This is a brutally blunt examination of a society in which the "means of production" are unfettered by any controls. In the factory where Haraszti worked, a decent living was only obtainable by "gaming" the system -- manufacturng substandard product and abusing the production machinery. Haraszti's tale of what survival requires, and what it costs, should be a warning to us all. He is a keen and thoughtful observer of the consequences of the system in which he finds himself. Although this book is set in a socialist state, the lessons are equally applicable to rampant capitalism. It brings to mind the old adage that capitalism consists of people exploiting people, but under socialism it is the other way around

This book and it's partner book (part II, Bequest) were particularly interesting to me because I grew up knowing the man who is the subject of the books. Though it is not completely non-ficticious, I was pleased to find the character of the man in the book to be consistent with the character of the man I knew. It filled in many questions I'd had of what life experiences had helped to mold such a respectable person. It also gave new insight into the history of Hungary. After reading it I knew it was a good one to pass on to my kids and even supply their school library with their own copies. The only disappointment was that the story ended so early in his life; I could have read 2 more books and then some because I know he is still alive as of this writing.

There are so many confliciting reviews, I just had to read this book and write this review.

I knew the author, many years ago in Europe. Although we did not know each other before the war in our native Budapest, we were in the same camp. We are about the same age. I knew her then -- and her family. Betty [her American name] was a young girl, whose idealized life was torn apart. Her love for Richie kept her hopes alive as much as her dear Mother kept her body alive... and perhaps her faith kept her soul alive. She was ill in the camps, perhaps often delirious. Many of us were -- with death, sickness and hunger as our constant companions.

I can't blame her for her obsession with her first love -- I am sure her maturity was arrested at the same time she was taken away. So, she got older, but remained 15 for many many years. You cannot imagine the horrors we endured -- Schindler's list is a "Disney-like" version of our experience.

All Holocaust survivors are deeply damaged souls. We are not "normal" in any sense of the word. Luckily, in later life, Betty finally learned what true love is, and her {also deeply traumatized} husband stuck with her -- through her troubled life and even now... even as she painted such a unneccessarily cruel and negative portrait of him in her book... he must be a very sad and very special man.

This book will not win any great awards. It is just one story -- one about a very spoiled, self-centered and foolish girl who is REAL. She did live the life she described -- I know that for certain -- and she had the nerve to admit it to the world. Don't criticize her, understand her.

I have met Betty Schimmel and her husband Otto. How anyone can say her story is fiction is beyond me. Yes, both Betty and her husband Otto survived the concentration camps. The deep emotions of her story are still evident in her voice and face. This is a true life story about both the horrors of war and being a Jew in WWII Europe and of true love.

True, this is not an ending to give away. Read Betty's story. It will rip your heart in many directions. You will not be disappointed. You will not be able to put this book down.

Reading this book changed my life and helped me learn to cherish the liberties and love in my life. To See You Again : A True Story of Love in a Time of War is a valuable historical account that shares what it was like to live through an ordinary day in an extraorinarily horrific time.I couldn't put this book down. It was enlightening to read an honest and graphic account of life in the war torn city of Budapest as well as accounts of life in the Ghetto, concentration camps and a death march. The love story encapsulated in this book is enthralling, sweet and touching. This book teaches the reader that life, love, and faith have the power to overcome hatred and horror. Betty Schimmel was a bit self serving at times but anyone with a spirit and sense of survival as strong as hers is truly a important person. This is a wonderful book.

This book is definately a "guy book". It covers a period of Hungarian history from the end of World War II up until the 1956 revolution as told by a group of basketball players. These boys spend lots of time talking about, dreaming, about, telling jokes about, or thinking about sex. Intertwined with this running theme is an interesting perspective on Hungarian though during the Soviet Occupation (just another in a series of defeats for the Hungarian army that as many characters echo, "...can't last forever."

Mr. Fischer's style is sometimes bold and explicit such as "Now, of course apart from the bad taste it would leave in his soul, his participaton in the Communist movement would be as welcome as a bonfire in an ammunition dump. He had as much chance of joing as a blue whale had, assuming it could make its way to Budapest." Other times, he has such a complicated sentence structure and compound adverbs and adjectives that it takes three times to read the sentence. Compounding that is a lack of clear plot. The story consists of chapter after chapter of vinettes flashing back and forth through the period. There are many references to figures and events in Hungarian history that are good to know about ahead of time in order to more fully enjoy the dialogue.

If you can get past all hat, there are many wonderful passages accurately depicting the Hungarian character and view of life such as Guryi's reaction to watching a girl jump the bridge into the Danube "there goes another one." Having lived in Hungary and experienced the culture, I never the less enjoyed the book.

