If you've never been to Budapest before and want to squeeze a lot of sights into your visit, this is the book for you. It's very accessible what with the images of most major sights in the city. There's not much information to go with the pictures - just enough to satisfy those who want to see the sights but don't care to learn all about them. The real strength of the book is the section with the practical information. Pictures of post boxes and policemen and ambulance cars, a street index, a great variety in the hotel and restaurants index - this section alone is worth the money you spend on this book.

In preparing for a trip to Hungary, I examined thoroughly the choices for Budapest.

The Eyewitness Travel Guide on Budapest by Tadeusz Olszanski is the most eye-catching and the least helpful. It contains lots of graphics and diagrams and maps, and not too much information. Still, the most helpful section was the street index--something I hadn't seen in other books. The multitude of pictures are helpful in describing architecture, geography and art. On the other hand, its information on accomodations is very limited. Don't get me wrong; it's a beautiful and interesting book; it just is not as helpful as the other three. And it is two years old. I'm not necessarily saying that this book is bad, merely that it may not help you very much on the excursion.

The Frommer's Budapest book (3rd edition) gave the best information about finding and choosing accomodations, but the book has no pictures and aside from a nice subway cover on the inside cover, the maps are hard to find and not very easy to use. Frommer's gives excellent information about prices and shops and restaurants; it's almost a guide to buying things rather than a tour book. I didn't find it particularly thorough about travel information, customs, or those sorts of details. That is not entirely fair. They have a nice section in the front a kind of "best of" list for things in budapest. The nice thing about the book is that it recommends things to do if you have only one day, three days or a week. They also suggested some itineraries for walking tours.

The Fodor's Budapest pocket reference is drab and not full of much information. Don't get it.

My favorite guidebook series has been Lonely Planet, and the Budapest Lonely Planet is fairly helpful. Although it doesn't give as thorough a treatment on accomodations, the book gives a lot of hints and secret. I found its facts for the visitors to be the most helpful, and the maps (placed at the very back of the book) to be the easiest to use. The frommer book, on the other hand, put the maps close to the section of the book referring to it. The organization of LP makes it easiest to use in the field; they tend to have the best background, history and cultural information. It was particularly good about including rules, regulations and things like closing times. ON the other hand, there are not many photos, and they don't plan as many walking tours as the frommer book does.

The Budapest: A Critical Guide by Andras Torok, 4th edition is a less complete and more personal account of things to do in Budapest. The other books were like encyclopedias, but this book was just a few personal recommendations about things to do and places to stay. Also, the writing for this book seems to be better than the other books. If you already are a little familiar with Budapest, but just want to learn about new and undiscovered places, this might be an excellent book. It certainly covers most of the bases, but it just doesn't try to list a huge number of accomodations or restaurants.

I ended up buying the Frommer's and a used copy of the Eyewitness travel guide.

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Summary:
Every Dorling Kindersley Guide has been a great and interesting book... and delightful to have and use, even if you are not traveling to that location, but are only interested in learning more!

The Guides are well organized in a logical and easy to follow manner. They are beautifully illustrated, well developed with accurate information (it is unusual for hotel and restaurant information to be that accurate), have enough history to help the reader understand the people and cultural background, and have a lot of useful travel information and useable maps in the appendixes.

The really great attraction to this book is several fold; it is:
............Very complete
............Easy to read
............Beautifully and artistically completed
............Good shopping, safety and other tips
............Gorgeous photographs too numerous to list.

Specifics:

The guides are organized as follows:

How to use this guide
Introduction to Historical and Geographical information
............Introducing Budapest
........................Budapest on the Map
........................History of Budapest
........................Budapest at a Glance
........................Through the Year (events, holidays)
........................A River View of Budapest

............Budapest Area by Area, each section includes:
........................Introduction to street by street area
........................Detailed pictorials of area buildings

........................Architectural drawings, pictures, cut-aways of buildings
........................Specific stops, historical monuments, churches, buildings, etc.
........................Further Afield (trips just outside Budapest)
........................Two Guided Walks (highly recommended)

Travelers Needs - includes full list with rankings and notes
............Hotels
............Restaurants, bars, cafes
............Shops / Markets
............Entertainment

Survival Information
............Practical
........................Tourist info., Etiquete, Personal Security and Health
........................Currencies, Telephones, misc info.
............Getting to Budapest
............Getting Around Budapest
........................Planes, trains and automobiles, signs
............Street Maps
............General Index
............Phrase Book(forget it.... Hungarian is very, very difficult to learn and pronounce!)
(My grandparents were from Hungary)

Discussion:
The book begins with "Introducing Budapest", including a complete map, a review, the city's history, and Budapest through the Year - including events, etc.

