Solotaroff was one of the notable intellectuals of his generation, the founder of the New American Review, editor and friend of Philip Roth, and editor-in-chief at HarperCollins. Solotaroff reveals himself here as a thinking man with a big heart and gaping wounds of love that are not disconnected from the contributions he has made to American culture throughout his career. Solotaroff turns back to the earliest pages of his romance with Lynn, remembering his first sighting of her emerging from the water as if from a dream. Yet the image, as he penetrates the intervening layers of sorrow and disappointment, is almost impossibly distant, fragile. First Loves reenacts the blurring of a perfect conception in the mind of a man who would devote his life to precision of thought and word. This opposition, of romantic and intellectual passion, drives the narrative and eventually brings it to crisis. First Loves could be described as a very private feat of honesty from a public intellectual. Solotaroff’s willingness to admit the failures, personal and professional, alongside the triumphs of his career gives a three-dimensional intensity to the emotions on the page. Working with all of the gritty and romantic elements of his storied life, Solotaroff manages to avoid a tone too heroic or honey-dipped; he manages simply to tell the tale.

"Award-winning designer and writer Steven Heller comes of age at the center of New York's youth culture in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s"--

From Tajikistan to the Moon is an inspirational, true story of the spellbinding events of World War II, the author s escape from his war-torn country, his flight to freedom, and his ultimate success in America. Told from a unique Soviet perspective, Robert Frimtzis takes you from surviving bombs of the Nazi blitzkrieg, to imminent starvation and deprivation in a mud hut in Tajikistan, to contributing to America's lunar exploration and spacecraft development. Without warning, his childhood was shattered, his home was destroyed, and he was plunged into the madness and savagery of World War II. His family evaded Nazi capture by running eastward 3,000 miles to Tajikistan. To get to America they crossed borders illegally, trekked across half of Europe, and eventually ended up in a displaced persons camp in Italy. At nineteen, penniless and knowing little English, he arrived in America with the goal to continue his education.

From Tajikistan to the Moon is an inspirational, true story of the spellbinding events of World War II, the author's escape from his war-torn country, his flight to freedom, and his ultimate success in America. Told from a unique Soviet perspective, Robert Frimtzis takes you from surviving bombs of the Nazi blitzkrieg, to imminent starvation and deprivation in a mud hut in Tajikistan, to contributing to America's lunar exploration and spacecraft development. Without warning, his childhood was shattered, his home was destroyed, and he was plunged into the madness and savagery of World War II. His family evaded Nazi capture by running eastward 3,000 miles to Tajikistan. To get to America they crossed borders illegally, trekked across half of Europe, and eventually ended up in a displaced persons camp in Italy. At nineteen, penniless and knowing little English, he arrived in America with the goal to continue his education.

In the early 1950's, in Los Angeles, at 6 AM, John West, vice-president of the National Broadcasting Company in charge of west coast, gets a phone call from New York City on the NBC tie line. The caller is General David Sarnoff, chairman of the Board of RCA, the Radio Corporation of America, NBC's parent company. Awakened from sleep, Mr. West groggily says "Hello" "John, this is General Sarnoff." Mr. West swiftly clears the cobwebs. "Good morning, General, it's always good to hear from you." "John, you're acquainted with my nephew Richard Baer, aren't you?" "Yes, General, I am. He's a fine young man. I think very highly of him." "Last night I spoke with his mother, my sister. She's upset. The reason she's upset is that Richard has been out of work for four months and he has no prospects, so it looks like his life is going nowhere." "General, I'm surprised and sorry to hear that." "John, I want you to find Richard a job. And I want you to find him a job by nine o'clock this morning, your time. I'll be waiting for your call saying you took care of it. Goodbye."

The autobiography of Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), the painter and printmaker of images of urban America. 120 pages; 11.5 x 9 inches.

My Brother's Madness is based on the author's relationship with his brother—who had a psychotic breakdown in his late forties—and explores the unfolding of two intertwined lives and the nature of delusion. Circumstances lead one brother from juvenile crime on the streets of Brooklyn to war-torn Vietnam, to a fast-track life as a Hollywood publicist to owning and operating The Tin Palace, one of New York's most legendary jazz clubs, while his brother falls into, and fights his way back from, a delusional psychosis. My Brother's Madness is part thriller, part exploration that not only describes the causes, character, and journey of mental illness, but also makes sense of it. It is ultimately a story of our own humanity, and answers the question, Am I my brother's keeper?