Under the Frog is a novel about the oppression and evils of totalitarianism.

The book tracks the exploits of Pataki and Gyuri, members of Hungary's elite National Basketball team from the end of WW II to and through the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet Union in the mid 1950's.

Ostensibly railway workers, the team travels the country, usually buck naked, in a specially constructed rail car, playing basketball, chasing girls and generally avoiding anything that looks like work while desperately striving to maintain their team membership, the only thing that keeps them from experiencing first hand the blight and depression that marks the plight of the common man in post war Hungary.

Biting, satirical, often hysterically funny, the book nevertheless searingly conveys the sense of deprivation and repression that gave rise to the uprising as well as the brutality and viciousness with which it was put down.

Fischer's international reputation was built on this novel, and deservedly so. It was one of the great novels of the Cold War era.

A brilliant, haunting, truly memorable book.

From the dark days at the end of World War Two, through to perhaps even darker days at the time of the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising. Under The Frog is a deeply moving whilst seriously funny book. Seen mainly through the eyes of a basketball playing, perenial under achiever. Under The Frog effectively shows how laughter can rise out of tradegy, and tradegy out of absurbity. Under the frog for me remains one the bitterst denouciations of a totalitarian regime and the evils that it can generate. All that the hero wishes for is freedom. Better a street sweeper in Stockholm than a general in Hungary. This is Fischer's first book and acts as an excellent introduction into the unique prose style. I would heartily recommend the equal excellent 'Thought Gang' and 'Don't buy this if your stupid'

Magda Denes writes of her experiences in World War II, and how she and her Jewish family deal with deprivation, fear, tragedy, and ultimately, hope. Denes' words flow, and her abilty to comment on her environment and on her own personality lend levity and irony to what could be a very grim story. There are many sadnesses that Denes must overcome, but at the end of the book, one feels uplifted. This book is not only an excellent way for young people to learn about the way and the persecution of Jews, but will appeal to the natural wit of most young people. Mostly, Denes, who has gone on to carve out a successful life for herself, reminds her readers, without hammering them over the head, that this very important time in history must be remembered in order for it not to be repeated. I highly recommend this book for adults and teens alike. It is well-written, poignant, and quite funny at times. One needn't be Jewish to get something from reading it, because it is about the human experience, not just the Jewish experience.

As a student I read the "Diary of Anne Frank" and indeed it was poignant and unforgettable. Magda Denes' book is the darker side, a memoir written almost 50 years after the war, and yet through the eyes of a young child. Her relationship with her beloved brother Ivan is central to the story, and their closeness makes you want to examine your own sibling relationships. Magda survives, but at a cost. I had a sense of immediacy and even awe, that she and her mother and elderly grandmother could be so resourceful, so brave, in the face of starvation and deprivation. I kept wondering, could any of us be so brave, and at 9 years old yet. This book is more than a holocaust memoir, it is an ultimately awe inspiring adventure tale, tinged with truth and sadness.

Magda's story grips you from the start - full of horrifyingly vivid memories told in a straightforward fashion, it examines several years of a Hungarian child's life during and after WWII. Her relationship with her brother and cousin is so intense that your heart will ache for all three children. At the book's conclusion, although you know that Magda will be okay (obviously, if she wrote the autobiography later) but you itch to find out more about this incredibly resillient, intelligent young lady.

I like to pair this book with The Trumpeter of Krakow. First we read how "The Tartars came through the world like a horde of wild beasts. They left not one thing alive nor one green blade of wheat standing. Brave they were as lions, courageous they were as great dogs, but they had hearts of stone and knew not mercy, nor pity, nor tenderness, nor God." (From Trumpeter of Krakow)

Then in White Stag we read, "For years there was no rest for them, there could be no rest. Like a sharp wedge they had driven themselves into Europe and now they were surrounded by enemies; they had to go on or perish."

By comparing these two books, a child learns that there are two sides to every story--a good lesson in life.

I first read the White Stag in fifth grade. I really liked this story because I found it to be very moody and beautiful. If I remember correctly, the story involves the early migrations of Eurasian people into the Eastern European steppes. I particularly liked this book because it is a fascinating blend of fact and legend, and deals with a somewhat obscure area of European history. A "Mists of Avalon" for younger readers.

