A note from Carrol F. Coates (the translator) about THE FESTIVAL OF THE GREASY POLE: in his review Bob Newman stated that there was "no explanation" of the acronym NOFES (National Office for the Electrification of Souls). If he had looked at my introduction, he would have found the explanation: a major project of Francois Duvalier was the production of energy (specifically, electric energy) in Haiti: Depestre even uses the slightly altered name of Peligre Dam, constructed under Duvalier--"Veligre" Dam in the novel. "Electricity" becomes the symbol of control and of the project of "energizing" the country by Dictator-President Zachary (the fictional caricature of Duvalier). Unlike the reviewer, it seems to me that the symbolism of electricity as a means and a symbol of control by the dictator is fairly transparent in the text of the novel.

As a political exile for most of his life, Depestre must have harbored deep despair for the fate of his country, Haiti, forever wrapped in oppression, poverty, and ecological degradation. His feeling boiled over in this novel in which hopelessness oozes from every page. The Haitians are valiant and resourceful, but they are doomed, they are bound to be crushed. THE FESTIVAL OF THE GREASY POLE is not so much a novel as a political fable which explains, far better than an academic treatise or newspaper article, the crushing conditions that obtained during the dictatorship of the awful Duvalier, a.k.a. Papa Doc, who is called Zachary in the novel, and his government, called the National Office for the Electrification Of Souls, or NOFESO-Zacharian for short (?). The word "Haiti" does not appear in the novel, but Haitian culture, especially its connections to the African religion sometimes known as "Voodoo" or Vodun, and Haitian history are squarely in the center of the work. There is no explanation. Whether all of this would be comprehensible to a person unfamiliar with Haiti is unclear. It may be confusing to such readers, who, I think it is safe to assume, make up the majority of the readers in the world. Why did Depestre choose "National Office for the Electrification of Souls" as a title ? He no doubt had a reason, but it remains a mystery to me because I don't know Haiti that well.

Perhaps some broadening of scope would have made this a more universal novel. The government holds a festival in which men try to climb to the top of a greasy pole. Can our hero do it and so show the NOFESO-Zacharian dictatorship that its opponents can strike a blow (however ineffectual) against it ? That is the plot of the novel. What can a thinking individual do when totalitarian rulers have completely crushed a nation? This is the question Depestre asks. I am not just intellectualizing about what I may or may not understand as the point of the story. On page 105, the hero asserts "...In the paradise where we live, a pole smeared with s... can be President-for-Life and vice versa." Can the hero conquer this pole? What would be the result of such brave action ? The translation could have been a little smoother. But if you are interested in what a Haitian writer, obviously a thoughtful man, has to say about the situation in his country in an allegorical way, then read this book.

Depestre fills your brain with what is like to be in a system where you have no choice other than stand for what you believe. The reader does not need to be latinamerican to feel the experience of repression. The fluent narrative involves you more and more and when you less expected...you have finished the book... i strongly recomend it.

This guide reads like the authors spent a couple of weeks in the D.R. Some major towns, like La Vega, don't even merit a hotel recommendation. A pretty bad guide. Avoid it.

This book is a well written book that I really enjoyed. Even though at times I felt the book was a bit negative on some issues, over all it's great. It clearly post the different points of interests, restaurants, accommodations across the Dominican Republic. It gives some good detailed history of the country. I don't think the book did as good of a job with the Haiti section but the Dominican Republic section is stellar. Anyone travelling to the D.R. should not leave prior to buying this book!

A leader in travel guides, Lonely Plant once again proves it self as the leader in the industry with this excellent guide to traveling to/throughout the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Although Haiti's tourism industry is nearly nonexistent, the guide still provides the readers with information on attractions, accommodations, and safety issues.

In covering the neighboring Dominican Republic, the book provides much more information for this country which has seen a major boom in its' tourism industry since the late 1980s. Always informative with tidbits if information, history, maps, and information for singles and gay & lesbian travelers, the "Lonely Planet Dominican Republic and Haiti" is the best book for anyone planning a trip to the island of Hispaniola. Excellent guide for an excellent price.

