Argues Emerson's representatives both as an American writer of his time and as a comprehensive human spirit. Emerson appears here in all his vital contradictions.

Joanne Limburg suffers from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: she thinks things she doesn't want to think, and she does things she doesn't want to do. As a small child, she would chew her hair all day and lie awake at night wondering if heaven had a ceiling; a few years later, when she should have been doing her homework, she was pacing her bedroom, agonising about the unfairness of life as a woman, and the shortness of her legs. By the time she was an adult, obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours had come to dominate her life. She knew that something was wrong with her, but it would take many years before she understood what that something was. "The Woman Who Thought Too Much" follows Limburg's quest to understand her predicament and to manage her symptoms, taking the reader with her on a long, twisted journey through consulting rooms, libraries and internet sites, as she seeks to discover all she can about rumination, scrupulosity, avoidance, thought-action fusion, fixed-action patterns, anal fixations, schemas, basal ganglia, tics and synapses. On the way, she encounters competing interpretations of her condition, as offered by psychoanalysts, neuropsychiatrists and cognitive psychologists, and does her best to come to terms with an illness which turns out to be both common, and even - sometimes - treatable. This candid, moving and beautifully written memoir is a sometimes shocking, often sad, and yet also humorous revelation of what it is like to live with so debilitating a condition. It is also an exploration of the inner world of a poet and an intense evocation of the persistence and courage of the human spirit in the face of mental illness.

"Banning people from libraries is even worse than banning books! Decades before the Civil Rights Movement, Samuel Wilbert Tucker, a Black lawyer in Virginia, organized a peaceful read-in at the local public library, which was segregated. He wanted to affirm the right of everyone to use the library. Thanks to efforts like his, we can all sit at a table, any table, pick up a book, any book, and read."--Back cover.

"The Washington lobby for Israel has mad a decisive contribution in the struggle to establish Israel, to sustain it, and to help it achieve peace. This book tells the story of how and why this lobby came into existence and of the role played by the American people, and of the American Jewish community in particular..."--Publisher's description.

For sixty-four years, Isaac Stern has been a great--and greatly loved--performing artist, famous for his profound music-making, his gusto for life, his passionate dedication to sharing his knowledge and wisdom with younger musicians, and his determination in a good cause (Stern is, after all, The Man Who Saved Carnegie Hall). Indeed, there is no more revered musician in the world than Isaac Stern, revered not only as a great violinist but as a warm and generous personality and as a crucial figure and spokesperson in the world of the arts. Brought to America from Russia when he was ten months old, Stern grew up in San Francisco and was quickly recognized as an extraordinary talent. He began performing publicly while still very young, and was soon touring across the country and around the world. His fame escalated when he led the fight to save Carnegie Hall, and again when he was the subject of the Academy Award-winning documentary film From Mao to Mozart. In this book he shares with us both his personal and his artistic experiences: the story of his rise to eminence; his feelings about music and the violin; his rich emotional life; his great friendships and collaborations with colleagues such as Leonard Bernstein and Pablo Casals; his background as an ardent supporter of Israel; his ideas and beliefs about art, life, love, and the world we live in. At seventy-nine, Stern's mind, his wit, and his spirit are as strong as ever, and they are conveyed to us in the most sympathetic and articulate way by Chaim Potok. The two men spent a year talking and sharing their perceptions, and the result is a book in which Stern's voice comes through with complete conviction and persuasiveness. The man on the page is the musician and humanitarian we have loved and admired for so long. Here is the most readable and revealing musical autobiography of the decade.

This book came about through a conversation the author had with his friend and editor, Zoltán Hafner, over the course of 2003 and 2004.

