Howard Engel, an internationally published and award-winning mystery writer, takes dead aim, so to speak, at this fascination we all share, and produces a wonderfully wise and witty social history of the men and women who represent our agents of death, and have done our dirty work over the centuries. 60 photos and line drawings.

The must-read music book of the year—and the first such history bringing together all musical genres to tell the definitive narrative of the birth of Pop from 1900 to the mid-1950s. Pop music didn't begin with the Beatles in 1963, or with Elvis in 1956, or even with the first seven-inch singles in 1949. There was a pre-history that went back to the first recorded music, right back to the turn of the century. Who were these earliest record stars—and were they in any meaningful way "pop stars"? Who was George Gershwin writing songs for? Why did swing, the hit sound for a decade or more, become almost invisible after World War II? The prequel to Bob Stanley’s celebrated Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! , this new volume is the first book to tell the definitive story of the birth of pop, from the invention of the 78 rpm record at the end of the nineteenth century to the beginnings of rock and the modern pop age. Covering superstars such as Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra, alongside the unheralded songwriters and arrangers behind some of our most enduring songs, Stanley paints an aural portrait of pop music's formative years in stunning clarity, uncovering the silver threads and golden needles that bind the form together. Bringing the eclectic, evolving world of early pop to life—from ragtime, blues, and jazz to Broadway, country, crooning, and beyond— Let's Do It is essential reading for all music lovers. "An encyclopaedic introduction to the fascinating and often forgotten creators of Anglo-American hit music in the first half of the twentieth century."—Neil Tennant (The Pet Shop Boys)

“An incisive study of the Western world’s shift from institutional religion to more personal beliefs in the second half of the nineteenth century . . . This is intellectual history at its most comprehensive and convincing.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) The late nineteenth century was an age of grand ideas and great expectations fueled by rapid scientific and technological innovation. In Europe, the ancient authority of church and crown was overthrown for the volatile gambles of democracy and the capitalist market. If it was an age that claimed to liberate women, slaves, and serfs, it also harnessed children to its factories and subjected entire peoples to its empires. Amid this tumult, another sea change was underway: the religious revolution. In The Religious Revolution , Dominic Green charts this profound cultural and political shift, taking us on a whirlwind journey through the lives and ideas of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman; of Éliphas Lévi and Helena Blavatsky; of Wagner and Nietzsche; of Marx, Darwin, and Gandhi. Challenged by the industrialization, globalization, and political unrest of their times, these figures found themselves connecting with the religious impulse in surprising new ways, inspiring others to move away from the strictures of religion and toward the thrill and intimacy of spirituality. The modern era is often characterized as a time of increasing secularism, but in this trenchant new work, Green demonstrates how the foundations of modern society were laid as much by spirituality as by science or reason. The Religious Revolution is a narrative tour de force that sweeps across several continents and five of the most turbulent and formative decades in history. Threading together seemingly disparate intellectual trajectories, Green illuminates how philosophers, grifters, artists, scientists, and yogis shared in a global cultural moment, borrowing one another’s beliefs and making the world we know today.

This collection brings together Daniel Bell's best work in essay form. It deals with a variety of topics: technology and culture, religion and personal identity, intellectuals and their societies, and the uses and abuses of doctrines of social class. The Winding Passage demonstrates the author's continuing concern with the salient issues of our times, while its inspiration draws upon an older, humanistic sociological tradition. In a central essay on intellectuals, Bell examines the term new class and calls it a muddle. Though the idea of class has been relevant to Western industrial society for the past two hundred years, the concept is less useful for examining Communist states, the Third World, and even the emerging postindustrial sectors of the West. Bell seeks to establish the idea of situs, the competitive conflict of functional groups for shares in the state budgetary process. A more personal note is struck in the final section of the book. In reflecting on the nature of intellectual life, the special role of the Jewish intellectual, and the tension between the claims of the parochial and the universal, Bell uses as a general framework antinomianism, the claims of individual conscience against authority, law, and established institutions. And in a final statement, "The Return of the Sacred," Bell explores the enlightenment belief in the dissolution of religion and attempts to show why it was wrong. This is a must book for those concerned with the sociology of knowledge, intellectual history, and social stratification. Speaking of The Winding Passage, Seymour Martin Lipset called the book "sociological analysis at its best" Irving Howe noted that "Bell is always worth listening to. He is a true intellectual." And Irving Louis Horowitz, in his review of the book, calls it "the sifted excellence of a civilized and urbane intellectual.

Did the Jews go like 'sheep to slaughter' during the Shoah? Not really. They walked to their deaths with great dignity, and thousands of Jews resisted in the camps, ghettos, forests, and allied armies. This is the untold story of that resistsance in the Soviet Union during WW II. Based on personal memoirs, officer accounts, and interviews, this 655-page book tells that story with over 100 photos and 12 maps. Porter himself is a survivor and his father was a partisan commander in Western Urkaine.