Norma Barzman is a blacklisted writer living in Southern France. Henry Myers is her beloved cousin, a former member of the Algonquin circle who has found his writing talent diminished with age, and is living an isolated life in New York City. When Norma invites Henry to Italy to realize their mutual dream of traveling together to Cremona to write about the mysterious origins of violin making, neither one could have anticipated the explosive consequences of their journey. But their adventure opens a Pandora's box of long-suppressed emotions, family secrets, and forces each to reassess their feelings towards each other, and themselves.

Journalist Max Lerner writes a stunningly honest account of the feelings and thoughts that marked his battle with two successive cancers and a heart attack. Journal entries from this extraordinary ordeal show how mind and body interweave in the healing process. A worthy companion to Anatomy of an Illness.--Kirkus Reviews.

The life story of one of Hollywood's most dashing swashbucklers reveals how his wild offscreen behavior--drinking, womanizing, and carousing with David Niven--contrasted with his on-screen charm. (Biography).

Praise for Coming Together, Coming Apart ""Interesting conversation is Israel's most ingratiating commodity, and this is an especially interesting one. To read Coming Together, Coming Apart is to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue with one of Israel's most thoughtful observers--an American who made Israel his home, despite its imperfections and dangers. Gordis's conversational narrative is irresistible."" --Alan dershowitz, author of The Case for Israel ""Whether describing a walk through Jerusalem in snow, a hike in the desert, or a farewell family drive to the Gaza settlements, Gordis manages to capture the essential details that tell us the larger meaning of our Israeli lives. There is much irony in this book, and also anger, especially against those who unfairly judge Israel in its most desperate and noble times. Most of all, though, this book is the chronicle of a love story--of an immigrant family in Jerusalem falling in love with Israel and, through that love, discovering the strength to cope with life on the front lines of a jihadist war. As a fellow Jerusalemite, I feel a profound debt to Gordis for explaining what it means to raise a family in the middle of a terror zone, and the courage that average Israelis instinctively display in maintaining the pretense of normal life. Those of us who share his passion are fortunate to be so well represented by this book."" --Yossi Klein Halevi, Foreign Correspondent, The New Republic

Essays. Criticism. Memoir. This odd and engaging volume consists primarily of essays written between 1900 and 1944, in which the Italian poet Umberto Saba writes of himself in the third person, providing a truly fascinating critique of his own work. As work of criticism written pseudonymously, and without irony, about one's own work, and for the primary purpose of celebrating that work, the History and Chronicle of the Songbook remains unique . . . in literary history . . . This is not a work of self-promotion; it is, like all Saba's writing, in poetry or prose, a work of self-definition, even self-creation (from the Translator's Foreword). As an exercise in self-objectification, then, the book becomes not only a useful work about Saba's poetry, but an inquiry into identity, the relationship of the self to the world around the self, and the ability of a poet to explicitly create a poetics but of a response to his or her own work.

Middle-aged single mother and entertainment publicist Suzanne Portnoy leads a double life. Monday to Friday, she's a professional executive devoted to her two adolescent boys. But at weekends she spends her kid-free hours having sex, with a different man each time. Or multiple men. Picking up where her first book, The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker- An Erotic Memoir , left off, this memoir finds Suzanne both confronting the consequences, and enjoying the fruits, of her notoriety as the bestselling author of an erotic memoir. From a coked-up rock star to an uptight millionaire, to a hunky stripper, Suzanne attracts plenty of men wherever she goes, particularly once they learn her identity. But just when Suzanne grows reconciled to the possibility of never settling down, she meets a man who wants to be more than one of her 'friends.' While debating whether to unload her 'portfolio' of men for the potential one true lover, this most unconventional woman ponders the most conventional question- has she found the fabled Mr Right or will he prove to be just another in a long string of Mr Wrongs?

"A heartfelt account of how Rabbi Weinblatt confronts cancer after receiving this devastating diagnosis, this memoir traces his journey from beginning to end. It deals with his emotions, fears, and treatment and offers comfort, encouragement, and inspiration from a Jewish perspective. Using humor and coupling it with the wisdom of Jewish and Biblical sources as reflected in his sermons and other communications and writings, his words are a vehicle for sharing his experience and insights as he battles this disease. As a comforter to others, as well as a recipient of comfort, support, and love from family, friends, and members of his congregation, this book is also a valuable tool for clergy and health care professionals who interact with and counsel individuals in similar situations"--

"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.

