<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: A donnish interpreter for the working class
Review: After a slow 150 pages in which Hobsbaum tells of his birth in 1917 in Alexandria to a Jewish father, son of an émigré cabinet-maker, and a Viennese jeweller's daughter followed by his youth in Austria and then Weimar Berlin and his stint at Cambridge, his story gains energy, if intermittently. Certainly Hobsbaum has led, after a rather tenuous period of living hand-to-mouth via the courtesy of relations and friends, a life more comfortable than that gained by many, communist or capitalist. His adherence to the Communist Party for so much of his life, from his profession in 1932 in Germany to his joining in 1936 and his allegiance throughout Stalinism and after the Hungarian revolt of 1956 motivates his four-hundred page apologia. Balancing his ideological commitment to a concomitant refusal to accept dogma results in a curious tension. How can a securely employed, well-travelled, multi-lingual, and nimbly minded individual stay loyal to a cause that rallied the poor and the intellectual while committing so many murders in its name?
Hobsbaum argues well his reasoning. Surprisingly, little of his book recapitulates his scholarly mission, the fame of which derives first from his popularising of the earlier century's "primitive rebels," those who resisted capitalisation and globalisation and their own redundancy. Far too many pages provide lists of luncheons, flights, and friends. Hobsbaum warns the reader that little of his private life will emerge here, and his sons gain only a couple of sentences here and there, for example; their half-brother, apparently the result of an affair in-between his two marriages, is mentioned in half-a-sentence. Instead, as the blurb and the cover images trumpet, Hitler, Che, and the Soviet Man of Steel gain attention, and even more the milieu in which he and his internationalists roamed in between seminars and scholarship-again, little of the classroom to be found here. Hobsbaum actually gives little insight into the Great Men, but much on his mates.
Idiosyncratically, the book's form skips about. Most of it tracks his own career, while latter chapters sum up his thoughts and chats in France, Italy, Spain, the Third World, and the U.S. One chapter, fascinating to me for its oblique mirroring of recent Ireland, takes on the land of his holiday home in Wales near the eccentric Clough Williams-Ellis, builder of among other wonders, the seaside resort of Portmeirion, later the site of the 1960s television series The Prisoner. In this chapter, the author carefully analyses the resurgence of Welsh separatism in that decade, to the point that it drove him to a safer and more anglicised portion of the principality in which to vacation. Hobsbaum dismisses "ethnolinguistic nationalism" and has little time for the 1960s legacy of individualism that led to the promotion of non-conformity at the expense of the social ideal for which earlier revolutionaries had struggled.
Hobsbaum pinpoints the crucial difference between himself and later radicals. He is one of the last living intellectuals inspired to hoist the Red flag by the events in the year of his birth. A teenager when he cast his lot with the German communists just before Hitler's consolidation of power, Hobsbaum defends his faith in Marx. While later converts recanted once the allure of the anti-fascist crusade dimmed, Hobsbaum emphasises that he remained a believer after Khrushchev's decision to undermine the monolithic power of the CPSU in 1956-the second time that "ten days shook the world." "To put it in the simplest terms," he summarises, "the October Revolution created a world communist movement, the Twentieth Congress destroyed it." (201) Because Hobsbaum and his CP allies had been lied to, "something that had to affect the very nature of a communist's belief," the concealment of the truth about Stalin led to the instability of an presumed solid façade of political and cultural endurance, and foreshadowed the fall of the Wall.
Which perhaps was a Potemkin village, but one where, Hobsbaum claims, protection against the harsh blows of capitalism and unrestrained greed did enable Soviets and those under their subjection to pursue a laudable goal of communist equality and worldwide fraternity. Hobsbaum cautiously tiptoes around the conflict of the dream with the reality.
He acknowledges that communists like himself and their western parties never had to govern from a position of actual power, and therefore mitigates the decisions made by those who did rule in the name of the working class. No creed since Islam in the seventh century, he reminds us, spread so rapidly and so far across our planet.
