first edition of 1945, dustwrapper.

In the early decades of this century, the wave of immigration that brought nearly two million Jews from the Pale of Settlement to the United States included an extraordinary group of gifted Yiddish poets and writers, who came to be called Di Yunge (The Young). A Little Love in Big Manhattan tells the story of two of the Young’s most prominent figures―Mani Leib, a lyric poet intent on refining the hard facts of his life into works of enduring beauty, and Moishe Leib Halpern, for whom poetry had to be the expression of coarse and shattering reality. Through a dual biography of these opposing personalities, Ruth Wisse describes the rich and vital cultural movement that embraced them both. She tells of the burst of creative energy exhibited by the young poets and intellectuals who, after a long day of manual labor, would congregate in the cafes of the Lower East Side for badinage, debate, and literary talk. They started literary journals and compiled anthologies of their writings, which found their way overseas and had a rejuvenating influence on Yiddish poetry abroad. Ironically, their achievement coincided with the decline of the language in which they wrote, so that Yiddish poetry came into its own in America at a time when the next generation could scarcely read it; there were no literary heirs. Ruth Wisse presents modern Jews with a part of their lost inheritance, and also claims for the Yiddish poets a place in the American canon. The first book to present these poets as part of the history of immigrant Jews in America, A Little Love in Big Manhattan (the title is from a poem of Halpern’s) will appeal to readers of poetry and to people interested in facets of the intellectual and artistic atmosphere of the interwar period.

The name Boeing evokes vivid images, from the B-17 Flying Fortresses of World War II to the 707 and 747 jet transports that revolutionized air travel. Less well known: The Boeing Company built the first stage of the Saturn rocket that started men on the way to the moon, developed the Minuteman missile system, and is now designing America's space station. Boeing jets, in service around the globe, carry 675 million passengers annually--the equivalent of twelve percent of the world's population. Behind the statistics and the awe-inspiring aircraft is a company of paradoxes, a vast organization nimble enough to take daring market risks that have kept it at the top of its industry. Robert J. Serling, forty-five years an award-winning aviation writer, takes the reader behind the scenes with humor, objectivity, and abundant anecdotes: Boeing once went seventeen months without seeing a single domestic jetliner and came close to bankruptcy. One of its legendary test pilots unexpectedly barrel-rolled a prototype jetliner, into which the company had sunk one-quarter of its net worth, because he thought the stunt would help sell the airplane. Legend and Legacy, Robert J. Serling's most ambitious work to date, reads like a novel, complete with memorable characters who, despite occasional stumbles, helped win the war and conquer the commercial skies: The salesman who almost traded a used 727 for $12 million worth of underwear. The vice president who worked in a darkened office illuminated by a single, low-wattage light bulb. The gifted, driven engineers who did the impossible, by yesterday. Never in its seventy-five years has Boeing been so revealingly profiled. This book is must-reading for anyone fascinated by the history of aviation.

This collection of Peter F. Drucker's essays explores the intersection between society, politics, and economics. Despite this lofty goal, however, the essays themselves remain down to earth, highly readable, and full of stories and ideas that make us think differently about the business world around us. The majority of these essays were written in the 1960s, and in them Drucker specifically examines that turbulent decade, yielding conclusions that are as timeless as they are fresh. He places the merger mania of the decade in the context of business history of the twentieth century, and arrives at fundamental questions about mass market economies. He questions the personal and political values of 1960s adolescents, and ends up relating them to the concurrent rise of big complex modern institutions. He examines with equal vigor Japan's management successes, the role of politics and economics in American identity, and the "real" Kirkegaard.

