About the Author Jacob Neusner is Research Professor of Religion and Theology Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.

"Inspired by a search for the origin of his Lithuanian-immigrant grandfather's unlikely name - Charles Beresford Price - Stanley Price sets out to assemble his own identity from a multitude of fragments: rugby-playing, patriotic Irish; rebellious orthodox Jewish; Cambridge, anti-Establishment British; 1960s immigrant to America; not to mention, eventually, successful novelist and playwright." "Price introduces us to a varied, Woody Allen-esque cast: the eccentric grandfather who was once famously asked by a Dublin policeman whether he was 'a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew'; the ageing spinster aunts Minnie and Hilda, aka 'The Girls'; a wind-obsessed rabbi; and guest appearances from Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Marilyn Monroe." "Criss-crossing both the Irish Sea and the North Atlantic, this perfectly paced and witty memoir also tells a little-known story: that of the Jews of Ireland - their history, culture and contribution."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Selected by his daughter, Vivien, from Max Perutz's voluminous correspondence, the letters reproduced here portray their author with a spontaneity and directness no autobiography could have matched. They chronicle Perutz's adventurous life through his own vivid, erudite and humorous pen, documenting the hopes, roadblocks and moments of elation of his sixty-year quest to understand the molecular biology of hemoglobin. The first great step in this quest ― unraveling the molecular structure of hemoglobin ― earned Perutz the 1962 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Narrated against a backdrop of family and friends, politics and war, literature, travels, and Max's beloved mountains, these letters provide rare insight into the thoughts of a remarkable and very human scientist, and delightful sketches of some of the people he encountered. Starting with lively letters to a girlfriend written in his youth in Vienna and the impressions of a young scientist in Cambridge, the letters progress to the desperate pleas of an "enemy alien" interned in Canada during World War II. The diary of Perutz's subsequent super-secret war work for the British to build a floating ice airstrip in the North Atlantic, ardent campaigning letters to scientists and politicians, and self-deprecating stories of his own mishaps written to amuse his children and grandchildren are some of the many highlights of these fascinating letters, unique in the annals of recent scientific history. This book is a companion to Georgina Ferry's Max Perutz and the Secret of Life. Together these volumes provide a portrait of an extraordinary character in the development of molecular biology.

Translated from the original Kindheit, written in 1958 and published in German in 2003, David Dollenmayer’s edition makes this remarkable work available to a much-deserved wider audience. Moses Rosenkranz came from impoverished roots in rural Bucovina and gained acclaim for his poetry only late in his life. He survived the same Rumanian fascist work camp as his fellow poet Paul Celan, only to be arrested by the Russians in 1947 and interned in the Gulag for ten years. With his richly detailed recollections of rural life among Jews, Ukrainians, Rumanians, Poles, and Germans in Bucovina, a colorful parade of characters, and a remarkable eloquence, Rosenkranz recaptures a vanished moment of cultural history. The author’s unvarnished portraits of love, jealousy, and passion in his extensive family bring a fresh resonance to his poetry.

The captivating memoirs of a Political heavyweight, detailing more than 40 years in government. Sir Malcolm Rifkind's political career has been as glittering as it has been long-lived. Indeed, he served as a minister for eighteen years, longer uninterrupted service than anyone since Lord Palmerston in the nineteenth century. Informed and stimulating, but also more relaxed, amusing and readable than most books of this genre, Rifkind's memoirs include his battles with Margaret Thatcher over Scotland, explain how he helped change Polish history during the Cold War, describe his presence at the Gorbachev-Thatcher summit and tell how he served as both Defence Minister and Foreign Secretary during some of the most turbulent years of the late twentieth century.The book also covers Rifkind's five pivotal years as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, working with MI6, the CIA and both spies and those spied upon. For his robustness, he is currently banned from Russia by President Putin. Rifkind's memoir is serious and funny, wise and self-deprecatory. This is a book about the past and the future.

