The man with the spats rolled up his sleeves and proceeded to pluck a polished red billiard ball out of thin air. Presto! It vanished. Abracadabra! It reappeared. It turned white. it blushed red again. VoiIá! Suddenly there were four billiard balls between this amazing man's fingers. I was stunned. All of this was happening right under my nose. And there was more. He flipped the deck into falling waterfalls of cards, spun them into fans, and thrust a sword through a shower of cards to impale the seven of diamonds -- selected a moment before. I was dazzled. The moment he finished his act and ushered us gawkers back onto the sidewalk, I knew what I wanted to be. Someone else could be president of the United States. I wanted to be a magician.

"To all those who have for several years sought to discredit the new American literature, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has just dealt a most powerful blow," wrote French critic Pierre Lepape in 1961 when Her was published in France as La Quatrième Personne du Singulier. Calling it "a masterpiece of the young American novel," Lepape declared it was "the confirmation of a great American writer who, in the hall of American literary glories, takes the place left vacant by the death of Hemingway." Lepape went on to speak of the "incredible verbal virtuosity" by which the reader is led through this "laby-rêve," and it is this image of the "labyrinth-dream" which relates Her to the anti-novels of the young French school of Robbe-Grillet and Butor. Being thus very far from the kind of novels produced by Ferlinghetti's immediate contemporaries (whether Beat or academic) this book has met with little but bafflement among American critics. With well over 50,000 now in print Her nevertheless continues to make its own way.

Brooklyn, Bed-Sty, post WWII euphoria, nostalgia, the PAL and race relations as they really were, as lived by pioneering track stars, the DeSaussure twins, who opened Police Athletic League to thousands of girls of color. Story of a religious home life, pride of a mixed neighborhood, athletic triumphs and defeats. Successful today, they are giving back.

One of the richest & fullest lives of recorded ancient history is that of David, King of Israel. David's story has instructed, moved, inspired, & enchanted listeners & readers throughout the centuries. Barbara Cohen recounts David's story with a different purpose than that of the biblical writers. Her interest is in David the man, the human being who was poet, soldier, politician, administrator, lover, father, & religious leader to the united kingdoms of Judah & Israel. She tells his story in modern language, using the perspective of today's knowledge of archaeology, history, psychology, & politics, to bring him to life as an individual.

For fans of All-of-a-Kind Family , here is the true story of how Sarah Brenner, a poor girl from New York City’s Lower East Side, became Sydney Taylor: dancer, actress, and successful children’s book author. Sarah Brenner might have come from an all-of-a-kind family (five sisters who all dressed alike), but she was always one of a kind. Growing up in a Jewish immigrant family on New York’s impoverished Lower East Side, Sarah loved visiting the library, celebrating holidays with her family, and taking free dance classes at the Henry Street Settlement. But she was always aware of things that weren’t fair—whether it was that women couldn’t vote, or how girls were treated in her school, or that her parents had had to leave Europe because they were Jewish. When she grew up, Sarah changed her name to Sydney and became an actress and a dancer, but she never forgot the importance of fighting unfairness, whether it was anti-Semitism at her job or the low wages of workers. And when her daughter complained that it wasn’t fair that there were no books about Jewish children like her, Sydney put pen to paper and wrote a one-of-a-kind children’s book. From well-known Jewish children’s author Richard Michelson, this is the story of how Sarah became Sydney and how she showed children the joy of seeing their culture reflected on the page.

In 1977, when Zhongmei Lei was 11 years old, she learned that the prestigious Beijing Dance Academy was having open auditions. She'd already taken dance lessons, but everyone said a poor country girl would never get into the academy, especially without any connections in the Communist Party of the 1970s. But Zhongmei, whose name means Faithful Plum, persisted, traveled for three days and two nights to get to Beijing and eventually beat out 60,000 other girls. But getting in was easy compared to staying in, as Zhongmei soon learned. Without those all-important connections, she was just a little girl on her own, far away from family. But her determination, talent, and sheer force of will were not something the teachers or other students expected, and soon it was apparent that Zhongmei was not to be underestimated. Zhongmei became a famous dancer, and founded her own dance company, which made its New York debut when she was in just her late 20s. In A Girl Named Faithful Plum, her husband and renowned journalist, Richard Bernstein, has written a fascinating account of one girl's struggle to go from the remote farmlands of China to the world's stages, and the lengths she went to in order to follow her dream.

Edward R. Murrow was one of America's "most dedicated and eloquent spokesmen. The people of the free world are deeply in his debt. So is broadcast journalism, which, in so many ways, he helped establish and to which he was one of the finest practitioners. He set standards of excellence that remain unsurpassed. His thoughtful spirit of inquiry, his profound insight and his single-minded devotion to quality were without parallel in radio, television or any other medium." -Memorial plaque, CBS Broadcast Center, New York City

Accounts of record-breaking attempts by fifteen athletes: Joe DiMaggio, Toni Sailer, Wilt Chamberlain, Johnny Unitas, Roger Bannister, Don Schollander, Jimmy Clark, Jimmy Brown, Bobby Jones, Sandy Koufax, Donald Campbell, Gordie Howe, Maureen Connolly, George Billick, Roger Maris.

In Journey Through a Small Planet (1972), the writer Emanuel Litvinoff recalls his working-class Jewish childhood in the East End of London: a small cluster of streets right next to the city, but worlds apart in culture and spirit. With vivid intensity Litvinoff describes the overcrowded tenements of Brick Lane and Whitechapel, the smell of pickled herring and onion bread, the rattle of sewing machines and chatter in Yiddish. He also relates stories of his parents, who fled from Russia in 1914, his experiences at school and a brief flirtation with Communism. Unsentimental, vital and almost dream like, this is a masterly evocation of a long-vanished world.

Surveyor, fur-trader and explorer, David Thompson was the first European to descend the Columbia River from its source to its mouth. A partner in the North West Company, Thompson explored western Canada exhaustively, and the maps he produced became the basis for many future maps of the region. Thompson first came to Canada in 1784 as a clerk for the Hudson's Bay Company. He spent several years gaining knowledge of the fur trade, making extensive expeditions and learning the ways of the aboriginal peoples. After learning the use of sextant, chronometer, telescope, compass and nautical almanac, surveying became his primary interest. He explored new territory whenever possible, keeping detailed journals of his bearings and weather conditions, and charted all of his journeys.

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.

Looks at the journeys of Roy Chapman Andrews who, in the early twentieth-century, led countless expeditions for the American Museum of Natural History in search of dinosaur fossils, facing dangers such as pythons, wild dogs, marauding bandits, sandstorms, and corrupt officials. Original.

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A native of Vienna, Henry Koerner immigrated to the United States in 1938, a refugee from Hitler's persecution of the Jews. Upon his return to Vienna as an American soldier in 1946, he learned that his family had been deported and killed. This volume documents the painter's formation through his experience of loss, exploring his magical realism work of the period 1945-57.

W L Mackenzie King is published by Fitzhenry and Whiteside.