For the specific areas it provides an "At a glance" overview, then has subsections of specific blocks, or sections, then specific locations, churches, historical monuments, bridges, galleries, etc.

Architectural reviews include various views, and cutaways; given greater understanding and better perspective. They are all attractive, if not works of art - honestly. And, Budapest has a great architectural history.

The travelers' Info. offers good and valid info. on prices, currencies, customs, important words, etc. I used the reviews on hotel's restaurants and nightclubs, etc. and found they were useful and accurate, and helpful with my touring and site decisions

The books are so well thought-out that it has multiple maps, with various lookup tables, and the book's flaps are designed to be used as bookmarks for map pages.

Conclusion:
Each book in this series is a great help, and beautiful collectible resource. As the President, CEO of an International Meeting Planning Corporation we have many resources and techniques to learn about places we have meetings / groups at as well as the cities and sights. But, as a traveler, this book really is top notch and I would recommend it to anyone going on a personal trip, or wanting to learn about a city, or location. We have used some of these books to augment our research to investigate cities for our groups.

This book is a confusing mixture. It tells the story of a rather fascinating human monster, but gives the reader no real understanding or empathy for any of its characters. The voices of the book are too removed, too cold. The countess tormented and killed her hundreds of young women with no interest in the reality of their lives and interests; the book chronicles the killings in the same manner, and thus fails to involve the reader. Even the parallel plot line of the modern-day Drake, drawn into the mystical world of immortal evil, fails to involve the reader closely. Too much blood, pain, and perverse excitement, not enough understanding. All in all, it was lurid and adolescent.

If nothing else, this story will remain imprinted in my memory throughout my life. "The Blood Countess" is absolutely the most graphic book I have ever read (and I've been reading horror/gothic/sci fi for a long time), and yet, through all my disgust and horror, I found myself unable to look away from the scene written before me. This, I finally concluded, was not necessarily because of the innate urge for humans to gawk at car accidents and watch Jerry Springer, but because I was curiously attracted to the mad genius of Elizabeth.

Although the modern-day secondary story annoyed me with its shallowness and (mostly) irrelevance to the "true" plot, I truly admired the author's writing style, and the few moments of insight into Elizabeth's psyche touched me. Please, gentle reader, do not think that I would release a monster from its due blame - but I nearly cried the few times the Countess actually showed her vulnerability. How alone, how lost, how angry she must have felt to do such things! Her vision of reality was so skewed and disjointed that I felt I must mourn for the genius that could have done so much, but instead felt compelled to cause suffering.

The use of sexuality is extremely powerful in this novel. In my darkest dreams and nightmares, I could never have conceived of such horrible torture, and at the same time the sexual naivete of Elizabeth. The fact that so many of her victims were tortured and murdered sexually simply adds to the disturbing image of the Countess. The reader can clearly see each point at which the Countess is faced with a glimpse of her own fragility and humanity - she wavers on the brink of self-understanding, then the madness rips it from her and she resumes her ritualistic pasttimes with a newfound viciousness.

The author's perception of European witchcraft during this time in history is rather interesting - those who are familiar with "The Burning Times" as they are called in the neo-pagan communites may be shocked and horrified at the idea that women during this time had indeed incorporated the Devil into ther rituals and spells. It disgusted me, too, at first. A couple of things saved this plot-device for me: A) this is a work of (mostly) fiction, and B) It makes sense that after a few hundred years of being told that midwifery, herbal lore and women's spirituality was evil and wrong, that the women would come to believe it as well, whether they practiced it or not.