No two phrases in American baseball go together better than “World Series Champions” and “New York Yankees.” The most iconic franchise in American sports, the Yankees have taken home 27 World Series titles. Out of the thousands of games and millions of memories that have come to define this epic team, Maury Allen has distilled the greatest championship moments in this newly revised edition of Yankees World Series Memories . The name says it all—within these pages readers can relive all the glory, passion, and excitement of Yankees domination. Critical reading for any baseball fan, Yankees World Series Memories is a nail-biting compendium of athleticism and skill. Readers young and old will relish tales of baseball’s golden age and the thrill of modern victories. From Yogi Berra to Derek Jeter, Maury Allen highlights the absolute best of Yankees baseball.

A finalist for the 2017 George Freedley Memorial Award "A compelling, absolutely unputdownable story . . . And, in case you're wondering, yes, the book is funny. In places, very funny. A remarkable story, magnificently told." -- Booklist In this richly reported, scene-driven narrative, Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv from its unlikely beginnings in McCarthy-era Chicago. We witness the chance meeting between Mike Nichols and Elaine May, hang out at the after-hours bar where Dan Aykroyd hosted friends like John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner, and go behind the scenes of cultural landmarks from The Graduate to The Colbert Report . Along the way, we befriend pioneers such as Harold Ramis, Chevy Chase, Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Alan Arkin, Tina Fey, Judd Apatow, and many others. Wasson shows why improv deserves to be considered the great American art form of the last half century. " One of the most important stories in American popular culture . . . Wasson may be the first author to explain [improv's] entire history . . . For that reason alone, it's a valuable book . " -- New York Times Book Review "A compelling history . . . It holds the element of surprise--true to the spirit of its subject." -- Entertainment Weekly

What’s the most useful thing you could know about your own life? In this era-defining book, developed from her groundbreaking Radio 4 essay series, Naomi Alderman turns her boundless curiosity and incisive thinking to a question that affects us all: how do we understand, and navigate, the epoch we’re living through? She calls this epoch the Information Crisis. The internet has flooded us with more knowledge, opinions, ideas, opportunities, as well as verbal attacks and misinformation, than ever before. It lets us learn more quickly and also spread falsehood more quickly, it brings us together and also divides us in new ways, it is now the lens through which we perceive and understand the world. There is no going back. But we have been here before. In fact, this is humanity’s third information crisis. The first, the invention of writing 5,000 years ago, and the second, the invention of the printing press 600 years ago, drastically reshaped our perceptions, interactions and mental landscapes in ways that feel acutely familiar. Overwhelmed by information, people become afraid and angry, unsettled and distressed, as well as more knowledgeable, educated and curious. By looking at those previous information crises, both the turmoil and the advances, Alderman asks what we can learn from the past to better understand our present, and prepare for our future. Drawing on the work of philosophers and historians, Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today explores how new technology opens up new ways of being and helps us chart a way forward (once again), through the turbulent seas of information overload.[Bokinfo]

Western Europe is in a strangely neurotic condition of being smug and terrified at the same time. On the one hand, Europeans believe they have at last created an ideal social and political system in which man can live comfortably. In many ways, things have never been better on the old continent. On the other hand, there is growing anxiety that Europe is quickly falling behind in an aggressive, globalized world. Europe is at the forefront of nothing, its demographics are rapidly transforming in unsettling ways, and the ancient threat of barbarian invasion has resurfaced in a fresh manifestation. In The New Vichy Syndrome , Theodore Dalrymple traces this malaise back to the great conflicts of the last century and their devastating effects upon the European psyche. From issues of religion, class, colonialism, and nationalism, Europeans hold a "miserablist" view of their history, one that alternates between indifference and outright contempt of the past. Today's Europeans no longer believe in anything but personal economic security, an increased standard of living, shorter working hours, and long vacations in exotic locales. The result, Dalrymple asserts, is an unwillingness to preserve European achievements and the dismantling of western culture by Europeans themselves. As vapid hedonism and aggressive Islamism fill this cultural void, Europeans have no one else to blame for their plight.

Enslaved peoples were brought to the Americas from many places in Africa, but a large majority came from relatively few ethnic groups. Drawing on a wide range of materials in four languages as well as on her lifetime study of slave groups in the New World, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall explores the persistence of African ethnic identities among the enslaved over four hundred years of the Atlantic slave trade. Hall traces the linguistic, economic, and cultural ties shared by large numbers of enslaved Africans, showing that despite the fragmentation of the diaspora many ethnic groups retained enough cohesion to communicate and to transmit elements of their shared culture. Hall concludes that recognition of the survival and persistence of African ethnic identities can fundamentally reshape how people think about the emergence of identities among enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas, about the ways shared identity gave rise to resistance movements, and about the elements of common African ethnic traditions that influenced regional creole cultures throughout the Americas.

