Alexander Granach, who died while he was acting on Broadway in 1945, brilliantly relates the remarkable story of his unlikely path from a poverty-stricken, rough-and-tumble childhood to success on the German stage. This is the account of a daring, curiosity-filled, and perceptive Jewish child from poor towns in Galicia who was seized with a passion for the theater when he saw his first show at the age of 14. He overcame great odds to become a leading stage and film actor in Weimar Germany - and he had to have both legs broken to do it! Born in what is now southern Ukraine, Granach began working at the age of six in his father's bakery, where his heavy tasks left him visibly knock-kneed. With very little formal education but open for adventure and willing to work hard, Alexander ran away several times, the last time to Berlin, at the age of 16, where his talent and charm won him a place in Max Reinhardt's theater school. His career was abruptly interrupted by World War I and his time as a prisoner of war in Italy, but after a daring escape and the end of the war he resumed his rise to prominence in German artistic life. A natural storyteller, Granach's autobiography captures equally the charms, adventures, and trials of his shtetl days, the horrors of trench warfare, and the glamour and excitement of the German theater before Hitler came to power.

1st edition Futura 1985 paperback, vgIn stock shipped from our UK warehouse -

Yvonne Kapp, best known today for her biography of Eleanor Marx, was a remarkable woman whose life spanned virtually the entire twentieth century. "Time Will Tell" charts her life: 'enfant terrible' in London, the literary editor of "Vogue" in France in the late 1920s, work for anti-fascist refugee committees in 1930s' London, research for the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the British Medical Research Council, then, in her later years, work as a translator and a biographer. Kapp is a gifted writer on the details of family life and a fine recorder of shifting political and cultural patterns. Accounts of the many encounters she had with various important figures--Quentin Bell, Rebecca West, Paul Robeson, John Heartfield, Melanie Klein and Herbert Morrison, to name only a few--are expertly woven into the fascinating story of her own life. This is the autobiography of a woman who took issue with the dominant political movements of her age, with Fascism and with Communism, while at the same time reflecting on the changing cultural and political climate in Britain during her lifetime.

Arguing that all human beings are incorrigibly autobiographical and that the most common mode of autobiography is oral and partial, this book maps out the diversity of autobiographical practices and seeks to introduce them to teachers and educators.

Miriam Karlin is that rare creature: a pillar of the British acting establishment who is at the same time a thoroughgoing maverick. This autobiography is free of self-justification and recrimination, and full of the passion and earthy humour of one of our finest character actors.

Jack Rosenthal had always resisted writing an autobiography until he hit on an original way of writing it that excited him: it would be as a screenplay, with himself as the central character, the storyline that of his own life, the supporting cast drawn from the many wonderful and sometimes eccentric people who touched, shaped and shared that life. What a prospect, coming from the author of such memorable classics as 'Bar Mitzvah Boy', 'The Evacuees', 'London’s Burning', 'The Knowledge' and 'P’tang Yang, Kipperbang', a writer who uniquely won three successive BAFTA Awards. The story moves from Manchester in the 30s – via school, evacuation, university, the Navy, the early days of Granada TV (he wrote 129 pioneering episodes of 'Coronation Street'), the ‘Busby Boys’, marriage and life with Maureen Lipman, fatherhood, writing his famous plays, working with Barbara Streisand – to Muswell Hill in the 90s. Sharp, funny, evocative, teeming with memorable stories and characters, this is an autobiography like no other ... but then, its author is Jack Rosenthal.

Jack Rosenthal had always resisted writing an autobiography, until he hit on an original way of writing it that excited him--it would be as a screenplay, with himself as the central character, and the supporting cast drawn from the many wonderful and eccentric people who touched, shaped, and shared that life. What a prospect, coming from the author of such memorable classics as Bar Mitzvah Boy, The Evacuees, London's Burning, The Knowledge, and P'tang Yang, Kipperbang, a writer who uniquely won three successive BAFTA Awards. The story moves from Manchester in the 30s--via school, evacuation, university, the Navy, the early days of Granada TV, marriage and life with Maureen Lipman, fatherhood, writing the famous plays, and working with Streisand--to Muswell Hill in the 90s. Sharp, funny, evocative, teeming with memorable stories and characters this is an autobiography like no other.

