5053 results for "Biography"

Omaha blues: a memory loop

Lelyveld, Joseph
The profoundly moving family history of one of America's greatest newspapermen. As his father lies dying, Joseph Lelyveld finds himself in the basement of the Cleveland synagogue where Arthur Lelyveld was the celebrated rabbi. Nicknamed "the memory boy" by his parents, the fifty-nine-year-old son begins to revisit the portion of his father's life recorded in letters, newspaper clippings, and mementos stored in a dusty camp trunk. In an excursion into an unsettled and shakily recalled period of his boyhood, Lelyveld uses these artifacts, and the journalistic reporting techniques of his career as an author and editor, to investigate memories that have haunted him in adult life.. With equal measures of candor and tenderness, Lelyveld unravels the tangled story of his father and his mother, a Shakespeare scholar whose passion for independence led her to recoil from her roles as a clergyman's wife and, for a time, as a mother. This reacquired history of his sometimes troubled family becomes the framework for the author's story; in particular, his discovery in early adolescence of the way personal emotions cue political choices, when he is forced to choose sides between his father and his own closest adult friend, a colleague of his father's who is suddenly dismissed for concealing Communist ties. Lelyveld's offort to recapture his family history takes him on an unforeseen journey past disparate landmarks of the last century, including the Scottsboro trials, the Zionist movement, the Hollywood blacklist, McCarthyism, and Mississippi's "freedom summer" of 1964. His excursion becomes both a meditation on the selectivity and unreliability of memory and a testimony to thepossibilities, even late in life, for understanding and healing. As Lelyveld seeks out the truth of his life story, he evokes a remarkable moment in our national story with unforgettable poignancy.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2005 226 pages

Memorable encounters: a Torah pioneer's glimpses of great men and years of challenge

Kaminetsky, Joseph
As the leader and National Director of Torah Umesorah, the National Association for Hebrew Day Schools, Dr. Joseph Kaminetsky was instrumental in creating the Day School movement. Here, he looks back on an excitement-studded life, and his memorable encounters'' with Torah leaders and influential personalities. A Shaar Press Publication.
Shaar Press 1995 255 pages

From the wings

Harmatz, Joseph
Memoirs of a Jew from Lithuania, born in Rokiškis in 1925, who relates his experiences in the Holocaust against the background of a return trip to the area in 1994. Describes the German occupation in 1941, followed by the massacre of ca. 4,000 Jews from Rokiškis and the surrounding villages by the Nazis and their local collaborators. Relates stories of relatives and acquaintances. Harmatz joined the resistance movement in the Vilna ghetto, the Veraynigte Partisaner Organisatzye, whose leader, Yitzhak Wittenberg, was sacrificed to the Nazis by Judenrat head Jacob Gens. When the ghetto was liquidated in September 1943, he escaped with other resistance members to the forests, where they formed a partisan group which operated in the area until the liberation by the Russians in summer 1944. After the war Harmatz emigrated to Palestine.
Book Guild 1998 227 pages

Life sentences: literary essays

Epstein, Joseph
In Joseph Epstein's fourth collection of literary essays, he considers the lives and works of 19 writers of note, appreciating many of them, roughing up some others, and overall weighing them in the very finely calibrated balance of his well-stocked mind. "The modern essay has regained a good deal of its literary status in our time, much to the credit of Joseph Epstein"., --"Chicago Tribune".
W.W. Norton & Co 1997 347 pages

The last waltz: the Strauss dynasty and Vienna

Suchet, John
"Captured in a beautiful package, including more than fifty color photographs, The Last Waltz tells the intriguing story of of the Viennese Strauss family known for producing some of the best known, best loved music of the nineteenth century. Johann and Josef Strauss, the Waltz Kings, composed hundreds of instantly recognizable and enduring melodies, including The Blue Danube Waltz, Tales from the Vienna Woods, Voices of Spring and The Radetzky March. Their iconic music has been featured on the scores of nearly a thousand films. Yet despite their success, this was a family riven with tension, feuds and jealousy, living in a country that was undergoing seismic upheaval. Through the personal and political chaos, the Strauss family continued to compose music to which the Viennese -- anxious to forget their troubles -- could dance and drank champagne, even as their country hurtled towards oblivion at the hands of the First World War. Classical music expert and radio host John Suchet skillfully portrays this gripping story, capturing the family dramas, the tensions, triumphs and disasters against the turbulent backdrop of Austria in the nineteenth century, from revolution to regicide." --
Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press 2015 277 pages

