Peter Janos had recently turned eighteen when he heard rumours that a demonstration was going to take place that day in Budapest. He and his classmates in the sixth form of his prestigious school were instructed not to attend, which naturally made them all the more eager to do so. They could not have known that this 'demonstration' would turn into a major uprising which was to change forever the lives of those involved. The date was October 23rd 1956. "John Peter has the most extraordinary tale to tell. He was one of the most powerful critics of his time, and so it's good to see his love of theatre shine through his writing; but what is more surprising is the nature of the battles he had to fight to achieve his preeminence." Simon Russell Beale How I Became An Englishman is John Peter's astounding account of childhood in a Soviet State and his hair-raising escape from Hungary after the 1956 Uprising, to safety in England, and his gradual transformation into John Peter, Oxford graduate, author of Vladimir's Carrot: Modern Drama and the Modern Imagination, and Chief Drama Critic of The Sunday Times. 'Anybody who came across John Peter was instantly charmed by a puckish individual with a perpetual twinkle in the eye who drew people in by whispering quiet witticisms that were equally perceptive and funny. Even though he left his native Hungary in the late 1950s and completed his education at Oxford, the accent remained, but beyond that, the man became as Anglicised as his name. What readers of this thrilling, slim tome will discover is that, before Peter even came of age, he had lived through torrid times, lucky to escape alive and intact from a childhood and youth that contained many terrifying moments. Indeed, his hidden Jewish ancestry meant that, had a stray word been misplaced, Peter might have become a victim of the Nazis or their local collaborators and been murdered or condemned to a concentration camp....a stirring tale.' British Theatre Guide

After more than thirty years as an expatriate, Irma Kurtz gave in to her growing curiosity about her American roots and set off on a grand adventure to explore 'the most baffling of all places' - by Greyhound bus. Taking only the barest necessitites for travel, she entered the vast network of America's bus routes and a seething, fleeting world of brief encounters and changing landscapes.

A tattoo is a bugle call, a summoning that lingers in the ear. Although Hortense Calisher's family eventually migrated north to New York City, the echoes of their days as a slave-owning family in the South still resonate with this acclaimed author, who uncovers a part of history never before so strongly and tenderly revealed. Calisher traces her family's years in the South and their transformative move up north, beautifully evoking the mood and texture of the early twentieth century. Her family was an eccentric combination of traditions and tragedies. Her Virginia-born father, a perfume manufacturer, was twenty-two years older than her German-born mother. Marked by longer-than-normal gaps between the generations and conflicts between the mercantile and the scholarly, the "American" and the emigre, her family is characterized by Calisher as "volcanic to meditative to fruitfully dull, and bound to produce someone interested in character, society, and time." "

Elias Canetti originally intended Party in the Blitz to capture an image of his time in post-war London. Well known throughout Europe, Canetti scorned British intellectuals who weren't familiar with his work. By force of will alone he accumulated English followers, but not before being christened "the godmonster of Hampstead." Canetti's memories of various people in his social circle are brief and scathing brimstone sketches. T.S. Eliot, Iris Murdoch, Wittgenstein, Herbert Read, Bertrand Russell-Canetti rakes them all over the coals. To Canetti, T.S. Eliot was nothing more than an American emigrant trying desperately to act British, and Canetti's portrayal of Iris Murdoch, with whom he had an affair, is nothing short of brutal. Michael Hofmann's translation pulls no punches, delivering the goods on Canetti's searing injection: "when you write down your life, every page should contain something no one has ever heard about."

Hundreds of books have been written about the infamous Dreyfus Affair; but this account comes from the pen of Alfred Dreyfus himself. From a bright morning in October of 1894, responding to a request for inspection, to his exoneration in September of 1899, the author tells his lonely story of conviction, solitary confinement and humiliation at Devil's Island in French Guiana. This is a true account of a modern day Job.

