I found the book excellent and very informative. The scope is much broader than what the title hints, it's a history of Paraguay from it's inception to the mid XVIII century, very well documented and very readable. Maybe, if I have to find a fault, a better review of what was going on in the Jesuit missions area would have helped. If somebody wants to get the full picture, he'll have to go look for some other book on the missions south of the Tebicuary river. Another fault is in the mispelling of "comuneros" in the cover, I am sure that the author was the first to be very annoyed by that.

This is an excellent book. It captures the images of the almost unknown conflict in the swamps of Paraguay in the 1860's. Contemporay with the American civil war this war was the largest and bloodiest conflict in South America. The war pitted Paraguay against Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. This book captures the war in photographs, water colours and sketches. Similar to the photographs made avalable by Mathew Brady of the Civil War, the book captures images and the aftermath of battles and camp life of the the conflict. For those who are intersted in this period, this book is a valuable reference.

This is an amazing story of the work of a Mennonite missionary in Europe. He tells of his work with refugees and how he and his wife worked to find a country that would accept the refugees. I couldn't put it down.

Somebody said that wars are too important a thing to leave them to military men. I would say that the history of the jesuit missions is too important a thing to leave it to jesuits. The book is a collection of bromides and uncritical descriptions of the mission's history. Very light and uninformative, the UN funds that went into it should have been better spent. The pictures are very nice and well printed, and are worth the money.

The history of the Guaranis is both fascinating and tragic. Anyone interested in these people should rent or purchase the movie, "The Mission," which is one of the most accurate depictions of the Jesuits, Rome and the Guaranis. Rome, ie the Roman Catholic Church, was very much in bed with both the Spanish and the Portugese in their conquering of the Guaranis. Although the Jesuits attempted to protect the Guaranis, they too eventually gave in to Rome and took the safe road, selling out the Guaranis. Thsi book is indeed a wonderful find for anyone interested in the culture of Argentina and the countries where the Guaranis are found.

I love this book. The photos are gorgeous, and it's the only really good book I have been able to find on this subject. The story of the Jesuits and the Guarani deserves a book that can do it justice, and this one does. It's on the short list of things I'd grab if my house was on fire.

I've been planning to be a missionary for a long time and reading Missionary Maverick was very encouraging! He took 7 kids to Paraguay with almost zero finantial support, but God took care of them every day. This is certainly a book that makes God look good because of what He did for the Goddards.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction! Either the author and his wife were crazy for taking seven children to the jungles of South America or his faith may have been genuine. Either way, the story of their lives was facinating and real. The author was in fact a maverick!

Azara's book is still the most important description for the area of the governments of Buenos Aires and Asunciòn at the end of the XVIII century. Azara was a member of the boundaries expedition that followed the San Ildefonso treaty, whose explorations were a complement to those, much more well known and publicized, done by Von Humboldt in the NW area of the spanish colonies in about the same period. The southern explorations were by no means less relevant, but no funds were available for a publication of the results so comprehensive as that by V.H., so this book is the main source for that venture. Azara describes the history, geography, plants, animals, indian tribes of the area. His geographic measurements and maps are remarkably accurate. He was called back to Spain in 1801.

This is a great cookbook of all sorts of recipes from Paraguay. Also a lot of information on the products that goes into the country's cooking.

The Foreign Service has many would-be-writers,who want to turn their exotic overseas adventures into novels and short stories. I know because I'm one of them. It is a rare one who can transform those experiences into stand-alone literary creations that do not center on the American diplomat protagonist. Mark Jacobs has succeeded. He is an inspiration. His foreign characters come alive. The interactions of cultures rings true. His sensitivity shines. I'm glad he's a writer. I'm also glad he represents his country abroad.

This book is interesting up to a point, and it contains some good anecdotes. But the author's almost touching need to prove that the Third Reich's admiration for Nietzsche was based solely on a combination of willful misreading and Elisabeth Nietzsche's influence leads him into all manner of logical quagmires.

At one point, he claims that Nietzsche's idea of the "superman" is "a concept intended to inspire but one which would develop sinister overtones in the wrong hands." This begs several questions: Whose are the right hands? How many people read--and believe-- Nietzsche without considering themselves to be at least larval supermen? Why should anyone be surprised when a philosopher who "rejected Christian morality and all other ideologies with moral imperatives," who claimed that "man should be trained for war and woman for the recreation of the warrior," and who trumpeted the obligation of the self-styled strong to stamp out the "weak" is well received among brutal eugenicists with a lust for military power? I would think that a necessary competence for a career in philosophy would be to possess some slight awareness of the practical implications of one's ideas.

MacIntyre makes a convincing argument that Elisabeth Nietzsche was responsible for trying to pass her brother off as a rabid anti-Semite, but leaves one wondering precisely what benign effects Nietzsche's own drab and cruel political thought was supposed to have had on the world. Nietzsche would surely have rejected the notion that he was dealing in abstractions, so it seems disingenuous to treat his political notions as some form of Platonic ideal. MacIntyre's confusion is especially evident when, after praising Nietzsche for freeing mankind from the tyranny of false morality, he calls the Nazis "moral cripples"...beyond good and evil indeed!

A biography of Nietzsche's sister Elizabeth that would make good airplane reading. Partly that's because the bio is hung on a story, that of the author's trip to backwoods Paraguay to look for the colony she helped start.

I enjoyed this book because I found the story of Nueva Germania very interesting, although it turned out to be more of a biography of Elizabeth Nietzsche. I was expecting more on the actual inhabitants of Nueva Germania. I think it is still worth reading though because of its unique subject matter.

A truly disappointing "travel book": contains no meaningful information on bus, train, boat travel (more particularly routes, schedules and costs), does not provide a hotel rating system and tariffs, no detailed info. on eateries, and there is no attempt at a detailed index; additionally, I found the book with its glut of pastel colors and advertisements to be garish. Another item to make it less user-friendly is its tri-lingual approach.

Lots of maps, even street maps, lots of pictures, back cover is a scene of horses grazing against a background of giant palmtrees. Interesting, short presentations of the history and the culture of Paraguay. A book to be studied before you go, and definitely to be carried in your luggage.

I dident found better informacion from Paraguay