Was it possible to achieve peace between Jews and Arabs in Palestine in the 1930s? This study discusses the Fifth Avenue muti-millionaires who believed they could bring peace to the Middle East through secret diplomacy and a generous dose of "Baksheesh" (the Arabic word for bribery).

"Ja, No, Man is an eerily familiar portrayal of the life of an ordinary white South African growing up during Apartheid-era South Africa. Told with extraordinary humour and self-awareness, Poplak's story brings his gradual understanding of the difference between his country and the rest of the world vividly to life. A startlingly original memoir that veers sharply from the quotidian to the bizarre and back again, Ja, No, Man is an enlightening, darkly hilarious, and, at times, disturbing read." From book cover

Spanish American fiction became a world phenomenon in the twentieth century through multilanguage translations of such novels as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman, Octavio Paz's Labyrinth of Solitude, and Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits. Yet these "blockbusters" are only a tiny fraction of the total, rich outpouring of Spanish-language literature from Latin America. In this book, Naomi Lindstrom offers English-language readers a comprehensive survey of the century's literary production in Latin America (excluding Brazil). Discussing movements and trends, she places the famous masterworks in historical perspective and highlights authors and works that deserve a wider readership. Her study begins with Rodó's famous essay Ariel and ends with Rigoberta Menchú's 1992 achievement of the Nobel Prize. Her selection of works is designed to draw attention, whenever possible, to works that are available in good English translations. A special feature of the book is its treatment of the "postboom" period. In this important concluding section, Lindstrom discusses documentary narratives, the new interrelations between popular culture and literary writing, and underrepresented groups such as youth cultures, slum dwellers, gays and lesbians, and ethnic enclaves. Written in accessible, nonspecialized language, Twentieth-Century Spanish American Fiction will be equally useful for general readers as a broad overview of this vibrant literature and for scholars as a reliable reference work.

Throughout her career, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Maxine Kumin has been at the vanguard of discussions about feminism and sexism, the state of poetry, and our place in the natural world. The Roots of Things gathers into one volume her best essays on the issues that have been closest to her throughout her storied career. Divided into sections on "Taking Root," "Poets and Poetry," and "Country Living," these pieces reveal Kumin honing her views within a variety of forms, including speeches, critical essays, and introductions of other writers’ work. Whether she is recollecting scenes from her childhood, ruminating on the ups and downs of what she calls "pobiz" (for "poetry business"), describing the battles she’s fought on behalf of women, or illuminating the lives of animals, Kumin offers insight that can only be born of long and closely observed experience.

Few figures of interwar Germany were as influential as Leopold Schwarzschild, the brilliant editor of the liberal magazine 'Das Tage-Buch'. In the uncertain years of the Weimar Republic, Schwarzschild became famous for his perceptive political analyses and critique of the economic policies of successive governments in the twilight of Germany's first experiment with democracy. When he was forced to emigrate in 1933, following Hitler's rise to power, he pursued his analysis of developments in Germany from Paris, where he resumed publication of his journal under the new name 'Das Neue Tage-Buch', while also mounting a furious attack on the European powers taken by surprise by the Nazi ascendancy. 'One thing is already beyond question today...', he wrote in the spring of 1933, '...part of the new era is an unremitting descent into some kind of military conflagration'. Winston Churchill, a great admirer of Schwarzschild, made one of his later books required reading for the War Cabinet, yet his campaigning journalism has never before appeared in English. In bringing his writings to an English-speaking readership, Chronicle of a Downfall will restore Leopold Schwarzschild to his rightful place as one of the most poignant chroniclers of the fall of German democracy and the descent of Europe into World War II.

Does Tommy know you're Jewish? Tommy knows I'm Irish. At 12:37pm on 22 July 1946, the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed. 91 people were killed, 46 wounded. The bombing was carried out by right-wing Zionists, targeting the headquarters of the British in Palestine. Two Irish Jewish brothers, Paul and Cecil Green, journey from their Dublin birthplace to battle antisemitism on the streets of East London. Their Irish nationalism propels them towards Jewish nationalism as they struggle against British Imperialism to form a Jewish nation state. As violence between British soldiers and Jewish terrorists erupts, Paul and Cecil become involved in an act of terrorism that changes both their lives. 12:37 raises complex and controversial questions around Jewish violence, homeland and national identity in a stunning new play that is both a hard-hitting historical epic and an intimate family drama. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at the Finborough Theatre, London, in November 2022.

The Unraveling of Scientism , a companion to Joseph Margolis's Reinventing Pragmatism , follows the thread of American analytic philosophy through the second half of the twentieth century, the period of its greatest influence and activity. Margolis finds that the distinctive features of analytic philosophy were effectively altered, at about mid-century, most pointedly by W. V. Quine. Surprisingly, this was a time of declining conceptual invention and originality among the leading strands of philosophy--pragmatism, logical positivism and the unity of science program, and the principal continental European movements. The Unraveling of Scientism centers on the primary commitment of analytic philosophy through the twentieth century to what Margolis calls "scientism"--the conviction that an unyielding reductionism, applied universally but in an exemplary way in the sciences, can provide a convincing account of the most important philosophical puzzles of the human world, those centered on the nature of the objective world, our knowledge of reality, language, and human existence. Margolis examines the principal puzzles that the analytic movement has addressed and argues that in recent years its claims have been effectively stalemated, perhaps even defeated.