Here is the first biography of Casanova, "the king of all adventurers," the great gallant of the Eighteenth Century. Liar, forger, cardsharp, adulterer, seducer, he had only his wits to protect him from unmasking - and the resultant imprisonment and poverty. Yet in the midst of his ruthless existence he found time to be, also, a student to the humanities, a philosopher, dramatist and poet.His Memoirs, famous through they are, have been unavailable to all but a few, and cover but a portion of his career. Mr. Endore has undertaken to sift out the falsehood in the Memoirs, fill in their hiatuses, and complete the life-story, basing it upon the latest available sources.So amazing was the life of this paradoxical gentleman that a generation after his death the world refused to believe he had ever existed. He became a rakehelly myth. Mr. Endore has restored him to his rightful place in history, at the same time preserving the picturesque and flavorsome aspects of his nature.

What if you were supposed to die, but you didn’t? And what if, years later, your precious second chance didn’t turn out anything like you thought it would? That’s the journey Evan Handler experiences, and the one he explores in It’s Only Temporary: The Good News and the Bad News of Being Alive. In a collection of funny, offbeat, and poignant autobiographical essays, Handler moves beyond the supposedly "incurable” illness he triumphed over in his mid-twenties--only to tumble through his thirties and forties in search of ever elusive love and happiness. From bold attempts to rekindle his acting career to hapless efforts to run faster around New York’s Central Park reservoir, from bizarre Internet dates to twenty-seven breakups (involving only ten women), Handler careens through his against-all-odds existence. Always searching for meaning in his unlikely survival, he shares stories of sadistic junior high school gym teachers, bullying wannabe Hollywood moguls, returned engagement rings, and Europeans’ fascination with American bathroom habits. Picking up ten years after his first book, Time on Fire, Handler again uses what the New York Times calls his "laceratingly funny and revealing” storytelling skills to weave twenty-one new tales into a defiantly unconventional memoir. Consistently witty and insightful, Handler’s stories shift effortlessly from the comedic to the profound, musing with equal intensity on the existence of God and his experiences with TV stardom. Then, just when it seems he’s failed to make the most of his astonishing second chance, Handler finds his way to miracles even greater than the ones that saved his life. His memoir describes his journey from darkness to light, from yearning to gratitude, and in so doing succeeds as both a stirring love story and a classic coming-of-age tale. It’s Only Temporary celebrates the transformation of a boy to man--even if it look Handler more than forty years to get there.

"What amazes about this book is not only the wonderful writing and passionate honesty, but the fact that it is so much fun to read." -Erica Jong "Fans of Birstein's work will not be disappointed by this memoir, which expands on much of the colorful narrative found in her superb biography of her father. The Rabbi on Forty-seventh Street, and delves deeper into her Hell's Kitchen Childhood, college life the heady world of New York intellectuals her turbulent marriage to (Alfred) Kazin." - Publishers Weekly "Birstein is a graceful writer, and she's also very funny." - Jewish Week

Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994) was the seventh and seemingly last Rebbe of the Habad-Lubavitch dynasty. Marked by conflicting tendencies, Schneerson was a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda, a reclusive contemplative who built a hasidic sect into an international movement, and a man dedicated to the exposition of mysteries who nevertheless harbored many secrets. Schneerson astutely masked views that might be deemed heterodox by the canons of orthodoxy while engineering a fundamentalist ideology that could subvert traditional gender hierarchy, the halakhic distinction between permissible and forbidden, and the social-anthropological division between Jew and Gentile. While most literature on the Rebbe focuses on whether or not he identified with the role of Messiah, Elliot R. Wolfson, a leading scholar of Jewish mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, concentrates instead on Schneerson's apocalyptic sensibility and his promotion of a mystical consciousness that undermines all discrimination. For Schneerson, the ploy of secrecy is crucial to the dissemination of the messianic secret. To be enlightened messianically is to be delivered from all conceptual limitations, even the very notion of becoming emancipated from limitation. The ultimate liberation, or true and complete redemption, fuses the believer into an infinite essence beyond all duality, even the duality of being emancipated and not emancipated--an emancipation, in other words, that emancipates one from the bind of emancipation. At its deepest level, Schneerson's eschatological orientation discerned that a spiritual master, if he be true, must dispose of the mask of mastery. Situating Habad's thought within the evolution of kabbalistic mysticism, the history of Western philosophy, and Mahayana Buddhism, Wolfson articulates Schneerson's rich theology and profound philosophy, concentrating on the nature of apophatic embodiment, semiotic materiality, hypernomian transvaluation, nondifferentiated alterity, and atemporal temporality.