Speaking of this takeover, Hobsbaum elides complications. He compares the removal of communist ministers in western governments circa 1947 with their inclusion in non-communist administrations "in the countries under communist rule." (180) He laments the establishment of the Orwellian-monikered Cominform before continuing: `The Eastern regimes, deliberately not set up as communist, but as pluriparty "new" or "peoples' democracies" with mixed economies, were now assimilated to the "dictatorship of the proleteriat", i.e. the standard Communist Party dictatorships.' The author seems to skip over how a country can be "under communist rule" with a mixed economy and a pluriparty regime for long, before being standardised as a CP one-party dictatorship, given the logic of communist consolidation of power within a single party model. And, from my admittedly non-specialist understanding of those nations soon to be mortared into the façade of the Eastern bloc, such a pluriparty system was never seriously intended to survive, given the 1943 Tehran conference and the Cold War's surrender to the USSR of those Central and Eastern European nations as a buffer zone to defend Stalin's empire.
Hobsbaum confused me with a statement about one of those buffer nations with which I have some familiarity, Hungary. Discussing an intellectual who claimed to be a victim of Soviet repression post-1956 who in fact was a Party organiser after the revolt, the author states: `Unfortunately in the course of those years, under the benevolent eye of the Kadar government, the sympathizers with the 1956 movement, that is to say the bulk of the communist intellectuals and the academics, quietly re-established their positions.' (145)
Those less informed about Hungary at this time might misconstrue this passage, intended to contrast the fake refugee from the revolt with his comrades who remained, as praising the regime of Kadar, who pretended to side with the rebels only to turncoat to the Soviet invaders as they returned to crush the revolt, and to imply that the majority of those who were sympathisers with the rebellion suffered no harm under the Kadar regime. Although a communist revolt, the Hungarians sought neutrality apart from the Warsaw Pact and a mixed economy. These aims, Hobsbaum agrees, could not have been tolerated under Soviet domination, but he diminishes the struggle of those who sought a more human face for socialism by too often defending the Russian bear's slashes across the face of those who defied its imperial might, feigned as a blow for people's equality.
Throughout his book, Hobsbaum distances himself from Judaism and Zionism, in the name of a greater identity with the oppressed everywhere. Yet his early identification with the position of the outsider, the alien, and the non-conformist (witness too his long championship in scholarship and avocation of an appreciation for jazz) could only have been gained by his Judaic stance, secular as it was, and his similar oppositional decision to embrace communism at fourteen. I find his lack of sympathy for Israel predictable therefore, but still would like to know what alternatives could have existed for his relatives who did not survive the camps, or those who did survive in a hostile Europe.
His detachment from issues like these when they effect the individual may be attributed to his rather distanced position as that outsider, whether in Wales, in London, in Berlin, or in Alexandria (although his lectureships at the New School in New York City, at Stanford and the Getty Center, or his frequent global trips in search of like-minded companions sounded quite enjoyable to me). He claims that after his forties, whatever happened of note in his life was inside his head, and these transatlantic odysseys merely widened his intellectual horizons. Or maybe not, as he remained loyal to the Cause throughout the Cold War, despite New Labour, and now in spite of Bush. His chapters on the rest of the world outside the dons' room and the overseas seminar open up many intriguing insights, but I never felt that Hobsbaum was quite on the same level as us proles.
A sample, taken from a discussion of the Party's `cultural group' protesting in 1956: `The Indo-Scandinavian intellectual Palme Dutt, one of those implausibly tall upper-class figures one occasionally meets among Bengalis, belonged through his mother to an eminent Swedish kindred-Olaf Palme, the socialist premier assassinated in 1986, was another member.' (208-9) This, like his analogy of labeled decanters in "the combination room" at Cambridge to keep dons from confusing their port and their sherry, speak of a privileged world in which Hobsbaum has earned his eminence, and one where, his communism to the contrary, he continues to thrive. It is natural for any of us to write from the position we know, so I don't mean to criticise the laurels which Hobsbaum has earned, but I do wish to point out that, as he confesses, `somewhere inside of me there is a small ghost who whispers: "One should not be at ease in a world such as ours." As the man said when I read him in my youth: "The point is to change it."' (313). However, he interprets the world marvelously--if evasively.
[Review edited from an on-line essay for the Belfast-based journal The Blanket.]
