician in Baltimore and entering Johns Hopkins night college;
* being drafted into the U.S. Army, becoming a U.S. citizen, and fighting in Europe as a combat soldier;
* entering the Dachau concentration camp in April 1945;
* in May 1945, being called out of a motor pool in Austria, because of his bilingual skills, to serve as General William J. ("Wild Bill") Donovan's OSS interpreter;
* moving with Donovan into the Justice Jackson/war crimes project that became Nuremberg;
* serving as the principal and preferred interpreter of each prisoner, including Hermann Goering;
* playing a significant role in interrogating and studying each of them;
* being half of the 2-man team that served the October 1945 indictment on each Nuremberg defendant;
* working for the U.S. prosecution throughout the trial;
* returning to Baltimore and succeeding as a Johns Hopkins engineering student;
* becoming a distinguished engineer with RCA, where he was part of the team that invented color television;
* working on NASA projects;
* working as an executive at NBC;
* obtaining patents on numerous inventions;
* becoming a husband and very proud father;
* sailing three times across the Atlantic; and
* never talking much about his past until his grandchildren started to interview him for school projects and papers.

Richard Sonnenfeldt's life is an extraordinary true story, and he has written it modestly and well. His book deserves to reach a very large general audience, and I am confident that any reader, from children through seniors, will find it to be relevant, exciting and inspiring.

Editorial Review:

In this gripping memoir by the chief American interpreter atthe Nuremberg trials, Richard Sonnenfeldt recounts a remarkable life. Bythe time he was 18, Sonnenfeldt had grown up in Germany, escaped toEngland, been deported to Australia as a "German enemy alien", arrived inthe U.S., and joined the U.S. army. By age 22 he had fought in the Battleof the Bulge and helped liberate the Dachau concentration camp, when he wasappointed chief interpreter for the American prosecution of Nazi warcriminals at the Nuremberg trials. During his service, he spent pretrialtime with Hermann Goering as well as other top Nazi leaders like vonRibbentrop, Rudolph Hoess, and Julius Streicher, the infamous editor of theanti-Semitic Der Sturmer. An engineer in later life, he was a principaldeveloper of color TV and computer technology and a key player in NASA'spreparation of the first moon shot.

Documents on the Laws of War

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Readership: This is an essential book for statesmen and diplomats, members of armed forces and humanitarian organizations, lawyers, journalists, and students of international law and international relations.

This is a completely revised and updated edition of a book which has become widely accepted internationally as a standard work on international humanitarian law. It contains authoritative texts of the main treaties and other key documents covering a wide variety of issues: the rights and duties of both belligerents and neutrals; prohibitions or restrictions on the use of particular weapons; the protection of victims of war, including the wounded and sick, prisoners of war, and civilians; the application of the law to forces operating under UN auspices; the attempts to apply the laws of war in civil wars; the prosecution of war crimes and genocide; the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons; and many other matters.

This third edition, greatly expanded from the second, contains thirteen new documents, including agreements on anti-personnel mines and laser weapons; key extracts from the statutes of the international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the International Criminal Court; two documents on UN forces and international humanitarian law; and an extract from the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on nuclear weapons. There is a new appendix listing internet websites.