A collection of letters, speeches and articles by Solzhenitsyn, his admirers and his critics.

Leopold Infeld was one of the nine eminent scientists who, together with Albert Einstein, signed Bertrand Russell's famous letter warning that in this nuclear age, only a ban on war itself could save this planet (July, 1955). Infeld was born in the Jewish ghetto of Cracow, Poland in 1898, and this autobiography contains a vivid description of this long-since-vanished world. He was assistant to and then a scientific collaborator with Albert Einstein at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ (1936-1938), and this collaboration continued for twelve years while Infeld was at the University of Toronto. In 1938 he wrote a book together with Albert Einstein that became a number one bestseller, The Evolution of Physics. Infeld was lecturer and then Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Toronto from 1938--1950. From 1945-1950 he gave many lectures all over Canada on the elementary physics of the atom bomb, warning that Russia would soon have the bomb and urging that the short period

Leonard Lavin epitomizes the American Dream. In this book Lavin reveals how his instinct-driven vision led him to build the Alberto Culver Corporation from a tiny beauty supply company into a revered Fortune 500 buisness.

hardcover with white dust jacket

Stories of Biblical Mothers offers a new look at an often unnoticed group of women in the Hebrew Bible: the biblical mothers. The author's insightful analysis gives evidence that women of the Bible are able to obtain domestic and public influence through their status as mothers. This work reassesses the position of the biblical woman, and acknowledges that while marginalized, nevertheless as a mother she is both honored and powerful. Author Leila Leah Bronner adds to the ongoing conversation about the role and place of women in the Bible, and inspires further reflection on the biblical mother.

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.

Renowned harmonica player tells the spellbinding story of his charmed life among legends like Al Capone, Ingrid Bergman, Frank Sinatra, and Elton John.

Unusual book

The untold life story of All-of-a-Kind Family author Sydney Taylor, highlighting her dramatic influence on American children's literature.

Traces the life and music of the major composer and key figure of Romanticism, who has been the subject of major controversy since his early death in a mental asylum.

The problems, responsibilities and, ultimately, the meaning of our lives have long been concerns of philosophers, poets, artists - indeed all thinkers, whether their religion informs their opinion or their disbelief challenges conventional wisdom.--Amazon.com.

The life of a congregational rabbi is often seen as an ivory-tower existence - full of prayers and piety - but Jonathan Romain's has radically departed from that image. Virtually no one has ever asked him about their spiritual life and instead he has dealt with a rollercoaster of crises, emotional traumas, moral dilemmas, attempts at seduction, multiple murders, Machiavellian families, funerals that go wrong, weddings that are hijacked, and fighting his way through a maze of other people's sexual fantasies. Nothing in rabbinic training ever hinted that this catalogue of human misery would become part of his calling, nor gave any clues as to how to handle it. Luckily, his previous careers - as a radio agony aunt, prison chaplain, postman and nightclub bouncer - gave him insights that proved very useful in navigating through the human jungle, and hopefully helping some of those he has met on the way. Candid, poignant and often hilarious, this highly original and very readable book offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into an extraordinary job dealing with timeless human scenarios.

Autobiography of growing up in a left-wing American family - a social documentary and personal statement.

Book by Wallach, John, Wallach, Janet

A profoundly moving biographical study of George Kennan by the fine historian John Lukacs A man of impressive mental powers, of extraordinary intellectual range, and--last but not least--of exceptional integrity, George Frost Kennan (1904-2005) was an adviser to presidents and secretaries of state, with a decisive role in the history of this country (and of the entire world) for a few crucial years in the 1940s, after which he was made to retire; but then he became a scholar who wrote seventeen books, scores of essays and articles, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir. He also wrote remarkable public lectures and many thousands of incisive letters, laying down his pen only in the hundredth year of his life. Having risen within the American Foreign Service and been posted to various European capitals, and twice to Moscow, Kennan was called back to Washington in 1946, where he helped to inspire the Truman Doctrine and draft the Marshall Plan. Among other things, he wrote the "X" or "Containment" article for which he became, and still is, world famous (an article which he regarded as not very important and liable to misreading). John Lukacs describes the development and the essence of Kennan's thinking; the--perhaps unavoidable--misinterpretations of his advocacies; his self-imposed task as a leading realist critic during the Cold War; and the importance of his work as a historian during the second half of his long life.