If you are looking for backgrounder on the people, geography, and history of the Dominican Republic and Haiti, this book may fit your needs. As a general travel guide, it misses the mark badly.

First, the positives. The book provides 150 pages of concise overview. The history section is particularly successful. With an investment of about 90 minutes of reading, you come away with a reasonable understanding of how these two nations arrived at their modern condition, and in particular why they are quite different from one another. The photography in this section and throughout the book is superb and inspirational.

Now, the bad news. As a practical travel guide, information is consistently lacking or just plain wrong. A few examples (there are many more)...

1. Want to know what time it is when you arrive in the DR? This book will tell you you're in the Eastern Time zone. (False - you are one hour ahead).

2. Want to know how much cash you'll need at the airport? This book correctly informs you of the $10 tourist card you must purchase on arrival but utterly fails to mention the $10 departure tax.

3. Want to do a little exploring on the Costa del Coco north of Punta Cana? This book will treat you to purple passages like "the charter meccas are left behind glinting like shiny oyster pearls in the sun...", then toss out the names of a few beaches you could have located on the map, and provide absolutley no additional information.

In short, you might find this book useful for some inspiration in planning your trip, but don't expect to rely on it for practical information once you're on site.

I bought this book, not as a travel guide, but as a "coffee-table book" about the country of Haiti. As such, it is FANTASTIC! Sure, there are some typos in this first edition, but the publisher specifically invites readers' contributions & corrections (p. 2) for future editions. The photos in this book are vivid, stunning depictions of life in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. There is an introductory section full of photos & illustrations that covers the history of both nations that comprise Hispaniola, followed by colorful, photo-filled sections on people, language, art, religion, cuisine, sports, flora & fauna, architecture, economy & agriculture, geography & demography by regions of each country (including a wide variety of detailed maps), sites to visit and sights to see. All this comprises the first 344 pages of this marvelous book! Only the last 48 pages are devoted to "Travel Tips" -- trip planning, transportation, places to stay, places to eat, tourist sites, shopping, festivals, excursions, and so forth. Indeed, this is NOT A TRAVEL GUIDE! BUT A MARVELOUS AND DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO THE RICH CULTURE, BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE, AND INTRIGUING HISTORY OF THE ISLAND OF HISPANIOLA it is!!

I purchased "Tonight, by Sea" hoping for the same experience I got from reading "Taste of Salt", Temple's other novel about Haiti, but this one just didn't have the power to transport me to beloved Haiti as the other did. However, it's not a bad read and does tell quite honestly of the horror that caused the exodus from Haiti by "boat people" in the 90's and that still lingers today, albeit in a more "underground" form.

Tonight by Sea may have grammatical and orthographical errors such as "Belle Fleuve" for either "Beau Fleuve" (in French) or "Bèl Flèv" (in Creole) or stylistic inconsistencies and incongruities as in the speech pattern of the character Sadrak who is a teacher but sometimes speaks like an uneducated person. But Frances Temple's novel for young adults succeeds in capturing the atmosphere that lead hundreds of Haitian people to risk their lives in rickety boats to "Chache lavi," Seek Life in the U.S. As the story evolves, the reader is treated to an overview of Haitian History and culture and, at the same time, comes to realize that, put in the same situation, he or she might have done the same.

A story about the will to survive. A story that rehabilitates the image of the Haitian Boat People. Tonight by Sea is a story that needed to be told.

First of all your ideas are not well founded since you did not live in Haiti long enough to place a judgement or an opinion.Your grounds are very weak when you see only one part of Haiti. Being like a horse on a race track, the author is only focusing on what you may consider the worst, I would like to know when writters are going to start publishing the right stuff about a third world country.