Even before he wrote his bestselling book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine , historian Ilan Pappe was a controversial figure in Israel. In Out of the Frame , he gives a full account of his break with conventional Israeli scholarship and its consequences. Growing up in a conventional Israeli community influenced by the utopian visions of Theodor Herzl, Pappe was barely aware of the Nakbah in his high school years. Here, he traces his journey of discovery from the whispers of Palestinian classmates to his realization that the "enemy's" narrative of the events of 1948 was correct. After producing his Ph.D at Oxford University based on recently declassified documents in the early 1980s, he returned to Palestine determined to protect the memory of the Nakbah and struggle for the rectification of its evils. For the first time, he gives the details of the formidable opposition he faced in Israel, including death threats fed by the media, denunciations by the Knesset, and calls for him to be sacked from his post at Haifa University. This revealing work, written with dignity and humor, highlights Israel's difficulty in facing up to its past and forging a peaceful, inclusive future in Palestine.

Ian Halperin is no stranger to undercover investigations. He posed as a model in 2001 to expose the fashion industry, his resulting in the expos� Shut Up and Smile . In Hollywood Undercover , he gives us a unique and scandalous glimpse behind the scenes of the movie business. This time he poses as an aspiring actor and soon finds himself with an agent, a job offer (admittedly in a hardcore porn film) and ultimately a part in The Aviator , directed by Martin Scorcese. In the interim, he is surprised to uncover anti-Semitism in Hollywood; infiltrates the Church of Scientology, whose celebrity stable includes Tom Cruise and John Travolta; and meets numerous A-listers, including Brad Pitt, Barbra Streisand, and Leonardo DiCaprio, who give him the inside track on what life in Hollywood is really like.

"Howard Jacobson's funny, revealing and tender memoir of his path to becoming a writer. It's my theory that only the unhappy, the uncomfortable, the gauche, the badly put together, aspire to make art. Why would you seek to reshape the world unless you were ill-at-ease in it? And I came out of the womb in every sense the wrong way round. In Mother's Boy, Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson reveals how he became a writer. It is an exploration of belonging and not-belonging, of being an insider and outsider, both English and Jewish. Jacobson was forty when his first novel was published. In Mother's Boy he traces the life that brought him there. Born to a working-class family in 1940s Manchester, the great-grandson of Lithuanian and Russian immigrants, Jacobson was raised by his mother, grandmother and aunt Joyce. His father was a regimental tailor, as well as an upholsterer, a market-stall holder, a taxi driver, a balloonist, and a magician. Grappling always with his family's history and his Jewish identity, Jacobson takes us from the growing pains of childhood to studying at Cambridge under F.R. Leavis, and landing in Sydney as a maverick young professor on campus." --

By the time of his untimely death in 1983, Herman Kahn was recognized by both friends and intellectual adversaries as "one of the world's most creative and best minds." The current growing resurgence of interest in Kahn's ideas and intellectual legacy demonstrates the enduring relevance of his work. Yet, in spite of the constant influence of his arguments, there is a shortage of books summarizing Kahn's essential contributions, and thus his work is not as well known as it should be. The Essential Herman Kahn is an attempt to cope with this predicament and offer the public for the first time.

A leader’s provocative look at 20th century financial markets Henry Kaufman, former vice Chairman of Salomon Brothers, was a key Wall Street figure in the 70s and 80s. His projections about interest rates, bond performance, unemployment, and government debt impacted monetary policy in more than one presidential administration, and prompted swings in the markets. You’ll find On Money and Markets —Dr. Kaufman’s look back at the financial and economic arenas he helped shape for half a century — both fascinating and valuable. His memoir gives you insight into such questions as why the Federal Reserve has gained so much power, and what it means for investors....and what patterns we can see in the credit crunches and other financial crises that have rocked Wall Street and world markets. The dozen or so questions he explores are of serious concern to today’s investors. And few other experts have Dr. Kaufman’s perspective and experience to answer them.