On the whole, a great story with a lot of filler. It seemed to me as if the author threw the "real-time" scenes in to fill the story to novel-length. This, I found disappointing. I should have just skipped over these parts, because they seemed unrealistic and flat.

I honestly do not know how much of Elizabeth's story is historically accurate. It may be that this novel is all fabrication and assumptions - but knowing nothing about Hungarian history, I found the intricate details fascinating. The story has a great flavor - although the explicit violence and sex may leave a bad taste in your mouth.

As a graduate student in the area of Medieval and Renaissance Europe, I always go into historical novels with a bit of skepticism but also hopeful optimism. Codrescu's account of 17th century Hungary and the historical character of Countess Bathory met my optimistic hopes. The brutality, suspicion and general hardship of the time was obviously well-researched, as was the totalitarian power of the noble class which provoked peasant revolts like the one described in the book. The characters were possibly not developed enough, particularly the modern-day Count Bathory-Kereshtur about whom I would have liked to know more. But the complex psychological motivations of Elizabeth Bathory were developed quite well and in a chilling and descriptive manner. The descriptions of violent acts were perhaps a bit graphic, but relevant within the historical context for the period and place in which they occur. Overall a book definitely worth reading, but not for the squeamish.

This book is not a history of Austria-as the title indicates, it is a history of the Habsburgs, the hereditary rulers of Austria. As I mentioned in my review of Brook-Shepherd's book, "The Austrians" (a book that is complementary to this one, with relatively little overlap), there really isn't a great deal of material available in English on Austrian history-at least not on events taking place before the latter half of the 19th century.

From the traditional historical point of view-that in which history is the chronology recounting of war and changes in power-nothing of significance really happened in Austria that wasn't somehow associated with the Habsburgs. Whether or not this is the case is the subject of a different book-the subject of this one is the Habsburg family itself. Although their presence lasted longer in Austria than anywhere else, this powerful family also ruled the Netherlands, and Spain, and often provided the figurehead for the Holy Roman Empire.

Probably to an extent greater than any other royal house, the Habsburgs had their greatest successes not on the battlefield, but in the bedroom. They married their way to what at one point was the largest empire in the world, encompassing not only the majority of the German-speaking lands, but also the Lowlands, the Iberian peninsula, and the Spanish territories in North and South America, and Asia. Quite a feat for a dynasty that had been chased out of their hereditary home and namesake 300 years earlier by pitchfork-wielding Swiss peasants. The Habsburg story is more concerned with the issues of power than it is with warfare, which often went quite badly for them.

Given a unique and interesting subject, the author takes a somewhat non-traditional approach. As he explains in the preface "More and more I found that the Habsburgs expressed their sense of missions and their objectives obliquely, through a kind of code." Wheatcroft attempts to show how the Habsburgs manipulated symbolism and other communication mechanisms to further their goals and to set themselves apart as the unquestionable lords of Central Europe. I think the author is only partially successful in this, although I found nothing in his approach that seemed unreasonable. Several of the author's explanations have been useful to me in interpreting symbolism that can still be seen today in Austria, such as the designation "K.K" and the gilded presence of the Order of the Golden Fleece on statues and paintings (This was a chivalric order borrowed from the Burgundians when they didn't need it any longer giving the Habsburgs an opportunity to run their own good ole boys club.)

On the negative side, I found the book difficult to read. While the subject matter certainly lends itself to confusion, dealing with an inbred family that unimaginatively reused the same names over and over again, sometimes with different numbers in different contexts for the same ruler, perhaps the author could have used a more straightforward outline. The book tends to spiral a bit, mixing up events taking place at different times in order to make a point about continuity and a repeating pattern of Habsburg behavior. I finally dog-eared the family trees appearing in the Appendix so that I could flip back to them in an attempt to keep all the cousins, nieces, and nephews straight.

This is not a traditional history. While I don't feel that the author necessarily builds totally plausible case for his conception of the Habsburgs as being Europe's premier power of propaganda, I do think that he offers genuine and useful insight. I question the execution more than the concept, which I think has some validity.

