Fritz

<br /> Agent Zigzag, a Review by the <br /> Cote d'Azur Men's Book Club<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> When one of the most wanted men in Britain escaped police by jumping through a Jersey hotel window he leaped into a new career, an Englishman whose deeds were to be heard and applauded by both The Fuehrer and Winston Churchill.<br /><br /> Hitler knew him as Little Fritz; the blue-eyed boy of the Abwher, the Nazi secret service and Churchill was impressed by his exploit, for he was spying for Britain, too, under the codename Agent Zigzag. Eddie Arnold Chapman was, a rising star in the Soho world of gangsters, and, in the twilight days of peace in early l939, a dark haired, handsome young man, destined it seemed, to spend many years behind bars. <br /> He was a care rogue, a womaniser, a leading figure in the mob known as"The Jelly Gang" for their habit of using gelignite to blow safes. He could have been a prototype for 007 James Bond. His girlfriend was pregnant and he was with another woman when the police found him in the Channel Islands. He was captured, eventually and jailed, managed to rob the Governor and then the Germans invaded and he found himself in a Nazi prison camp outside Paris. He was already a bit of a linguist, having picked up basic German and French. <br /> The harsh regime did not appeal so Chapman offered his services to the goose steppers; after lengthy Teutonic thought, the SS the Abwher decided he was genuine. They trained him to be one of their spies in England He graduated from a Nazi school for spies, in France with honours and made many friends, especially his boss, a somewhat aristocratic chap who kept him well supplied with cash. Chapman, naturally, quickly found that boss man was taking his cut from the thousands of Reich marks he was handing over. It takes a crook to know a crook.<br /> The Cote d'Azur Men's Book Club thought Agent Zigzag by journalist Ben Macintyre a very entertaining read, a combination of Bond and Biggles. Fritz, parachuting at night and landing in a muddy Cambridgeshire field and naively banging on a farmhouse door and saying he had been in a car accident. MI5who turned him into their man picked him up. Money changed hands. <br /> Fritz blowing up the De Havilland factory where the wonder plane, the Mosquito was made,<br />the staged attack being arranged by MI5 experts to fool the Germans. <br /> The stubborn Englishness of the Editor of The Times in refusing to print an untruthful report, which would have fooled the enemy into believing Fritz, was doing good work. . Not a problem for the patriotic Daily Express! <br /> Fritz still has that swashbuckling air about him, he returns to his German group leader and friend by sea, and seemingly reverts to the Nazi regime. Back in Germany and many more adventures, he finds love again in Norway with the beautiful Dagmar. Just as he arranged with MI5 to pay a good"pension" to his woman, so now he does the same for his new love, with the Germans! <br /> He parachutes back into Britain with the brief to track down the new anti-U-boat weapon that is causing devastation to the wolf packs. Such a device only exists in the Nazi imagination, of course and the boffins think up a hilarious device that is pure Monty Python or The Goons, just to give the enemy something to think about. The secret weapon was, of course, the Bletchley Park code breaker. <br /> Had the stakes not been so huge, Agent Zigzag would have been a biting satirical piece of work, yet, it is the gripping life story of courageous con man who reverted to type at war's end to thieving and safe breaking and, naturally, womanising. A crook, but our crook. As his MI5 boss said,"One of the bravest men I have ever met."<br /> Oh, yes, and old Adolf probably thought much the same. Eddie Arnold Chapman was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class. <br /> Chapman, born in the North East, was a charismatic crook made good by his courage and apparent indifference to personal suffering. He mixed with the great and the good but he was never a Gentleman, he was a spy who did a great service for his country in her time of need.<br /><br /><br /> All, especially the ladies, loved him. It could have been men like Chapman who inspired a Naval Intelligence officer, one Ian Fleming, to create James Bond. Agent Zigzag did not have a licence to kill, officially, but he dreamed of assassinating Hitler! <br /><br /><br />

A real eye opener!

A great read, covering the major scare stories of our time and exposing them. Even if you're sceptical about being sceptical, you owe it to yourself to explore all the options and have an informed opinion, rather than shaped by the fear mongering press.

A Bad MIx of Some Great Works

As one other reviewer, I bought this book because I liked the title. But that is where the similarity of our reviews ends.<br /><br />The book is strange in the way the story develops, and the aide memoires used by Sharma are bizarre in the extreme. While I recognise the sense in providing some life lessons in stroy format, it does not gel well, and has a lot of mixed messages in the delivery (e.g. Julian Mantle (the monk) advocates the seeking of a simple life free from materialism, but then says that the techniques can be used to acumulate wealth, and material possessions.)<br /><br />It is a poor blend of Napoleon Hills"Think and Grow Rich" - a more preferrable read - and some Eastern Mysticism. I think a lot of the impact is lost in the unfeasibility of the monks in the himalayan hills (not to mention the ease with which Julian apparently finds them!). It is like a blend of red wine and a single malt. Work well on their own, but have little business being put together!<br /><br />It is my habit to complete a book, but this has been turgid going, and frankly of little or no value.

