This autobiography of William G. Dever is unabashedly his story that offers not only candid reflections on his life, but also on the remarkable generation of giants in archaeology in Israel and the evolving history of the fields of biblical and Israeli archaeology. Chapters cover the ups and downs in both his life and career with brutally honesty. His memoir concludes with a postscript on the likely future of biblical archaeology, and an annotated bibliography provides a guide for serious readers who wish to explore some of the scholarly literature to flesh out Dever's narrative--

In an unforgettable addition to the literature of memoir, one of America’s preeminent literary scholars tells his story of coming of age in France during the buildup to the Second World War. As a Jewish youth in France during the 1930s, Victor Brombert’s heady explorations of sex and love were cut short by the rise of Nazi power and the Vichy Regime. His family narrowly escaped to New York, where Brombert joined the U.S. Army, only to return to Europe to fight on the beaches of Normandy and in the Battle of the Bulge. As he shuttles between the stations of his life, Brombert’s narrative recaptures the textures of childhood, the horrors of war, and his own discovery of a sustaining passion for literature. By turns melancholy and erotic, his memoir is also a meditation on memory itself, and a Proustian re-creation of a lost time and place.

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.

"Samantha's mother tongue is dying out. An urgent need to find out more becomes an expansive investigation into how to keep hold of her culture -- and when to let it go. The daughter of Iraqi-Jewish refugees, Samantha grew up surrounded by the noisy, vivid, hot sounds of Judeo-Iraqi Arabic. A language that's now on the verge of extinction. The realisation that she won't be able to tell her son he's 'living in the days of the aubergines' or 'chopping onions on my heart' opens the floodgates. The questions keep coming. How can she pass on the stories of displacement without passing on the trauma? Will her son ever love mango pickle? In her search for answers Samantha encounters demon bowls, the perils of kohl and the unexpected joys of fusion food. Her journey transports us from the clamour of Noah's Ark to the calm of the British Museum, from the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages to the banks of the River Tigris. As Samantha considers what we lose and keep, she also asks what we might need to let go of to preserve our culture and ourselves. This is a life-affirming memoir about resilience and repair, and the healing power of dancing to our ancestors' music, cooking up their recipes and sharing their stories"--Publisher's description.

"A poignant, groundbreaking memoir that links the Holocaust and its aftermath to the safe haven that opened for camp survivors in Latin America at mid-century. The controversy surrounding the collaboration between Isacovici and Rodr guez remains an extraordinary opportunity to reflect on the thorny path of Jewish-Hispanic relations worldwide."-Ilan Stavans"Distinguished by geography as well as by its painful testimony. . . . Much of the memoir's early drama involves the creeping Nazi threat opposing Jews' wishful thinking-that the war might be ending and that 'it can't happen here.' . . . The author's family is shattered in Birkenau, but he survives Auschwitz with jobs peeling potatoes and mining coal at Jaworno, and he survives a gruesome death march as the Soviets advance. Isacovici is able to rejoin two brothers in a fruitless return to the family farm and to many European cities in search of a haven. He then joins the family of a woman with whom he has a serious romance, who end up with visas for Ecuador, where he feels an empathy for the suffering of the local Indians. . . . This account tells an unforgettable and unique story."-Kirkus ReviewsSalomon Isacovici died in 1998. Dick Gerdes is a professor of Spanish at George Mason University. Man of Ashes was first published in Mexico in 1990 as A7393: Hombre de cenizas and was awarded the Fernando Jeno Prize.

