The makers of obi, the elegant and costly sash worn over kimono in Japan, belong to an endangered species. These families of manufacturers, weavers, and other craftspeople centered in the Nishijin weaving district of Kyoto have practiced their demanding craft for generations. In recent decades, however, as a result of declining markets for kimono, they find their livelihood and pride harder to sustain. This book is a poignant exploration of a vanishing world. Tamara Hareven integrates historical research with intensive life history interviews to reveal the relationships among family, work, and community in this highly specialized occupation. Hareven uses her knowledge of textile workers' lives in the United States and Western Europe to show how striking similarities in weavers' experiences transcend cultural differences. These very rich personal testimonies, taken over a decade and a half, provide insight into how these men and women have juggled family and work roles and coped with insecurities. Readers can learn firsthand how weavers perceive their craft and how they interpret their lives and view the world around them. With rare immediacy, The Silk Weavers of Kyoto captures a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.

The makers of obi, the elegant and costly sash worn over kimono in Japan, belong to an endangered species. These families of manufacturers, weavers, and other craftspeople centered in the Nishijin weaving district of Kyoto have practiced their demanding craft for generations. In recent decades, however, as a result of declining markets for kimono, they find their livelihood and pride harder to sustain. This book is a poignant exploration of a vanishing world. Tamara Hareven integrates historical research with intensive life history interviews to reveal the relationships among family, work, and community in this highly specialized occupation.Hareven uses her knowledge of textile workers' lives in the United States and Western Europe to show how striking similarities in weavers' experiences transcend cultural differences. These very rich personal testimonies, taken over a decade and a half, provide insight into how these men and women have juggled family and work roles and coped with insecurities. Readers can learn firsthand how weavers perceive their craft and how they interpret their lives and view the world around them. With rare immediacy, The Silk Weavers of Kyoto captures a way of life that is rapidly disappearing.

This subtle, unusual book explores the many, often overlapping ways in which the Russian Jewish past has been remembered in history, in literature, and in popular culture. Drawing on a wide range of sources?including novels, plays, and archival material? Imagining Russian Jewry is a reflection on reading, collective memory, and the often uneasy, and also uncomfortably intimate, relationships that exist between seemingly incompatible ways of seeing the past. The book also explores what it means to produce scholarship on topics that are deeply personal: its anxieties, its evasions, and its pleasures. Zipperstein, a leading expert in modern Jewish history, explores the imprint left by the Russian Jewish past on American Jews starting from the turn of the twentieth century, considering literature ranging from immigrant novels to Fiddler on the Roof . In Russia, he finds nostalgia in turn-of-the-century East European Jewry itself, in novels contrasting Jewish life in acculturated Odessa with the more traditional shtetls. The book closes with a provocative call for a greater awareness regarding how the Holocaust has influenced scholarship produced since the Shoah.

Have you ever wondered: How it feels to be eponymous? Why some German pigeons were painted blue in the First World War? What connects Rachmaninoff to Chief Sitting Bull? It is 1972. Bernard Robins is in London – American, innocent, uninformed and arrogant – to make his name and fortune as a pianist, composer and conductor. He lives at the Kensington Music Society, a haven for aspiring musicians, including afro-headed violinists, cellists in caftans and coloraturas from Colorado. During his time there, Bernard accidentally encounters his long lost great-uncle, Hermann Heinrich Zweck, a nonagenarian – a once eminent, now forgotten composer, who has known most of the great musical figures of the Twentieth Century and hated almost all of them. Zweck is engaged in a war against stupidity, laziness and cowardice with the entire world, and especially with Bernard and Charles Forsythe – a hapless English musicologist whose only crime, (grievous in Zweck's view) is to be both English and an academic. The romantic relationships the three principals have with strong women, ranging from promiscuity to endless love, change the lives of all concerned. Throughout the novel, Zweck engages in a battle of words with the author in a series of interruptions and monologues. Comically written by an author skilled in both writing and music, Zweck is an accessible and hilarious novel about fame, identity, music and dumplings.

