"Bound together for the first time, these two boyhood memoirs relate A. E. Hotchner's coming of age in the Midwest during the Depression"--Provided by publisher.

This book undoes 50 years of mythmaking about Stravinsky's life in music. During his spectacular career, Igor Stravinsky underplayed his Russian past in favor of a European cosmopolitanism. Richard Taruskin has refused to take the composer at his word. In this long-awaited study, he defines Stravinsky's relationship to the musical and artistic traditions of his native land and gives us a dramatically new picture of one of the major figures in the history of music. Taruskin draws directly on newly accessible archives and on a wealth of Russian documents. In Volume One, he sets the historical scene: the St. Petersburg musical press, the arts journals, and the writings of anthropologists, folklorists, philosophers, and poets. Volume Two addresses the masterpieces of Stravinsky's early maturityÑ Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, and Les Noces . Taruskin investigates the composer's collaborations with Diaghilev to illuminate the relationship between folklore and modernity. He elucidates the Silver Age ideal of "neonationalism"Ñthe professional appropriation of motifs and style characteristics from folk artÑand how Stravinsky realized this ideal in his music. Taruskin demonstrates how Stravinsky achieved his modernist technique by combining what was most characteristically Russian in his musical training with stylistic elements abstracted from Russian folklore. The stylistic synthesis thus achieved formed Stravinsky as a composer for life, whatever the aesthetic allegiances he later professed. Written with Taruskin's characteristic mixture of in-depth research and stylistic verve, this book will be mandatory reading for all those seriously interested in the life and work of Stravinsky.

Pp. xiii-xxxii contain a historical introduction by David Engel; pp. 267-279 contain an afterword by Phyllis Palgi.

One would expect the rulers of England and France to have a relationship of some kind, if only political. But the personal relationships that developed between Victoria and Albert of Great Britain, and their counterparts across the channel, were rather surprising. Ambitious and flamboyant, Napoleon III of France and his wife the Empress Eugenie could hardly have been more different to the British monarch and her consort. And while Victoria was enchanted by that very difference, over the years their relationship was frequently strained by political and military events. But when the world of Napoleon III and Eugenie began to crumble, it was to their British friends that they fled. And when Eugenie lost her husband and her only child in swift succession, the publicly ice-cool Queen Victoria revealed her true character as she welcomed a heartbroken Eugenie into her own family. In Queen Victoria and the Bonapartes , Theo Aronson reveals a little-known aspect of Queen Victoria's life and deploys his skill as a writer and researcher to great effect, showing us the complex and often surprising characters behind the great names of history. Praise for Queen Victoria and the Bonapartes : 'Relying primarily on correspondence between the Queen, Empress, Emperor and other family members and officials (much of it previously unpublished), Aronson delivers another superbly readable and engaging history' - Shawn Day, Randomosity 'I enjoyed reading this book very much indeed, & would most certainly recommend it to those seeking a more human experience of history' - Goodreads review Theo Aronson is the author of over twenty works of royal historical biography, published in eleven languages. Among the widely read are Grandmama of Europe, The King in Love, Napoleon and Josephine and a biography of Princess Margaret . In the course of researching and writing these books he has interviewed major and minor members of Britain's royal family and members of the royal households, as well as various officials, servants, friends and others whose lives are in some way connected with the monarchy.

The geographic, spiritual, and intellectual journeys of Nahum N. Glatzer (1903-1990)―prolific scholar, Brandeis University professor, and editor of the Schocken publishing house―reveal a rich cultural ambiance that no longer exists, as well as a breadth of perspective and learning that remains enviable in our time. This collection of 78 memoir entries, written as a document for his family, offers personal glimpses of Nahum Glatzer which complement his scholarship. Episodes and vignettes in chronological sequence recount the decisive events of his travels from Bodenbach to Boston and from strict Orthodoxy to a more historical, cultural, and aesthetic understanding of Judaism. Anecdotal and at times humorous accounts of some of the many outstanding personalities Glatzer knew and interacted with, including Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig, two of the leading German-Jewish thinkers of the twentieth century. Glatzer also relates a variety of his experiences and expressions of faith, both personal and social. The events themselves become moments of religious psychology or theological insight. For Glatzer, as for Rosenzweig, the world was transformed by speech and the realities brought into existence through it. Michael Fishbane’s detailed introduction sets these memoirs, from the final decades of Glatzer’s life, in the context of his life and work. A preface by Judith Glatzer Wechsler offers personal reflections on the character of her father and his work.

