Relates the life story of Josef Mengele and quotes from the testimonies of twin children who were the victims of his sadistic pseudo-medical experiments in Auschwitz. They speak about the complicated psychological problems which they confronted after the war, and which caused their silence in the 1950s-70s. In 1984 the organization of surviving twins, CANDLES, was established, which organized a trip to Auschwitz in 1985 and publicized their reminiscences.

Louis Begley, himself a multilingual exile and, like Kafka, a lawyer and writer, renders Kafka's life with sensitivity and insight. His discussion of Kafka's masterpiece 'The Trial', along with shorter works such as 'The Metamorphosis', opens a window on a tormented soul, one of the most intriguing figures of the modern period.

The Bible story is illustrated with 40 reproductions from the Pamplona Bibles, two thirteenth-century illuminated manuscripts.

A Holocaust survivor recounts her journey to her family's hometown of Šamorín, Slovakia, to exhume the bodies of her grandparents from a Jewish cemetery that would soon be flooded by a new dam on the Danube River, and take the bodies to Israel for reburial.

Mosaic: Memoirs, Lincoln Kirstein's long-awaited autobiography, is a compelling, often highly subjective evocation of his astonishing youth. The book's scenes move from the old mansions of Brahmin Boston to the waterfront bars of Brooklyn, George Gurdjieff's Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man at Fontainebleau, and the brothels of Marrakesh. It culminates with thrilling suspense in 1933, when Kirstein visits Paris, hoping to lure George Balanchine to the United States. Kirstein shapes his numinous memories into the story of a young man's quest to fuse his various roles into a unified self. Mosaic is the epic history of his ultimately triumphant search for a vocation. As a chapter in the growth of modernism, and as a contribution to cultural history - and the history of assimilation - this superbly written, humorous, and candid book is unique and invaluable.

Contributors examine how the Nakba has shaped the personal and collective memory of Palestinians and how that memory impels their claims for justice.

The memoirs of Lev Razgon, "the last man alive to have actually attended and survived the Communist Party Congress of 1934." Razgon was born in a shetl, became a Communist journalist and writer, was among the Party elite at the beginning of Stalin's reign of terror, and spent seventeen years in labour camps.

"In her deeply engaging, astonishingly candid memoir, author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin exposes the fiercely-guarded lies and intricate cover-ups woven by dozens of members of her extended family. Beginning with her own long-suppressed secret, the story spirals through the hidden lives of her parents and relatives--revealing the truth about their origins, personal traumas, marital misery, abandoned children, religious transgressions, sexual identity, radical politics, and supposedly embarrassing illnesses. While unmasking their charades and disguises, Pogrebin also showcases her family's remarkable talent for reinvention in a narrative that is, by turns, touching, searing, and surprisingly universal." --

The accomplished actress describes her rise to fame and the subsequent destruction of her career after being added to the Hollywood blacklist and how she eventually rebuilt her life and career after being exonerated.

Lawrence Weschler has created six remarkable stories of people who suddenly seem to catch fire, becoming utterly obsessed and ending up somewhere entirely different from where they thought they were headed.

From the author of Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder , Calamities of Exile combines three gripping narratives that afford a sort of double CAT scan into the natures of both modern totalitarianism and timeless exile. "Beautiful but harrowing chronicles of three exiles that probe the moral and personal risks of their encounters with totalitarianism. . . . Piercing and timely."— Kirkus Reviews , starred review "Weschler . . . combines a novelist's gift for drama with the objectivity and research skills of a journalist. . . . The result is three gripping profiles of very human but also extraordinary men."— Publishers Weekly "[Weschler's] thorough accounting of the men's covert operations, assumed identities and strained relationships with fathers, wives, and colleagues creates a disturbing triptych of the perils of totalitarianism."—Lance Gould, New York Times Book Review "Weschler tells these three tragic tales with an admirable combination of psychological penetration, intellectual thrust, concision and compassion."—Francis King, Spectator "Endlessly absorbing. . . . Breathtaking."—Jeri Laber, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Colors, Rubin tells us, affect everyone through sound, smell, taste, and a vast array of emotions and atmospheres. She explains that although she has been blind since birth, she has experienced color all her life. In her memoir Do You Dream in Color?, Laurie Rubin looks back on her life as an international opera singer who happens to be blind. From her loneliness and isolation as a middle school student to her experiences skiing, Rubin offers her young readers a life-story rich in detail and inspiration drawn from everyday challenges. Beginning with her childhood in California, Rubin tells the story of her life and the amazing experiences that led her to a career as an internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano. Rubin describes her past as a "journey towards identity," one she hopes will resonate with young people struggling with two fundamental questions: "Who am I?" and "Where do I fit in?" Although most of us aren't blind, Rubin believes that many of us have traits that make us something other than "normal." These differences, like blindness, may seem like barriers, but for the strong and the persistent, dreams can overcome barriers, no matter how large they may seem. This is what makes her story so unique yet universal and so important for young readers.