This is an amazing book. I have traveled to Hait 5 times, my longest stay being four months. This book made me feel as if I was back in the country I love so much. I would recommend this book to anyone who's heart has been grasped by this country.

This is one of the most compelling book that I ever read about Haiti. Mr. Gold is funny and objective. One could feel his love for Haiti popping out of the pages; he is not just another foreigner out to make a quick buck. Although his experiences in the book were limited to the capital, he gave a vivid account because he was in the thick of things. When I checked with family and friends on the veracity of some of Mr. Gold's claims, he seemed to have hit right on the money. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves Haiti.

If you are interested in Haiti, specifically in medical missionary work, please read "The Neglected and Abused" by Bentivegna, or "Song of Haiti" by Barry Paris. They are wonderful.

If you are interested in Haiti on a broader historical or cultural basis, please read "Written in Blood" by Robert Debs and "The Rainy Season" by Amy Wilentz. I am sure there are others, but at least I can vouch for these two.

I admire that Nelson worked in Haiti, but the book just does not reflect what it should if you want to know about Haiti, its people, its conditions, and its wonder. Nelson spends too much time on his personal travel problems (about 1/3 of the book it seems) and other negatives, not nearly enough on either his missionary work or medical work, and when he does there is just no substance or development of topic. What were the reasons behind the bad roads? The poverty? Anything else medically or culturally he dealt with? Few of these are addressed, so the book reads like I did this, or this happened, with no illumination as to the whys of the situations he experienced.

I read this book to learn anything I could to apply to work a group of us do every year in Haiti and felt that I came up empty.

Nelson wrote a book of his experiences and opinions, but by golly, he could have spent SOME time on those people he went to serve, and surely he could have been less condescending and more understanding of the conditions and culture.

Having been tempted to write my own description of what it is like to be a missionary doctor in Haiti, I don't have to thanks to this book. Accurate vivid descriptions of Haiti as it was in 1946 and still today in 2000 fill the book. Dr. Nelson's writing details how everything is difficult in Haiti, takes longer than expected, yet gets done in God's time not his. The primitive organization of Haitian society and infrastructure is captured factually. This should be required reading for any person considering missionary work in Haiti, medical or ministerial. Haiti is a destination for service, not vacation or leisure. Don't go unless you are called. Don't stay home if you are.

Readers of this book should know that it is vociferously biased, not only because of the author's apparent preference for Stalinist Communism, but a violent antipathy towards the "Mulatto" caste of Haiti. The role of the US military in the 20th century history of Haiti is poorly known in the USA, of course, and it is overwhelmingly destructive; but Trouillot, while eager to vilify Americans in his narration, sheds no light on the details. So be advised that when he describes events in ways that seem willfully malicious, there is understandable grounds for resentment which he never explains adequately.

The other aspect of this book I found disturbing is his vilification of the "mulatre" (Mulatto) caste in Haiti, which we learn was the reviled "other" of the Noirist movement of post-WW2 Haiti. The mulatres are an insular group whom Trouillot regards as arrogant, aristocratic, commerce-minded, born to privilege, and ultimately anti-Haitian--or rather, hostile to his own dream of a hyper-regimented, Communist Haiti. Since the Duvaliers were inheritors of the Noirist movement against rule by mulatres, there is a tone in this book reminiscent of apologists for the Interhamawe/"Hutu Power" movement in Rwanda.

Trouillot is therefore vehemently defending the Haitians who favored Noirism; but he absolutely does not defend the Duvaliers, who co-opted the Noirist slogans and imposed a ferocious totalitarian kleptocracy. His analysis of how their regime flourished, and the damage it did, is actually quite excellent, although he could have done a much better job explaining exactly what role foreign powers really did have in Haiti and the actual divisions that were left BY the Duvaliers.

This book can be recommended for its superb description of life under totalitarian rule, of social relations in Haiti, and the breadth of Haitian history since Toissant l'Ouverture's death. It is also a good introduction to attitudes among camps of intelligencia, and of course Mr.Trouillot is entitled to wish that Haiti had become a regimented socialist society at independence. But Trouillot's resentment against class/caste enemies must be mentioned and it damages what is otherwise a very useful book.