Rating: 
Summary: A Gentle, Steadfast Man
Review: Eric Hobsbawm is the greatest communist historian who ever lived, and almost certainly one of a small number of the finest historians alive today. Hobsbawm is immensely knowledgeable and intelligent and consistently rewards his readers with surprising perspectives and little-known but telling facts. (For example, he mentions in passing that most of the world considers it simply absurd that America conforms its politics to and reveres the wording of a document more than two hundred years old.) As a professional, Eric Hobsbawm writes utterly non-polemically, which is to be expected, but he also writes with grace and a gentle irony, which is not. The title of this work testifies to that gentle irony -- "May You Live in Interesting Times" being an ancient Chinese curse - but there are also flashes of anger. As how could there not be? Moreover, Hobsbawm is revealed in Interesting Times to be a fundamentally happy man, a success in his profession and his family and friends, both political and non-political, in his politics and the worlds it opened for him, and in the choices he's made. (Which is, seemingly, a source of consternation to many American cold war intellectuals, who just can't comprehend why Hobsbawm hasn't repented.) Finally and most germane, Eric Hobsbawm in Interesting Times has authored the best autobiography by a non-scientist I've ever read, a truly remarkable blending of the personal and the socio-political. This is a fascinating book about a fascinating life.
Born in Egypt in the historically momentous year of 1917, little Eric moved with his family to Vienna several years later, then to Berlin in 1931 when he was fourteen, and to England in 1933. (The German politics and personal experiences in Berlin from 1931-33 which Hobsbawm recounts in two chapters make especially compelling reading.) Hobsbawm's family was ever peripatetic, and traveling continued to play a central role in Hobsbawm's life.
In England, Hobsbawm's genius was recognized early and he "went up" to Cambridge University at seventeen to eventually become a member of the exclusive Acolytes there. It was also at Cambridge that Hobsbawm joined the communist party, a natural thing for a jew at Cambridge with radical politics to do as Hitler consolidated his terror in Germany. However, Hobsbawm was as precocious politically as intellectually and had supported leftist causes in Vienna before moving to Berlin in 1931 - in Vienna he was torn between joining the communist party and the Boy Scouts! And he tells a story of inadvertently crossing the French-Spanish border when on vacation (in 1937?) in France during the Spanish civil war, and nearly becoming an unintentional soldier for the Republican cause. (So little was Hobsbawm "soldier material" that despite all his fervent efforts, the British Army nearly despaired of finding anything for him to do to fight Hitler.) Evidently, that French-Spanish border story was characteristic of Eric - sometimes absentminded, always curious, never fearful - and he passed through this unspeakably violent century with the angels protecting him. So is the book stories. Stories of its author's love affairs with life. His loves for history, for jazz, for Spain, for Italy, for Columbia, for New York City, for Britain, and of course for communism. All merged seamlessly into the great flow of history that was the twentieth century after 1917.
To see these times through the eyes of their most perspicacious, historically erudite, non-polemical, and articulate communist. What an incomparable experience!!
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but humourless
Review: Eric Hobsbawn has led a fascinating life and has added enormously to the understanding of the last two centuries withhis brilliant historical mind. I enjoyed reading his autobiography, but I found it to be almost humourless and astonishingly free of anecdote. He comes across as an earnest devotee of communism. His wrestling with the failure of communism - both morally and materially - is one of the most engaging features of the book. But I wanted to know the person and person does not seem to appear at all. In truth, it is an extended essay on his life and times, but very little else.
