In May of 1996, pathologist Dr Seaborn Beck Weathers was left for dead on Everest, along with Yasuko Namba, a Japanese businesswoman. However, he miraculously woke up and walked back into High Camp, resembling a zombie. No one thought he would stay alive long enough to be able to descend the mountain, but he managed to survive with severe frostbite to his face and hands anyway. Upon hearing that her husband was alive, Margaret "Peach" Weathers and her "supermom" friends called people in the government (George W. Bush, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Tom Daschle among many others) to find a way to airlift Beck from the mountain to get medical help. They found a brave helicopter pilot in Madan KC, a member of a Nepalese warrior caste who risked his life to rescue "the Beck". This helicopter manoeuvre had never been attempted before because it was a risky proposition for someone who did not have time to adapt to high altitude conditions.

Mountain climbing became a way for Dr. Weathers to escape the "black dog" of depression that descended on him at various times in his life. Because of his profession as a medical doctor, he knew that he had a medical problem but felt that to admit it would cause him to lose his prestige. He also was sceptical of psychiatrists and did not see any point in talking to someone about his problems. The depression and mountain climbing cut into his family time because he would leave vacations early and desert his wife and kids to climb mountains or rocks. As a result, Peach became frustrated with the situation and contemplated divorce. However, when she confided to her friends about Beck, they told her about their own hairy situations at home and she came to the conclusion that every married couple had some problem or other. She also wanted to keep her family together for the sake of the children and because she loved Beck. Beck blamed her hatred of his mountain climbing hobby on her not having a hobby of her own and only having to care for the kids, Meg and Beck II. As Peach examined her life, though, she found that she really enjoyed her children and did not need an outside hobby. She just wanted Beck to spend more time with them.

Everest was the last straw for Peach and she decided to tell Beck that she would like a divorce when he came home. The accident, however, changed Beck's outlook on life and made him want to be a different person. When his brother-in-law, Howard, was dying of cancer, Beck did all he could to help him with his HMO problems and also travelled with him to Chicago in a last ditch effort to save his life. Beck also came to realise just how important his family was to him and that he should spend more time with them. Throughout his rock climbing quests, he had neglected them, yet they were still in the back of his mind. It did not occur to him that Peach might want to get a divorce, and he never thought of that himself because he would never let his wife and children go.

Left for Dead is the story of a man who survived the unsurvivable and who is now working on changing his own life for the better. It is the story of a marriage made rocky by a man's depression and obsession with mountain climbing. With the help of his friends and family, Beck Weathers is still practising medicine and living a pretty normal life. Throughout the book, the viewpoints of family members, friends, and acquaintances are interspersed, giving the reader the bigger picture of this story. While Weathers is not a religious person, he does believe that miracles are commonplace and he also believes that humans are tough creatures. He speaks to groups of people and this helps him by putting his life in perspective. Reading this book gives hope to other people with their own personal problems and the encouragement to overcome them. Left for Dead is a kind of "sequel" to Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and High Exposure by David Breshears. Those interested in the 1996 Everest tragedy will enjoy this take on what happened next for a survivor of this event. Weathers does not try to tell the story of what happened on the mountain, only about his life and how his near-death experience changed things for him.

The Associated Press photograph of a group of children feeling in terror following an American napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong positions left the world dazed, shocked, choked. The central figure in the photograph was a nine-year-old girl, horror contorted large on her face, her clothes burnt off. The photograph taken by Nick Ut, a South Vietnamese-born photojournalist who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, still bears a ghastly testimony to the brutal impact war has on children. The June 8, 1972 incident did not scar Kim Phuc, the girl in question, alone for life. John Plummer, the 24-year-old helicopter pilot who ordered the assault on Trang Bang village, never recovered from the traumatic experience of seeing the results of his doing.

A good quarter-of-a-century later, Kim Phuc, now a Canadian citizen and having undergone 17 operations over the years to heal the skin and relieve the pain, was the featured speaker at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. Plummer, who had become a clergyman, was there in the audience. Phuc said in her speech, "If I could talk face-to-face with the pilot who dropped the bombs, I would tell him we cannot change history, but we should try to do good things for the present and for the future to promote peace." Plummer had a note sent across to her saying, "Kim, I am that man." The two happened to meet, Plummer kept repeating "I'm so sorry," and Phuc said, "I forgive."