As a writer, I found this book very helpful in determining the way my characters spoke without having the ability to go to Haiti and hear it for myself. It addresses sentence structure and word usage effectively, but it is by no means a dictionary! If you want noun or verb translations, you will need another book.

This book is entirely unhelpful. It does nothing to explain the Creole language. It seems to aim to confuse the listener. I learned more Creole in one day of travelling than this book taught me in several run throughs. If you want to learn Creole stay away from this book.

40 bucks is pretty hefty for what you get. I expected that at least they would have used both sides of the tape. The rather thin book seems to have been put together at Kinko's.

I hope I have some measure of credibility in spite of the fact that my last name happens to be the same as the author's!

I have traveled to Haiti twice and feel the course is of inestimable value. The dictionary includes all the words I would need in normal tourist-to-Haitian conversations...and then some.

The voices on the cassette are well-modulated and easy to understand. The course itself is clear and well-organized. It seems to include all the information any traveler would need on a visit.

One criticism: there are no pauses on the tape, and it's difficult to assimilate the information without stopping the tape in several places. But that's actually not a problem.

I would rate this course 5 out of 5 because, although not exhaustive, the course includes much more information than I could ever use, the materials are attractively packaged, and the lessons are well-organized and easy to follow.

Goff is an ideologue pushing an agenda. Having a view about a controversial event is one thing, put distorting facts to fit it into a grand conspiracy theory is something else.

This book explores much of what was wrong with the Haiti mission, which was plenty. Unfortunately, most of the credibility is lost when considering the source.

According to a soldier I met I met recently at Fort Bragg who was a squad leader with Goff at 75th Ranger Regiment, he was an operationally sound guy who could plan and execute missions with the best of them. It wasn't until he went SF, and then later on to Delta Force (supposedly), that his personal habits got the best of him.

While he was in Haiti, he got into trouble for egregiously violating the alcohol policy, then shooting his pistol in the air in anger when he found out they were shipping him back. He also got burned on a later mission for sleeping with a suspected member of the FMLN terrorist group at the ambassador's mansion in El Salvador.

These events had something to do with the early termination of his military career, I'm told. Now Goff spends his time attending anti-war rallies and trying to rub elbows with the liberal elite.

I can't help but wonder if he wrote all of this because of a personal axe to grind. As far as the accusations of racism in SF goes, I find it curious why nobody ever considers a largely black Army career field, such as supply, to be racist as well. However, if one wishes to attract attention from military and white male hating journalists, the race card is an effective strategy towards getting published. Pity for him that so few will read this little rant.

"Hideous Dream" has taken politics, foreign policy, and the Special Operations military down the Lane of Lost Mystiques.

This highly personal, and highly emotional account, of what for most of us was yet another CNN Docu-drama, puts a fallible human face on this amazingly cynical operation--the US invasion of Haiti in 1994.

Having read some of the other reviews of HD at Amazon.com , I think they are telling us how powerfully our system organizes the thinking of the individuals in it. One man gives HD a glowing review, then when confronted with what it quite likely his own credulity in the face of that other monument of US cynicism, the aggression against Yugoslavia, he retracts everything he has said. And the fellow who says he served with Goff in Haiti... well, his final words tell us a lot. "[A] white guys journey to becoming black..." What is THAT about?

I found the book to be brutally self-critical throughout. Contentiousness there was plenty. Arrogance... nah.

What I found was a book that humanized two groups who are frequently stereotyped, one for public villification, and one for public worship: Haitians and the military. The whole book plays out like an "I am a camera" documentary, with some very emotional editorializing in the interstices, and the result, while a little jarring from time to time (Goff admits he is a novice writer, more than once), is a remarkable demystification of the events and the social forces that underwrote them.

Buy this book.