"I had to do something to escape Hitler's clutches," writes Esti Freud. Yet she waits with her then-16-year-old daughter, Sophie in Paris, until German canons can be heard in the distance, before deciding to escape by bicycle across France as Sophie keeps looking back to see whether German tanks will overtake them. Both women survive by sheer miracle and, in their own ways, come to feel a need to keep a personal record of those tumultuous times. In a memoir written at age 79, Esti Freud, daughter-in-law of Sigmund Freud and wife of his oldest son Martin, looks back on her life that began before the 20th century, was lived on three continents, and stretched through two world wars and the Holocaust. Twenty years after her mother's death, daughter Sophie turned to Esti's memoir as a scaffold for this book, expanding it through family letters and archival material. Out of these documents the author has created a fascinating, many-voiced mosaic--the story of a famous family and of a century seen through the eyes of many characters. Indomitable Esti was not an easy person to love. While she establishes herself professionally three times, in three different languages, her troubled family relationships leave her lonely, often deeply unhappy. Sophie confides that Esti died without son or daughter at her side. This work gives an insider's, in-law view of the family Freud, its foundations, and flaws. The relationship between Esti, daughter of a wealthy Vienna attorney and her husband Martin Freud is foreshadowed by the young lovers' fathers. At first meeting Esti, Sigmund told his son the glamorous woman was "too beautiful" for the clan, meaning her splendor belied a lifestyle not conducive to the frugal Freud ways. And Esti's father, on hearing of her love for Martin, expressed regret she was involved with a man who was "not a financially favorable linkage," and that his family was not respectable since patriarch Sigmund was "just another psychiatrist, and one who writes pornography books at that." Thus begins the ill-fated relationship that would rock two families and a generation of children to come. Sophie weaves into the text letters she inherited, including letters from Martin while he was a prisoner of war, and excerpts from her own diary, kept as an adolescent. The resulting mosaic will fascinate--and perhaps disturb--readers interested in Freud and psychoanalysis, as well as those intrigued by relationships and family.

Aesop revisited! Selected tales, some old, some new - and all of them transcending the constraints of time and place - as narrated by a storyteller of international renown. A unique blend of inspiration and imagination "Kalo is a moving story teller" "Joy de Menil, Random House, US. " ..".The ending of many of the stories is surprising. A weave of various relationships, different human backgrounds from the East to the West. The book deals mainly with the quest for personal happiness and with the question "what is this eternal happiness?" The examples of different wise men, spiritual figures and their followers as well as charlatans and impostors, underline the themes at various levels. I recommend adding this book to the bookshelf of every home." "Rabbi Haim Dovrat, Editor, Lahav magazine, Israel." "Shlomo Kalo is, obviously, a writer of talent, vision and significant accomplishment." "Daniel Menaker, HarperCollins, US, about Kalo's title Lili. " "Each new title by Shlomo Kalo is a cause for celebration." "Odetta Schwartz, Yediot Ahronot, Israel. "

Flappy returns in the fabulously fun follow-up to Flappy Entertains from bestselling author Santa Montefiore, and this time something is amiss in the village of Badley Compton . . . Binoculars at the ready, Flappy Scott-Booth is set to investigate. Newcomers have moved in, a young couple from London, delightful no doubt but they do need to know their place. Who better to teach them the ways of this close-knit community than Flappy herself? But Flappy has other distractions. An ardent admirer, a New Year's Ball to organize and manifold appearances to be kept up. How much time and effort it all takes! Add to the mix the sudden arrival of her son Jasper with his utterly charming persona and total lack of ambition and drive, accompanied by his pretentious wife and their two highly-strung children - and Flappy is on ultra-high alert. Endlessly entertaining and gorgeously gossipy, Flappy Investigates is the perfect escape. Praise for Flappy Entertains : 'Santa Montefiore is a born storyteller' Woman's Weekly 'A friendly, undemanding read in unfriendly, demanding times' Daily Mail 'A keeping up with the Joneses tale that will lift your spirits in no time' New! 'Another winner from the author who writes about relationships so astutely' Belfast Telegraph 'Packed with wickedly funny insights and throwaway lines and written with an extra-large helping of heart, this is the perfect escape for anyone in need of of a book hug!' Lancashire Post 'With its air of nostalgia, gentle humour and snobbery, this is a super but also surprising read' NFOP magazine