"Daring to struggle, daring to win tells the fascinating true story of an individual radical organizer turned independent Chicago city council member, and her forty year struggle for justice in Chicago. Helen Shiller went from radical anti-war activist in Wisconsin, to a member of a collective of white allies of the Black Panther Party in Chicago, to an elected city council person who helped break the back of the racialized opposition to Harold Washington, Chicago's first Black mayor. Shiller participated, when few other did, in the historic fight against the gentrification of a unique economically and racially mixed Chicago community on the Northside. With insight into historic community organizing and political battles in Chicago from the 1970s through 2010, this book details numerous policy fights and conflicts in Chicago during this time, illuminating recurrent political themes and battles that remain relevant to this day." --

"In The Damned Don't Cry -- They Just Disappear, literary historian and Lamba Award--winning novelist Harlan Greene has created a portrait of a nearly forgotten Southern writer, unearthing information from archives, rare books, film libraries, and small-town newspapers. Greene brings Harry Hervey (1900-1951) to life and explicates his works to reveal him as a hardworking writer and master of many genres, bravely unwilling to conform to conventional values. As Greene illustrates, Hervey's novels, short stories, nonfiction books, and film scripts contain complex mixtures of history and thinly disguised homoerotic situations and themes. They blend local color, naturalism, melodrama, and psychological and sexual truths that provide a view of the circles in which he moved. Living openly with his male lover in Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, Hervey set novels in these cities that scandalized the locals and critics as well. He challenged the sexual mores of his day, sometimes subtly and at other times brazenly presenting texts that told one story to gay male readers, while still courting a mainstream audience. His novels and nonfiction may have been coded and thus escaped detection in their day, but twenty-first-century readers can decipher them easily" --

Presents stories of nine child survivors, as related to Teller.

The memoir of Gwendolyn Midlo Hall offers today's activists and readers an accessible and intimate examination of a crucial era in American radical history. Born in 1929 New Orleans to left-wing Jewish parents, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall's life has spanned nearly a century of engagement in anti-racist, internationalist political activism. In this moving and instructive chronicle of her remarkable life, Midlo Hall recounts her experiences as an anti-racist activist, a Communist Party militant, and a scholar of slavery in the Americas, as well as the wife and collaborator of the renowned African-American author and Communist leader Harry Haywood. Telling the story of her life against the backdrop of the important political and social developments of the 20th century, Midlo Hall offers new insights about a critical period in the history of labor and civil rights movements in the United States. Detailing everything from Midlo Hall's co-founding of the only inter-racial youth organization in the South when she was 16-years-old, to her pioneering work establishing digital slave databases, to her own struggles against cruel and pervasive sexism, Haunted by Slavery is a gripping account of a life defined by profound dedication to a cause.

"Born in 1915 to Russian Jewish immigrants, Saul Bellow was raised in the small town - "a medieval" shtetl he called it - of Lachine, Quebec, and then in a predominantly Jewish section of Montreal until the age of nine. He had a trilingual childhood which included Yiddish as well as English and French. In an insightful new look at Bellow's life and career, Gerald Sorin argues that Bellow's immersion in Yiddish and childhood memories of the vibrant Jewish life on Montreal's Napoleon and Dominique streets continued to echo in his adult inner ear and permeated almost all of his writing. Much of Bellow's creative power, including the dynamic, comic, and lusty language that became his literary signature, was shaped and informed by the fact that he was Jewish"--

The Blackwell Companion to Major Contemporary Social Theorists is a survey of contemporary social theory that focuses on the thinkers themselves. In original essays especially commissioned for this volume, leading experts and practitioners examine the life and work of 13 major theorists such as Elias, Baudrillard, Giddens, and Butler. Includes 13 original essays by leading scholars on major contemporary social theorists. Covers key figures such as Elias, Goffman, Foucault, Habermas, Giddens, Bourdieu, and Butler. Essays include biographical sketches, the social and intellectual context, and the impact of the thinker's work on social theory generally. Includes bibliographies of the theorist's most important works as well as key secondary works. Can be used in conjunction with The Blackwell Companion to Major Classical Social Theorists , edited by George Ritzer, for a complete reference source in social theory.