Enigmatic and explosive, Irving Layton was indisputably one of this country's most controversial literary figures. His flamboyant style and outspokenness won him friends and enemies. His visceral and lyrical poetry earned him reverence and international acclaim. In Waiting for the Messiah, first published in 1985, Layton writes openly about his life and the discordant impulses that shaped him into the provocative poet and personality that he became. With the vitality, passion, and intimacy that characterizes his verse, his memoir -- covering the years between 1912 and 1946 -- sheds welcome light on Irving Layton's public persona, and gives further substance to one of the most impressive bodies of work in Canadian poetry. His self-portrait teems with insight and energy, and paints a picture of a colourful life, from its beginnings in Montreal's Jewish ghetto. As a high-spirited, life-loving, and sensual boy, he reacted against anti-Semitism and poverty that surrounded him, rejecting his parents' values and orthodox beliefs. He battled his way through an educational system that provided no outlet for his imagination. Layton's "crazy need for experience" drove him to embrace or challenge all that he encountered, and he recounts his first experiences with sex and death, his associations with literary friends and rivals, his relationships with women. Equally compelling is his description of Montreal in the forties as a city crackling with literary and political energies. It was in the ferment of this milieu that Layton ripened as a poet In Waiting for the Messiah, Layton unleashes his sparkling prose style. He is bold and revealing, scathing and witty. The result is a rich and entertaining memoir of a life which as "commuted daily between heaven and hell" and produced poems which have made a lasting contribution to Canadian literature.

At twenty, Alix Kates Shulman wrenched herself from her middle-class family and staked a claim to a fierce independence. Through her bestselling writings she has chronicled what it means to defy the expectations of family and society in order to map one's own life. Now, in this unflinching but tender memoir, she explores what it means to do what is expected of a daughter -- discovering in the process the unexpected, complicated joys of going home.

This engaging autobiographical account traces the remarkable life and career of John Meisel, Canadian political scientist, professor, and public intellectual. The memoir is witty and insightful, filled with stories and personalities that will both inspire and challenge readers the world over. Peter C. Newman, former editor of Maclean's and the Toronto Star, has this to say about the book:,"John Meisel is a national treasure - with a Moravian accent. His life and times have bridged fabulous careers in academia and public affairs, anointing each with the grace of his thoughts and the cadence of his words. This is a book for the ages." Learn more about the book through Wintergreen Studios Press (www.wintergreenstudiospress.com).

"Do You Mind If I Smoke? tells the story of Fenella Fielding's remarkable 65-year career in theatre, radio, TV and film. Best known for her 1960s film appearances in classic comedies such as Carry On Screaming, Doctor in Clover and Carry On Regardless, Fielding's sublime talents also brought her success in serious roles on the stage, including title roles in Hedda Gabler and Colette. Spiced with star-studded anecdotes and personalized with moving stories about innocence and experience, the early struggles of an aspiring actress and later professional rivalries, Do You Mind If I Smoke? is a witty, warm and wonderfully recounted memoir of an extraordinary life."--

A young soccer player dreamed of playing professionally. Or, better said, he dreamed of doing something great. He wanted to be someone or get somewhere--for his life to mean something--and soccer became his path. When he heard his name called in the 1st Round of the MLS SuperDraft, he expected his life to change forever. What he found, instead, was much of the same: the same fears, insecurities, and internal conflicts, except now with higher stakes. When the Dream Became Reality is the story of a professional athlete's path and evolution, as a person and athlete, from childhood through six professional seasons. In this heartfelt memoir, Bobby Warshaw recounts the moments we rarely hear so honestly from athletes, including disagreements with coaches, personal mistrust of his own ability, doubt about his sexuality, and the aftermath of loss and failure. Warshaw experienced incomparable highs--game-winning goals; championship games; wearing the captain's armband--but he rarely felt like he was living the dream that everyone suggested. Beyond the usual self-doubt, he struggled to come to terms with the paradox at the root of the profession: the intersection of a ruthless business with a children's game. To achieve his goals, Warshaw discovered at a young age he would have to live with two conflicting parts of his life, the athlete and the human. The former Stanford University captain opens up about his efforts to maximize his ability as an elite player and a compassionate person despite their often-clashing demands; the constant frustration that he never performed either as well as he would have wanted; and the subsequent struggle to like himself, as either an athlete or a person, along the way. When the Dream Became Reality is not the story of the glitz and glamour of a famous superstar, but rather the everyday emotions and decisions of an average pro pushing to be remembered. Warshaw writes the story that pulls back the curtain on the life and emotions of America's professional athletes. Sometimes there is more than giant contracts and big trophies on the line. It's a common thought to chase our dreams. Do we ever stop to think what happens when we get there? When the dream no longer remains a dream, but becomes reality.