From the beloved bestselling author Santa Montefiore comes a new novel filled with humour and heart - the perfect gift for Mother's Day! For fans of The Temptation of Gracie, Flappy now takes centre stage, more charismatic and competitive than ever. 'Fresh, fun and fabulous! Flappy certainly kept me entertained!' Heidi Swain, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Winter Garden Underneath her graceful exterior lies a passion nobody knew about, least of all Flappy herself... Flappy Scott-Booth is the self-appointed queen bee of Badley Compton, a picturesque Devon village. While her husband Kenneth spends his days on the golf course, she is busy overseeing her beautiful house and gardens, and organising unforgettable events, surrounded by friends who hang on to her every word. Her life is a reflection of herself - impossibly perfect. Until the day that Hedda Harvey-Smith and her husband Charles move into the village. Into an even grander home than hers. Taking the front seat on the social scene, quite literally. That simply will not do. Flappy is determined to show Hedda how things are done here in Badley Compton. But then she looks into Charles's beautiful green eyes. And suddenly, her focus is elsewhere. She is only human, after all... Praise for Flappy Entertains : 'Santa Montefiore is a born storyteller' Woman's Weekly 'A friendly, undemanding read in unfriendly, demanding times' Daily Mail 'A keeping up with the Joneses tale that will life your spirits in no time' New! 'Another winner from the author who writes about relationships so astutely' Belfast Telegraph 'Packed with wickedly funny insights and throwaway lines and written with an extra-large helping of heart, this is the perfect escape for anyone in need of of a book hug!' Lancashire Post 'With its air of nostalgia, gentle humour and snobbery, this is a super but also surprising read' NFOP magazine Praise for Santa Montefiore: 'Nobody does epic romance like Santa Montefiore' JOJO MOYES 'An enchanting read, overflowing with deliciously poignant moments' DINAH JEFFRIES 'Santa Montefiore hits the spot for me like few other writers' SARRA MANNING 'One of our personal favourites' The Times 'Accomplished and poetic' Daily Mail 'Santa Montefiore is a marvel' Sunday Express

Robert Aumann's career in game theory has spanned over research - from his doctoral dissertation in 1956 to papers as recent as January 1995. Threaded through all of Aumann's work (symbolized in his thesis on knots) is the study of relationships between different ideas, between different phenomena, and between ideas and phenomena. When you look closely at one scientific idea, writes Aumann, you find it hitched to all others. It is these hitches that I have tried to study.

Joseph Levy leads a quiet life in rural Wheaton Arizona. Retired from a long career in psychiatric research and practice, he reads, writes, and walks in the mountains and hills near the Native reservation. His quiet life ends, however, when a dental crown replacement causes trouble just before meeting an internet date in California. Thus begins a year of back-to-back nightmare infections, a drug overdose, and two failed relationships. At every step, Levy is confronted by matters of life and death, love and hate, faith and doubt, trust and betrayal. Most of all, he faces what it means to be sick and to be healthy. He prays to his God, relies on his friends, examines his dreams, and entrusts his psyche to a new therapist. Joseph Levy Escapes Death is a tale of perseverance in the face of adversity. Strassman uses several lenses to view Levy's life: medical, psychoanalytic, and religious--both Buddhist and Jewish. Pathos and humor fill the tale, while enlightening detours examine the Holocaust, cardiovascular physiology and microbiology, and Jewish-Christian relations.

"In 1966, at the ripe age of 22, Richard Goldstein approached The Village Voice with a novel idea. "I want to be a rock critic," he said. "What's that?" the editor replied. It was a logical question, since rock criticism didn't yet exist. In the weekly column he would produce for the Voice, Goldstein became the first person to write regularly in a major publication about the music that changed our lives. He believed deeply in the power of rock, and, long before it was acceptable, he championed the idea that this music was a serious art form. From his unique position in journalism, he saw the full arc of events that shaped culture and politics in the 1960s--and participated in them, too. He toured with Janis Joplin, spent a day at the Grateful Dead house in San Francisco, and dropped acid with Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys. He was present for Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the student uprising at Columbia, and the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. He was challenged to a boxing match by Norman Mailer, and took Susan Sontag to her first disco. Goldstein developed close relationships with several rock legends--Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, to name two--and their early deaths came as a wrenching shock, fueling his disillusionment as he watched the music he loved rapidly evolve from a communal rite to a vast industry--and the sense of hope for radical social upheaval fade away. Another Little Piece of My Heart is the intimate memoir of the writer as a young man with profound ambition. It is also a sweeping personal account of a decade that no one else could provide--a deeply moving, unparalleled document of rock and revolution in America"--

The bestselling author of "Women and Madness" offers a revolutionary look at aggressive relationships between women of all ages that continues the dialogue of recent bestsellers "Odd Girl Out" and "Queen Bees and Wannabees." Includes a new Introduction by the author.