"In this remarkable, historically significant book, Mordecai Paldiel recounts in vivid detail the many ways in which, at great risk to their own lives, Jews rescued other Jews during the Holocaust. In so doing he puts to rest the widely held belief that all Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe wore blinders and allowed themselves to be led like 'lambs to the slaughter.' Paldiel documents how brave Jewish men and women saved thousands of their fellow Jews through efforts unprecedented in Jewish history. Encyclopedic in scope and organized by country, Saving One's Own tells the stories of hundreds of Jewish activists who created rescue networks, escape routes, safe havens, and partisan fighting groups to save beleaguered Jewish men, women, and children from the Nazis. The rescuers' dramatic stories are often shared in their own words, and Paldiel provides extensive historical background and documentation. The untold story of these Jewish heroes, who displayed inventiveness and courage in outwitting the enemy - and in saving literally thousands of Jews - is finally revealed"--front jacket flap.

How does a Jewish boy who spent the bulk of his childhood on the basketball courts of Brooklyn wind up teaching in one of the city's pioneering black studies departments? Naison's odyssey begins as Brooklyn public schools respond to a new wave of Black migrants and Caribbean immigrants, and established residents flee to virtually all-white parts of the city or suburbs. Already alienated by his parents' stance on race issues and their ambitions for him, he has started on a separate ideological path by the time he enters Columbia College. Once he embarks on a long-term interracial relationship, becomes a member of SDS, focuses his historical work on black activists, and organizes community groups in the Bronx, his immersion in the radical politics of the 1960s has emerged as the center of his life. Determined to keep his ties to the Black community, even when the New Left splits along racial lines, Naison joined the fledgling African American studies program at Fordham, remarkable then as now for its commitment to interracial education.This memoir offers more than a participant's account of the New Left's racial dynamics; it eloquently speaks to the ways in which political commitments emerge from and are infused with the personal choices we all make.

Rostenberg and Stern run a New York antiquarian book firm, and for half a century have specialized in books by and about minorities that mainstream collectors neglect. Here they identify and describe works that foreshadow later developments in a range of fields. Among them are blood transfusion, feminist militancy, world federation, the free press, relativity, and the Chunnel. They also include eyewitness accounts of historical events. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Who was Herod the Great? How did he come to govern one of the most politically tumultuous regions in the world? Was he the heartless baby-killer of Matthew's Gospel, or does this popular tale do Herod a great disservice? Geza Vermes, whose work on the Historical Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls has made him one of the most recognisable names in Biblical and Jewish studies, provides a new portrait of Herod. Vermes examines Herod's legacy as a political leader, and a potentate, a man of culture, and an all-round smooth operator. Vermes opens up the fascinating character of Herod, from his sizable and fragile ego to his devastation at the execution of his beloved wife, an execution that Herod ordered himself. Beginning with the key historical sources (notably Josephus) Vermes moves on to consider Herod's greatest legacy and testament - his extensive building works, which include the Temple in Jerusalem, Masada and Herodium. Colour images, combined with Vermes' lively prose make this new picture of Herod an enticing and informative guide to one of ancient history's most misunderstood figures.

A powerful and wide-ranging collection of essays, letters, and diary entries that weave together all the periods of the author's life from his childhood in Transylvania to Auschwitz and Buchenwald, Paris, and New York. • "One of the great writers of our generation addresses himself to the question of what it means to be a Jew." — The New Republic Elie Wiesel, acclaimed as one of the most gifted and sensitive writers of our time, probes, from the particular point of view of his Jewishness, such central moral and political issues as Zionism and the Middle East conflict, Solzhenitsyn and Soviet anti-Semitism, the obligations of American Jews toward Israel, the Holocaust and its cheapening in the media. "Rich in autobiographical, philosophical, moral and historical implications." — Chicago Tribune

"In April 1911, Prague artists, writers, and intellectuals often gathered nightly at the Café Louvre, an intellectual center where music was played and high-level discussions were held. Many of the attendees were German-speaking Jews, such as Franz Kafka and his faithful friend Max Brod, Hugo Bergmann, Oskar Kraus, Franz Werfel, the mathematician Georg Pick, and a new arrival to the city, thirty-two-year-old Albert Einstein. Is it possible that Kafka and Einstein met and exchanged ideas? Did they influence each other from a philosophical or deep-thinking perspective? In neither Kafka's nor Einstein's correspondence there is not even the slightest mention of each other. But Einstein and Kafka, two icons of our modern era, serve as the starting point for this book on the enormous contributions in the fields of the empirical sciences, humanities, letters, and arts by individuals of Jewish origin in modernity. In this book, the reader will encounter numerous names in the pages that all spring from the fountainhead of these two antecedents, the Einsteinian and the Kafkian"--