These articles, written over a period of time from the end of World War II to the American invasion of Vietnam, expose the deception propagated by various administrations and their apologists. That deception was the claim that the United States Government was fighting for "freedom and democracy".

"The available sources on Hasidic society at the turn of the twentieth century create an impression of discontented Jewish youth and panicked parents, but not inexorable crisis and decline. Though the First World War and post-war pogroms further destabilized Hasidic society, they inadvertently created opportunities for the reinvention and revitalization of traditionalist education. The challenges of the early twentieth century would prove more galvanizing than demoralizing for certain visionary, reform-minded Hasidic leaders"--

For centuries, knowledge has been thought to be the key to human progress of all kinds and has dominated Western culture. But what if knowing has now become an impediment to further human development? The End of Knowing is concerned with the practical consideration of how to reconstruct our world when modernist ideas have been refuted and many social problems appear insoluble. Newman and Holzman suggest provocatively that we should give up knowing in favour of "performed activity." They show how to reject the knowing paradigm in practice and present the many positive implications this has for social and educational policy.

Gotz and Meyer, two noncommissioned SS officers, are entrusted with an assignment, "not a big one," but one that "requires efficiency." Their task is to transport five thousand women, children and elderly, one hundred at a time, from a concentration camp near Belgrade in a hermetically sealed truck, in which they are gassed. As Albahari's anonymous narrator, a teacher, obsessively pursues the truth of this systematic annihilation, he shares his findings with his students. Their school bus becomes that truck, and as the memory of Belgrade's lost Jewish souls is evoked, the students are bewildered. Their teacher, worn down as much by the task of making history come alive as by the toll his research has taken on him, is overwhelmed by the horror of his own imaginings. A harrowing, masterfully written story, full of compassion, irony, and lyricism.

From the beginning, myths have told of women who lived apart from men -- the Sirens who sang on the Aegean rocks, the Amazons of the Brazilian jungle, the self-reproducing women on islands in Polynesia, to mention only a few. As this theme emerged in her own fiction, Batya Weinbaum became intrigued by its persistence across time and cultures and began tracing it in literature and mythology, as well as in actual locales that are or were said to be islands of women. In this fascinating, interdisciplinary book, she explores how the myth of Amazons has served varying psychological needs in different cultures over time. Weinbaum first analyzes various historical interpretations and uses of the Amazon archetype, some designed to empower women, others created by men to disempower them. She next turns to the original Greek context, in Homer's epics and other aspects of Greek culture, and then traces how Amazons eventually evolved into negative representations of paganism. Moving from Rodriguez de Montalvo's fifteenth-century Sergas de Esplandian, which imagined an island of women in the New World, Weinbaum concludes with revealing fieldwork she conducted on Isla Mujeres (Island of Women) off the Yucatan Peninsula, which included giving birth with the participation of a native Maya midwife. Batya Weinbaum is Assistant Professor of English at Cleveland State University. She founded and edits the journal Femspec.

The only country in the world with a line in its national anthem as desperate as “this people has already suffered for its past and its future,” Hungary is a nation defined by poverty, despair, and conflict. Its history, of course, took an even darker and more tragic turn during the Holocaust. But the story of the Jews in Hungary is also one of survival, heroism, and even humor—and that is the one acclaimed author Adam Biro sets out to recover in One Must Also Be Hungarian , an inspiring and altogether poignant look back at the lives of his family members over the past two hundred years. A Hungarian refugee and celebrated novelist working in Paris, Biro recognizes the enormous sacrifices that his ancestors made to pave the way for his successes and the envious position he occupies as a writer in postwar Europe. Inspired, therefore, to share the story of his family members with his grandson, Biro draws some moving pictures of them here: witty and whimsical vignettes that convey not only their courageous sides, but also their inner fears, angers, jealousies, and weaknesses—traits that lend an indelible humanity to their portraiture. Spanning the turn of the nineteenth century, two destructive world wars, the dramatic rise of communism, and its equally astonishing fall, the stories here convey a particularly Jewish sense of humor and irony throughout—one that made possible their survival amid such enormous adversity possible. Already published to much acclaim in France, One Must Also Be Hungarian is a wry and compulsively readable book that rescues from oblivion the stories of a long-suffering but likewise remarkable and deservedly proud people.