In a famous passage in The Red and the Black , the French writer Stendhal described the novel as a mirror being carried along a roadway. In the twentieth century this was derided as a naïve notion of realism. Instead, modern writers experimented with creative forms of invention and dislocation. Deconstructive theorists went even further, questioning whether literature had any real reference to a world outside its own language, while traditional historians challenged whether novels gave a trustworthy representation of history and society. In this book, Morris Dickstein reinterprets Stendhal's metaphor and tracks the different worlds of a wide array of twentieth-century writers, from realists like Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Edith Wharton, and Willa Cather, through modernists like Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, to wildly inventive postwar writers like Saul Bellow, Günter Grass, Mary McCarthy, George Orwell, Philip Roth, and Gabriel García Márquez. Dickstein argues that fiction will always yield rich insight into its subject, and that literature can also be a form of historical understanding. Writers refract the world through their forms and sensibilities. He shows how the work of these writers recaptures--yet also transforms--the life around them, the world inside them, and the universe of language and feeling they share with their readers. Through lively and incisive essays directed to general readers as well as students of literature, Dickstein redefines the literary landscape--a landscape in which reading has for decades been devalued by society and distorted by theory. Having begun with a reconsideration of realism, the book concludes with several essays probing the strengths and limitations of a historical approach to literature and criticism.

In a famous passage in The Red and the Black , the French writer Stendhal described the novel as a mirror being carried along a roadway. In the twentieth century this was derided as a naïve notion of realism. Instead, modern writers experimented with creative forms of invention and dislocation. Deconstructive theorists went even further, questioning whether literature had any real reference to a world outside its own language, while traditional historians challenged whether novels gave a trustworthy representation of history and society. In this book, Morris Dickstein reinterprets Stendhal's metaphor and tracks the different worlds of a wide array of twentieth-century writers, from realists like Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Edith Wharton, and Willa Cather, through modernists like Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, to wildly inventive postwar writers like Saul Bellow, Günter Grass, Mary McCarthy, George Orwell, Philip Roth, and Gabriel García Márquez. Dickstein argues that fiction will always yield rich insight into its subject, and that literature can also be a form of historical understanding. Writers refract the world through their forms and sensibilities. He shows how the work of these writers recaptures--yet also transforms--the life around them, the world inside them, and the universe of language and feeling they share with their readers. Through lively and incisive essays directed to general readers as well as students of literature, Dickstein redefines the literary landscape--a landscape in which reading has for decades been devalued by society and distorted by theory. Having begun with a reconsideration of realism, the book concludes with several essays probing the strengths and limitations of a historical approach to literature and criticism.

The glorious tradition of the Broadway musical from Irving Berlin to Jerome Kern and Rodgers and Hammerstein to Stephen Sondheim. And then . . . Cats and Les Miz. Mark Steyn's Broadway Babies Say Goodnight is a sharp-eyed view of the whole span of Broadway musical history, seven decades of brilliant achievements the best of which are among the finest works American artists have made. Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, Gypsy, and more. In an energetic blend of musical history, analysis, and backstage chat, Mark Steyn shows us the genius behind the 'simple' musical, and asks hard questions about the British invasion of Broadway and the future of the form. In this delicious book he gives us geniuses and monsters, hits and atomic bombs, and the wonderful stories that prove show business is a business which -- as the song goes --there's no business like.

First published originally in German in 1921, "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" is the only book-length philosophical work by Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein published during his lifetime. Based upon notes made during his time serving in World War I, the treatise is composed of 526 numbered declarative statements that are presented without argument and were seen by Wittgenstein as being self-evident. Wittgenstein's style is succinct and sparse and his ideas are presented in a highly logical, organized, and scientific manner. Wittgenstein proposes that the solution to all major philosophical problems can be solved only with logic and a scientific analysis of language and its meaning. His idea that philosophy is not about metaphysics and mysticism, but about critical and rational thought led to a massive shift in philosophical theories after its publication. The treatise was influential with many of the "logical positivists" of the Vienna Circle, such as Rudolf Carnap and Friedrich Waismann, and to philosophers such as Bertrand Russell. Considered one of the most significant and influential philosophical works of the twentieth century, this treatise is an important read for any student of the history of language and ideas. This edition is printed on premium acid-free paper.