Attila . . . who is this man? Attila the Hun . . . who is this conquerer? You may read every history book on this historic man, but you may not learn as much as when you read The White Stag. Ask yourself this: when does fiction end and history begin? There are few authors who can express themselves perfectly in both writing and drawing as Kate Seredy, the author of The White Stag. When she combines her talents into this book, the results are wonderous. The poetic words flow into rich pictures which capture the imagination and brings it into new heights. Even though The White Stag is a short book, it is an equal to any ancient history book with hundreds of pages. After you read this book, the memory of it lingers and enthralls you. Adults and childern alike can read this novel and find the satisfaction of an excellent book. Stories which mix fiction with facts are as true as history. When you read this book, you read history, because history is as full of untruths as truths. Read this book when you are young, and when you grow up, read it again to yourself anf your childern. Each time you read this book, your insight of its sighnificance will grow.

Schechter has done it again! I was eager to read his latest effort, having been delighted with his last book, The Path of No Resistance. In clear, elegant and witty prose, he has brought to life the European and mathematical world of Paul Erdos, and through careful biography and analysis has shed light on his fascinating, eccentric personality. The math in this book is remarkably clear; I finally understand the Monty Hall problem!!! I came away with a deepened understanding of the culture of Hungary and of mathematicians, and I was also moved by the book's compassionate portrayal of an unusual life dedicated to truth, beauty, and support of fellow mathematicians.

If you at all are interested in math or history, read this book!!!

This beautiful book is an intellectually rich biography of one of the world's most prolific mathematicians. Amusingly, inoffensively and highly idiosyncratic, Erdos worked on hard problems in apparently simple fields, taking rather easily explained concepts and forging powerful new results and tools with a speed which astounded professional colleagues. Bruce Schechter does a magnificent job of clearly explaining what Erdos did and the many connections between his work and other areas of mathematics and, more generally, science. Through frequent digressions he paints both a humane portrait of a uniquely caring individual and a thumbnail sketch of western political oppression around the world during the first sixty years of this century.

This book also will introduce readers, in a gentle and interesting manner, to the world of numbers and mathematics. The nature of prime numbers and how they are distributed, famous conjectures such as Goldbach's, topics in graph theory and combinatorial mathematics, and more are made accessible to the reader. The account of the controversy surrounding the "elementary" proof of the Prime Number Theorem benefits from the author's access to newly available material, and will be of interest to both laypeople and mathematicians. Other topics, introduced through natural association with the subject at hand, include Godel's Theorem, Russell's paradox, the Monty Hall problem (made famous by Marilyn vos Savant), the nature of infinity, proving theorems by contradiction, and the normal distribution.

Though Erdos is known to many for his unusual life style and behavior, this book does not dwell on the bizarre but weaves such facets of his life into the more exciting mathematical development of the person. This biography ranks among the very best of the numerous works about mathematicians which I have read over the past 45 years. Arguably, more has been written about Erdos in the past decade or two than about any other mathematician. Despite this, Schechter's new contribution is an outstanding addition to the literature

Schechter takes you by the hand and walks you through some stunning yet simple mathematical proofs that are real eye-openers for a layman like myself. He doesn't just talk about math, though. For example, one chapter has Paul Erdos explaining a simple proof to the non-math-literate wife of a colleague. You get to see the proof (which was nifty) as well as the way Erdos interacted on a human level. It's the kind of thing this biography does fantastically well, i.e., math in a thoroughly human context. Erdos is a very charming and unusual person who comes alive along with the math. The book is written in stories, anecdotes, and observations about math in general and Erdos's contribution in particular. It could be understood by a tenth grader who is bad at math but it's still written in an adult and intelligent tone, not one that talks down to the reader. One of the best popular math or science books I have ever read. I liked it better than Gleick's book, Chaos, and Gleick's bio of Feynman (though these were also very fine books, in my opinion).

I've just finished reading "Speed of light" and thought I share!
It just an incredible book! Once you get used to the 3 "voices" is speaking, your lost in a wonderful world of colours, tastes, sounds and feelings. It's so damn good! It's warm, intricate and very, very human! It leaves you just wanting to read another page, another chapter! But it ends just right, in the very moment it should!
The language is beautiful warm and beautiful and very poetic! But I must look up a few more words than usual. English is not my native tongue, but I read most of my books in English, so I'm fairly used to it. I usually have to look up 4-5 words in a book, but this time I had to do it at least 15 times. But it isn't really a negative thing. The overall feeling of the language is that it is incredibly beautiful and poetic.
The three characters are so intricately written. They shine through as very "real people", especially Sola. The inner turmoil and fears of these 3 very tormented person grabs you and holds you in almost awe! Don't miss out on this book, buy it, borrow it from a library or a friend, and do it now!