The Phuc-Plummer incident is only of the many in Victoria Sherrow's compilation that examines the impact of war on young people throughout the world and at different times in history beginning with the Thirty Years' War 1618-1648. Though this war was taken as the starting point because Sherrow believed it was the first time that the number of civilian casualties far exceeded the number of military casualties and this was the first war of long duration to have a significant effect on children and families, the bulk of the book is taken up by the Second World War and post-War wars. It seems records of the impact of war on youths in the 19^th century and beyond are either not well-documented or are non-existent altogether.

Sherrow takes the 18-year-old yardstick of defining boys and girls as "youth", though many of the 300+ entries follow the activities of specific individuals (like Phuc) from their teens into their 20s and later. She (the author), however, does not offer any explanation why she chose the format of a cross-referenced encyclopaedia which is likely to confuse a first-timer over a starting point. A linear structure would have seemed ideal for anyone interested in "young people as participants and victims" of wars, revolutions and conflicts in the last 400 years or so. If one gets over the format obstacle, the book assorts innumerable other experiences like the one Phuc and Plummer went through. Every other entry hits and hurts you.

Throughout history, children have endured countless wars. Between 1986 and 1996 alone, a study conducted by United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) found out, 2 million children were killed in wars, another 4-5 million had to suffer disabilities, and more than 12 million were left homeless. Youth in war-torn countries live with hunger, fear, family separations, upheaval and destruction. There are some who document their tales. Anne Frank's diaries are the most well-known. But there have been others: Mary Berg, who survived the Warsaw Ghetto and Zlata Filipovic who lived through Bosia. Diarists are not the only ones profiled for their wartime activities or hardships. Youths are participants in wars in many ways: combatants, support personnel, defence plant workers, spies, couriers, resistance fighters, protesters and volunteers. Sherrow does not neglect any of these virtual child abuse aspects, just as she also includes entries on food, disease, education, rationing, clothe shortages, blackouts, holidays.

The most common refrains raised about encyclopaedias are contentions over what ought not to have been included and what have been missed out. To Sherrow's credit it must be said that there are none that should have been dropped. But there are a lot that should have found a place in her encyclopaedia. Pre-World War II events and experiences are few and far between. Third World countries too (in terms of profiles) apparently get a raw deal. Nevertheless, all said and done, the book comes across as a commendable effort, and the together with the bibliographies should prove a good starting point for researchers studying effects of war on the youth.

The origins of the art of fragrance are traced back to ancient Egypt in this groundbreaking analysis of perfumes and cosmetics employed in the pharaoh's court and used everyday to attract, and to honor the gods. Egyptian men and women considered perfumes, ointments and makeup an important part of their lives. The more exotic the ingredients were, the more value they were given.

The author, Lise Manniche, is not an aromatherapist, but a Danish archaeologist involved in the study of Ancient Egypt. In this large hardcover book of high quality, she is archaeologically concerned with the importance of perfumes and cosmetics in Ancient Egyptian society and presents her archaeological views of perfumery in Ancient Egypt from the earliest times. She also claims that the information presented in this book is more accurate than that which appears in books written by aromatherapists.

Three categories of ingredients used by the Ancient Egyptians are detailed in the first chapter. Plants described include cinnamon, mint, papyrus, lily, marjoram and mint. Gums and resins, particularly frankincense and myrrh, are then presented, as are the most important oils: almond, castor, olive and sesame oils.

In the second chapter, Manniche explains the use of fragrances in the Egyptian temples and details their religious function. According to the author's study, perfumes help gain passage through the chambers of the underworld to afterlife. Incense, imported from the Mediterranean area, was actively used for religious purposes: it particularly played a vital part as an intermediary between the dead pharaoh and the gods.

The third chapter deals with kyphi and tiryac. The Egyptians used the former as both an incense in the temples and a remedy for treating serpent bites, while the latter was a remedy for poisonous bites. Several recipes of both these substances exist, one of the most important, for tyriac, from a detailed account of Egyptian botany and medicine written by Prospero Alpini in the 16th century AD.

The fourth chapter describes fragrances traded around the Mediterranean in Ancient Egyptian times. The author discusses the use of containers, palettes, utensils and other daily objects, as well as the artists who made them. She provides actual recipes for certain perfumes; the recipes are drawn from Arabic, Egyptian and Greek sources including Pliny, Plutarch, Herodotus and Dioscorides Pedanius. This chapter also includes a section on unguents found in the tomb belonging to the boy-king Tutankhamen. The fifth chapter discusses Egyptian paintings related to the Feast of the Valley; unguent cones; lotus flower; mandrake; the 7 sacred unguents and unguents as funerary gifts. The sixth concerns fragrant oils, herbal remedies, fumigation, inhalation and the treatment of diseases with aromatics. Though the book's title indicates that it will include a study of aromatherapy, the topic is only briefly explored in this chapter.