" . . . scrupulous, fair-minded and richly-detailed study . . . the book charts one of the most remarkable intellectual careers of the 20th century's latter half. . . . What is most heartening about Mr. Alexander's biography is its exemplary civility and nuance in discussing ideas across the lines of political difference." ―Nathan Glick, Washington Times "Anyone interested in Howe's varied career, and the historical context that has given it its particular shape―American radicalism, the Cold War and anticommunism, the New Left, literary modernism, Jewish life―will profit handsomely from reading Alexander's respectful book." ―Wilson Quarterly "Edward Alexander's captivating study of Irving Howe is illuminating and scrupulous; it is also temperate, generous, and deeply fair-minded. If Howe were alive, he would thank the author―and even now, in Paradise, he is surely doing so (while hotly continuing the discussion)." ―Cynthia Ozick " . . . a singular achievement." ―Jerusalem Post " . . . a masterpiece" ―National Jewish Post and Opinion ". . . meticulous scholarship, felicitous writing style and a literate feistiness." ―Chicago Jewish Star "An excellent work of insight and criticism, recommended for academic libraries." ―Library Journal "An insightful, balanced contribution . . ." ―Booklist "Edward Alexander's estimable intellectual biography . . . studiously avoids both undue sentimentality and overly harsh censure." ―Sanford Pinsker, Philadelphia Inquirer "Edward Alexander's well-informed and engaging portrait of Irving Howe does full justice to the complexities of mind and the political passions of one of this country's leading intellectuals. This bracing, perceptive study honors Howe's admirable career by treating it with the same high degree of moral seriousness that characterized Howe's own work at its best." ―Alvin H. Rosenfeld Irving Howe, author of World of Our Fathers, the prize-winning history of American Jewish immigrant culture, and founding editor of the influential magazine Dissent, was for over 50 years a dominant―and controversial―figure in American intellectual life. Through a clear and eloquent study of Howe's politics, writings, and thought, Edward Alexander constructs a sympathetic yet critical intellectual biography of this complex individual.

Elie Kedourie has been variously described as an angry young man, a sceptic, a conservative, an Oakeshottian, a pessimist, an imperialist, a Zionist, an anti-Zionist, an anti-Arab, and lately even starry-eyed about imperialism - all labels which attempt to categorize the scholar but reveal nothing about the man or his work. This little book is not a biography. It is a collection of essays evaluating his work and his legacy to scholarship. The various contributors, ranging widely in interest and occupation, have indicated their relationship with him in their essays. Of his own work, three pieces are included. One of his last essays, 'The Jews of Babylon and Baghdad', is published here for the first time.

"The author has constructed a chronicle of the life of Ilia Zdanevich (known as Iliazd), an important writer and artist in Russian and French modernism, and enriched this chronicle with commentary on the process of writing a biography and a discussion of the twentieth-century avant-garde. The author originally researched Iliazd with the help of his widow many years ago, and she revisited her notes taken at that time with an experienced scholar's critical distance"--

This volume completes the biography of Peter Struve (1870-1944), one of the most remarkable and influential Russian intellectuals of this century. More than anyone else in his time, Struve was the master of history, journalism, economics, international relations, and practical politics. A scholar and activist, he helped found the Marxist movement in Russia, initiated Marxist Revisionism there, and launched Lenin's career, and he was the theoretician and a cofounder of the Constitutional Democratic Party. After 1905--the years covered in this self-contained volume--Struve became the principal critic of the Russian intelligentsia and the main political ideologist of the anti-Bolshevik opposition during the Civil War and in emigration. His life was a part of the life of Russia as he struggled to craft a liberal democracy and wound up defeated and faced with an emerging totalitarian state. In writing about Struve, Richard Pipes turns biography into history. He lays bare the split soul of the Russian intellectuals--their irresponsibility, unwillingness to compromise, intolerance. Struve, the liberal turned conservative, preached to his countrymen physical and spiritual freedom based on law. He was a Westerner in his championing of social reform, legality, private property, and a vigorous state and foreign policy. This long and rich tradition of liberal-conservatism is recounted against the background of a "monstrous growth of political claims on the individual that caused intellectual and moral independence increasingly to be punished with ostracism, confinement, exile, and death."