I found Elizabeth Rosner's Speed of Light a lyrical and surprising novel. It is the first work of fiction or non-fiction I've read which gives a believable sense of hope for an emotionally whole life for the "second generation," children of Holocaust survivors. My daughter, in the "third generation," also felt very connected to the content and context of the characters' inner and outer lives. I felt the novel showed the universality of trauma--that witnessing mass murder first or secondhand causes permanent vulnerabilities, regardless of the age, gender, class, race or nationality of the witness--and wove that concept together with a positive subtext that even those who don't talk about their trauma, may work to "undo" it by helping others experiencing a wholly different trauma, explaining to me why so many survivors silent about their own pasts are very politically active to help other oppressed groups.

On my first reading I thought the protagonist was the extroverted sister, who maintained her positive outlook by being away from her family as much as possible. The second time through, I thought the book was focused on the introverted brother, who was so vulnerable and intolerant of the unexpected that he could scarcely leave his apartment. Who knows how the book will present a third face on my next trip into the falling gingko leaves? What is clear is that Rosner has created a hopeful, believable vision relevant to those who are survivors, children of survivors, grandchildren of survivors, or who work with survivors.

The Speed of Light is an incredible book. I've been in a book group for 10 years, and I think this book rates as one of my top ten, perhaps even top five! It's right up there with Correlli's Mandolin and Samuri's Garden.

The story is rich with raw truth, tender love, fear of the past, yet hope for the future. Also, being a child of two Holocaust survivors, I could fully empathize with all three characters of the book and their full range of emotions. Rosner's writing style is very poetic, bringing beauty to a story of trauma that could otherwise be too difficult to read. It was a totally absorbing book and I highly recommend it!

I admit to knowing nothing about this book until reading that Kertesz won the Nobel prize for writing it. I am probably one of the least informed people to read this book, and just having finished an MBA curriculum, I wanted to read something that actually looked interesting. Before I began this book, about all I knew about it was that it was a first-hand accounting of the Holocaust. I really didn't know what to expect, but once I started reading this book, I could not put it down. Fatelss is the fascinating story of a 15 year old Hungarian Jewish boy's journey through the Nazi concentration camps. It is told in the first person, and Kertesz makes the most mundane detail seem vivid and worthy of all the reader's thought and attention.

The story is told through the eyes of a 15 year old. He enters the camps not knowing what to expect, and he has no idea that an organized extermination is taking place. He never seems to take too much personally, but instead simply treats each new situation as something to be dealt with and survived. His journey through the camps becomes part of his childhood that he does not want to forget, because doing so would mean forgetting part of his life. It is as if he is thinking that other people get to remember their childhoods, so why can't I.

After returning from the camps after being liberated, Kertesz recalls a conversation with a relative who keeps talking about 'the fate of the Jews'. I think this conversation is the main point of the book. Kertesz feels that if fate is a reality, then life is not worth living, because of the implied predetermination. Kertesz rejects any notion of 'fate', preferring to live each day, even in the camps, as though tomorrow will bring a new day to be lived.

Kertesz presents an amazing perspective of life as a Jew and life in the Holocaust. This book will capture you from the very beginning. You will put yourself in the main character's shoes and ponder how you would have handled every situation, however, you will be doing it from the perspective of someone who knows the historical outcome and circumstance of the Holocaust. You will not be experiencing it as the story is told, through the eyes of a youngster who is experiencing a historical event that has not yet been defined or named. My opinion is that everyone should read this book.

This book is astonishingly beautiful. I'll admit I never heard of this book or the author Kertesz until he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. I will also admit I only picked it up because of the prize, and that the subject matter - concentration camps of World War II meant it sat around for several weeks while I debated whether there really was any reason to read one more account of the horrors of WWII - hasn't it all been said. But then I began to read and I was enchanted by the voice of the narrator - a young, bright non-religious Jew who precisely because he doesn't understand what is going on, presents us all with an authentic sense of his world. The chapter where he first arrives and ses all the convicts and wonders what they did to arrive there then follows him through the showers and shavings of his body and the clothing he is handed and his suddens realization that he too is now a convict is presented without editorilizing on identity, so that when he is transformed you feel it, not think it. There is no attempt to manipulate your feelings with pathos or self-pity, nor is there the bitterness of regret that comes from looking back. This book is written as it was experienced, so that there is no attempt to editoralize the situations or fit them into what shoudl be said. Thus we get both moments of horror and humor, of beauty even as the crematoriums smoke, of total selfishness and stubborn selflessness. Consider this passage when the very ill narrator is almost tossed in with the corpses and soon to be corpses arriving at Buchenwald, and is hoping for death's release: "Here and there suspicious smoke mixed with the more friendly vapors and from somewhere the sound of a familiar clanging reached out to me lke the ringing of bells in one's dreams... in spite of any other consideration, rational thought..I couldn't mistake the furtive words of some kind of quiet desire rising from within myself, as if embarrassed by their senselessness...I would so like to live a little longer in this beautiful concentration camp!" This is an extraordinaryly honest book of - not the concentration camps - but of a fellow human being - and that is why one should read it.