The award-winning, bestselling author of While Canada Slept gives his view of a country wasted on Canadians. What is national character? What makes the Americans, the British, the French, the Russians, and the Chinese who they are? In this homogenized world, where globalization is a byword for a deadening sameness, why do peoples who live in the same region, use the same money, read the same books, and watch the same movies remain different from one another? As much as Canada may be seen as a copy, clone, or colony of America, we are unquestionably distinctive. It is a result of our geography, history, and politics. It comes from our demography and prosperity. Most of all, it comes from our character. In The Unfinished Canadian , Andrew Cohen delves into our past and present in search of our defining national characteristics. He questions hoary shibboleths, soothing mythologies, and old saws with irreverence, humour, and flintiness, unencumbered by our proverbial politeness (itself a great misperception) and our suffocating political correctness. We are so much, in so many shades, and it’s time we took an honest look at ourselves. In this provocative, passionate, and elegant book, Cohen argues that our mythology, our jealousy, our complacency, our apathy, our amnesia, and our moderation are all part of the unbearable lightness of being Canadian.

Through his hundreds of lectures, Rabbi Wein has brought the Torah perspective on history to thousands of listeners. In this original work, he paints a magnificent, panoramic picture of our people in the centuries that shaped us and our world. This major work has the touches of luxury you expect in books of this magnitude, including a ribbon place-marker and embossed foil-stamped jacket. Large 8-1/2 x 11 coffee-table format. Beautifully written and illustrated, it is accurate and incisive, yet personal and passionate. It is informative, provocative, and inspiring. Seldom is must reading so enjoyable.

This book is about the principal writings that shaped the perception of Turkey for informed readers in English, from Edward Gibbon’s positing of imperial Decline and Fall to the proclamation of the Turkish Republic (1923), illustrating how Turkey has always been a part of the modern British and European experience. It is a great sweep of a story: from Gibbon as standard textbook, through Lord Bryon the pro-Turkish poet, and Benjamin Disraeli the Romantic novelist of all things Eastern, followed by John Buchan's Greenmantle First World War espionage fantasies, and then Manchester Guardian reporter Arnold Toynbee narrating the fight for Turkish independence.

Theodor Herzl, Architect of a Nation , is the compelling account of a complex individual who sacrificed his health and family in pursuit of an ideal: the establishment of a homeland where Jews throughout the world could go to escape anti-Semitism. "If you will it, it is no dream," he said. This book sheds valuable light on a man whose short, eventful life helped create and shape the modern State of Israel. Norman H. Finkelstein focuses on the ideas that Herzl gave to the Zionist movement and on the grand diplomacy and political maneuvering to which he devoted his life.

This is a biography of a young man who is not really sure what to do with his life, who gets thrown into the whirlwind of World War II and only then learns about life, about courage, and about honor. A boy, who grows up in poisonous, anti-Sematic surroundings in Poland, he travels to Palestine and unexpectedly finds a purpose in life. then everything changes for Abram with the outbreak of World War II. He joins the British Army as a private and a sequence of incredible events follow- he serves in the suicide comando and is court-martialed for hitting a British Sargeant Major. After the war ends, Abram, now a major in the British Army, organizes the transport of tens of thousands of concentration camp survivors to Palestine. he does this right under the noses of British intelligence, and is later detained for months while being investigated. Finally, the story moves on to the War of Independence in Palestine, where Abram plays a critical part in establishing a secret road to supply the surrounded Jerusalem Jews- saving them from the Arabs. Abram tells of his fight with Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and its consequences. The incredible saga of Abram plays out against the stark reality of World War II and its aftermath. It will no doubt leave an indelible impression on the reader.

Warsaw was once home to the largest and most diverse Jewish community in the world. It was a center of rich varieties of Orthodox Judaism, Jewish Socialism, Diaspora Nationalism, Zionism, and Polonization. This volume is the first to reflect on the entire history of the Warsaw Jewish community, from its inception in the late 18th century to its emergence as a Jewish metropolis within a few generations, to its destruction during the German occupation and tentative re-emergence in the postwar period. The highly original contributions collected here investigate Warsaw Jewry's religious and cultural life, press and publications, political life, and relations with the surrounding Polish society. This monumental volume is dedicated to Professor Antony Polonsky, chief historian of the new Warsaw Museum for the History of Polish Jews, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. This book is also available in hardcover.

FOR SEVERAL decades German Labour was the pride and model of the international working-class movement. It led the nation out of the first World War and into the post-war period; it was the founder and...