Poorly-written, historically weak, and worst of all, yet more warmongering!

Robert Kagan worked in the US State Department from 1984 to 1998, and was a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). He has written this little book in reply to Francis Fukuyama, also of the State Department and of PNAC, who in 1992 wrote `The End Of History And The Last Man'.<br /><br />This book may be Kagan's application for the post of foreign policy advisor to Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. Among other brilliant ideas, McCain wants Britain to invade Sudan, just like we did in the 1880s. Remember what happened to General Gordon? And to the government that sent him?<br /><br />Kagan wants whatever he calls democracies to unite against what he calls autocracies, especially China and Russia. But actually he wants empires, US and EU alike, to unite against national sovereignty. <br /><br />He defines democracy as having competitive elections. But in the USA, the electoral choice is between two wings of the Property Party, two multi-millionaires, equally pro-capital, equally pro-empire (witness Obama's pledges, like McCain's, to back whatever the Israeli state does, to eliminate the so-called threat from Iran and to tighten the USA's illegal blockade of Cuba). Are Russia's elections, or Iran's, or Venezuela's, significantly less democratic that the USA's? Yet Kagan calls these countries autocracies. <br /><br />Kagan notes that the American people want the USA to play a less prominent world role, but he doesn't let that stop him calling for more globalisation, more capitalism. But the peoples of the world need to determine their own countries' futures, free from outside interference.<br /><br />He approvingly quotes Blair's adviser Robert Cooper, who says that the EU is a `cooperative empire ... dedicated to liberty and democracy' - so free and so democratic that it refuses its citizens a vote on its treaties. Not surprising, given that Cooper believes,"The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards."<br /><br />Remember that in 1914, Germany's franchise was wider than Britain's, yet the British and US states called the First World War a war for democracy against German autocracy. Kagan, as a servant of his empire, says that it must fight and defeat the `autocracies' - he is just another warmonger. Here he continues his ten-year campaign for attacking Iraq, claiming that Iraq may join a bloc of pro-US democracies in the Middle East. The end of dreams?<br />

No Longer

It's worth remembering the stir created when this book came out 6 years ago. Looking at it again now is a great measure of how quickly culture has moved. No Logo will be remembered as a truly ground-breaking book that galvanised the attitudes of a generation who had a sneaky feeling that something wasn't right but struggled to articulate it. That's a nice way of saying that it now feels quite dated - although perhaps that's the perfect compliment as it clearly did it's job of waking us all up to our global responsibilities.

Still the best popular book on this topic

This is a wonderful achievement of science popularisation. Sutherland had a gift for succinctly and non-technically summarising psychology experiments. In this book he surveys more than one hundred and sixty different studies that expose failings of human reasoning and judgement. Overconfidence, conformity, biased assessment of evidence and inconsistency are among the follies given their own chapters. One chapter deals with organizational (bureaucratic) irrationality.<br /><br />The point is not the banal one that there are stupid people about. It is that we all make systematic errors and biases that can lead to disaster in predictable ways. The example applications include reasoning about medical tests, military disasters, the paranormal, the Rorschach test, gambling and daft purchasing decisions.<br /><br />If society took the recommendations in this book, we would give up job interviews, stop awarding school prizes, totally reform the procedures for criminal trials and change many of the incentive structures we use to motivate people. Each chapter ends with a set of personal lessons for minimising the damage of one's inevitable human irrationality.<br /><br />This is a potentially very depressing book, but its humiliating lesson is one that, for a better public life and personal life, we need to learn. You can either learn it from a huge corpus of technical psychology literature or from this little paperback.

All things in moderation .... better with Napoleon Hill for sure

I enjoyed this book when I read it and have given copies to friends and family to read. Take out the nonsense areas like its all your fault when something major goes wrong .... scary statement indeed, and some of it makes sense. You can have so much more in life and all it takes is focus and belief ... if you can truly beleive it, you can acheive it. So much of this is taken out of context and without the incredible power that comes from the great master himself Napoleon Hill. I would urge you to read or listen to the 6 set cd series by napeleon hill ... Tony Robins and so many others have learnt and preach his teachings from almost 100 years ago ... it is the real thing !! The Science of Personal Acheivement. Its called. Its the real Mccoy. Rhoda and some great gurus of today seem to have taken what he has said all that time ago and paraphrased it. Hope you enjoy it !! Its also downloadable if you look around.