"This volume presents lucid and insightful lectures on three great figures from the history of political thought, by John Plamenatz (1912-1975), a leading political philosopher of his time. He explores a range of themes in the political thought of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Rousseau, at substantially greater length and depth than in his famous work of 1961, Man and Society. The lectures exemplify Plamenatz's view that repeated engagement with the texts of canonical thinkers can substantially enrich and expand our capacity for political reflection. Edited by Mark Philp and Zbigniew Pelczynski, the volume includes annotations to supply Plamenatz's sources and to refer readers to developments in their interpretation. A substantial introduction by Philp sets some of Plamenatz's concerns in the light of trends in recent scholarship, and illuminates the relevance of his work to the contemporary study of political thought"-- ; "This volume presents lucid and insightful studies of three great figures from the history of political thought, by John Plamenatz (1912-1975), a leading political philosopher of his time. This previously unpublished work exemplifies Plamenatz's view that engagement with canonical texts can enrich and expand our capacity for political reflection"--

Fake documentaries mimic documentary genre expectations, unraveling the documentary's authority and dismantling understandings of identity, history, and nation. The interdisciplinary essays in F Is for Phony discuss a broad scope of works and explore issues raised by "fake docs" such as the fiction/documentary divide, the ethics of reality-based manipulation, and whether documentariness derives from form or reception. Defining the borderline between fact and fiction, the contributors reveal what fake documentaries imply and usually make explicit: that many documentaries lie to tell the truth, and that the truth is relative

A groundbreaking history that radically changes our understanding of the Six-Day War, how it started, and what its adversaries were willing to do to win Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez's groundbreaking history of the Six-Day War in 1967 radically changes our understanding of that conflict, casting it as a crucial arena of Cold War intrigue that has shaped the Middle East to this day. The authors, award-winning Israeli journalists and historians, have investigated newly available documents and testimonies from the former Soviet Union, cross-checked them against Israeli and Western sources, and arrived at fresh and startling conclusions. Contrary to previous interpretations, Ginor and Remez's book shows that the Six-Day War was the result of a joint Soviet-Arab gambit to provoke Israel into a preemptive attack. The authors reveal how the Soviets received a secret Israeli message indicating that Israel, despite its official ambiguity, was about to acquire nuclear weapons. Determined to destroy Israel's nuclear program before it could produce an atomic bomb, the Soviets then began preparing for war--well before Moscow accused Israel of offensive intent, the overt trigger of the crisis. Ginor and Remez's startling account details how the Soviet-Arab onslaught was to be unleashed once Israel had been drawn into action and was branded as the aggressor. The Soviets had submarine-based nuclear missiles poised for use against Israel in case it already possessed and tried to use an atomic device, and the USSR prepared and actually began a marine landing on Israel's shores backed by strategic bombers and fighter squadrons. They sent their most advanced, still-secret aircraft, the MiG-25 Foxbat, on provocative sorties over Israel's Dimona nuclear complex to prepare the planned attack on it, and to scare Israel into making the first strike. It was only the unpredicted devastation of Israel's response that narrowly thwarted the Soviet design.

This companion discusses Jewish American literature in relation to ethnicity, religion, politics, race, gender, ideology, history, and ethics, and places it in the contexts of both Jewish and American writing. With its chronology and guides to further reading, this volume will prove valuable to scholars and students alike. --

The creation of the Christian Church is one of the most important stories in the development of the world's history, but also one of the most enigmatic and little understood, shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. With a forensic, brilliant re-examination of all the key surviving texts of early Christianity, Geza Vermes illuminates the origins of a faith and traces the evolution of the figure of Jesus from the man he was - a prophet fully recognisable as the successor to other Jewish holy men of the Old Testament - to what he came to represent: a mysterious, otherworldly being at the heart of a major new religion.