'Bill Freund, the late social historian and leading analyst of African history, passed away in 2020 soon after finishing his autobiography. Often described as the academy's 'outsider insider', he was an eminent South African historian who published prodigiously in the areas of labour, capital and economic history. What influenced this American-educated academic to become such an astute and trusted observer of the political economy in Africa? We follow Bill's intellectual journey from a modest Jewish home in Chicago in the 1950s to the Universities of Chicago, Yale, Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, and finally to a permanent teaching position at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. Peppered in between the commentaries on academic life are stories of his travels, poems he wrote for loved ones, and endearing anecdotes of friendships that shaped his life. As an 'outsider', both in the United States and abroad, he is able to offer rich insights into the world of Africanists and their scholarship on different continents. His thoughtful and balanced observations on late- and post-apartheid South Africa are especially interesting and refreshing. This posthumously published autobiography will give deeper insight into this unusual man and the world that shaped him - and which he in turn influenced through a deep commitment to rigorous scholarship. It includes a select bibliography of Bill Freund's many publications as well as a foreword by Robert Morrell on the making of this autobiography."--Amazon description.

Dollars for Scholars, Dr. Irving A. Fradkin, with Michael J. Vieira, Branden Books, Paperback ISBN 9780828319744 $19.95; E-Book ISBN 9780828319744, $9.99 It all started when Dr. Fradkin received the first donation: “Here’s a buck!” His organization, Citizens’ Scholarship Foundation of America , however, took hold when another donor said, “Here’s a million!” This book tells the story of Dr. Fradkin’s crusade to raise money so that thousands of needy students would have access to institutions of higher learning through his scholar-ship grants. When people say, only in America” they include the feats of Dr. Fradkin. He started with a dollar and grew it to tens of millions of dollars now administered by a national headquarters with hundreds of chapters located in every state, and counting benefactors by the tens of thousands. Dollars for Scholars is a tribute to Dr. Irving Fradkin whose vision and efforts have become emblematic in the concrete reality rooted in the phrase, “only in America.”

Allan Spear had a long and distinguished career as a historian and as a Minnesota state senator. Perhaps best known for coming out as openly gay during his first term in the Minnesota Senate-becoming one of the first elected officials in the nation to do so-Spear was also a leader of Eugene McCarthy's run for the presidency, an organizer against the war in Vietnam, and a key proponent for the establishment of the African-American studies department at the University of Minnesota. Spear's memoirs are fascinating and moving: in early chapters on his childhood and college years, he writes with great introspection about his growing self-awareness of being gay. Later he writes about his development as an intellectual, particularly as a white man fighting to win legitimacy for the study of African-American history and culture. During his time at the University of Minnesota, Spear became deeply involved with the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) and the antiwar movement. At the same time, Spear became increasingly active in the emerging gay rights movement and began the process of coming out to his friends and colleagues. After a failed run for the Minnesota House in 1968, Spear was elected to the Minnesota Senate in 1972 and served as Senate president from 1993-2000. In 1993, he was instrumental in the passage of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, which protected LGBT people from discrimination in housing, education, and employment-an achievement he considered one of the finest of his career. A skilled parliamentarian, he remained a progressive leader in the legislature until his retirement in 2000. Spear passed away on October 11, 2008, leaving his memoir slightly incomplete. A stirring afterword by John Milton completes the story of Spear's life, chronicling the recognition of his accomplishments as a politician and activist during his final years.

This candidly written autobiography of Sir Michael Kerr chronicles the life of one of Britains most prominent judges of the 70s and 80s from his Continental childhood up to his career in the Court of Appeal and beyond. In the first part of his memoir,the author traces his family history and Germanic roots. His father, Alfred Kerr, was a well-known dramatic critic and essayist, whose writings were widely known throughout Germany from the turn of the century and have recently seen a resurrection, 50 years after his death, as related in the last chapter of the book. But because of the fame of his anti-Nazi writings and broadcasts, the Kerrs were forced to flee from Berlin as early as 3 March 1933, when Hitler came to power. The author and his sister Judith, later to become a famous author of childrens books, had a relatively happy cosmopolitan childhood in Zurich, Paris, Nice and ultimately England. But their parents lives remained on the edge of poverty and sometimes despair and there was never again a family home. The memoirs then tell of his years at Aldenham School and the beginnings of Cambridge, and of his assimilation into the English way of life. They relate the story of his internment as an enemy alien in 1940 and of his subsequent release and service as a pilot in the Royal Air Force until the end of World War II. The author then returned to Cambridge to finish his law degree and was urged to go the Bar. The later chapters of this autobiography are mainly devoted to the law. They recount the authors career as a leading commercial Junior and then a Silk, his initial hesitations about the Bench, but ultimately culminating in his appointment as a Lord Justice of Appeal. He describes the Bar of the post-war decades and is frank about the frustrations and disappointments of his career. He also provides insights into the oddities of the English legal system, but maintaining throughout his firm belief in the importance of an independent Bar.