Excellent

The choice of writings contained within this anthology is wide and varied, and endlessly fascinating and intellectually stimulating. There is enough ammunition contained within its covers to keep the active atheist on the offensive through many a debate. <br /><br />An interesting feature for me is just how many times in this volume I have come across paragraphs, just sentences even, that by themselves fatally undermine the entire 'logic' of organised religion. Example: the quote from Mill regarding the monstrous cruelty (and thus laughable improbability) of a supposedly merciful and loving supreme being who plainly (according to the good books, damned in their own words as ever) creates beings by his own hand solely to condemn them to hell fire and damnation. Do what? My other favourite is Ian MacEwan's comments on curiousity being one of the definitions of human freedom of thought, and how organised religions fear almost nothing more - see St Augustine on that one. It's true: the Western religions live in terror of truly free thought, yet without it the human race would still be living in caves. Humanity has advanced to attain astonishing levels of scientific knowledge, yet for centuries it has been a continual fight to achieve it against the squeals of thwarted God-botherers.<br /><br />Outstanding.

Good, but...

I really enjoyed the first couple of chapters; they were well-written, informative and really quite interesting. Unfortunately, the rest of the book regurgitates the same information, making for a dull read. Still, I'd recommend this book (if you can get it for a good price) if only for the first couple of chapters.

The worst book i have read in years.

I thought this was a very long winded and boring book that seemed to go nowhere. It is only the second book i have been totally disgusted with in all my years of reading. Simply terrible.

Brilliant

the entire series is very good however you do ned to read them in chronoligical order else it could get confusing. A great read you cant put down. Each book is individually different, revealling new plots and mysterious alongside the one continous plot. a brilliant read but i would not recommend for anyone over 15 or under about 8. brilliant!

Has to be the Classic of PMA Books ..........if not the best!!

I can only affirm & agree wholeheartedly with ALL the Positive reviews written here already. Truly a classic & one of the best of the PMA (Positive Mental Attitude) series of books. Straight to the point & full of inspiration. A much needed"pick me up" pep pill when you're feeling down & a little lost in your life or career. It's never too late to start afresh!! Easy to read, digest & apply to your own life RIGHT NOW!! Get it, get up, get out & start living a new, improved & happier life right from page one! No airy fairy weird and wonderful (or unbelievable) stuff, just plain and practical solutions that you can activate straight away & incorporate into your regime without delay. For winners only!!

Handy for the classroom

This has been a great classroom tool. It is easy read and has some great ideas. Some of them you may have already thought of, but on those rainy days when your brain just isn't working, it's great to be able to flip through the pages and find an inspiring starter. Or, in some cases the inspiration for a greta lessons; there are some lovely writing workshop ideas included. Great for 7-14's. A must have for every teachers tool box.

This is a fantastic book...

This is a fantastic book. Let me say I'm a sceptic when it comes to the web: okay, I buy from amazon but I think second life is really dull and I only signed up 3 friends on facebook before I got bored. So when I was given this I thought it would just wind me up. It did the opposite. It explains what `open source' actually means, why it goes way beyond the geeks who support linux or play tedious computer games and could affect us all. It suggest answers to those obvious questions like `if everyone is sharing all their knowledge how is anyone going to make a living?' Charles is also really encouraging about the impact of the new technology on the developing world - I always thought the divide between the `information rich' and `information poor' was just going to widen. And the book is optimistic!!! Read it. It inspires.<br /><br /><br /><br />

essential for child related degree

I'm doing an early years degree and this book provides lots of basic, vital info about theorists. Well worth the money & easy to read with lots of visual info too.

Wonderfully ecelectic

One of the most enjoyable books I've read in a long time. Deakin's extensive and eclectic knowledge fills the book with all manner of interesting anecdote. His enthusiasm for swimming is contagious, and as a recent late learner make me look forward to the watery joys ahead.

Fantastic

Through anecdotes about his practice and examples of the stories he used, My Voice will go with You is a fascinating and highly readable insight into the genius of Erickson. The stories are always compelling; often funny; and occasionally bizarre; making this a really enjoyable read. The only problem for me is that many of the stories are so context specific that it is difficult to know how they could be applied elsewhere. Nevertheless this a fun, easy read and there are many ideas that you can apply in your own metaphors.

Buy this book!!

