"Two Jews were traveling on a train. . . . " Many Eastern European jokes—and several of the charming and often hilarious conversations in this book—begin this way. From all regions of the world and from all walks of life, the characters are young and full of life and old and ugly; they are rabbis, matchmakers, students, and immigrants. They gossip and speak about everything from the banalities of the world to the unspeakable evils of existence all for a single purpose: to laugh and to celebrate the good luck of being alive. As Biro recounts these tales, we hear not only his voice and the voice of his father, but those of generations of storytellers who have used humor to teach about the truly important issues in life—the delicacy of love, the fragility of friendship, the pitfalls of self-righteousness, the costs of narrow-mindedness, and the unpredictability of life itself. Biro artfully spins each story, lingering on the details, guiding the reader to the inevitable—yet always unexpected—punchline. Taken individually, these stories will make you laugh out loud; taken as a whole, they form an invaluable record of the sensibilities of an entire people. Biro writes: "These Jewish stories of which not a single one happened to me, and of which I did not invent a single one, do describe me, do characterize me, do explain me. They are always my own story. And yours."

"The Tashkent-born Russian-American literary critic, editor, essayist, and journalist Vladislav Davidzon has been covering post-Soviet Ukraine for the past ten years, a tumultuous time for that country and the surrounding world. The 2014 "Revolution of Dignity" heralded a tremendous transformation of Ukrainian politics and society that has continued to ripple and reverberate throughout the world. These unprecedented events also wrought a remarkable cultural revolution in Ukraine itself. In late 2015, a year and a half after the 2014 Revolution swept away the presidency of the Moscow-leaning kleptocratic President Viktor Yanukovich, Davidzon and his wife founded a literary journal, The Odessa Review, focusing on newly emergent trends in film, literature, painting, design, and fashion. The journal became an East European cultural institution, publishing outstanding writers in the region and beyond. From his vantage point as a journalist and editor, Davidzon came to observe events and know many of the leading figures in Ukrainian politics and culture, and to write about them for a Western audience. Davidzon later found himself in the center of world events as he became a United States government witness in the Ukraine scandal that shook the presidency of Donald Trump. This eagerly anticipated debut tells the real story of what happened in Ukraine from the keen and resilient perspective of an observer at its center"-- Provided by publisher.

Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport, known as An-sky (1863-1920), the author of the best known play in the Hebrew and Yiddish languages, "The Dybbuk,” was a figure of immense versatility and also ambiguity in Russian and Jewish intellectual, literary, and political spheres. He was a leading Russian populist; he was the author of the poem adopted as the anthem of the Jewish Socialist Labor Bund; he is credited with being the founder of the field of Jewish ethnography; and he wrote one of the most influential works of Jewish catastrophe literature in modern times, his masterpiece "Hurbn Galitsye,” on the travails of East European Jews in the First World War. This volume is the most complete examination of An-sky ever produced. It draws together leading historians, ethnographers, literary scholars, and others in a far-ranging, multidisciplinary exploration. It also contains numerous photographs culled from archives in the former Soviet Union, a superb English translation of an early Russian draft--among the very first--of "The Dybbuk,” and a timeline that covers all of An-sky’s peripatetic life. Finally, it includes a compact disk combining material drawn from An-sky’s own 1912-14 field recordings of Jewish songs, together with contemporary renditions, recorded at Stanford, of the Russian and Yiddish music that An-sky wrote, collected, and heard. Includes a CD of An-sky’s music,, in Russian and Yiddish

Siegfried Kracauer (1889–1966), friend and colleague of Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno, was one of the most influential film critics of the mid-twentieth century. In this book, Johannes von Moltke and Kristy Rawson have, for the first time assembled essays in cultural criticism, film, literature, and media theory that Kracauer wrote during the quarter century he spent in America after fleeing Nazi-occupied Europe. In the decades following his arrival in the United States, Kracauer commented on developments in American and European cinema, wrote on film noir and neorealism, examined unsettling political trends in mainstream cinema, and reviewed the contemporary experiments of avant-garde filmmakers. As a cultural critic, he also ranged far beyond cinema, intervening in debates regarding Jewish culture, unraveling national and racial stereotypes, and reflecting on the state of arts and humanities in the 1950s. These essays, together with the editors' introductions and an afterward by Martin Jay offer illuminating insights into the films and culture of the postwar years and provide a unique perspective on this eminent émigré intellectual.

". . . a remarkable book. . . . A most penetrating study of education."--Saturday Review of Literature". . . an admirable defense of the critical mind in education . . . Sidney Hook is among the the Children of the Light, that is to say, of the Enlightenment."--Albert Guerard, New York Herald Tribune". . . Mr. Hook has put his finger . . . upon the profound fallacy of most of the current attempts to 'reorganize' higher education . . . exciting reading"--Howard Mumford Jones, New York Times". . . needed by anyone who wishes to have a comprehensive view of the problems of modern education."--Wendell Johnson, Chicago Sun"Sidney Hook brings . . . a new high standard of sanity and clarity. . . . For sheer excellence of logic, and for magic of comprehensiveness, the book is head and shoulders above all recent competitors."--William Randel, St. Louis Post-Dispatch". . . a fine book . . . it has the advantage of Mr. Hook's dissecting mind, operating with the cleanness of a surgical instrument."--Jerome Nathanson, The New Republic"Wisely sane."--John Dewey