OUT-OF-PRINT. "'Sacha, by her death, seemed to have taken my life with her as well. Because of the strange circumstances of our existence - she had been the only witness to all the important events of my life. Now, with that witness gone, it was as though the past had begun to grow dim and dissolve. Until that moment I had not realised the importance of witnesses. And the importance of stories. When Sacha told me stories about her childhood and youth she was doing so in part because she herself had never had any parents. When she told me stories about my childhood it was because I had no brothers and sisters, no grandparents, aunts and uncles who had known me from my earliest years. Now she is gone and I have tried to tell her story I find a kind of calm descending on me and I have begun to reconstitute my own.' Part memoir, part biography, part autobiography, this remarkable book is also an exploration of the role of memory and story-telling in our lives. At the same time it is an account of the life of an immensely strong, resourceful, yet vulnerable woman, who was born into the comfortable world of wealthy Egyptian Jewry before the First World War, who, with her infant son survived the Second World War in France, and who ended her days in the peace and quiet of the English countryside; and of an extraordinary relationship between mother and son which spanned more than fifty years. " (Publisher)

The Worst It Can Be is a Disaster is the autobiography of Braham Murray, founding director of the Royal Exchange Manchester which in 2006 celebrated its thirtieth anniversary. With a foreword by Sir Tom Courtenay. Born into a Jewish family, Braham Murray struggled against his parents' expectations that he should follow them into the world of commerce; instead he became at twenty-two the youngest artistic director in the country when he took over Century Theatre, a theatre company based in Manchester. Detailing his relationships and the theatrical successes and flops along the way, the narrative takes us through his early years with Century Theatre, with the 69 Theatre Company, and the birth of the Royal Exchange Manchester in the heart of Manchester in 1976. Twenty years later, the theatre rose from the ashes of the IRA bomb brilliantly opening a new production on time just ten days after the bomb had destroyed the city centre. The role and influence of the author's Jewish heritage and of his key collaborators - including Caspar Wrede and Michael Elliott - are explored in this illuminating and inspiring account of one of English theatre's great directors. 'Braham's passion is sometimes overwhelming, sometimes annoying but completely inspirational. It's his passion that the Royal Exchange has thrived on, and this book is full of his passion for the theatre.' Robert Lindsay

Selected by his daughter, Vivien, from Max Perutz's voluminous correspondence, the letters reproduced here portray their author with a spontaneity and directness no autobiography could have matched. They chronicle Perutz's adventurous life through his own vivid, erudite and humorous pen, documenting the hopes, roadblocks and moments of elation of his sixty-year quest to understand the molecular biology of hemoglobin. The first great step in this quest ― unraveling the molecular structure of hemoglobin ― earned Perutz the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Narrated against a backdrop of family and friends, politics and war, literature, travels, and Max's beloved mountains, these letters provide rare insight into the thoughts of a remarkable and very human scientist, and delightful sketches of some of the people he encountered. Starting with lively letters to a girlfriend written in his youth in Vienna and the impressions of a young scientist in Cambridge, the letters progress to the desperate pleas of an "enemy alien" interned in Canada during World War II. The diary of Perutz's subsequent super-secret war work for the British to build a floating ice airstrip in the North Atlantic, ardent campaigning letters to scientists and politicians, and self-deprecating stories of his own mishaps written to amuse his children and grandchildren are some of the many highlights of these fascinating letters, unique in the annals of recent scientific history. This book is a companion to Georgina Ferry's Max Perutz and the Secret of Life. Together these volumes provide a portrait of an extraordinary character in the development of molecular biology.

Analogies play a fundamental role in science. To understand how and why, at a given moment, a certain analogy was used, one has to know the specific, historical circumstances under which the new idea was developed. This historical background is never presented in scientific articles and quite rarely in books. For the general reader, the undergraduate or graduate student who learns the subject for the first time, but also for the practitioner who looks for inspiration or who wants to understand what his colleague working in another field does, these historical circumstances can be fascinating and useful. This book discusses a series of analogy effects in subatomic physics, the prediction and theory of which the author has contributed to in the last 50 years. These phenomena are presented at a level accessible to the non-specialist, without formulae but with emphasis on the personal and historical background: memoirs of meetings, discussions and correspondence with collaborators and colleagues. As such, besides its scientific aspects, the book constitutes an absorbing witness account of a holocaust survivor who subsequently illegally crossed the Iron Curtain to escape communist persecution.