Rating: 
Summary: ¿Oh, it would be so lovely to live a thousand lives.¿
Review: The quote is from Ludwig Van Beethoven, which was a part of a letter to Franz Wegeler.Mr. Russell Martin has crafted a beautiful piece of work that is much more complex than it initially appears. The difference between writing a book on a subject this narrowly defined and having it succeed, and producing nothing more than a mind numbing recitation of facts, is extremely fine. In this case the Author did a brilliant job. My only wish is that a few photographs were included, as they would have added to the work. This criticism is very minor, and the book is outstanding. To have written as narrowly on a subject as suggested by the title would have never merited a book. Mr. Russell gently sways the time frame from the current year, and then as far back as Beethoven's years as a child, and the transitions are seamless. He builds the book in layers, Beethoven's life, illnesses, loves, and his introduction to Mozart. He narrates the custom of taking a lock of hair as a memento, in this case Beethoven's, from days after the great man's death, to the most sophisticated forensic examinations currently available. He writes of the men who purchased the relic, the passion that catalyzed their purchase, and all that resulted from it. All of this joyfully fascinates, until the great mystery of the hand off of the relic to a Doctor, who risked his life saving Jews from the Nazis darkly enters the story. And it is here the Author transforms the book from a documentation of a historical curiosity, to an important work, by including the remarkable events in Gilleleje Denmark. The events that surrounded the relics' travels all illustrate the veneration this man and his music have had, and will continue to have for as long as we have a future. His music was played for the amusement of concentration camp staff, the vermin that were Hitler's creatures. The hideous ironies of the music being played by those that were condemned to die. Can you imagine a scene where a group that knows death is their only future plays a requiem, a requiem that literally is to be theirs? I cannot. His most recognizable symphonic opening was used by the allies because of what it translated into, using...but that would be a spoiler. The quote that begins these comments is probably the greatest irony of all. When you read of how ill this man was, the decades of pain and barely imaginable discomfort, the deafness many know of seems minor by comparison. The contemporary part of this tale puts myths about his death to rest, provides evidence of what may have been responsible for the misery that was his "health", and ponders what did his horrendous health have to do with what he wrote. The premise of the book does not indicate just how much lies within. It is a biography of a man, of musical and human history, and of scientific marvels. It is the examination of why this man's music resonates uniquely to this day. I cannot think of any reader who would not enjoy this work.
Rating: 
Summary: A good magazine article, a mediocre book
Review: The title and subtitle were compelling, so I sat down with this book for a few hours in a local bookstore. It wasn't long before I realized that the book had a lot of "air" in it -- the author kept saying the same thing over & over, trying to create excitement, trying to stretch the manuscript. I became annoyed, but I finished the book because I wanted to know what they found in Beethoven's hair. The results were mildly interesting, but certainly not worth hours of my time. My boyfriend summed it up perfectly: "It should have been a magazine article, not a book."
Rating: 
Summary: Beethoven's Hair
Review: This book does not live up to its potential and lacks the rigor of many histories. It was actually published before the scientific answers were in. If shortened to an essay it would be more compelling. Ultimately it can be summed up as a demonstration that Beethoven was poisoned and that his deafness and other physical symptoms were entirely consistent with this.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting story but unrealized
Review: This book does not live up to its potential and lacks the rigor of many histories. It was actually published before the scientific answers were in. If shortened to an essay it would be more compelling. Ultimately it can be summed up as a demonstration that Beethoven was poisoned and that his deafness and other physical symptoms were entirely consistent with this.
Rating:
Summary: Much Ado About (Absolutely) Nothing
Review: This book was quite a disappointment. I was looking for new information about Beethoven's life, but most of it was old news that I'd read from other biographies of Beethoven. Your reviewers presented opinions about the book that I don't share. There were a few interesting pages dealing with forensic science, but I think that the "mystery" of the book could have been summed up in one paragraph. It seemed that the author attempted to fill up enough pages to make up a book with information that sensationalized irrelevant secondary characters and events. I guess it depends on what one's looking for in a book. It was a disappointing waste of my precious reading time.
Rating: 
Summary: Will there be a sequel?
Review: This is a cleverly written biography of the great master, Ludwig van Beethoven, paralleled in alternating chapters with the history of a lock of Beethoven's hair from the time it was cut from his head in Vienna in 1827 until its laboratory analysis in USA in 2000. Wisely, the current owners of that lock of hair allowed only a few of the 582 strands to be sacrificed for testing, in the hope that in years to come science will advance to the stage where even more meaningful tests can be carried out. The life and times of Beethoven in Vienna are described in the context of the life and times of the first owner of that lock of "Beethoven's Hair", Ferdinand Hiller, a student of Beethoven's friend Johann Hummel. The greats of the musical and literary world who enjoyed each other's company in Paris as well as Vienna not long after Beethoven's death included, Frederic Chopin, Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, George Sand and Honore de Balzac, a veritable Who's Who of the romantic era. The fluctuating relationships between Hiller and some of the above characters from that of close friends to mistrusted acquaintances provide fascinating reading. Meanwhile, that lock of hair and its various identified owners are traced through the 19th century and through the first one-third of the 20th century until the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Europe breaks the trail. The amount of research that was necessary by author Russell Martin to describe the prevailing circumstances of the war in Northern Europe at that time, particularly Denmark, can be seen in the many acknowledgements he makes. The writing style throughout the book made for difficult reading with many sentences being a quarter of a page long if not more. They often had to be re-read so that the first part of the sentence could be understood in the context of the final stages of the same sentence. Another criticism of the style was the use of dashes - just to break the sentence up - rather than using commas. However, these criticisms should not put you off a very good read which combines the elements of music, history, war, persecution, love (or the search for it), science and mystery. It has whetted my appetite to find out more about Beethoven. I envisage a sequel to this book as more advanced tests are done on those famous strands of hair in years to come and perhaps a movie to rival "Immortal Beloved".
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful stuff
Review: This is an extraordinary story of a relic (in the literal, Biblical sense) of the great composer, passed down through generations of a German musical family, through Nazi-occupied Denmark, and to modern Arizona where it was analyzed by modern medicine. Even if you don't agree with their conclusion for the reasons for Beethoven's eccentricity, it's a great read. The chapter "A Gift in Gilleleje" made me cry: a wonderful story of people helping people in one of the worst situations in modern history.
Rating:
Summary: not worth 5 dollars
Review: well i assumed that this book would be crap seeing as it is about beethoven's hair. however i read it in hopes that it would be about beethoven. it is not, it is about the nazis. honestly you read the book and it starts off with beethoven, then a name gets dropped of some famous composer or related family memeber. And in a matter of sentences you go from the death of beethoven to the rescuing of jews from denmark? what? yeah. its basically a 288 page ramble. However within those pages there are a few good quotes and some worthy information. Like someone said "who doesn't love beethoven," we all love his music and have a strong appreciation for him, but if i were you, i'd save your five dollars and buy some ice cream or something.
Rating:
Summary: Boring book
Review: Who doesn't love Beethoven? Who doesn't love Beethoven facts?
But Beethoven's Hair is a bore. This book is analogous to submitting your theme for your 30-page semester paper and once you began to write you found your subject was worth about 3 pages. Pumped up, poorly organized, wildly disarrayed, who can call this "masterful" except the author's mother?
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