In 1975, at the age of forty, Richard Raskind, a renowned eye surgeon and highly ranked amateur tennis player, "died," and Renée Richards was "born," in what was to become the most public and highly scrutinized sex reassignment to date. It was not until Renée Richards was discovered playing in an amateur tennis tournament that the world took notice. Extensive media coverage and criticism thrust Renée reluctantly into the spotlight, sparking an intense public debate over her private life. Now, at seventy-two, Richards looks back and speaks frankly about all aspects of her complicated and often notorious life in this eye-opening, thought-provoking memoir. Richards' honest and compelling narrative explores the dichotomy between the successful life she lived as Dr. Richard Raskind, who seemed to have everything (devoted friends, a beautiful wife and son, a stellar record of academic and professional achievement, and outstanding athletic ability), and a secret life of struggle with a drive that could not be suppressed, even by years of psychotherapy and the force of a considerable will. Richards takes readers through her difficult decision to undergo surgery and the complex mixture of relief and continued frustration that came with the realization of her new identity. Discussing life after her transformation, Richards candidly relates the details, trials, and pleasures of her romantic life as well as fascinating stories about her tennis career, including her experiences as Martina Navratilova's coach. She also provides an intimate account of her difficult but rewarding relationship with her rebellious son: runaway teenager, high-stakes Vegas gambler, karate champion, and entrepreneur. She describes the deterioration of a once-loving marriage and the challenges of reclaiming her place at the forefront of her demanding medical specialty. Having lived as a woman almost as long as she lived as a man, Richards draws on a personal history that illuminates thirty years of remarkable change in society's attitude toward gender issues. Her absorbing and inspiring story, at once heartbreaking and uplifting, is a testimony to how far we have progressed in our ability to discuss and accept sexuality in all its iterations, as well as a reminder of how far we still must travel.

A Memoir of Creativity chronicles one woman's life journey as she derives a theory, revealing meaning in abstract painting, from varied personal and professional experiences, and tells how she locates this theory within a broader social context. In 1966, Piri Halasz became the first woman within living memory to write a cover story for Time (and not just any cover story, either: the notorious one on "Swinging London"). With wit and wisdom, she provides a glimpse into her "red-diaper" childhood, as well as reporting on her climb at Time from research to the writing staff. Vividly, she describes her controversial career as a female journalist during the sixties, offering an inside view of newsweekly rivalries during that tempestuous decade. Halasz then moves on to her initiation into the art world, her lively interaction with some of its most distinguished denizens and her immersion in graduate school. She concludes with what she has learned about art, art history, and history itself since the early eighties, applying that knowledge to better understand the twenty-first century. Through sharing her life story, Halasz encourages others to remain open to new experiences, to try different ways of seeing, and to use creativity to tackle hurdles.

"A Leader Must Be A Leader essays political leadership in modern Canada. Based on impressions and personal encounters with each of the last 11 Prime Ministers, their followers, and reflections on their paths to power, their legacies still being written on the pages of history -all in the context of their times as observed through the eyes of an up close political activist and participant. Based on impressions and personal encounters with each of the last 11 Canadian Prime Ministers, Senator Jerry Grafstein has explored their paths to power, considering the legacies they have left on the pages of history. Like all politicians, Grafstein became obsessed with the factors that made a leader a leader. Is leadership a natural or a learned skill set? What unique amalgam of oratory skill, ambition, character, persistence, detachment, decisiveness, empathy, intelligence, personality, experiences, memory, common sense, ideas, judgement, temperament and, most especially, self-awareness, separate wannabe leaders from the pinnacle of leadership? This is a unique book written by an acute legal mind, a powerful political strategist, a very successful media and communication expert, an engaged Canadian, and a most thoughtful Liberal. Senator Grafstein assesses, evaluates, and appreciates these Canadian Prime Ministers with insight, humor, and generosity."--