Elias Canetti originally intended Party in the Blitz to capture an image of his time in post-war London. Well known throughout Europe, Canetti scorned British intellectuals who weren't familiar with his work. By force of will alone he accumulated English followers, but not before being christened "the godmonster of Hampstead." Canetti's memories of various people in his social circle are brief and scathing brimstone sketches. T.S. Eliot, Iris Murdoch, Wittgenstein, Herbert Read, Bertrand Russell-Canetti rakes them all over the coals. To Canetti, T.S. Eliot was nothing more than an American emigrant trying desperately to act British, and Canetti's portrayal of Iris Murdoch, with whom he had an affair, is nothing short of brutal. Michael Hofmann's translation pulls no punches, delivering the goods on Canetti's searing injection: "when you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about."

Praise for Coming Together, Coming Apart ""Interesting conversation is Israel's most ingratiating commodity, and this is an especially interesting one. To read Coming Together, Coming Apart is to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue with one of Israel's most thoughtful observers--an American who made Israel his home, despite its imperfections and dangers. Gordis's conversational narrative is irresistible."" --Alan dershowitz, author of The Case for Israel ""Whether describing a walk through Jerusalem in snow, a hike in the desert, or a farewell family drive to the Gaza settlements, Gordis manages to capture the essential details that tell us the larger meaning of our Israeli lives. There is much irony in this book, and also anger, especially against those who unfairly judge Israel in its most desperate and noble times. Most of all, though, this book is the chronicle of a love story--of an immigrant family in Jerusalem falling in love with Israel and, through that love, discovering the strength to cope with life on the front lines of a jihadist war. As a fellow Jerusalemite, I feel a profound debt to Gordis for explaining what it means to raise a family in the middle of a terror zone, and the courage that average Israelis instinctively display in maintaining the pretense of normal life. Those of us who share his passion are fortunate to be so well represented by this book."" --Yossi Klein Halevi, Foreign Correspondent, The New Republic

A poignant and raucous memoir of a mother — feminist, fighter against injustice, and unbridled lover — and her madcap son.

Reflections and rumblings on human nature and the law from one of Australia's longest serving criminal defence barristers, once nicknamed 'The Smiling Funnelweb', Chester Porter QC. Chester Porter's life in the law began in 1948, when at the age of 21 he was the youngest lawyer to be admitted to the Bar. He took silk in 1974 and quickly became known as Sydney's best defence lawyer, shunning the courtroom theatricals favoured by many of his rivals.'Young Chester' was the man others would go to if they were in strife. Chester's most famous cases included successfully defending the 'once only's' such as Detective Sgt Roger Rogerson on bribery charges, and Judge John Foord who was accused of attempting to pervert the course of justice. He was counsel assisting the Northern Territory Commissions of Inquiry into the convictions of Lindy and Michael Chamberlain. After clocking up scores of legendary victories, some of Macquarie Street's more larrikin lawyers produced a limited edition t- shirt with 'Chester Porter Walks on Water'- a slogan that sums up an illustrious career that spanned more than 50 years. This is not merely a reflection of human nature at its worst but also an overview of how the law has changed and developed over the years. From the McDermott Royal Commission to the reform of forensic evidence and the future of the law in Australia, this is the long-awaited memoir from one of Australia's most respected QC's.

Hundreds of books have been written about the infamous Dreyfus Affair; but this account comes from the pen of Alfred Dreyfus himself. From a bright morning in October of 1894, responding to a request for inspection, to his exoneration in September of 1899, the author tells his lonely story of conviction, solitary confinement and humiliation at Devil's Island in French Guiana. This is a true account of a modern day Job.

"What amazes about this book is not only the wonderful writing and passionate honesty, but the fact that it is so much fun to read." -Erica Jong "Fans of Birstein's work will not be disappointed by this memoir, which expands on much of the colorful narrative found in her superb biography of her father. The Rabbi on Forty-seventh Street, and delves deeper into her Hell's Kitchen Childhood, college life the heady world of New York intellectuals her turbulent marriage to (Alfred) Kazin." - Publishers Weekly "Birstein is a graceful writer, and she's also very funny." - Jewish Week