This is by far the most entertaining rock autobiography I have read. These guys were insane!! The stories they tell are hilarious and also touching and the book is unputdownable. I definitely recommend this book for anyone with an interest in this genre.

The virtues of Machiavelli

In the course of my political science training, I studied at great length the modern idea of realpolitik. In that study I came to realise that it was somewhat incomplete, without the companionship of The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli, a Florentine governmental official in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The Prince is an oft quoted, oft mis-quoted work, used as the philosophical underpinning for much of what is considered both pragmatic and wrong in politics today. To describe someone as being Machiavellian is to attribute to the person ruthless ambition, craftiness and merciless political tactics. Being believed to be Machiavellian is generally politically incorrect. Being Machiavellian, alas, can often be politically expedient.

Machiavelli based his work in The Prince upon his basic understanding of human nature. He held that people are motivated by fear and envy, by novelty, by desire for wealth, power and security, and by a hatred of restriction. In the Italy in which he was writing, democracy was an un-implemented Greek philosophical idea, not a political structure with a history of success; thus, one person's power usually involved the limitation of another person's power in an autocratic way.

Machiavelli did not see this as a permanent or natural state of being -- in fact, he felt that, during his age, human nature had been corrupted and reduced from a loftier nobility achieved during the golden ages of Greece and Rome. He decided that it was the corrupting influence of Christianity that had reduced human nature, by its exaltation of meekness, humility, and otherworldliness.

Machiavelli has a great admiration for the possible and potential, but finds himself inexorably drawn to the practical, dealing with situations as they are, thus becoming an early champion of realpolitik carried forward into this century by the likes of Kissinger, Thatcher, Nixon, and countless others. One of the innovations of Machiavelli's thought was the recognition that the prince, the leader of the city/state/empire/etc., was nonetheless a human being, and subject to all the human limitations and desires with which all contend.

Because the average prince (like the average person) is likely to be focussed upon his own interests, a prince's private interests are generally in opposition to those of his subjects. Fortunate is the kingdom ruled by a virtuous prince, virtue here not defined by Christian or religious tenets, but rather the civic virtue of being able to pursue his own interests without conflicting those of his subjects.

Virtue is that which increases power; vice is that which decreases power. These follow Machiavelli's assumptions about human nature. Machiavelli rejected the Platonic idea of a division between what a prince does and what a prince ought to do. The two principle instruments of the prince are force and propaganda, and the prince, in order to increase power (virtue) ought to employ force completely and ruthlessly, and propaganda wisely, backed up by force. Of course, for Machiavelli, the chief propaganda vehicle is that of religion.

Whoever reads Roman history attentively will see in how great a degree religion served in the command of the armies, in uniting the people and keeping them well conducted, and in covering the wicked with shame.

Machiavelli has been credited with giving ruthless strategies (the example of a new political ruler killing the deposed ruler and the ruler's family to prevent usurpation and plotting is well known) -- it is hard to enact many in current politics in a literal way, but many of his strategies can still be seen in electioneering at every level, in national and international relations, and even in corporate and family internal 'politics'. In fact, I have found fewer more Machiavellian types than in church politics!

Of course, these people would be considered 'virtuous' in Machiavellian terms -- doing what is necessary to increase power and authority.

The title of this piece -- the virtues of Machiavelli, must be considered in this frame; certainly in no way virtuous by current standards, but then, it shows, not all have the same standards. Be careful of the words you use -- they may have differing definitions.

Perhaps if Machiavelli had lived a bit later, and been informed by the general rise of science as a rational underpinning to the world, he might have been able to accept less of a degree of randomness in the universe. Perhaps he would have modified his views. Perhaps not -- after all, the realpolitikers of this age are aware of the scientific framework of the universe, and still pursue their courses.

This is an important work, intriguing in many respects. Far shorter than the average classical or medieval philosophical tome, and more accessible by current readers because of a greater familiarity with politics than, say, metaphysics or epistemology, this work yields benefits and insights to all who read, mark, inwardly digest, and critically examine the precepts.

Insightful & thought-provoking

Never having thought there was anything unusual about how I expressed my anger, my last boyfriend could not handle my occasional angry outburts when I'd felt I was at my wits end. He said it scared him as it seemed like my outburst was disproportionate to what I had felt he had done to upset me. <br /><br />This book gave me better insight into how people cope with hurt and display their anger, and it's helped me think about things and realise what my"triggers" are. With this knowledge I can now understand that the things that people do these days to upset me aren't done to intentionally hurt me and can relate to events that have happened in the past which I've held onto.<br /><br />Very interesting read, and I'm glad I bought the book.