This story is about three Americans (Willie Griffis, Edward Morse, and Lafcadio Hearn) who visited Japan in the 1800s and had their lives "altered greatly" by the experience. Unconventional in both style and form, and explicitly subjective - even self relexive - the book is nevertheless interesting, informing, and challenging. Moreover, it is exactly what Rosenstone purports it to be -- a new way of telling the past. His aim is to "break with some of the conventions of narrative history, and to move beyond the 'realistic' nineteenth-century novel as a paradigm for the historian's 'art'." Yet despite this new approach, the author keeps 'reality' in check by combining stylistic innovation with sound research.

Rosenstone writes in the present tense - both in the first and second person - and as the 'Biographer', whose comments appear much like side takes in television documentaries. A&E anyone? In any case, the technique, scorned by most conventional historians, is quite successful. Instead of reinforcing the dichotomy between 'true' history and film, Rosenstone establishes a truce between them - one might even say a 'relationship'.

In short, 'Mirror in the Shrine' is thoughtful, entertaining, and highly recommended -- and certainly not dry.

This is a factual account of the recent development and evolution of biker gangs -- specifically, the Hells Angels -- in Canada. Well-written and brilliantly researched, the authors do an excellent job of providing details about the Hells' infiltration of ports in Halifax, Montreal, and Vancouver, their domination of the illicit drug and porn industries, and their expanding business empire. Sher and Marsden also examine the war between the Hells Angels and Rock Machine, focusing not only on the exchanges of bombs and bullets, but also on police, government, and public reactions to the war. Although not nearly as cynical as Yves Lavigne (author of a number of books on the Hells Angels), Sher and Marsden are justly critical of the authorities -- specifically as regards the inability of various police forces to get along and work together in the fight against organized crime, as well as the mismanagement of the ports police, who for years had argued in favour of a more pro-active approach against the Hells Angels and their associates in their (successful) efforts to control Canada's major ports.

Perhaps the most intriguing story, however, was that of Dany Kane, who led a double life as a Hells Angel associate and member of their puppet club, the Rockers, and as an RCMP source. For years, Kane provided investigators with information about Hells Angels activities while at the same time committing crimes for his biker "friends" -- including murder. Eventually, such work would take its toll and Kane committed suicide, but not before providing RCMP investigators with enough information to plan a full-scale assault on the Hells Angels in Quebec. His work led to charges against a number of the highest-ranking Angels in Quebec, including the Nomads chapter.

I have probably already said too much, and saying more would only detract from what is surely the best book I have ever had the pleasure of reading. So I leave you with this: Past, present, and future, Sher and Marsden provide the reader with important and frightening details about the world's most notorious biker gang, and do so in a format both easy to read, and easy to digest and understand.

As other reviewers have suggested, Robert Eaglestone appears to be as concerned about postmodernism as he is about Holocaust denial. They are, he implies, diametrically opposed. As a result, he suggests that employing postmodern strategies can indeed help historians confront denial. To make clear his point, Eaglestone refers to the 2001 case of David Irving versus Deborah Lipstadt, in which Irving was suing Lipstadt for libel.

Now, some people think that it was up to the judge to decide whether the Holocaust did or did not happen, but that is untrue. Because the trial took place in England, it was Lipstadt who had to prove the truthfulness of her statements about Irving (ie. that Irving "is a Hitler partisan wearing blinkers.") If she could not, then Irving's status as an historian would have been secure. Surely, it would also have been a victory of sorts for Holocaust denial in general. But Lipstadt's team did prove her case. In fact, Irving was destroyed during (and later, because of) the trial. As Eaglestone suggests, this was not simply the result of Irving's not having been objective in his writing. Objectivity is, of course, simply a long-cherished myth. No, the author makes it clear that Irving did not follow the proper conventions of history, ergo, he was (and is) not an historian at all.

How does postmodernism fit in to all of this? Postmodernists' having been so successful at exposing the inherent subjectivity in historical writing, what better "genre" than postmodernism to help expose the goals and motivations of Holocaust deniers? Just to make this abundantly clear, never does Eaglestone suggest that there is no such thing as "truthful" history, and that ONLY postmodernism can successfully confront Holocaust denial. On the contrary, he states explicitly that there is a bedrock/foundation on which histories are built. Unfortunately, arguing with Holocaust deniers on the basis of the evidence alone is a fruitless task, for they and their arguments simply aren't reasonable. Historians must go deeper, and expose deniers for who they really are, and for HOW, not just what, they write. Employing postmodernism as a corollary to evidentiary means should help do exactly that. It will assist in making readers aware of deniers' goals, motivations, and strategies. Only then will readers, many of whom simply aren't familiar with Holocaust studies and might then be coerced by denial literature because of its scholarly appearance, be confronted with a stark reality: Holocaust deniers aren't interested in the truth at all. Holocaust denial is simply a way to disguise their anti-Semitism, display the Jewish conspiracy theory in which they seem to believe, and portray their work as legitimate. Eaglestone's book is important because it makes evident the imperative to combat deniers by making these things clear to all readers alike.