Rating: 
Summary: Hobsbawm Answers (Almost) All
Review: Hobsbawm's book is called Interesting Times rather than An Interesting Life, but that is just Hobsbawm being modest. After a lifetime of analyzing history from the perspective of a leftist, but generally even-handed, professor, he takes an opportunity to get a few things off his chest.He tackles the question of why he stayed a communist for so long, even after the Stalin years forced so many believers to reevaluate their views. He discusses America frankly, past (loves New York, hates the suburbs near Stanford University) and present (the reaction to Sept. 11). He reminisces about wars, academia, and jazz.About the only question he doesn't address is when and why he changed the spelling of his last name. Unimportant perhaps, but curious. A readable, entertaining, and thoughtful memoir of an interesting man in a troubled century.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Times...At Least to a Degree
Review: I approached Eric's Hobsbawm's autobiography with some relish. His background is truly fascinating and his views often contrary to the mainstream. His long term membership of the British Communist Party certainly places him within a very small group by any measure. However, I must admit that I was often disappointed in Hobsbawm's work. There were large sections of pontificating rather than him outlining the so-called interesting times in which he lived. And let there be on mistake, Hobsbawm did live in interesting times. He was born in the year of the Russian Revolution to an Austrian mother and British father who were both Jews in Vienna during the dying days of the Hapsburg Empire. His early education was in Vienna while his later education was in Britain where he ultimately went on to study at Cambridge. Throughout his life, he travelled widely and truly met many interesting people. Thus, my only concern with his book is that his interesting life can sometimes play second fiddle to his opinions. But perhaps this is always the way with historians. They are here to interpret the world and not simply narrate. Read Hobsbawm's work for an opinion on the twentieth century but not have expectations that you are going to read a tour de force of the century's movers and shakers.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting Times...At Least to a Degree
Review: I approached Eric's Hobsbawm's autobiography with some relish. His background is truly fascinating and his views often contrary to the mainstream. His long term membership of the British Communist Party certainly places him within a very small group by any measure. However, I must admit that I was often disappointed in Hobsbawm's work. There were large sections of pontificating rather than him outlining the so-called interesting times in which he lived. And let there be on mistake, Hobsbawm did live in interesting times. He was born in the year of the Russian Revolution to an Austrian mother and British father who were both Jews in Vienna during the dying days of the Hapsburg Empire. His early education was in Vienna while his later education was in Britain where he ultimately went on to study at Cambridge. Throughout his life, he travelled widely and truly met many interesting people. Thus, my only concern with his book is that his interesting life can sometimes play second fiddle to his opinions. But perhaps this is always the way with historians. They are here to interpret the world and not simply narrate. Read Hobsbawm's work for an opinion on the twentieth century but not have expectations that you are going to read a tour de force of the century's movers and shakers.
Rating:
Summary: a sad tale
Review: Much as I admire Hobsbawm's histories of Europe and "invention of tradition", I felt, when reading this account of a long life, as if the author is evading his own personality, his own roots, seeking refuge in apostolic and childish occupations without having a real sense of humour, and setting to write his own history and diaries without a keen talent to face and practice life and times as it realy faced him in a sensitive, humam attitude: The Holocaust, of which he hardly makes a note, and with it Jewish collective fate, both in Nazi Germany and in his beloved Soviet Russia. Moreover(on page 295 in the Abacus paperback edition), he makes a rather stupid, or perhaps malicious comparison between Stalinist Russia, Vichi France and the State of Israel. He does mention the great Israeli Historian, Prof. Jacob Talmon, as the only person giving him a helping hand in hard times, but has other than that only bad language and simple, narrow thoughts about the only place on earth which has opened welcoming doors to ANY Jew escaping Nazi Europe, not only to a lucky, selected few which had landed elsewhere.
Similar opinions are widespread in Europe today (and in academic circles in Israel too). I for one welcome any debate on Israeli policies. But In Hobsbawm's book there isn't any. Only harsh, cold, unjust remarks, which stand in harsh dissonance to his kind description of almost anything and anyone associated with left-wing English Sports or British Jazz. Pity how Brecht's poem which he likes so much ("An die Nachgeborenen")could apply to this "unfriendly" autobiography of a great historian and scholar.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating memoir