What if you were supposed to die, but you didn’t? And what if, years later, your precious second chance didn’t turn out anything like you thought it would? That’s the journey Evan Handler experiences, and the one he explores in It’s Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive. In a collection of funny, offbeat, and poignant autobiographical essays, Handler moves beyond the supposedly "incurable” illness he triumphed over in his mid-twenties--only to tumble through his thirties and forties in search of ever elusive love and happiness. From bold attempts to rekindle his acting career to hapless efforts to run faster around New York’s Central Park reservoir, from bizarre Internet dates to twenty-seven breakups (involving only ten women), Handler careens through his against-all-odds existence. Always searching for meaning in his unlikely survival, he shares stories of sadistic junior high school gym teachers, bullying wannabe Hollywood moguls, returned engagement rings, and Europeans’ fascination with American bathroom habits. Picking up ten years after his first book, Time on Fire, Handler again uses what the New York Times calls his "laceratingly funny and revealing” storytelling skills to weave twenty-one new tales into a defiantly unconventional memoir. Consistently witty and insightful, Handler’s stories shift effortlessly from the comedic to the profound, musing with equal intensity on the existence of God and his experiences with TV stardom. Then, just when it seems he’s failed to make the most of his astonishing second chance, Handler finds his way to miracles even greater than the ones that saved his life. His memoir describes his journey from darkness to light, from yearning to gratitude, and in so doing succeeds as both a stirring love story and a classic coming-of-age tale. It’s Only Temporary celebrates the transformation of a boy to man--even if it look Handler more than forty years to get there.

Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that might be deemed heterodox by the canons of orthodoxy while engineering a fundamentalist ideology that could subvert traditional gender hierarchy, the halakhic distinction between permissible and forbidden, and the social-anthropological division between Jew and Gentile. While most literature on the Rebbe focuses on whether or not he identified with the role of Messiah, Elliot R. Wolfson, a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, concentrates instead on Schneerson's apocalyptic sensibility and his promotion of a mystical consciousness that undermines all discrimination. For Schneerson, the ploy of secrecy is crucial to the dissemination of the messianic secret. To be enlightened messianically is to be delivered from all conceptual limitations, even the very notion of becoming emancipated from limitation. The ultimate liberation, or true and complete redemption, fuses the believer into an infinite essence beyond all duality, even the duality of being emancipated and not emancipated--an emancipation, in other words, that emancipates one from the bind of emancipation. At its deepest level, Schneerson's eschatological orientation discerned that a spiritual master, if he be true, must dispose of the mask of mastery. Situating Habad's thought within the evolution of kabbalistic mysticism, the history of Western philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism, Wolfson articulates Schneerson's rich theology and profound philosophy, concentrating on the nature of apophatic embodiment, semiotic materiality, hypernomian transvaluation, nondifferentiated alterity, and atemporal temporality.

A heartfelt personal autobiography of the life and times of Richard Frank Hall. Take a journey with this New Jersey native as he reached into life's challenges, life's journey, and the joy of discovering deep relationships in friends and family.

Leila Amsel and Joseph Bronner escaped Nazi Europe with their families just ahead of the full onslaught of the Holocaust. Leila grew up in a Chasidic home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and with chutzpah and determination became the first woman to earn a doctorate in Ancient Semitic Languages and History in South Africa. She went on to publish seven books, write hundreds of articles, and mentor and teach thousands of students. Joseph established a thriving diamond business, and as a volunteer rabbi in Johannesburg and then in Los Angeles inspired hundreds of children and adults with his teaching of Torah. Together, Leila and Joseph raised three children, and dedicated themselves to establishing and supporting communal, Zionistic, and educational institutions in Johannesburg and Los Angeles, as well as in Israel. With an unflagging belief in the value of education, an aura of elegance, and an embrace of the unconventional, Leila and Joseph share a story of leadership, love, and commitment.

Easy the Hard Way is a full-life story told with gusto, often hilarious, sometimes touching. It will bring a lump to your throat when you least expect it. Joe Pasternak emerges from the pages of his autobiography as an imaginative and resourceful man of tremendous drive and honesty, who is also a warm and deeply human talent. Pasternak's early life reads like the script of an American dream picture: born in a tiny town in Transylvania, son of the shammas at the local synagogue, at seventeen Joe threw off the shackles and made his way to Philadelphia. He knew no English, knew in fact little of anything, but he had sense enough, he writes, to go to New York. The rise of Joe Pasternak was not always in a straight ascending line, but sooner or later it always landed him one rung higher. From Paramount in Jamaica he went to Universal in Hollywood and thence to Europe to supervise Universal's operations abroad before the war. Those were the great days of movie making in Germany and Pasternak played an important part in them. As a producer he is credited with helping such great stars as Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland, Mario Lanza and others to achieve stardom in Hollywood.

