This is an eloquent and deeply felt memoir exploring the author's complex relationship with his Jewish identity. "If I Am Not Myself" is a passionate, thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be Jewish in the twenty-first century. It traces the author's upbringing in 1960s Jewish-American suburbia, his anti-war and pro-Palestinian activism on the British Left, and life as a Jew among Muslims in Pakistan, Morocco, and Britain. Interwoven with this are the experiences of his grandfather's life in Jewish New York of the 1930s and '40s, his struggles with anti-Semitism and the twists and turns that led him from anti-Fascism to Militant Zionism. In the course of this deeply personal story, Marqusee refutes the claims of Israel and Zionism on Jewish loyalty and laments their impact on the Jewish Diaspora. Rather, he argues for a richer, more multi-dimensional understanding of Jewish history and identity, and reclaims vital political and personal space for those castigated as self-haters by the Jewish establishment.

Yom Kippur A Go-Go is a mind-blowing meeting of pop culture, Orthodox faith, and hipster poetics. Matthue Roth is an American original: an Orthodox Jew who cites Outkast and Michelle Tea among his influences, who won’t touch a light switch on Shabbos but mimics a screaming orgasm onstage while reading his paean to Orthodox girls. From the World Bank riots (what can you do when the revolution starts on Shabbos?) to Thursday night tranny basketball in San Francisco’s Dolores Park, Matthue takes readers on a journey among the queer and hip streets of urban America in his exuberant memoir, Yom Kippur a Go-Go. With humor and insight, Roth describes the tension between contemporary life and the demands of faith. He falls in love and in lust with a panoply of girls, both strictly kosher and determinedly secular, to the accompaniment of MP3 rabbinical lectures on modesty ("Boys are nothing but perverts and filthy animals!”).

Marvin Wachman's parents were Russian Jewish immigrants with little formal education. Yet they instilled in their son the values of education, self-improvement, and perseverance. Because of Wachman's beliefs in human progress, he learned not only how to survive in hard times, but how to flourish. A newly minted PhD, Wachman served in World War II as a combat platoon sergeant where he was further drawn to teaching by his desire for work of lasting value. He proved a man of vision and administrative ability, qualities that suited him to lead two great universities renowned for their commitment to extending educational opportunity. During the Civil Rights era, Wachman served as the president of Lincoln University, the country's oldest historically Black college; later he guided Temple University to greater fiscal security, and under his leadership, education programs for Temple students were launched in Europe and Asia ."The Education of a University President" recalls Wachman's distinguished career in education and his steadfast dedication to liberal values.

Memoirs of Cohn, a Jew born in 1920 in Metz as Marthe Hoffnung. As a child, Cohn was confronted with the antisemitism of the local population. In September 1939 the family moved to Poitiers, where they experienced the German occupation and the Nazi anti-Jewish measures. Several of Cohn's seven siblings joined the resistance. One sister, Stéphanie, was arrested in summer 1942, interned in various camps, and murdered in Auschwitz. Cohn arranged for most of her family to escape to the south of France, with the help of her fiancé, Jacques Delaunay, who was executed in 1943 for his resistance activities. Cohn moved to Paris to live with one of her sisters. After the liberation she joined the French army and, being fluent in German, worked for intelligence, interrogating German POWs. In early 1945 she entered Germany to gather vital information for the advancing French army, for which she was awarded various medals. In 1956 she emigrated to the U.S.

This book defies categorization. It is an auto-biographical novel, a book about how to have fun, a cautionary tale for the sexually and socially inhibited. It is a political treatise on how to combat puritanism, a philosophical tract on the importance of humour to the human soul, a buyers' guide to outstanding porno tapes and a business book for the entertainment industry. It is the life of Mark Breslin. Beginning as the enfant terrible of Canadian comedy, Mark Breslin rose up and built an empire: the Yuk Yuk's chain of comedy clubs. He pulled Jim Carrey out of open-mic obscurity, gave dozens of other comics their big breaks and made an astounding contribution to the widely held belief that Canadians are the funniest people in the world. Along the way he learned how far some people will go for money, or for a dream; how truly puritanical North American society remains in this supposedly progressive age; how as you move closer to the top, the only thing you really get is a better view of the men pulling the strings. Written in the sort of irreverent, confessional prose style that will keep the Yuk Yuk's lawyers awake at night, Control Freaked takes us on a hilarious and shocking journey into the dark corners of the entertainment industry.

The Vienna Paradox is Marjorie Perloff's memoir of growing up in pre-World War II Vienna, her escape to America in 1938 with her upper-middle-class, highly cultured, and largely assimilated Jewish family, and her self-transformation from the German-speaking Gabriele Mintz to the English-speaking Marjorie--who also happened to be the granddaughter of Richard Schüller, the Austrian foreign minister under Chancellor Dollfuss and a special delegate to the League of Nations. Compelling as the story is, this is hardly a conventional memoir. Rather, it interweaves biographical anecdote and family history with speculations on the historical development of early 20th-century Vienna as it was experienced by her parents' generation, and how the loss of their "high" culture affected the lives of these cultivated refugees in a democratic United States that was, and remains, deeply suspicious of perceived "elitism." This is, in other words, an intellectual memoir, both elegant and heartfelt, by one of America's leading critics, a narrative in which literary and philosophical reference is as central as the personal.