Review: There has been much discussion in American intellectual life about the appeal of Communism to intellectuals. But much of this talk reveals little that is profound, because it is not intended to. It is less designed to understand the traison des clercs than to applaud both the author and the reader for resistance to its temptations. The career of E.J. Hobsbawm complicates this self-regard. Here is a historian who is regarded by almost all as a principled and distinguished historian, a man whose works exude moderation, calm and good sense yet who belonged to the Communist Party of Great Britain until the collapse of the Soviet Union. He helped to found, and was chairman, of the British Communist Party Historian's Group at perhaps the darkest period of Stalinist terror against intellectuals, yet in 1952 he helped to found, and for decades was a crucial figure of "Past and Present," the leading journal of history in the English-speaking world. How to explain this anomaly? It is important to point out that he opposed the 1956 invasion of Hungary and that by 1968 both he and the party opposed the invasion of Czechoslovakia and took a much more liberal Eurocommunist line. It is important to point out that much of this has to do with tact, both on his part and that of the British party. He wrote little on history after 1914 until 1989 and held no party offices, and the party did not criticize him. It should be clear, since recent reviews by David Pryce-Jones in "The New Criterion" and Richard Pipes in "Commentary," do everything to confuse the issue, that Hobsbawm's ideal from the sixties to the eighties was Berlingeur, not Brezhnev, that he opposed Tony Benn and preferred Neil Kinnock to Michael Foot, and that De Gaulle and FDR are the world leaders that get the most praise here. In contrast to Pryce-Jones's hysterical and unsupported assertions, Hobsbawm's Communist Party membership did not undermine his integrity as a historian. (Though one wonders about Pryce-Jones' own competence, where he makes the incorrect assertion that "The Age of Extremes" does not mention the Gulag.) "Yes, but what about before 1956?" Hobsbawm admits that he supported Communism's anti-Social Democrat strategy in Weimar (when he was 15), and that he supported the Nazi-Soviet Pact. He reminds us that for the first eight months of the war the conservatives of France and Britain thought less of attacking Hitler than of trying to attack the Soviet Union in the course of defending Finland. We learn of his doubts and nervousness, in his case it was over the break with Tito, the Rajk trial in Hungary and a depressing 1954 visit to the Soviet Union. We learn much about the internationalism and efficiency of the party and the fact that for better or for worse it was the major revolutionary movement around. But this is a valuable book not simply because it describes how a rational and thoughtful man could believe in a course of political action that was in retrospect patently wrongheaded (he writes that Communism "left behind a landscape of material and moral ruin," and that "it must now be obvious that failure was built into the their enterprise from the start.") We also read many intelligent and thoughtful set-pieces, such as Hobsbawm's early life in post-war Vienna, or the reaction to the Fall of France. We learn about how this central-European/English Jew became a reputable jazz critic, under the name of Francis Newton, named after one of the few Communist jazz players. There are the chapters where he looks at his experiences in France, Italy, Latin America, and less successfully, the United States. These are filled with interesting and penetrating anecdotes along with thoughtful comments of how these countries have changed over the past fifty to seventy years. In France he notes the formality and dignity demanded by French intellectuals, of whom Sartre was an exception. We learn how in Italy the PCI's concern over how local groups elected as branch secretaries, of all people, Seventh Day Adventists. We also learn of the time Hobsbawm was talking in Sicily with a local Communist when the latter suggested that it would be best if the locals didn't know he was English. It would be better if they thought he was from Bologna. But hadn't we been talking in English all day? That's all right, "What do these guys know how they talk in Bologna?" We learn about his relationship with the sixties rebels, how he did not fully understand (and did not admire) their hedonistic attitude towards sex. He was sympathetic to the Black Panthers, though he knew they had no chance of succeeding, opposed Québécois and Basque nationalists, while the Shining Path was the first rebel group he clearly did not want to win. We learn interesting anecdotes about intellectuals. He suggests that it may have been J.L. Talmon, the conservative Israeli historian, who suggested to his publisher that Hobsbawm write "The Age of Revolution." We learn about his unsuccessful attempts to take E.M. Forster to see Lenny Bruce, and the economist Paul Baran to see Miles Davis. We learn that Hobsbawm has relatives in Chile, and that they supported Pinochet. Memoirs are often apologetic and misleading, especially among historians. As Perry Anderson pointed out in excellent review in "The London Review of Books," this book is very much an exception.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating memoir