Since the Habsburgs ruled much of Europe for over 700 years, writing their history is a risky business indeed. Happily, Wheatcroft avoids the trap of getting bogged down in a plethora of dates and deaths. His solution - and the reader soon realizes the briliance of his design - is instead to focus on what it meant to be a Habsburg, and on the metaphysical identity they assumed. The Habsburgs projected themselves as possessing a special mission from God above to preserve the Catholic faith and to maintain the common weal through a perpetual, hereditary monarchy. Their various inventions - the Order of the Golden Fleece, the motto "AEIOU," their patented system of interlocking dynastic marriages - were all part of this corporate strategy. The sense of quest sustained the family throughout the Holy Roman Empire and guided leaders such as Maximilian, Phillip of Spain, Maria Theresa, and Franz-Joseph. This book is also a terrific meditation on collective memory: while most of Gemany had forgotten that a Hapsburg had once been Emperor (Rudolf 1271-1291), NO-ONE in the Habsburg dynasty lost sight of the prize. Such was the family's preparedness that upon the re-election of one of its members (Albert, 1438-51), the Habsburgs held the Imperial throne until 1918. The Kennedys, the Bushes and even the Windsors are a mere blip by comparison.

Dr. Wheatcroft, a multilingual specialist in european and ottoman medieval history, has finally published one of his most elaborated works. The Habsbursg is the result of over 30 years of research, visiting different places and reading most of the previous publications on this field. The novelty of this work lies on its explanation of Continental Europe's history through the history of a family. This book might be boring for somebody who doesn't understand that the history of a country is the history of their people, and in the middle age the most influential people in Europe were the Habsburgs. This unique family had, during 1.000 years, a very characteristic fashion of behaving, because an individual able to track his / her origins for 40 straight generations till the deepest roots of Europe has a very special perspective of history and his / her role in it. Dr. Otto von Habsburg, European Deputy and living heir of this imperial dynasty, has worked all his live in order to re-discover the concept of Europe, the same ideal tracked by his familiy by means of the Holy Roman Empire. In conclusion, for everybody interested in discovering what is behind the ideal of Europe (and its symbols, like the EU's flag), this book will be extraordinarily interesting.

I currently am reading this book, and find it very difficult. The author skips around from one idea to another and its all on the same page. I do not understand his thinking in transforming all the Austrian names into an English version. This loses the historic context of the story and country. Had I know this I probably would not have bought the book. At this point I do not know if I am reading about an Austrian Emperor or an English king since Franz has become Francis. The author did a great harm to the history in doing this. I do regret buying this book and will advise others against it. When you write about history you need to present all the facts, and he did not do this. The names are the first example, skipping around and glossing over events without exploring them deeper is another.

The book is full of information about a very interesting time in history. I didn't mind the jumping around that another reviewer mentioned, but I am COMPLETELY distracted by the author's need to change the names. If you can't handle "Franz Joseph," you should try a little harder. Who is Archduke John? We are lucky he didn't change "Maria Anna" to Maryanne. Dear Author, please give your readers some credit.

This is a very good book. The only reason that I did not give it 5 stars is due to the fact that I am waiting to read several other Palmer titles and then rank against them. My interest in Franz Joesph originated in the start of WWI and how Franz Joseph played into Austia being the main country to instigate the Great War. I was also interested to find out more about the Austrain-Hungary royalty that was famous to intermarry with other nation's royalty. Palmer answer my questions and succeeded in providing a different viewpoint of Franz Joeseph. History books portrayed him as an aged man who was interested in nothing but war and out of touch with the modernizing world. I learned this to be unfounded rhetoric. This book gave an excellent overview of Franz Joesph and his Empire and the inevitable decline and fall of his empire. If you were curious about Franz Joesph or Austrian history, this book is an excellent read.

Only Lugosi completests should purchase this book. It is filled with numerous factual errors and offers absolutely nothing new that has not already been covered by other books. Lugosi fans would be better served to buy Gary Don Rhode's or Greg Mank's books or any of a number of other Lugosi related works.