Roma Ben-Atar resisted until late in life the urging of her family to share the memories of her Nazi-era experiences. The Holocaust exerted a dark pressure on all of their lives but was never openly discussed. It was only when her granddaughter insisted on hearing the whole truth, with a directness partly generational, that Mrs. Ben-Atar agreed to tell her story. What Time and Sadness Spared is a journey of both loss and endurance, moving with shocking speed from a carefree adolescence in upper-middle-class Warsaw to the horrors of the Final Solution. The young girl sees her neighborhood transformed into a ghetto populated by skeletal figures both alive and dead. Unbelievably, things only grow worse as this ruin gives way to the death factories of Majdanek and Auschwitz and the death marches of 1945. Life in the camps changes her in less than a day, as if "the person in my body was a stranger I had never met." Her only consolation is to lie on her wooden bunk, no mattress, and speak to the soul of her mother, who, like virtually her entire family, had already been swept away. Roma must summon astonishing powers of adaptation simply to survive, bringing her finally through the wreckage of postwar Europe and to an entirely new life in Israel. In this unique family collaboration Roma Ben-Atar's son Doron, a historian who brings with him fluency in psychoanalysis, contributes through his commentary an awareness of the difficulties presented by historical narrative and memory. A visitor to the much-changed sites in which his mother grew up and was interned by the Nazis, he also voices the perspective of the survivors' children and their ambivalence over being "protected" from this past. As the generation that endured the camps passes from this world, What Time and Sadness Spared illustrates with particular urgency the historical responsibilities of the survivors' descendants, who must become the new vessels for a story that will not remain alive on its own but demands our courage and curiosity.

True Beethoven fans know that Beethoven is the greatest composer of all time, but in recent years Mozart's followers have grabbed most of the good tunes. Beethoven is admired but he is lost in our affection. John Suchet both admires Beethoven and likes him, and his three-volume fictional biography, THE LAST MASTER is a carefully researched labour of love. Not a street name or coffee-house in Vienna has gone unchecked. There are many studies of Beethoven and his music, but fewer biographies. His work is complex, and his letters are not immediately revealing in the way that Mozart's are. John Suchet makes his aims clear: within the framework of the historical evidence, he allows himself to imagine episodes which could have happened. Anything which turned out to be impossible has been rewritten until it met this criterion. The result is an awesomely impressive feat of scholarship as well as a compelling read.

Herod: A Biography is a book written by Jacob S. Minkin that explores the life and legacy of one of the most notorious figures in biblical history, Herod the Great. The book provides a detailed and comprehensive account of Herod's life, from his rise to power in Judea to his death and the aftermath of his reign. Minkin draws on a wide range of historical sources, including ancient texts, archaeological evidence, and modern scholarship, to paint a vivid portrait of this complex and often controversial figure. The book covers Herod's many accomplishments, including his impressive building projects and his efforts to modernize Judea, as well as his many personal flaws and failures. Minkin also explores the political and religious context of Herod's reign, including the tensions between the Jewish people and their Roman rulers, and the various factions and power struggles that shaped the region during this time. Overall, Herod: A Biography is a fascinating and insightful look at one of the most intriguing figures in ancient history, and a must-read for anyone interested in biblical history, ancient politics, or the complexities of human nature.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

1833. Spain is gripped by a Civil War that will change everything. On one side the Carlists sought to return to an absolute monarchy under Carlos de Borbón, on the other the Liberals were fighting to defend constitutional monarchy under Isabella II. Both branches of the family abounded in colourful characters - the shrewd Maria Cristina, the masculine Infanta Carlota, the effete King Francisco, the suave Duke de Montpensier, the showy Carlos VII, and the licentious Alfonso XII. The drama unfolded across the world - in the court in the Palacio Real in Madrid, Don Juan dying incognito in a house in Brighton, Isabel living out her voluptuous days in Paris, Carlos VII scheming in his palazzo on the Grand Canal, the future Alfonso XII at Sandhurst, the Infanta Eulalia in Chicago, the son of Alfonso XIII dying in a car accident in the U.S.A. Royal Vendetta is a story of wars, revolutions, exiles and restorations; a parade of kings, queens, regents and pretenders. Theo Aronson is the author of over twenty works of royal historical biography, published in eleven languages. Among the widely read are Grandmama of Europe, The King in Love, Napoleon and Josephine and a biography of Princess Margaret.

Of all royal lost causes, none has a stronger fascination than that of the Stuart Pretenders to the British throne. For well over a century, four successive Stuart kings laid claim to the crown. The first was James II, deposed in 1688 by his daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange; then came James III the Old Pretender and his son, Bonnie Prince Charlie; finally, there was Henry IX who died in 1807, the last descendant in direct and legitimate line from James II. This book tells the story of these four men, and of their families. It is an account of their public and private lives, their personalities, their relationships with others, and the extraordinary hold which they never ceased to exercise over their adherents. It is a book about people and the twilight of one of the world's most romantic, colourful and ill-fated dynasties. Theo Aronson is the author of over twenty works of royal historical biography, published in eleven languages. Among the widely read are Grandmama of Europe, The King in Love, Napoleon and Josephine and a biography of Princess Margaret.