The creation of the Christian Church is one of the most important stories in the development of the world's history, but also one of the most enigmatic and little understood, shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. With a forensic, brilliant re-examination of all the key surviving texts of early Christianity, Geza Vermes illuminates the origins of a faith and traces the evolution of the figure of Jesus from the man he was - a prophet fully recognisable as the successor to other Jewish holy men of the Old Testament - to what he came to represent: a mysterious, otherworldly being at the heart of a major new religion.--

Weimar has become synonymous with catastrophic political failure, the prelude to the greatest moral and material disasters of the twentieth century. This book shows that such failure was never inevitable and that options remained tantalisingly open right up to Hitler's assumption of power. The democratic regime was saddled with heavy burdens stemming from defeat and never enjoyed general acceptance and legitimacy. On the other hand, it encouraged for the first time in German history expectations of a high level of welfare, individual rights and modern social practices, which were at least partially fulfilled. The period of relative prosperity was, however, too short, the return of crisis too severe and the resulting demoralisation too profound to save democracy.The author draws a compelling picture of a society frequently in turmoil, yet remarkably creative and innovative, but finally overwhelmed by a tide of irrationality and barbarism. He makes full use of the extensive sources and secondary literature available in German.

Dorothy Parker holds a place in history as one of New York’s most beloved writers. Now, for the first time in nearly a century, the public is invited to enjoy Mrs. Parker’s sharp wit and biting commentary on the Jazz Age hits and flops in this first-ever published collection of her groundbreaking Broadway reviews. Starting when she was twenty-four at Vanity Fair as New York’s only female theatre critic, Mrs. Parker reviewed some of the biggest names of the era: the Barrymores, George M. Cohan, W.C. Fields, Helen Hayes, Al Jolson, Eugene O’Neil, Will Rogers, and the Ziegfeld Follies. Her words of praise—and contempt—for the dramas, comedies, musicals, and revues are just as fresh and funny today as they were in the age of speakeasies and bathtub gin. Annotated with a notes section by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, president of the Dorothy Parker Society, the volume shares Parker’s outspoken opinions of a great era of live theatre in America, from a time before radio, talking pictures, and television decimated attendance. Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 provides a fascinating glimpse of Broadway in its Golden Era and literary life in New York through the eyes of a renowned theatre critic.

The world's major religions-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-find a common root in one man: Abraham. Yet Abraham looms so large in the realm of world religions that he has remained a ward of the Divine rather than a flesh-and-blood citizen of Humanity. In his monumental new book, David Rosenberg provides a long-overdue history of the patriarch; while revealing that the original story embedded in the Bible is actually our oldest historical biography. We also discover that the wandering ascetic of tradition cannot explain our deep-seated feelings for Abraham and his God. The road that Abraham traveled was marked by signs of civilization that we still recognize: libraries, museums, hotels, and houses of worship. He is a sophisticated, educated Sumerian; an artisan who became the first Jew. Moreover, through Rosenberg's audacious translation of the Abraham story from Genesis, we learn that many of the core tenets of the monotheistic tradition-the idea of God's covenant and the soul-are Sumerian in origin. Rosenberg first finds Abraham at his father's workshop in the cosmopolitan city of ancient Ur and follows his journey through what is today the Middle East. What kind of baggage-emotional, material, and spiritual-would Abraham have taken with him on his migration to a new land? Abraham does more than present a founding spiritual figure and his dynamic relationships with father, wife, and son. We witness this man as he transforms his heritage into an anxious embrace of religion with secular culture-the human condition in which we are still enfolded 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.

This book tells the story of Israel's epic struggle to survive, through the vicissitudes, mistakes, triumphs and tragedies of four wars. It provides a blow-by-blow account of one of history's most bitter and enduring conflicts - Arabs versus Jews. As well as describing each campaign in absorbing and incisive fashion - replete with desperate defensive actions against massive odds in isolated settlements, high-speed armored battles and breath-taking strategy, with the human elements of daring self-sacrifice - Herzog highlights the personal and political struggles that have determined the course of Middle East history.