Harry Stein gives us the conversations of a group of older men who meet every week for lunch to reflect on their lives and the state of the world. What is a well-lived life? What is honour, and does it have a place in our society? A profound and poignant meditation on the meaning of honour, told through the words of men who lived life according to the forgotten rules of trust and responsibility. From these conversations, Stein shows us men who lived their lives according to values that have since been declared relative or obsolete: honour, responsibility, decency, and an uncynical commitment to being the best men they could be. Stein presents the stories of this remarkable group of men who lived through the difficult time of the mid-20th century and all its wars and social upheavals. We meet Moe Turner, Stein's father-in-law, a mathematician involved in research on the H-bomb who is Stein's connection to the group. We meet Boyd Huff, a survivor of the Nazi prisoner camps, whose youngest son was killed in a gun accident and oldest is a hospitalized schizophrenic. We meet Gene Cooper, an electrical engineer and the emotional centre of the group. These three men, and the rest of the club, have had difficult lives and plenty of trying moments, yet all of them have survived with their sense of right and wrong, of honour and love, fully intact. Stein connects their background, stories and lives, to the valuable views and ideas they share with him now. What the reader comes away with is a renewed sense of purpose, a new confidence in the strength of courage and conviction in your beliefs—even as those of the world change around you.

"Do You Mind If I Smoke? tells the story of Fenella Fielding's remarkable 65-year career in theatre, radio, TV and film. Best known for her 1960s film appearances in classic comedies such as Carry On Screaming, Doctor in Clover and Carry On Regardless, Fielding's sublime talents also brought her success in serious roles on the stage, including title roles in Hedda Gabler and Colette. Spiced with star-studded anecdotes and personalized with moving stories about innocence and experience, the early struggles of an aspiring actress and later professional rivalries, Do You Mind If I Smoke? is a witty, warm and wonderfully recounted memoir of an extraordinary life."--

The second volume in the Nobel Prize winning author Elias Canetti's trilogy of memoirs, The Torch in My Ear This book presents an account of Canetti's young manhood, of his arrival in Vienna in the early 1920s, of his schooling, and of the beginning of his life as a writer.

Time in Africa: Flying and Fun from 1963 to 1983 covers 20 amazing years of David Price’s life as a pilot, working primarily in Africa. Although filled with personal adventures and humorous anecdotes, Time in Africa is much more than an autobiography. It is also an amazing glimpse of a time in aviation before computerized flight controls and when some older planes were still made of plywood and canvas. Having flown planes such as a DC3, Dove, Comet 4, Viscount, B737 and B707, the author shares stories of near disaster, having to make mechanical repairs and adjustments while flying—including once with a fire ax, and landing and taking off in the desert without a runway. Adding further interest to these stories is the setting: Libya, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, Zambia, Guinea, and Nigeria in their early days of independence post colonization. A natural storyteller, David portrays what life was like in Africa—both for the privileged Whites and the native Blacks—along with providing insight into the politics and attitudes of the time. From starting an airplane with car batteries strapped to a baggage trolley to having to put out a charcoal fire started in the aisle of a plane to brew a cup of tea, it is clear that there were few dull moments during David’s time as a pilot in Africa. It is also evident that he enjoyed every minute there, as will his readers as he takes them back to an amazing place in an interesting time.

A young soccer player dreamed of playing professionally. Or, better said, he dreamed of doing something great. He wanted to be someone or get somewhere--for his life to mean something--and soccer became his path. When he heard his name called in the 1st Round of the MLS SuperDraft, he expected his life to change forever. What he found, instead, was much of the same: the same fears, insecurities, and internal conflicts, except now with higher stakes. When the Dream Became Reality is the story of a professional athlete's path and evolution, as a person and athlete, from childhood through six professional seasons. In this heartfelt memoir, Bobby Warshaw recounts the moments we rarely hear so honestly from athletes, including disagreements with coaches, personal mistrust of his own ability, doubt about his sexuality, and the aftermath of loss and failure. Warshaw experienced incomparable highs--game-winning goals; championship games; wearing the captain's armband--but he rarely felt like he was living the dream that everyone suggested. Beyond the usual self-doubt, he struggled to come to terms with the paradox at the root of the profession: the intersection of a ruthless business with a children's game. To achieve his goals, Warshaw discovered at a young age he would have to live with two conflicting parts of his life, the athlete and the human. The former Stanford University captain opens up about his efforts to maximize his ability as an elite player and a compassionate person despite their often-clashing demands; the constant frustration that he never performed either as well as he would have wanted; and the subsequent struggle to like himself, as either an athlete or a person, along the way. When the Dream Became Reality is not the story of the glitz and glamour of a famous superstar, but rather the everyday emotions and decisions of an average pro pushing to be remembered. Warshaw writes the story that pulls back the curtain on the life and emotions of America's professional athletes. Sometimes there is more than giant contracts and big trophies on the line. It's a common thought to chase our dreams. Do we ever stop to think what happens when we get there? When the dream no longer remains a dream, but becomes reality.