"Rav Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) was one of the most influential--and controversial--rabbis of the twentieth century. A visionary writer and outstanding rabbinic leader, Kook was a philosopher, mystic, poet, jurist, communal leader, and veritable saint. The first chief rabbi of Jewish Palestine and the founding theologian of religious Zionism, he struggled to understand and shape his revolutionary times. His life and writings resonate with the defining tensions of Jewish life and thought.A powerfully original thinker, Rav Kook combined strict traditionalism and an embrace of modernity, Orthodoxy and tolerance, piety and audacity, scholasticism and ecstasy, and passionate nationalism with profound universalism. Though little known in the English-speaking world, his life and teachings are essential to understanding current Israeli politics, contemporary Jewish spirituality, and modern Jewish thought. This biography, the first in English in more than half a century, offers a rich and insightful portrait of the man and his complex legacy. Yehudah Mirsky clears away widespread misunderstandings of Kook's ideas and provides fresh insights into his personality and worldview. Mirsky demonstrates how Kook's richly erudite, dazzlingly poetic writings convey a breathtaking vision in which "the old will become new, and the new will become holy.""--

This book enables readers to learn about upstanders, partisans, and survivors from first-hand perspectives that reveal the many forms of resistance-some bold and defiant, some subtle-to the Nazis during the Holocaust. What did those who resisted the Nazis during the 1930s through 1945-known now as "the Righteous"-do when confronted with the Holocaust? How did those who resorted to physical acts of resistance to fight the Nazis in the ghettos, the concentration camps, and the forests summon the courage to form underground groups and organize their efforts? This book presents a comprehensive examination of more than 150 remarkable people who said "no" to the Nazis when confronted by the Holocaust of the Jews. They range from people who undertook armed resistance to individuals who risked-and sometimes lost-their lives in trying to rescue Jews or spirit them away to safety. In many cases, the very act of survival in the face of extreme circumstances was a form of resistance. This important book explores the many facets of resistance to the Holocaust that took place less than 100 years ago, providing valuable insights to any reader seeking evidence of how individuals can remain committed to the maintenance of humanitarian traditions in the darkest of times.

For several of his books, Theo Aronson has been granted rare interviews with the Queen Mother, Prince Charles, Princess Margaret, Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone and Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester. In this sparkling and often irreverent memoir, based on notebooks kept during the last twenty years, Theo Aronson describes these royal interviews as well as the trials and excitements of writing a royal biography. Ranging from the disastrous to the successful and the amusing to the touching, the encounters in Royal Subjects include hilarious descriptions of lunching on a Scotch egg (and Scotch!) with Princess Margaret, revealing conversations with the Queen Mother and bizarrely gracious meals with ageing princesses in Kensington Palace. Frank and affectionate, these portraits are assembled with a deft touch. Praise for Royal Subjects: ‘Wise and witty … Aronson writes with engaging frankness’ - Mail on Sunday ‘Compelling and funny … I was riveted’ - Sunday Telegraph Theo Aronson is the author of over twenty works of royal historical biography, published in eleven languages. Among the widely read are Grandmama of Europe, The King in Love, Napoleon and Josephine and a biography of Princess Margaret. In the course of researching and writing these books he has interviewed major and minor members of Britain's royal family and members of the royal households, as well as various officials, servants, friends and others whose lives are in some way connected with the monarchy.

Son of pioneer movie producer Harry Rapf, Maurice Rapf grew up in Hollywood in that city's golden age. After moving from independent filmmaking to Warner Bros., in 1924 the senior Rapf joined Louis Mayer and became one of the founding members of MGM. Hence, movies were a huge influence in Maurice Rapf's early life. After graduating from college, Rapf worked as a screenwriter for major Hollywood studios, but, in 1947, he left Hollywood, never to work for a major studio again. On numerous occasions, he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee as an alleged communist, although he never made a public confession or denial. As a result he was blacklisted from the industry and forced to begin a new career in the East. He eventually became a movie critic and film studies professor. Maurice Rapf knows movies and the movie business as an insider, from first-hand experience, not from books. His autobiography is the story of one person's interaction with an evolving Hollywood. Rapf witnessed the historical progression of movie production: from silents to sound, from a fun-loving frontier community to a huge and fiercely competitive industry, from an apolitical never-never land to a community very much aware of-and nervous about-its social responsibility in a period of economic depression and in a period of world peace seriously threatened by the aggression of fascism. Of interest to students and teachers of film studies, of American history, and of American popular culture, as well as anyone who loves movies.