The year is 2040. Mark Chadwick is a brilliant psychiatrist who is on the verge of a major scientific breakthrough. By combining functional imaging of the brain with computer technology, he can not only predict intentions but also decode human thought processes. It is this discovery which immediately attracts the attention of Robert Dufresne, a senior officer in Home Security who is determined to use this novel technique in the fight against the enemies of the Surveillance State. As Mark is relentlessly pursued by Dufresne, the changing relationships with his family, friends and colleagues.

"A nobleman and his wife, an apothecary nun, an astronomer-mathematician, an inquisitor, a poet who is both lover and villain, a portraitist, a queen and loyal servants deftly act out a beautiful drama of tantalizing relationships. They take up their roles in castle and convent, some surrounded by ornate interiors, garbed in velvets and silks, garlanded with precious jewels; while others abide in simple space devoid of art or representation, and dressed in plain linens and dull calicos. THE APOTHECARY'S DAUGHTER is a wondrous tale, rendered in erotic prose and poetry, stitched through with rich imagery, humour and tenderness. It is also a story of trade and exotic travel, both across the surface of the earth and among the stars."

Contemporary philosopher John Searle has characterized Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) as "the most intelligent human being who has ever lived." The German philosopher, mathematician, and logician invented calculus (independently of Sir Isaac Newton), topology, determinants, binary arithmetic, symbolic logic, rational mechanics, and much more. His metaphysics bequeathed a set of problems and approaches that have influenced the course of Western philosophy from Kant in the eighteenth century until the present day. On Leibniz examines many aspects of Leibniz's work and life. This expanded edition adds new chapters that explore Leibniz's revolutionary deciphering machine; his theoretical interest in cryptography and its ties to algebra; his thoughts on eternal recurrence theory; his rebuttal of the thesis of improvability in the world and cosmos; and an overview of American scholarship on Leibniz. Other chapters reveal Leibniz as a substantial contributor to theories of knowledge. Discussions of his epistemology and methodology, its relationship to John Maynard Keynes and Talmudic scholarship, broaden the traditional view of Leibniz. Rescher also views Leibniz's scholarly development and professional career in historical context. As a "philosopher courtier" to the Hanoverian court, Leibniz was associated with the leading intellectuals and politicians of his era, including Spinoza, Huygens, Newton, Queen Sophie Charlotte, and Tsar Peter the Great. Rescher extrapolates the fundamentals of Leibniz's ontology: the theory of possible worlds, the world's contingency, space-time frameworks, and intermonadic relationships. In conclusion, Rescher positions Leibniz as a philosophical role model for today's scholars. He argues that many current problems can be effectively addressed with principles of process philosophy inspired by Leibniz's system of monadology.

The rediscovery of Scotland’s past and a wake-up call about its future, from a leading scholar-journalist Scotland has a new Parliament and it has North Sea oil, but is it yet an independent, self-sustaining democracy? Is it a true nation? In Stone Voices, Neal Ascherson launches what he calls an imaginative invasion of his native land, searching for the relationships, themes, and fantasies that make up “Scotland.” Beginning with a breathtaking portrait of the country’s landscape, and of the way humanity has indelibly marked even its rockiest contours, Ascherson takes us on a journey through Scotland’s past, interweaving his historical accounts with a rollicking report on a back-country bus expedition he joined during the 1997 referendum campaign that led to Scotland’s first modern Parliament. He asked voters then what kind of country they hoped for, what they feared, and what they expected—questions that animate his book as well. In his search for a nation, Acherson explores many themes: the slow, hybrid formation of the Scottish people over centuries of successive immigrations; the way their most renowned intellectuals and writers came to hate the national church; the peculiar nature of their diaspora; the coexistence of their search for an “authentic” Scotland with the myths others create; and the Scots’ proud sense of true independence. Stone Voices enlightens us about Scotland, about Europe, and about the conditions for freedom that we must all seek today.