The second volume in the Nobel Prize winning author Elias Canetti's trilogy of memoirs, The Torch in My Ear This book presents an account of Canetti's young manhood, of his arrival in Vienna in the early 1920s, of his schooling, and of the beginning of his life as a writer.

A heartfelt personal autobiography of the life and times of Richard Frank Hall. Take a journey with this New Jersey native as he reached into life's challenges, life's journey, and the joy of discovering deep relationships in friends and family.

Leila Amsel and Joseph Bronner escaped Nazi Europe with their families just ahead of the full onslaught of the Holocaust. Leila grew up in a Chasidic home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and with chutzpah and determination became the first woman to earn a doctorate in Ancient Semitic Languages and History in South Africa. She went on to publish seven books, write hundreds of articles, and mentor and teach thousands of students. Joseph established a thriving diamond business, and as a volunteer rabbi in Johannesburg and then in Los Angeles inspired hundreds of children and adults with his teaching of Torah. Together, Leila and Joseph raised three children, and dedicated themselves to establishing and supporting communal, Zionistic, and educational institutions in Johannesburg and Los Angeles, as well as in Israel. With an unflagging belief in the value of education, an aura of elegance, and an embrace of the unconventional, Leila and Joseph share a story of leadership, love, and commitment.

Easy the Hard Way is a full-life story told with gusto, often hilarious, sometimes touching. It will bring a lump to your throat when you least expect it. Joe Pasternak emerges from the pages of his autobiography as an imaginative and resourceful man of tremendous drive and honesty, who is also a warm and deeply human talent. Pasternak's early life reads like the script of an American dream picture: born in a tiny town in Transylvania, son of the shammas at the local synagogue, at seventeen Joe threw off the shackles and made his way to Philadelphia. He knew no English, knew in fact little of anything, but he had sense enough, he writes, to go to New York. The rise of Joe Pasternak was not always in a straight ascending line, but sooner or later it always landed him one rung higher. From Paramount in Jamaica he went to Universal in Hollywood and thence to Europe to supervise Universal's operations abroad before the war. Those were the great days of movie making in Germany and Pasternak played an important part in them. As a producer he is credited with helping such great stars as Deanna Durbin, Judy Garland, Mario Lanza and others to achieve stardom in Hollywood.

Harry Stein gives us the conversations of a group of older men who meet every week for lunch to reflect on their lives and the state of the world. What is a well-lived life? What is honour, and does it have a place in our society? A profound and poignant meditation on the meaning of honour, told through the words of men who lived life according to the forgotten rules of trust and responsibility. From these conversations, Stein shows us men who lived their lives according to values that have since been declared relative or obsolete: honour, responsibility, decency, and an uncynical commitment to being the best men they could be. Stein presents the stories of this remarkable group of men who lived through the difficult time of the mid-20th century and all its wars and social upheavals. We meet Moe Turner, Stein's father-in-law, a mathematician involved in research on the H-bomb who is Stein's connection to the group. We meet Boyd Huff, a survivor of the Nazi prisoner camps, whose youngest son was killed in a gun accident and oldest is a hospitalized schizophrenic. We meet Gene Cooper, an electrical engineer and the emotional centre of the group. These three men, and the rest of the club, have had difficult lives and plenty of trying moments, yet all of them have survived with their sense of right and wrong, of honour and love, fully intact. Stein connects their background, stories and lives, to the valuable views and ideas they share with him now. What the reader comes away with is a renewed sense of purpose, a new confidence in the strength of courage and conviction in your beliefs—even as those of the world change around you.