The author describes his unusual life, from his birth in the Warsaw ghetto and escape to Russia, to his relentless efforts to bring about peace between Arabs and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis

"German, Jew, Muslim, Gay offers an astonishing perspective on the history of modern Germany through the vantage point of a man with multiple identities who devoted his life to religious utopias, fought for homosexual rights, wrote gay fiction, converted from Judaism to Islam (one of the few of any faith to do so), and considered himself part of a spiritual elite that held the key to Germany's salvation. Born in Posen in 1880, the son of a Jewish industrialist, Hugo Marcus converted to Islam and chose the name Hamid; he became the most important convert in Germany while retaining his membership in the Jewish community. He was renamed Israel by the Nazis and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1938, where he was in the unique position of Muslim witness to the Holocaust. The imam of his mosque gained his release and he escaped to Switzerland, where he wrote gay fiction under the pen name Hans Alienus. He died in Basel in 1966. The book challenges deeply ingrained perceptions of Muslim-Jewish relations during World War II and illuminates their interconnected histories in modern Europe. It also tells the unknown story of Marcus' orientalized Islam that, in echoing Goethe's, revitalized an essential strand of Germany's spiritual heritage"--

Trough the prism of the tumultuous life and brilliant intellect of Sir Christopher Wren, the multitalented architect of Saint Paul's Cathedral in London, historian Lisa Jardine unfolds the vibrant, extraordinary emerging new world of late-seventeenth-century science and ideas. The man behind the bold, imposing beauty of Saint Paul's was as remarkable as the monuments he has left us. Wren was a versatile genius who could have pursued a number of brilliant careers with equal virtuosity. A mathematical prodigy, an accomplished astronomer, a skillful anatomist, and a founder of the Royal Society, he eventually made a career in what he described disparagingly in later life as "Rubbish " -- architecture, and the design and construction of public buildings. Wren was a major figure at a turning point in English history. He mapped moons and the trajectories of comets for kings; lived and worked under six monarchs; pursued astronomy and medicine during two civil wars; exercised his creativity through the English Commonwealth, the Great Fire, the Restoration. His royal employment out lasted abdication, Dutch invasion, and the eventual extinction of the Stuart dynasty. Beyond the public achievements, Jardine explores Wren's personal motivations and passions. He was a sincere, intensely moral man with a remarkable capacity for friendship. His career was shaped by lasting associations forged during a turbulent boyhood and a lifelong loyalty to the memory of his father's master and benefactor, the "martyred king," Charles I. Everything Wren undertook, he envisaged on a grander scale -- bigger, better, more enduring than anything that had gone before.

Emmy Award-winning producer and New York Times bestselling author Lionel Friedberg has spent 50 years making films as diverse as full-length theatrical features and television documentaries. After growing up in South Africa during the troubled era of apartheid he began his career during the dying days of colonialism in Central Africa. He eventually settled in Los Angeles where his work took him to the sound stages of Hollywood and to the most remote regions of the Earth. His career exposed him to the extraordinary wonders of our planet and brought him into close contact with many unforgettable personalities from maverick scientists to politicians, entertainers and people who survived near-death experiences. His observations have taught him that life is far more complex and infinitely stranger than we can imagine. When he was struck by an unexpected life-threatening illness his efforts to find a way to save his life took him back to Africa where he encountered the age-old rituals and powerful healing methods of African shamans. Their mysterious ways have much to teach us and are as relevant today as they were in ancient times.

As the founder of financial futures and initiator of Globex, the world's first global electronic trading system, Leo Melamed revolutionized the finance industry. Man of the Futures, his definitive memoir, recounts Melamed's journey from Holocaust survivor and accidental runner at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), to one of the most prominent leaders in the world of finance. At 33, Melamed gave up a promising law career to pursue his dream of becoming a full-time pit-trader at the CME. He quickly ascended the ranks to become chairman. From there, he set out to disrupt the status quo and ultimately transform both the exchange itself and the broader finance industry. Through daring to embrace innovative ideas many considered absurd, Melamed was a pioneer, continually fighting for modernisation in the financial markets through diversification and the introduction of new technologies. Covering the internal battles waged within the CME, the launch of the International Monetary Market (IMM) and the rise of Globex, this enthralling autobiography details the struggles, scandals and triumphs of a visionary in his field. Together with behind-the-scenes reminiscences about the financial markets, this narrative delves into Melamed's philanthropic work at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, as well as his fascinating dealings with political figures at home in Chicago, at the White House, and around the world in China, Japan, Singapore, Great Britain, Russia, South Korea, and Brazil. . Man of the Futures offers exclusive access to the rationale behind some of the biggest financial decisions and dealings in the late 20th and early 21st century. Join Leo Melamed for this fascinating and revealing story of a life lived in pursuit of the future. --

Pittsburgh has always been—despite its industrial reputation—a great city in which to be a writer. Its active, close-knit writing community has seen the rise of several luminaries with Pittsburgh connections, such as Annie Dillard and Stewart O'Nan, and the caliber of Pittsburgh's writing community today is better than ever. Lee Gutkind has assembled a reunion of sorts with writers from across the nation, as well as the up-and-coming stars on the local scene—each of whom has a Pittsburgh connection. Many grew up in the region, others attended college here: all of them have an association with the city. The resulting collection of essays is both gentle and jarring, eclectic and persuasive, covering a range of topics—from a stripper's work ethic to West Virginia's famed Matewan shootout, Atlantic City's Boardwalk before Donald Trump, and the uses of poetry to better understand one's own life. Although Pittsburgh is not the subject of most of the essays, these writers are bound by their affinity for the written word and their collective fondness for Pittsburgh.

"During the German occupation of the Netherlands, 1940 to 1945, all Jews were ordered to register the religion of their grandparents. The Reichskommissar appointed the young lawyer Hans Calmeyer to adjudicate "doubtful cases." Calmeyer used his assignment to save at least 3,700 Jews from deportation and death, dwarfing the number saved by Schindler's famous rescue operation."--Back cover.