Even before its original publication in 1860, the Mei HaShiloach was attacked by Hasidic groups in Poland; attempts were even made to sabotage the press on which it was being printed. Izbicy is sometimes referred to as 'New Age Hasidism', a tribute to its radical modernity. Rabbi Mordechai Yosef stressed personal responsibility in attaining true spiritual growth and self-knowledge. Throughout the Mei HaShiloach one finds strong currents compelling us to focus on our selfhood, individuation, truth, identity, and transcendence, and inviting us to re-examine our sin, failure, and despair in the light of his unique and radical philosophy. In his reading of the personalities in the Biblical narratives, the Izbicy explores their choices, doubts, and compulsions in a way that seems startling modern, and was extraordinary for its time - and even for ours. He devoted uncommon attention to emotions, human relationships, and intimacy.Rabbi Worch’s meticulously annotated translation opens up all the nuances of Rabbi Mordechai Yosef’s elusive world, providing full access to his weltanschauung. This translation empowers the reader to enter the Mei HaShiloach on its many different levels - intellectual, emotional, and psychological.

In Mediating Modernity, contemporary Jewish scholars pay tribute to Michael A. Meyer, scholar of German-Jewish history and the history of Reform Judaism, with a collection of essays that highlight growing diversity within the discipline of Jewish studies. The occasion of Meyer's seventieth birthday has served as motivation for his colleagues Lauren B. Strauss and Michael Brenner to compile this volume, with essays by twenty-four leading academics, representing institutions in five countries. Mediating Modernity is introduced by an overview of modern Jewish historiography, largely drawing on Meyer's work in that field, delineating important connections between the writing of history and the environment in which it is written. Meyer's own areas of specialization are reflected in essays on Moses Mendelssohn, German-Jewish historiography, the religious and social practices of German Jews, Reform Judaism, and various Jewish communities in America. The volume's field of inquiry is broadened by essays that deal with gender issues, literary analysis, and the historical relationship of Israel and the Palestinians. Though other volumes have been compiled to honor Jewish historians, Mediating Modernity is unique in the personal and intellectual relationships shared by its contributors and Michael A. Meyer. Scholars of Jewish studies, German history, and religious history will appreciate this timely volume.

Now in paperback, the extraordinary English language debut from the critically acclaimed writer Maxim Biller, whose “gossamer fictions may remind you of narrative poems in their ability to simultaneously elude and haunt you” (Francine Prose, O, The Oprah Magazine). • A writer on the verge of international acclaim: maxim Biller’s work received raves when it was published in The New Yorker in the summer of 2007, and he’s already been published in Dutch, Danish, French, Greek, and Czech. German cultural institutions based in the u.S., such as the Goethe House, are enthusiastically helping to promote Biller’s work in english. In addition, Love Today is translated by Anthea Bell, the award-winning German-language translator. • Twenty-seven exquisite vignettes: Biller depicts the complexities of romantic relationships in the twenty-first century perfectly—the frustration, longing, and loneliness—in these skillfully crafted stories, designed to build upon each other. It’s as if the reader were standing in the courtyard of an apartment building, observing the lives of others, listening to their conversations, experiencing their intimacy. • For fans of Miranda July, Nathan Englander, and Jonathan Safran Foer: Biller’s writing is sensitive, observant, and honest. The end result is both romantically voyeuristic and deeply moving—Biller is a writer poised for international stardom.

Benny Hill`s saucy smirks at underdressed women are relished the world over. Yet the comedian cut an unlikely figure of global admiration: unmarried and emotionally enfeebled in his few relationships, he was a deeply private individual uninterested in the trappings of success, a frugal man content to live in his humble childhood home flooded, freezing and burgled while his building society account bulged with millions of pounds he didn`t use and hadn`t wanted to earn. Funny, Peculiar is the first objective and full account of Benny Hill`s life and work. Tenaciously researched and yet sensitively reported, it charts the highs, lows and many paradoxes of a man whose professional strengths-observation, impression and mime-bought him unimagined success, and whose weakness, especially an inability to change, fashioned his ultimate downfall. - First in-depth biography since Benny`s death in April 1992. - A return to favour with audiences who are jaded with `alternative comedy`. - Existing biographies are unreliable, lightweight and out of date. - Benny has been screened in 109 countries, and enjoyed for over 50 years