A good book but I noticed some obvious mistakes from the "get-go" like in the opening statements when it was said that Lugos was formerly Romania but now Hungary but it is actually the opposite- formerly Hungary but now Romania! Also, there was much repetition in the quotes in the book. Other than that it was actually one of the better books on Bela that I have read. I am Canadian but speak Hungarian and love Bela so I am always looking for a good biography of his!

This book made an instant fan of Bela Lugosi,from it i learned that he did more films than just 'Dracula'but he did lots of other things too.the book made hunt out more of Bela's iilms and i'm sure i drove my wife mad getng them,but i enjoyed every singe one of them,all thanks to this book.my favouites are "Scared To Death' and"Invisible Ghost".i would tell all new ela fans to hunt out this book as so much i crammed to it on just a small page count.Larry Edwards did a great job for the master of terror.i love this book.

This book by Berenger contains the two most blatant examples of cultural racism currently in print that I have yet found. See the arrogant dismissal of Berenger of the Hungarian origins and the unbelievable dismissal of Jews in Hapsburg history most obviously in the area of the Rothchild's. I have no idea what positive value this book may have, but as an artifact of racism, it is quite impressive.

Michael Wahrman

Berenger's book is an outstanding piece of scholarship eminently readable by scientists and lay people alike. Professor Berenger succeeded in this book in depicting how and why the miscellaneos nations of the Austrian Empire tried to shape their destinies against the background of complex relationships, even intrigues in the Habsburg family. In this work, Berenger undertook an enormous task of deciphering the colorful tapestry of the individual nations of the monarchy and, without taking sides, of determining their respective weights and roles in shaping the power structure of the monarchy.Thus, the book is primarily a study in the history of Central Europe while not neglecting the history of the Habsburg family. To explain the conditions and circumstances that made it possible for a relatively unknown count Rudolf of Habsburg to make the lands of Austria his springboard to power, Berenger takes us first to the middle of the 12th century when two kings, the Czech king Premysl Otakar II and the Hungarian king Bela IV vied for the domination of the Austrian lands. Eventually, the Czech ruler prevailed and his Austro-Bohemian state stretched from the Adriatic to the Baltic. This powerhouse, Berenger explains, was the thorn in the side of the German princes who decide to play Rudolf against Otakar. Eventually, Rudolf with their help overpowered Otakar by ruse and sword and had him killed by the hands of treasonous Czech noblemen. Austria lay open before Rudolf. The Habsburgs proved to be consummate politicians who mastered the art of playing their enemies against each other, who knew how to make use of religious tensions to get the Vatican on their side thus further strengthening their position in Europe. Berenger takes us then through the centuries of bitter wars against the invading Turks the brunt of which was born mainly by the Hungarians, through the fires of Reformation and Contra-Reformation, from the splendor of the Renaissance court of the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, where religeous tolerance and the pursuit of sciences florished, to the gradual concentration of political powers in Vienna. While masterfully moulding the enormous mass of facts and relationships into an integrated, logical picture of Central Europe, Berenger does not neglect to provide the total picture of the Universal Habsburg Monarchy which, through another branch of the family encompassed Spain and other countries of Western Europe. We can only hope that the second volume of Professor Berenger's outstanding work will be equally illuminating and captivating reading as was this first volume. J.J.Ulbrech

The title of this book should be "Termites and Borers: An AUSTRALIAN Homeowner's Guide to Detection and Control" -- this book is for Australians. Furthermore, the book reaffirmed my belief that exterminators maintain a shroud of secrecy around the truths of their profession in order to propagate the public fear of insect infestation. The book did contain a few worthwhile facts, but not as many as can be found by typing "termite" into your favorite Internet search engine.

unlike a previous reviewer, I believe this book is a useful resource. Not EVERYONE lives in the US. Does every guide in the US preface it's title with "A US guide to....."? Of course not! A cursory look would have revealed to this "reviewer" that the book was published by NSW University press. Don't let the arrogance and ethnocentricity of the previous reviewer fool you, this book could save your house. There is a nice listing of tell tale signs of infestation, these are all most "professional exterminators" look for anyway! (save yourself the money......)