Musically Speaking A Life Through Song Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer "Touching and frequently witty."-- Publishers Weekly "Dr. Ruth sees music as a kind of conscience. Melody is something she has measured her life on. It's an extraordinary story, her story."--Bono "Dr. Ruth shows us how and why music functions in her life, with lessons for all of us. A real gem of a book."--Wynton Marsalis "A wonderful book, both moving and delightful. With her customary charm and brio, Westheimer shares with us how a life can be shaped by music. Brava!"--Zubin Mehta "Who would have thought that when Dr. Ruth finally explained the rhythm method, she'd be talking about music? To read her is to know her, to know her is to adore her."--Harvey Fierstein "Music, I have come to realize, is for me a kind of golden thread running through my life. It has helped maintain my connection with the past that otherwise might have been severed by catastrophe and time. I am often asked--indeed, I often wonder myself--why it is that I should always have had such joie de vivre in the face of the losses and dislocations I had to endure in my early years. The answer I always gave was that the warmth and security of my early childhood had a remarkable power and influence. This is certainly true. But now I have realized that there is another part to the answer. And that is music."--from the introduction Who among us does not have a song that triggers vivid memories--of jubilation, of belonging, of sorrow, of love? In Musically Speaking , Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, one of America's most beloved personalities, has written a warm and contemplative book about the role music has played in her life and the ineradicable traces it has left on her thoughts, emotions, her very being. In this memoir through song, Dr. Ruth invites us to share her story from a uniquely musical perspective. By the time she was thirty, Ruth Westheimer had lived in five countries, each with a distinctive musical culture, each with a different hold on her sensibility. For the first ten years of her life, the comforting melodies of childhood helped drown out the anthems of Nazism to be heard elsewhere in her native Germany; as an adolescent refugee in Switzerland, she came to be aware that, however loudly she sang the patriotic songs of the land that gave her shelter, she could never truly be at home there. Present at the creation of the modern state of Israel, she sang and danced to the new music of a new nation; as a young woman eagerly absorbing all that Paris had to offer in the way of romance and worldliness in the early 1950s, the songs of Edith Piaf, Mouloudji, and Yves Montand were her tutors. An almost accidental emigration to America brought new challenges and new stability, as she became a wife, mother, and professional; tremendous and unforeseen celebrity came later, and with it the giddy opportunity to indulge her love of music as never before. Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer is a psychosexual therapist who pioneered the field of media therapy. She is author of 24 books. An Adjunct Professor at New York University, she also holds visiting appointments at Princeton and Yale. Personal Takes 2003 152 pages 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 ISBN 978-0-8122-3746-7 Cloth $24.95t £16.50 ISBN 978-0-8122-0835-1 Ebook $24.95t £16.50 World Rights Biography, Music

In this wry, candid, and sometimes poignant memoir, Peter Owen recalls his lonely Jewish boyhood in Nazi Germany and migration to England where he survived the London Blitz, a teenage dalliance with aspiring actress Fenella Fielding, and working with a motley variety of book publishers. He founded his eponymous publishing firm in 1951, becoming one of the youngest publishers in Britain. A pioneer of books on social themes, gay and lesbian writing, and literature in translation, Owen's authors included ten Nobel laureates and brought Hermann Hesse, Ezra Pound, and Anaïs Nin to a wider audience. Enjoying their success, he and his wife Wendy were memorably stylish and eccentric figures at the literary parties of the 1960s and 1970s. Owen describes his often hilarious encounters with many of those he published, including John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Salvador Dalí, his adventures in Japan with Yukio Mishima and Shūsaku Endō, and in Morocco with Tennessee Williams and Paul and Jane Bowles. As one of the last of the great émigré publishers, his death in 2016 aged 89 signalled the end of a literary era.

P.F. Sloan was one of the most prolific and influential geniuses to emerge from the golden age of the 60s. From his little studio at Dunhill Records, Sloan was a veritable hit-machine, writing and playing guitar for The Mamas & The Papas (that's Sloan's infectious guitar lick on 'California Dreamin'), Barry McGuire (the brilliant and controversial 'Eve Of Destruction'), Johnny Rivers (the iconic 'Secret Agent Man'), The Turtles, The Grass Roots, Herman's Hermits, The Fifth Dimension, The Searchers, and more. P.F. Sloan was everywhere. And then he disappeared. With a foreword by British singer-songwriter Rumer and an afterword by Creed Bratton, the Grass Roots guitarist turned star of The Office, What's Exactly The Matter With Me? is a revelatory memoir of an extraordinary life through the most fascinating years of American and British musical and pop culture. Beginning with a chance meeting with Elvis Presley, this is the story of a boy whose only love was music--of dreams, success, destruction, and miraculous resurrection. Along the way we encounter The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Byrds, Bob Dylan, Buffalo Springfield, The Beach Boys, and more, as well as UFOs and psychiatric hospitals. This is the dangerous ride and inspiring story of one of the greatest songwriters in popular music--and also one of the most elusive and mysterious.