Winner’s original Madhouse Sabbath has sold 45,000 copies, been translated into three languages, and spawned a successful video study series. After her conversion from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity, Winner found that her life was indelibly marked by the rich traditions and spiritual practices of Judaism. She presents eleven Jewish practices that can transform the way Christians view the world and God, including attentive eating, mourning, candle-lighting, and Sabbath-keeping. Since first publishing the book, Lauren has earned her MDiv and PhD, and become an Episcopal priest. Her thought has deepened and developed. This new Study Edition incorporates the complete original text plus primary texts from Jewish and Christian sources, and new material on each of the eleven topics. The result is a powerful work for Christians wanting to explore in depth and understand the Jewish origins of Christianity.

Renowned author Kati Marton tells how her journalist parents survived the Nazis in Budapest and were imprisoned by the Soviets.

"In 1937, as the Nazis gained control and anti-Semitism spread in the Free City of Danzig, a majority German city on the Baltic Sea, sixteen-year-old Justus Rosenberg was sent to Paris to finish his education in safety. Three years later, France fell to the Germans. Alone and in danger, penniless, and cut off from contact with his family in Poland, Justus fled south. A chance meeting led him to Varian Fry, an American journalist in Marseille helping thousands of men and women, including many artists and intellectuals--among them Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Andre Breton, and Max Ernst--escape the Nazis. With his German background, understanding of French culture, and fluency in several languages, including English, Justus became an invaluable member of Fry's refugee network as a spy and scout. The spry blond who looked even younger than his age flourished in the underground, handling counterfeit documents, secret passwords, black market currency, surveying escape routes, and dealing with avaricious gangsters. But when Fry was eventually forced to leave France, Gussie, as he was affectionately known, could not get out. For the next four years, Justus relied on his wits and skills to escape captivity, survive several close calls with death, and continue his fight against the Nazis, working with the French Resistance and later, becoming attached with the United States Army. At the war's end, Justus emigrated to America, and built a new life. Justus' story is a powerful saga of bravery, daring, adventure, and survival with the soul of a spy thriller. Reflecting on his past, Justus sees his life as a confluence of circumstances. As he writes, 'I survived the war through a rare combination of good fortune, resourcefulness, optimism, and, most important, the kindness of many good people.'" -- Publisher's description.

"Judy Chicago is America's most dynamic living artist. Her works comprise a dizzying array of media from performance and installation to the glittering table laid for thirty-nine iconic women in The Dinner Party (now permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum), the groundbreaking Birth Project, and the meticulously researched Holocaust Project. She designed the monumental installation for Dior's 2020 Paris couture show and, in 2019, established the Judy Chicago Portal, which will help to accomplish her lifelong goal of overcoming the erasure that has eclipsed the achievements of so many women. The Flowering is her vivid and revealing autobiography, fully illustrated with photographs of her work, as well as never-before-published personal images and a foreword by Gloria Steinem. Chicago has revised and updated her earlier, classic works with previously untold stories, fresh insights, and an extensive afterword covering the last twenty years. This powerful narrative weaves together the stories behind some of Chicago's most significant artworks and her journey as a woman artist with the chronicles of her personal relationships and her understanding, from decades of experience and extensive research, of how misogyny, racism, and other prejudices intersect to erase the legacies of artists who are not white and male while dismissing the suffering of millions of creatures who share the planet. With the first career retrospective of her work forthcoming at the de Young Museum in 2021, Chicago reinforces her message of resilience for a new generation of artists and activists. The Flowering is an essential read for anyone interested in making change."--Publisher's description.

"Untangles the narrative threads of Roosevelt's final months, showing how he juggled the strategic, political, and personal choices he faced as the war, his presidency, and his life raced in tandem to their climax"--Dust jacket flap

Joseph Epstein’s Fred Astaire investigates the great dancer’s magical talent, taking up the story of his life, his personality, his work habits, his modest pretensions, and above all his accomplishments. Written with the wit and grace the subject deserves, Fred Astaire provides a remarkable portrait of this extraordinary artist and how he came to embody for Americans a fantasy of easy elegance and, paradoxically, of democratic aristocracy. Tracing Astaire’s life from his birth in Omaha to his death in his late eighties in Hollywood, the book discusses his early days with his talented and outspoken sister Adele, his gifts as a singer (Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, and Jerome Kern all delighted in composing for Astaire), and his many movie dance partners, among them Cyd Charisse, Rita Hayworth, Eleanor Powell, and Betty Hutton. A key chapter of the book is devoted to Astaire’s somewhat unwilling partnership with Ginger Rogers, the woman with whom he danced most dazzlingly. What emerges from these pages is a fascinating view of an American era, seen through the accomplishments of Fred Astaire, an unassuming but uncompromising performer who transformed entertainment into art and gave America a new yet enduring standard for style.