Review: There has been much discussion in American intellectual life about the appeal of Communism to intellectuals. But much of this talk reveals little that is profound, because it is not intended to. It is less designed to understand the traison des clercs than to applaud both the author and the reader for resistance to its temptations. The career of E.J. Hobsbawm complicates this self-regard. Here is a historian who is regarded by almost all as a principled and distinguished historian, a man whose works exude moderation, calm and good sense yet who belonged to the Communist Party of Great Britain until the collapse of the Soviet Union. He helped to found, and was chairman, of the British Communist Party Historian's Group at perhaps the darkest period of Stalinist terror against intellectuals, yet in 1952 he helped to found, and for decades was a crucial figure of "Past and Present," the leading journal of history in the English-speaking world. How to explain this anomaly? It is important to point out that he opposed the 1956 invasion of Hungary and that by 1968 both he and the party opposed the invasion of Czechoslovakia and took a much more liberal Eurocommunist line. It is important to point out that much of this has to do with tact, both on his part and that of the British party. He wrote little on history after 1914 until 1989 and held no party offices, and the party did not criticize him. It should be clear, since recent reviews by David Pryce-Jones in "The New Criterion" and Richard Pipes in "Commentary," do everything to confuse the issue, that Hobsbawm's ideal from the sixties to the eighties was Berlingeur, not Brezhnev, that he opposed Tony Benn and preferred Neil Kinnock to Michael Foot, and that De Gaulle and FDR are the world leaders that get the most praise here. In contrast to Pryce-Jones's hysterical and unsupported assertions, Hobsbawm's Communist Party membership did not undermine his integrity as a historian. (Though one wonders about Pryce-Jones' own competence, where he makes the incorrect assertion that "The Age of Extremes" does not mention the Gulag.) "Yes, but what about before 1956?" Hobsbawm admits that he supported Communism's anti-Social Democrat strategy in Weimar (when he was 15), and that he supported the Nazi-Soviet Pact. He reminds us that for the first eight months of the war the conservatives of France and Britain thought less of attacking Hitler than of trying to attack the Soviet Union in the course of defending Finland. We learn of his doubts and nervousness, in his case it was over the break with Tito, the Rajk trial in Hungary and a depressing 1954 visit to the Soviet Union. We learn much about the internationalism and efficiency of the party and the fact that for better or for worse it was the major revolutionary movement around. But this is a valuable book not simply because it describes how a rational and thoughtful man could believe in a course of political action that was in retrospect patently wrongheaded (he writes that Communism "left behind a landscape of material and moral ruin," and that "it must now be obvious that failure was built into the their enterprise from the start.") We also read many intelligent and thoughtful set-pieces, such as Hobsbawm's early life in post-war Vienna, or the reaction to the Fall of France. We learn about how this central-European/English Jew became a reputable jazz critic, under the name of Francis Newton, named after one of the few Communist jazz players. There are the chapters where he looks at his experiences in France, Italy, Latin America, and less successfully, the United States. These are filled with interesting and penetrating anecdotes along with thoughtful comments of how these countries have changed over the past fifty to seventy years. In France he notes the formality and dignity demanded by French intellectuals, of whom Sartre was an exception. We learn how in Italy the PCI's concern over how local groups elected as branch secretaries, of all people, Seventh Day Adventists. We also learn of the time Hobsbawm was talking in Sicily with a local Communist when the latter suggested that it would be best if the locals didn't know he was English. It would be better if they thought he was from Bologna. But hadn't we been talking in English all day? That's all right, "What do these guys know how they talk in Bologna?" We learn about his relationship with the sixties rebels, how he did not fully understand (and did not admire) their hedonistic attitude towards sex. He was sympathetic to the Black Panthers, though he knew they had no chance of succeeding, opposed Québécois and Basque nationalists, while the Shining Path was the first rebel group he clearly did not want to win. We learn interesting anecdotes about intellectuals. He suggests that it may have been J.L. Talmon, the conservative Israeli historian, who suggested to his publisher that Hobsbawm write "The Age of Revolution." We learn about his unsuccessful attempts to take E.M. Forster to see Lenny Bruce, and the economist Paul Baran to see Miles Davis. We learn that Hobsbawm has relatives in Chile, and that they supported Pinochet. Memoirs are often apologetic and misleading, especially among historians. As Perry Anderson pointed out in excellent review in "The London Review of Books," this book is very much an exception.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting and - at least personally - lucky times
Review: Who ever is interested in newer history, in extensive portraits of European (and partly non-European) countries or single landscapes and towns (like Cambrigde) and in cultures in their different expressions can raise a treasure here. Already the chapters about the France and Italy of the decades between 1930 and 1995 (the author actually experienced this period of time personally) are wonderful, small books for itself. Written excellently this book can easily be read and is never superficial. A fine consumption perhaps like the red wine to a good meal. Unfortunately, it is also the slightly melancholy look back to the times that more and more seem to have been the golden age of the last centuries. In terms of Hobsbawm who simplifies consciously it were the times when the rich ones had to fear the poor ones. Hobsbawm considers his own life as an unusual and not at all foreseeable case of luck. It is generous that he invides us to take part in his review of interesting and personally lucky times. It is one of the best books that I know. I would like to always have a stack to the hand - for giving away a copy to friends.
<< 1 >>
|