"With the same candor that has characterized his life, Otto Preminger--actor, director, producer, and now writer--exposes himself (in writing) as well as an impressive line-up of show business folk in this engrossing memoir. As one of Hol1ywood's pre-eminent directors with 36 films and 32 stage productions to his credit, Preminger reveals the funny, outrageous, and often exasperating moments of his career, and his association with the eccentric, the gracious, the wealthy, the egomaniacal--'the stars.' Beginning his career as an apprentice of Max Reinhardt, Preminger became an instant success as an actor and then as a director. Hollywood called and he went there in 1935. His outspoken manner clashed with the autocratic studio moguls. He was forced to return to New York and find work directing plays on Broadway. He rebounded in 1944 to begin his stormy and remarkably creative period in Hollywood with Laura, his first all-out hit, starring Gene Tierney, Clifton Webb, and Dana Andrews. Preminger gives an inside glimpse at shooting such films as Daisy Kenyon with Joan Crawford (whom he considers a remarkable, independent, and generous woman); River of No Return, starring Marilyn Monroe; the all-black productions of Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess, both accused of being racist; The Man With the Golden Arm, with Frank Sinatra and Kim Novak; plus such legendary films as Anatomy of a Murder (James Stewart, Lee Remick, and George C. Scott), Exodus (Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint), Advise and Consent (Henry Fonda and Charles Laughton), The Cardinal (Tom Tryon, Romy Schneider), Hurry Sundown (Jane Fonda, Michael Caine, Diahann Carroll and Faye Dunaway), and In Harm's Way (John Wayne). Making no bones about naming enemies or exalting his friends, Preminger elaborates on the blacklisting during the fifties and includes his own critique of the critics. Preminger gives us a little more insight into his friend Tallulah Bankhead and her affinity for shocking behavior (with a few choice examples), as well as his opinion of Howard Hughes (a fascinating man, but not all that eccentric). He sets the record straight on a number of his love affairs and marriages, and divulges the story of his relationship with Gypsy Rose Lee and their child, who after Gypsy's death emerged as Erik Preminger. Leaving few stones unturned, this unique "Otto-biography" zooms in on Hollywood through the eyes of one of its most active and highly creative personalities--Preminger!"--Jacket.

"When her marriage suddenly ends, and a diary documenting her beloved grandfather's escape from Nazi-occupied Netherlands in the summer of 1942 is discovered, Naomi K. Lewis decides to retrace his journey to learn about her family history. Despite suffering from extreme disorientation and a lifetime of anxiety, she travels alone for the first time. Moving from Amsterdam to Lyon--relying on the marvels of GPS--she discovers family secrets and her own narrative as a second-generation Jewish Canadian. With vulnerability, humour, and wisdom, Lewis's memoir asks tough questions about her identity as a secular Jew, the accuracy of family stories, and the impact of the Holocaust on subsequent generations. How do immigrants weave their sense of identity into their chosen countries? Must we be able to locate ourselves within family and cultural geography to belong?"--

As a child, he played under Rav Ruderman's desk and noshed on the Rebbetzin's cookies. (The Rosh Yeshivah gave him and his friend ice-cream money, just to get a little quiet to learn!) As a youngster, he lent Rav Moshe Feinstein a dime for a payphone, and learned from that encounter a lesson for a lifetime. As a young man, he drove in his car -- a rarity in Eretz Yisrael in those days -- gedolim such as Rav Chaim Shmulevitz, Rav Beinish Finkel, Rav Mordechai Gifter, and Rav Elyashiv connecting with and learning from each one. As a respected mechanech, he consulted with gedolim like Rav Shach, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Rav Shimon Schwab, and Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel. Many, many people know Rabbi Yehoshua Liff as a master educator, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Ner Yaakov for more than two decades, with hundreds of devoted talmidim. Less well known is Rabbi Liff's penchant, beginning from his earliest childhood, for connecting with gedolim on a deep and personal level. In this absorbing memoir, penned by bestselling and beloved author Rabbi Nachman Seltzer, we will meet many of the greatest Torah personalities of the past half-century. We will see how their greatness in Torah and middos was reflected in their every action, both at home and in their communal lives. And we will also see their warm and personal sides, through the eyes of a talmid who was intimately connected with them. Everywhere he went, Rabbi Liff encountered Torah greatness, and his relationships with more than 25 gedolim makes for incredible reading. Follow him and be inspired, as he stands at his rebbi's side.