Sufi Murshid, Zen Master, Environmental and Peace Activist, Missionary to the Hippie Generation, Founder of the Dances of Universal Peace....Drawn from his own voluminous writings, A Garden of Vision and Initiation allows us to hear Samuel Lewis's story and teaching in his own words, the authentic voice of a spiritual original and pioneer."Here is the story of a mystic, a gardener, a Sufi, a Zen student, a true human being. Samuel Lewis' spiritual practice was deepened through his meetings with Hazrat Inayat Khan, but his teaching, his wisdom, came from his own visionary nature. Garden of Visions and Initiation takes us on the inner and outer journey of this remarkable man, who left us with the gift of the Dances of Universal Peace, and the living grace of a soul who embraced both love and pain in service to God." --Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D., author, Love is a Fire, the Sufis Mystical Journey Home ."The reader of Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz's sensitively selected and annotated writings of Murshid Samuel Lewis (1876-1971) is taken on the tumultuous spiritual journey of a truly universal being; a voyage propelled throughout his life by the quest for Truth, whether through the teachings of Sufism, Zen Buddhism or any other divinely revealed path. The reader grows with Sufi Sam as he explores with sincerity the inner and outer world, experiences hope and disappointment, and dances through this earthly life with his trademark flashes of spiritual humour and love for all. A collection of writings that will be of particular interest for those westerners who, like Lewis himself, find their path through the teachings of the east." --Muneera Haeri, author of The Chishtis, A Living Light , co-author with Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri of Sufi Encounters ."Whether you have known Lewis or are new to his work, it is illuminating to experience, in his compelling first person prose, how his determination to rise above the vicissitudes of his early years became fully realized in the form of an extraordinary capacity for healing the world." --W. A. Mathieu, author of The Listening Book and Bridge of Waves ."Sufi Vision and Initiation (1986) was always for me a reference for chronology regarding the life of Sam Lewis. Now comes what could be described as an autobiography par excellence. Sam Lewis wrote in The Lotus and the Universe (1963): "This is not an autobiography, although one may come sometime." This book, Gardens of Vision and Initiation (2020) is as close to an autobiography as we will have. This updated chronology of Lewis's writings, dowsed from the files by the editor, is a labor of love." --Mansur Johnson, author of Murshid: A personal memoir of life with American Sufi Samuel L. Lewis and compiler and editor of Big Tales: All the stories in the 12 volumes of The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan."Everytime I remember Sam, I end up laughing at myself. That's pretty good work for a dead-rascal-saint." --Ram Dass, author of Be Here Now and Still Here ."I have no fonder memory of the 60's than the appearance of this strange-looking man, who said things which made me first laugh, then smile, then later pause in a preciation of a spiritual original, a pioneer." --Dr. Jacob Needleman, author of The New Religions and Lost Christianity ."As much of a wonder-filled reading experience it is to dive into this 'map', this description of the territory, I'm sure that Murshid Sam would have encouraged the reader to go out and have some direct experiences, traveling the territory and leaving behind any concepts about it. Gardens of Vision offers us the opportunity to witness what a life of dynamic transformation lived through direct experiences and encounters looks like." --the Rev. Tasnim Hermila Fernandez, co-founder of the International Network for the Dances of Universal Peace.

This hilarious memoir, by Sally Fingerett, tells the tale of a free spirited musician and touring member of the original musical comedy theatre troupe THE FOUR BITCHIN' BABES. Traveling the country for 25 years, performing on over eight hundred stages, Sally, wanted it all--husband, kids, and career, even though she became the designated daughter to a manic-depressive mother. In this heartwarming book, she offers a view from the bridge between living life and creating art from it. In these tales, she shares those everyday moments women experience, as seen through her distinctly funny viewfinder. This "Jewish girl born on Christmas Day," comes from a long line of medicated women. Wild and crazy, genuine and caring, these Medicated Matriarchs handed down to this traveling Gypsy-Singer, their big thighs, their love of family, and their wackadoodle DNA. As a self-proclaimed "student of crazy," Sally compiled a heartwarming collection of forty essays, three family SECRET recipes, and the lyrics to thirty-three of her best loved songs, each following the story they're connected to. ALSO available (sold separately) is the companion double disc anthology CD set of those 33 songs, titled The Mental Yentl, Songs from a Lifelong Student of Crazy.

Stuart Hall’s retirement from the Open University in 1997 provided a unique opportunity to reflect on an academic career which has had the most profound impact on scholarship and teaching in many parts of the world. From his early work on the media, through his influential re-working of Gramsci for the analysis of Britain in the late 1970s, through his considered debates on Thatcherism and more recently on “race” and new ethnicities, Hall has been an inspirational figure for generations of academics. He has helped to make universities places where ideas and social commitment can exist alongside each other. This collection invites a wide range of academics who have been influenced by Stuart Hall’s writing to contribute not a memoir or a eulogy but an engaged piece of social, cultural or historical analysis which continues and develops the field of thinking opened up by Hall. The topics covered include identity and hybridity, history and post-colonialism, pedagogy and cultural politics, space and place, globalization and economy, modernity and difference.