At twenty, Alix Kates Shulman wrenched herself from her middle-class family and staked a claim to a fierce independence. Through her bestselling writings she has chronicled what it means to defy the expectations of family and society in order to map one's own life. Now, in this unflinching but tender memoir, she explores what it means to do what is expected of a daughter -- discovering in the process the unexpected, complicated joys of going home.

Ivan T. Berend is Distinguished Professor at the University of California Los Angeles, Director of the European Studies Program. He was one of the masterminds of regime change in Hungary. He made a career in Hungary as a university professor, Rector of the University of Economics (1973–79), and President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (1985–90). He was President of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (1995–2000), and Vice-President of the International Economic History Association (1986–1994). His research interests are the complex economic, social, ideological, and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe in the 19th–20th century; economic modernization; problems of European backwardness; transition from state socialism to capitalism. He published and 26 books and more than 120 studies. Before he became a professor at UCLA, Ivan Berend had survived five regime changes and two revolutions in Hungary, had been in prison and German concentration camp in 1944–45. His memoir offers an interesting case study, a subjective addition to the "objective" historical works on Central and Eastern European state socialism. It describes the hard choices of intellectuals in a dictatorial state: 1. remain in isolation, concentrate on scholarly works, and exclude politics in your personal life; 2. be in opposition, criticize and unveil the regime, accept discrimination and exclusion; 3. remain within the establishment and work for reforming the country using legal possibilities to criticize the regime and to achieve changes from within. Berend’s book raises basic historical questions and debates, compares East European and American higher education systems, and presents an eyewitness’ insights on life in the United States.

The Play of the Eyes is the third volume in Nobel Prize winning author Elias Canetti's trilogy of memoirs. Here, Canetti describes his young adult life as he tries to make it as a writer in Vienna during the 1930s, and provides vivid accounts of the remarkable figures he meets along the way, usually in cafes, from Robert Musil, Thomas Mann, and Herman Broch, among others. "Canetti uses a dramatist's gifts here to achieve emotional depth; his mother's death, sketched simply against the backdrop of a crumbling Europe, takes on a tragic dignity." - Publishers Weekly

In 1975, at the age of forty, Richard Raskind, a renowned eye surgeon and highly ranked amateur tennis player, "died," and Renée Richards was "born," in what was to become the most public and highly scrutinized sex reassignment to date. It was not until Renée Richards was discovered playing in an amateur tennis tournament that the world took notice. Extensive media coverage and criticism thrust Renée reluctantly into the spotlight, sparking an intense public debate over her private life. Now, at seventy-two, Richards looks back and speaks frankly about all aspects of her complicated and often notorious life in this eye-opening, thought-provoking memoir. Richards' honest and compelling narrative explores the dichotomy between the successful life she lived as Dr. Richard Raskind, who seemed to have everything (devoted friends, a beautiful wife and son, a stellar record of academic and professional achievement, and outstanding athletic ability), and a secret life of struggle with a drive that could not be suppressed, even by years of psychotherapy and the force of a considerable will. Richards takes readers through her difficult decision to undergo surgery and the complex mixture of relief and continued frustration that came with the realization of her new identity. Discussing life after her transformation, Richards candidly relates the details, trials, and pleasures of her romantic life as well as fascinating stories about her tennis career, including her experiences as Martina Navratilova's coach. She also provides an intimate account of her difficult but rewarding relationship with her rebellious son: runaway teenager, high-stakes Vegas gambler, karate champion, and entrepreneur. She describes the deterioration of a once-loving marriage and the challenges of reclaiming her place at the forefront of her demanding medical specialty. Having lived as a woman almost as long as she lived as a man, Richards draws on a personal history that illuminates thirty years of remarkable change in society's attitude toward gender issues. Her absorbing and inspiring story, at once heartbreaking and uplifting, is a testimony to how far we have progressed in our ability to discuss and accept sexuality in all its iterations, as well as a reminder of how far we still must travel.