This book about the Holocaust is unique in so many ways. First of all, it is written from the personal perspective of a l5 year old and it is entirely in the first person. Second, the book focuses on the the meaning of these experiences to him in a most unusual way. Trying to cope with the day to day moments of life in a concentration camp, the boy sees his captors in human, sometimes sympathetic terms and views his surroundings in bright, respledant colors which would oridnarily not ever be associated with such an ordeal or experience. This small book is intelligent, beautifully written and surely worthy of the Nobel prize that it won. I could not put this book down once I started it, and came away thinking about this boy's ordeal in an entirely different way. The writing is powerful and pointed, almost even poetic at times. This book is definitely one of the top ten novels that I have ever read, and I have been reading for a long time.

I read Bridge at Andau while in Budapest this spring. It was amazing to be in the places where this terrible history took place while reading Michener's account of the events. Two points were apparent to me; 1. I was surprised to realize that this history is overshadowed by other events in eastern Europe, 2. The book was written at the height of McCarthyism and must be taken with a small grain of salt. The stories told about the revolution of 1956 are no less legitimate or compelling than at the time the book was penned, but the purpose of the book was different. Michener wrote a novel that was to serve as a warning to anyone who might have romantic ideals about the evil communists that were percieved to be ready to destroy America. This is a great story about about courageous people. Unfortunately it may be misinterperted as soft sell propoganda about why capitalism is better than communism.

I read this book as a reading assignment during high school 2 years ago, forgot the title, but still remember the history. I finally got the title in a search here and have bought it to read again because I missed some of the fine details in the hour class I had to read it in. It portrays the struggle and eventual defeat of the Hungarian Revolution well from the view of Hungarians, though it does not give us insight into the USSRs view, which I wouldn't expect in a novel about the Hungarians fight for freedom. An excellent read.

When I first read about teenage children disabling tanks and killing the occupants with rocks, clubs and bottles filled with gasoline, I thought the Marines could learn a lot from these children. Their communication, teamwork and overwhelming dedication amazed me.
I read about a 12-year-old boy who strapped a half-dozen grenades to his body, pulled a wire to pull all the pins and stepped in front of the tracks of a tank. After the tank ran him over and killed him, the grenades went off, derailing the tracks and disabling the tank, so that other children could throw gasoline bottles inside the turret to kill the drivers. I realized then this was not military mastery, but desperation spawned from people who had nothing left to live for.
"It should not have happened," said the minister who told the story of the 12-year-old boy. "Somebody should have stopped such a child. But he knew what he was fighting against."
"The Bridge at Andau," by James Albert Michener, is based on interviews with survivors of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against communist Soviet occupation. Written in 1957, the book was checked out of the Depot library five times during the late 50s and early 60s. From then on, it has silently gathered dust on the shelf. Within three years after the uprising, interest in the estimated 40,000 to 80,000 Hungarians slaughtered by the Soviets had vanished.
This book tells the story of the Soviet expansionist theory which was not taught in the Woodland High School. Instructors provided amazingly lukewarm descriptions of Soviet Communist Theory as a philosophy of taking care of the common people.
The "Bridge at Andau", in simple language and vivid imagery, describes the actions of brave and desperate people fighting to escape the domination of the "Red Bear." In the five days following the expulsion of the initial soviet troops, Hungarians prayed for American intervention which did not come. In the third and final phase of the fight for independence, the Soviets returned to Hungary in a fury of modern tanks and a mechanized army with hundreds of thousands of soldiers who had orders to shoot everyone and everything.
"When the victorious Soviets finally entered the castle itself, the final bastion, only thirty young Hungarians remained to walk out proudly under the white flag of surrender," according to the book. "For three days they (teenage children) had withstood the terrible concentration of Soviet power, and they had conducted themselves as veritable heroes. The gallant Soviet commander waited until they were well clear of the walls; then with one burst of machine-gun fire, he executed the lot."
This book not only tells the horrors of Soviet-occupied Hungary, but provides insight to all countries that struggled under Soviet reign. On its pages are the horrors of torturous militia which "encouraged" confessions from the most devout would-be communists. These crimes against humanity, similar in many instances to those suffered at the hands of Nazi's but less publicized. Due to lack of media interest, this uprising, although bloody and foul, never caught the concern of the world. The people in this tiny country never gained a champion for their cause. And, so lived in terror until the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1990.