The glass closet: why coming out is good business

Browne, John
'I wish I had been brave enough to come out earlier in my tenure as CEO of BP. I regret it to this day. I know that if I had done so I would have made more of an impact for other gay men and women. With The Glass Closet , I hope to give some of them the courage to make an impact of their own.' Whether you're lesbian, gay, transgender or straight, John Browne's message is simple and clear, it's better for you and it's better for business when you bring your authentic self to work. Drawing on his personal experiences and the experience of other gay and lesbian business leaders, and by investigating the research and the social contexts, The Glass Closet strives to give courage and inspire the LGBT community that despite the risks involved, self-disclosure is best for employees and for the businesses that support them. Every CEO, every HR Manager, every team leader - anyone who is responsible for the culture and success of their business should read The Glass Closet . And for anyone fearful or lacking the confidence to bring their true self into work every day, this book was written for you.
WH Allen 2015 240 pages

Joachim Prinz, rebellious rabbi: an autobiography : the German and early American years

Prinz, Joachim
Pp. 98-179, "The Nazi Years", present an account by Rabbi Prinz (1902-1988) of his spiritual leadership in the Jewish community of Berlin under Nazi rule. His outspoken Zionism and advocacy of Jewish emigration expressed a minority opinion among German Jews. The popular sermons of Prinz, who was under Nazi surveillance, offered spiritual resistance, and his educational activities with youth and adults helped assimilated German Jews discover their Jewish identity. A farewell meeting for him held by the community was attended by Eichmann, whose report of the event apparently advanced his career. Prinz was expelled from Germany in 1937 and emigrated to the U.S. The editor occasionally corrects errors, such as dating, in Prinz's account, especially in regard to events affecting German Jews after Prinz emigrated.
Indiana University Press 2007-11-20 270 pages

Jeff Smith: conversations

Smith, Jeff
First with his magisterial fantasy Bone to his mind-bending, time-warping sci-fi noir RASL, Paleolithic-set fantasy Tüki: Save the Humans, arthouse-styled superheroic miniseries Shazam!, and his latest children's book Smiley's Dream Book, Jeff Smith (b. 1960) has made an indelible mark on the comics industry. As a child, Smith was drawn to Charles Schulz's Peanuts, Carl Barks's Donald Duck, and Walt Kelly's Pogo, and he began the daily practice of drawing his own stories. After writing his regular strip Thorn for The Ohio State University's student paper, Smith worked in animation before creating, writing, and illustrating his runaway success, Bone. A comedic fantasy epic, Bone focuses on the Bone cousins, white, bald cartoon characters run out of their hometown, lost in a distant, mysterious valley. The self-published series ran from 1991 to 2004 and won numerous awards, including ten Eisner Awards. This career-spanning collection of interviews, ranging from 1999 to 2017, enables readers to follow along with Smith's development as an independent creator, writer, and illustrator.
University Press of Mississippi 2019 137 pages

No steps behind: Beate Sirota Gordon's battle for women's rights in Japan

Gottesfeld, Jeff
"Her parents moved her from Austria to Tokyo, Japan before she started school. They were all rendered stateless when Nazi Germany and Austria stripped Jews of their citizenship. She graduated high school fluent in Japanese plus four other languages and went to college in America at age 15. Cut off from her parents by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and America's entry into World War II, she went years not knowing if they were alive. She returned to post-war Japan as an interpreter, found her parents, and wrote the fateful words that make her a storied feminist hero in that nation even today. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor said about Beate Sirota Gordon, 'It is a rare life treat for a Supreme Court Justice to get to meet a framer of a Constitution. It is rarer indeed for that framer to have been a woman'"--
Creston Books 2020