"The Jerusalem of the Balkans is today a city of ghosts. Saloniki or Salonika, as Thessaloniki was known its Jewish community, today barely numbers a thousand Jews whereas from 1500 to World War I the Jews constituted the majority of its inhabitants. Moshe Ha-Elyon and his extended family were part of the deportation from Salonika of some 45,000 Jews to Auschwitz where all but a handful were gassed, beaten, or starved to death during the spring of 1943 to the end of the war. This memoir differs from the many memoirs of Greek Jews. Moshe Ha- Elyon portrays the religious and cultural life of his ancestral community as well as the spiritual and mystical research of his father who predicted, prior to his death at the onset of the war, both the persecution of the Jews and the subsequent rise of a Jewish state in its aftermath. It is the moving story of a teenager who suffered in extremis yet lived to transmit to his family in Israel the legacy of a vanished era. A most informative and worthwhile insight into the inner world of Greek Jewry before and during its destruction during World War II"--

"Part memoir, part history, part political commentary - and all Richler - This Year in Jerusalem is a personal, passionate, and quirkily comic examination of the idea of Israel-as-homeland: for Jews, for Palestinians, and, not least, for the author himself. Richler re-creates the Montreal of his adolescence - the local Zionist youth organization functioning as an escape from the zealous Hasidism of his grandfathers; the idea of emigration to Israel growing into a shimmering dream for himself and his friends. And, going to Israel to look up his old pals from St. Urbain Street, he shows us what happened to those who actually did "make aliyah"--Who settled in the cities and on the kibbutzim, survived the turmoils of war, and are faced today with the opportunities and dangers of peace with the Palestinians. He shows us, as well, the course of his own migration - away from Zionism and through the maze of his own sense of Judaism until he rediscovers his true homeland: "I owe as much to the thin gruel of my Canadian experience as I do to my Jewish provenance." Woven through his story are his fond (and not so fond) recollections of his family, his encounters in today's Israel with the kids he grew up with in Montreal a million years ago, and his most mordant observations on the state of the state of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Witty, intelligent, well reasoned, and across-the-board provocative, here is Mordecai Richler at his inimitable - and controversial - best." -- dust jacket

Missy tells all … and there is a lot to tell. First came Missy. Then came Sable, Sunny, Chyna, and the rest. Missy Hyatt was professional wrestling’s first character — the original sexy “socialite” sidekick whose trademark Gucci purse and tough-girl attitude made her the most loved — and most hated — woman in wrestling. Now, fifteen years after she first shimmied up to the ring, Missy Hyatt takes fans inside the world of wrestling. From her high school days as a hard-core fan, cheering from her living room, to the cover of Wrestler magazine, Missy has done it all. In this no-holds-barred memoir, Missy discloses the behind-the-scenes secrets of table-throwing, chair-smashing, hair-pulling, and the technique of “juicing” — how wrestlers make themselves bleed on cue. Find out about her intimate relationships with Jake the Snake, Wonder Years’ Jason Hervey, Hot Stuff Eddie Gilbert, and many many more. Missy has worked with wrestling’s biggest stars, from Hulk to Jesse, from Vince to the Rock, and she tells everything.

A fictionalized memoir of the Spanish Civil War by the last commander of the Lincoln Brigade. The protagonist is Mitch Castle, a 21-year-old youth from Brooklyn who enrolls as a water carrier and rises to become the brigade commander. Against the background of trench warfare, the novel analyzes the bravery of non-military men who are fighting for a cause.