Tournament is Shelby Foote's first novel, published originally by Dial Press in 1949. Summa's reprint includes an exclusive preface by the author concerning his literary development and the genesis of Tournament and an introduction by Louis D. Rubin, Jr., the dean of American literature criticism. Tournament is a brilliant novel of the post-Civil War South, replete with Proustian and Faulknerian overtones. Many of the characters that appear in subsequent novels by Shelby Foote come onto the scene for the first time in this work. It is a must acquisition for every fan of Shelby Foote--From item description.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

An exciting assembly of Scotland's most promising new writers, with a foreword by Irvine Welsh, and exclusive artwork by Aidan Moffat of Arab Strap Such authors as Sophie Cooke, who was shortlisted for the Saltire First Book award; Suhayl Saadi, who was nominated for the James Black Tait Memorial Prize; acclaimed novelist and poet Kevin MacNeil; and renowned performer and novelist Alan Bissett all contribute stories on contemporary Scotland. Throw in renowned international authors like Kapka Kassabova and Jason Donald as well as esteemed figures of Scottish literature like Duncan McClean, and you have a collection that aims to show a changing and dynamic new Scotland. Brand new, unpublished authors are also featured; quite simply, if you want to read the best new talent in Scottish fiction, you've come to the right place.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

That Nissim Ezekiel is arguably the most influential, widely read, and appreciated modern Indian poet writing in English is well known. Less well known is that he is also a prose writer of considerable stature, although he has written very extensively with great sensitivity, style, and distinction on literature, art, television, books, and a range of other subjects for well over three decades. This gap in perception stems primarily from his prose writing being scattered in newspapers, journals and introductions to other books, giving readers and critics little opportunity to see them as an intellectually and stylistically distinctive body of work, of an original, inquiring, questing mind, consistent in the view that there are no easy answers to the questions of life and art; that each individual must seek his own anew every time on every issue. This book remedies this gap in perception by bringing together some of Ezekiel's best prose arranged in five sections entitled "On Poetry," "On Philosophy," "On Art and Culture," "On Life and Thought," and "On Books."

Few philosophical issues have had as long and elaborate a history as the problem of free will, which has been contested at every stage of the history of the subject. The present work practices an extensive bibliography of this elaborate literature, listing some five thousand items ranging from classical antiquity to the present.

In an insightful and original meditation on the writer's craft that is by turns descriptive and prescriptive, Delbanco explores how literary virtuosity is achieved, how the writing of fiction can be taught, and the way literature functions for writer and reader equally. The book includes a novella called "The Lost Suitcase," revolving around a famous anecdote about Hemingway's early work and how it came to be lost.

Trieste Publishing has a massive catalogue of classic book titles. Our aim is to provide readers with the highest quality reproductions of fiction and non-fiction literature that has stood the test of time. The many thousands of books in our collection have been sourced from libraries and private collections around the world.The titles that Trieste Publishing has chosen to be part of the collection have been scanned to simulate the original. Our readers see the books the same way that their first readers did decades or a hundred or more years ago. Books from that period are often spoiled by imperfections that did not exist in the original. Imperfections could be in the form of blurred text, photographs, or missing pages. It is highly unlikely that this would occur with one of our books. Our extensive quality control ensures that the readers of Trieste Publishing's books will be delighted with their purchase. Our staff has thoroughly reviewed every page of all the books in the collection, repairing, or if necessary, rejecting titles that are not of the highest quality. This process ensures that the reader of one of Trieste Publishing's titles receives a volume that faithfully reproduces the original, and to the maximum degree possible, gives them the experience of owning the original work.We pride ourselves on not only creating a pathway to an extensive reservoir of books of the finest quality, but also providing value to every one of our readers. Generally, Trieste books are purchased singly - on demand, however they may also be purchased in bulk. Readers interested in bulk purchases are invited to contact us directly to enquire about our tailored bulk rates.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

"This groundbreaking work by one of the world's foremost theoreticians of Russian literature, culture, and thought gives for the first time an extensive and detailed examination of the development of Russian thought during the late Soviet period. Countering the traditional view of an intellectual wilderness under the Soviet regime, Mikhail Epstein offers a systematic account of Russian thought in the second half of the 20th century. In doing so, he provides new insights into previously ignored areas such as Russian liberalism, personalism, structuralism, neo-rationalism, and culturology. Epstein shows how Russian philosophy and culture has long been trapped in an intellectual prison of its own making as it sought to create its own utopia. However, he demonstrates that it is time to reappraise Russian philosophical thought and cultural theory, now freed from the bonds of totalitarianism. We are left with not only a new and exciting interpretation of Russian thought, but also an opportunity to rethink our own intellectual heritage"--

Rabbinic literature is viewed here as an expression of the concepts of the Rabbis, creative concepts that canalized their thinking. This book is concerned chiefly with the wider aspects of the rabbinic mind. It discusses such problems as the transmission of social values, the integration of the self, and the relation of the self to society. It treats such topics as the category of significance, indeterminacy of belief, normal mysticism, the commonplace and the holy, rabbinic dogma, and the relation of rabbinic thought to philosophy. The sources on which these discussions are based are drawn from both the Haggadah and the Halakah.

Australian Readers Remember is a novel cultural history, based on an investigation into the reading habits of sixty elderly Australians, who were asked to recall and to analyse what they were reading in the late nineteenth century and during the first three decades of the twentieth century, It is the first work of Australian literary history to focus on readers' experience and attitudes. Part One discusses the project, the place of oral history, and the problems involved in analysing the finding. Part Two offers an account of readers' memories of novels, verse, children's books, newspapers etc. Part Three examines the diffusion of literature and how the subjects obtained access to books. Part Four, the most original in the book, analyses the status of reading, attitudes towards books, as well as myths and prejudices surrounding the act of reading.