From the romantic, highly detailed realism of his large-scale "Mountain" photographs to multimedia pieces that embrace abstract forms drawn from close observation of nature, Clifford Ross's work is unlike any other. In 2002, Ross invented his R1 camera, with which he has produced some of the highest resolution single shot photographs ever realized. In a Ross landscape, viewers can spot a bird in a tree on a mountain a mile away. Ross's longstanding desire to reconcile realism and abstraction in his art intensified when he took up photography in the mid-1990s. This book offers the first comprehensive survey of his work, from large-scale, highly detailed landscape photographs to his latest "invisible art" -- an augmented reality app for smartphones that reveals a hidden work within a work. Seen & Imagined accompanies a landmark exhibition at MASS MoCA. Featuring 139 images, most of them in color, including such major Ross series as "Mountains," "Mountain Redux," "Harmoniums," and "Digital Waves," it is the first fine-art book to offer readers an augmented reality 3D "pop up" experience (through a free downloadable app) using their smartphones. Texts by noted writers and critics David Anfam, Quentin Bajac, Arthur C. Danto, Jack Flam, Nicholas Negroponte, and Jock Reynolds, comment on Ross's work, placing it within the history of art and technology, alongside an interview by Orville Schell with the artist. -

The scientific achievements of the modern world failed to impress the leading writers of this century, leaving them instead profoundly disturbed by a sense of lost values and of the insignificance of the individual in a universe seemingly indifferent to human concerns. In The Search for Selfhood in Modern Literature Roston explores the strategies adopted by such mid-century authors as Greene, Salinger, Osborne, Baldwin and others in their attempt to cope with the spiritual vacuity - strategies including the emergence of the anti-hero and of literary existentialism - and offer in the course of the investigation fascinatingly new insights into their work.

In this disturbing book Marc Ellis, whom Rosemary Ruether has described as perhaps the most important contemporary Jewish theologian, examines the way in which religion has often been associated with violence, repression, war and vengeance. The book begins with the massacre in Hebron in 1994, perpetrated by a religious Jew, and the assasination of Yitzhak Rabin casts a long shadow over it. The first chapter enters into dialogue with these facts and trevals the world of Holocaust thought and theology. The second chapter explores the evolving world of Christianity after the Holocaust as a possible response to suffering in the contemporary world. Then two chapters join the search in Holocaust theology and liberation theology which seek to renew the core of Judaism and Christianirt, or alter that core through feminist and indigenous insights. Chapter five seeks to find a path beyond atrocity. The topic of this book is one which Marc Ellis has wrestled with for most of his adult life, and he has spent many years working with and travelling among the poor, most often in the company of committed Christians in different areas of the world. This lends his writing enormous power and conviction, and this work is not one that will easily be forgotten. Marc H. Ellis has taught at Maryknoll School of Theology and Florida State University, and was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University.

Mariano Siskind’s groundbreaking debut book redefines the scope of world literature, particularly regarding the place of Latin America in its imaginaries and mappings. In Siskind’s formulation, world literature is a modernizing discursive strategy, a way in which cultures negotiate their aspirations to participate in global networks of cultural exchange, and an original tool to reorganize literary history. Working with novels, poems, essays, travel narratives, and historical documents, Siskind reads the way Latin American literary modernity was produced as a global relation, from the rise of planetary novels in the 1870s and the cosmopolitan imaginaries of modernism at the turn of the twentieth century, to the global spread of magical realism. With its unusual breadth of reference and firm but unobtrusive grounding in philosophy, literary theory, and psychoanalysis, Cosmopolitan Desires will have a major impact in the fields of Latin American studies and comparative literature.

"A new history of twentieth-century North Africa, that gives voice to the musicians who defined an era and the vibrant recording industry that carried their popular sounds from the colonial period through decolonization. If twentieth-century stories of Jews and Muslims in North Africa are usually told separately, Recording History demonstrates that we have not been listening to what brought these communities together: Arab music. For decades, thousands of phonograph records flowed across North African borders. The sounds embedded in their grooves were shaped in large part by Jewish musicians, who gave voice to a changing world around them. Their popular songs broadcast on radio, performed in concert, and circulated on disc carried with them the power to delight audiences, stir national sentiments, and frustrate French colonial authorities. With this book, Christopher Silver provides the first history of the music scene and recording industry across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and offers striking insights into Jewish-Muslim relations through the rhythms that animated them. He traces the path of hit-makers and their hit records, illuminating regional and transnational connections. In asking what North Africa once sounded like, Silver recovers a world of many voices--of pioneering impresarios, daring female stars, cantors turned composers, witnesses and survivors of war, and national and nationalist icons--whose music still resonates well into our present"--

"A new history of twentieth-century North Africa, that gives voice to the musicians who defined an era and the vibrant recording industry that carried their popular sounds from the colonial period through decolonization. If twentieth-century stories of Jews and Muslims in North Africa are usually told separately, Recording History demonstrates that we have not been listening to what brought these communities together: Arab music. For decades, thousands of phonograph records flowed across North African borders. The sounds embedded in their grooves were shaped in large part by Jewish musicians, who gave voice to a changing world around them. Their popular songs broadcast on radio, performed in concert, and circulated on disc carried with them the power to delight audiences, stir national sentiments, and frustrate French colonial authorities. With this book, Christopher Silver provides the first history of the music scene and recording industry across Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, and offers striking insights into Jewish-Muslim relations through the rhythms that animated them. He traces the path of hit-makers and their hit records, illuminating regional and transnational connections. In asking what North Africa once sounded like, Silver recovers a world of many voices--of pioneering impresarios, daring female stars, cantors turned composers, witnesses and survivors of war, and national and nationalist icons--whose music still resonates well into our present"--