Good Points: This book covers the reigns of the 12th century kings of Hungary following a straightforward reign-by-reign approach. It is well researched, so if you're interested in the period, you'll find the facts that you want in here. You probably can't find this amount of detail in another English-language book, and I certainly knew much more about this period than I did before I opened the book.

Downsides: It's expensive and not very long -- presumably inevitable for a small monograph. The writing is a bit unpolished (I suspect that the author is writing in his second language) although there is never a problem in understanding what is being said. The book is stronger on facts than analysis (it would be interesting, for example, to know why the Byzantine emperor Manuel I was so determined to overthrow Stephen III).

I also thought that the space used for the two chapters that did not focus on a single ruler would have been nmore effectively devoted to a couple of extra reigns (either before or after the ones covered). One was on the laws of Ladislas I; without a chapter on Ladislas's reign, it just didn't fit. The other was on the investiture controversy. That story wasn't specific to Hungary, and has been told elsewhere.

The stories in this brief volume read more like anecdotal reminiscences than fiction. Reminded me of the tone of Joyce's "Dubliners" in their attempt to combine the mundane with the transcendent. However, their often flat tone distances the reader from identifying with the characters. This may be due to translation, but for an English-language reader, the interest conveyed through these wartime vignettes of Budapest Jewry endures more than their literary merit. Tbe final story, however, nearly redeems the interrelated collection with its epiphany of an imagined revival of the district today.

This book has a great premise and an ambitious objective. Phillips uses wonderful prose and an avant guard style to portray the life of five North American expats living in Budapest during the early 90s. The Americans are unable to comprehend what life was like under communist rule. They are extremely self-interested and have no appreciation for the culture or history. There is a great deal of irony and tragedy concerning the character's ignorance, which remains a central theme throughout the novel.

This book has received much praise and criticism, and both are well deserved. There are moments of brilliance followed by pages of complete boredom. The first couple of chapters act as an excellent hook but then finishing the book becomes a laborious task. Prague may be a good choice for a book club because so many people either love it or hate it and the author's style is very original. However, it's hard to imagine that the average reader won't be at least a little disappointed because the story never reaches its full potential.

As a voracious reader and former English major, I feel compelled to defend this novel. A year after reading it, I find myself still thinking about it, about John Price and his Budapest. Simply put, the characters in this novel--and the city of Budapest is a character--got under my skin. I suspect critics may have missed Phillips' subtle humor (e.g. a character works on a thesis on the history of nostalgia), Prague's pervasive understated emotion, and the clever little treats along the way (e.g. the juxtaposition of communist Budapest and the clueless hipsters of the '90s; a character's imaginary wife of a photo left behind in the apartment he rents). Both heartbreaking and hopeful, Prague is top on my list of favorite books of 2002. I only regret I can't read it again for the first time.

I hadn't heard of Arthur Phillips before I began reading Prague, but by page 6, I felt I had read 50 other books by him. Alienated youth, joined by a sense of ennui in a habitat not their own...sound familiar? Then, by page 20 I realized that this was, indeed, something remarkably fresh. And incredibly well written.
Don't open this story looking for a party in Prague itself, for the city merely plays Emerald City to Budapest's Oz. The 5 main characters of Phillips books are forever looking toward Prague while chasing money, love, and in one interesting case family through Budapest in the early 1990's. There isn't a whole lot at first to like about Emily, Scott, his brother John, Mark and Charles - but as their adventures roll along the pages, it is humor that makes these characters endearing.
Phillips use of the English language is awe-inspiring. It's clear that he recognizes the kudos showered upon Michael Chabon for taking time to perfect language and idioms in his storytelling. I kept thinking of Chabon's "The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh" while reading this book, and if you are a fan, you will greatly enjoy Phillip's storytelling skills.
I've read this type story so many times over the years (Bright Lights, Big City, Less Than Zero, The Secret History are less worthy members of this literary club). When I finished Prague, I felt like I truly cared about not only the outcome, but the characters themselves. That's difficult to pull off in a novel about self-absorbed, capital-hungry Gen X'ers, but Phillips does a great job in achieving this.