This book is a more personal history than has ever before been written by or about Marianne Faithfull. Anecdotal, conversational, intimate and revealing, this is her no-holds-barred account of her life, her friends, her triumphs and mistakes. A decade after the publication of ‘Faithfull’, one of the most acclaimed rock autobiographies of all time, Marianne Faithfull is back, vowing periodically leave her wicked ways behind and grow up, but finding that somehow strange things keep happening. A wry observer of her slightly off-kilter world, Marianne muses nostalgically about afternoons languishing on Moroccan cushions at George and Pattie's, getting high and listening to new songs. She fondly recalls the outlandish antics of her Beat friends Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs; is frequently baffled at her image in the press (opening the paper to read of her own demise: 'Sixties Star in Death Plunge'); terrified by the curse sent by Kenneth Anger; mortified by her history of reckless behaviour; not to mention her near-death experience in Singapore while looking for an opium den. Marianne peoples her anecdotal memoir with legendary characters one can imagine only Marianne assembling around her, both the eccentric and the beautiful, from Henrietta Moraes and Donatella Versace to Sofia Coppola, Juliette Greco, and Yves St. Laurent's dog. Here is Marianne on the dark side of the sixties and the bright side of the nineties, which saw her collaborating with the likes of Blur and Jarvis Cocker; compelling recollections of an unconventional childhood in her father's orgiastic literary commune to a hilariously decadent few days at Lady Caroline Blackwood's deathbed. Here she is her blossoming movie career, on her records as subliminal autobiography. This is as intimate a portrait as we've ever had of Marianne, as she meditates on sex and drugs, confronts her alter-ego, the Fabulous Beast, and faces her own mortality in her battle with breast cancer. Since her last book Marianne has, in her own words, 'made quite a few records, gone on many tours, tried to play it straight, and... Well, the rest is the subject of this book.'

This is a powerful memoir about a life of success and tragedy and how the author discovers the importance of being positive about people and events. Marc Mero's enthusiasm is contagious as he empowers people of all ages and walks of life to make positive choices that lead to a more fulfilled life. From his early days growing up in a single-parent home in Buffalo, NY, Marc dreamed big and set lofty goals. Marc found success with hockey, football and boxing and then achieved fame as a WCW and WWE Wrestling Champion. Following a series of personal tragedies including the death of more than 30 friends and family members mostly due to lifestyle choices and negative behaviors, Marc now dedicates his life to sharing his story worldwide in order to inspire others to make positive choices. His passion for reaching youth with his Champion of Choices School Program saves lives, encourages youth to achieve their goals and helps them become the Champions they are destined to be.

Dubbed-some would say drubbed-the "godfather behind creative nonfiction" by Vanity Fair, Lee Gutkind takes the opportunity of these essays, and the rich material of his own life, to define, defend, and further expand the genre he has done so much to shape. The result is an explosive and hilarious memoir of Gutkind's colorful life as a motorcyclist, a medical insider, a sailor, a college professor, an over-aged insecure father, and a literary whipping boy. In Forever Fat Gutkind battles his weight, his ex-wives, his father, his rabbi, his psychiatrist, and his critics in a lifelong cross-country, cross-cultural search for stability and identity. And from Gutkind's battles, the reader emerges a winner, treated to a sometimes poignant, sometimes harrowing, sometimes uproarious, and always engrossing story of the simultaneous awakening of a man and his mission, and of the constant struggle, in literature and in life, to sort out memory and imagination. Here, enacted in technicolor terms, is the universal, symbolic truth that no matter how far you travel, over how many years, you will never completely shed the weighty baggage of adolescence. Yet, as Gutkind proves again and again, he has learned to describe his burden with an ever-lightening brilliance. Lee Gutkind is the founder and editor of the journal Creative Nonfiction. The author and editor of a dozen books, including the award-winning Many Sleepless Nights: The World of Organ Transplantation, he is a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh and the director of the Mid-Atlantic Creative Nonfiction Writers' Conference at Goucher College.