Jochen Brennecke

I love these older field guides that have background information (i.e. reading material and not just a bunch of pictures) but also have gorgeous, hand-drawn illustrations. I find myself collecting these types of books that seem to have fallen out of commercial favor after the turn of the millennium. I don't have a bird feeder, so some information was irrelevant.

Only the most observation-friendly facts about the birds was included, making this book ideal for kids or anyone who wants to get acquainted with the most common bird feeder-visiting birds without getting bogged down trying to gauge how many inches the wingspan is or some other detail that requires a more experienced eye.… (meer)

This book is a dramatic and interesting saga of the voyage of the Pinguin, a German merchantman which was converted into an armored cruiser to raid British and neutral merchant shipping during World War II. It was disguised as a merchantman under a fake name and flag, but when going into action would raise the German flag. While it was at sea for less than a year before being sunk by a British cruiser, the Cornwall, it has been cited as the most successful German cruiser in terms of total tonnage of shipping sunk or captured, including the Norwegian whale fleet in the Antarctic, although other sources suggest that the Atlantis and the Thor might have had greater tonnage to their credit. (See German Warships of World War II). This book was written in 1954 and does not indicate any translation from German into English, although it clearly did later appear in German. Captain Krueger is portrayed as an honourable officer who took care both to minimize casualties on ships that it was his duty to sink or capture and to maintain the morale of his own men through his example and fair treatment of them. In short, it is a chapter of German military action in the war that lacks the atrocities and abuses that so often seem to accompany the German war effort.… (meer)