The last chapter demonstrates the importance of cosmetics, hair care, hygiene, skin care, lip tint, face paint, nail color and body decoration - i.e., tattoos - in Ancient Egypt, as revealed by numerous wall paintings, toilet utensils and sculptures. Hair was seen as a symbol of sexuality; the Egyptians, both men and women, extensively used wigs. Various oils were used on skin. The importance of eye make-up is discussed in details.

The book ends with an epilogue, endnotes, a bibliography of references and a very useful appendix of Egyptian, Greek and English names of substances to which the author refers throughout the book. It must be noted that the bibliographic references are generally not cited within the text body. The 100 lavish photographs accompanying the text are by renowned photographer Werner Forman. They include representations of plants, reliefs, tomb paintings and much more.

Manniche gives us an excellent look at this fascinating yet unfamiliar aspect of Ancient Egyptian society. A lot of careful and hard work has gone into producing this beautiful book, which is recommended for those interested in fragrances, beauty care and, of course, Ancient Egypt.

Historian Robert Conquest exposed the terrors of Stalinism at a time when many intellectuals who should have known better dismissed such writing as "right wing propaganda". Since then, he has been vindicated by the fall of the Soviet Union and it is no longer fashionable to try and defend Josef Stalin or his vast and terrible project. This vindication has led to the inevitable hyperbole and Conquest's reputation is now swinging into the opposite extreme i.e. that he is a prophet; inline with his prophet" status, Conquest has now produced his reflections on the last century in this readable little book.

In order to do so, he has taken some of his previous essays and lectures (all dealing with the dangers of totalitarianism and the history of the Soviet Union), padded them fore and aft, and viola! The book is ready just in time for the millennium. The argument presented is that the major disasters of the 20th century were caused by blind faith in Ideas with a capital I in Conquest's words:
"The books general theme is that any concept given anything like absolute status becomes not a guide to action but an abstraction whose imposition on reality reveals an incompatibility...of parts that do not fit, and that can only be made to fit by main force, and even then, ineffectively or ruinously."

In itself, this idea seems reasonable and correct. Devotion to abstract ideas, belief that you have found the one true road to salvation, the idea that perfection is possible if only such and such perfect system (already known to a select group) can be applied; all these are, indeed, dangerous beliefs. Marxism-Leninism was definitely in this category (as are religious fundamentalists in general). The Black American communist Richard Wright, for example, had this to say about the party people he briefly joined with:
"An hour's listening disclosed the fanatical intolerance of minds sealed against new ideas, new facts, new feelings, new attitudes, new hints at ways to live.... they denounced books they had never read, people they had never known, ideas they could not understand and doctrines they could not pronounce. Communism, instead of making them leap forward with fire in their hearts... had frozen them at an even lower level of ignorance than had been theirs before they became communist."

But in Conquest's world, money hardly figures as the possible reason for largescale slaughter. The tremendous cruelty and violence that has been perpetrated for the sake of old fashioned "money and power" is never mentioned. His touching faith in the elite who run our plutocracy is quite amazing to behold. When he mentions Che Guevara he is called "the totalitarian terrorist Che Guevara"; yet the world famous war criminal and mass murderer Henry Kissinger is described as "Dr Henry Kissinger" with the appropriate awe and respect! Now, Che Guevara in his entire life could not have killed as many people as "Dr" Kissinger killed on a good day in Cambodia.

Unlike many cheap hacks who write like this to earn their salary from General Electric, Conquest gives the impression of being an honest and sincere person. He is also very knowledgeable and cultured... a renaissance man who writes science fiction and surrealist poetry in addition to history. But after explaining his "totalitarian thesis" (which is at least true as far as it goes... the problem being that it doesn't go far enough) this "balanced intellectual" then gives an account of the English speaking societies as the only really sane cultures on earth; followed by a proposal for the union of England and her fair daughters (America, Canada, Australia and New-Zealand... for some reason the "black nations of the Carribean" are invited to join, but India and South Africa are not).

One can only conclude that Noam Chomsky is right when he says that the best picture of society and history that we have is in literature, not in the scholarly books which aim to explain psychology, sociology and history. This book is merciless and fairly accurate in its portrayal of Stalinism and its fellow travellers, but for deeper insights into human psychology and the history of the twentieth century, some works of fiction are infinitely superior.