Discusses the cause célèbre of Edgardo Mortara, who in 1858, at the age of six, was taken by force from his Jewish home in Bologna by the pontifical police on the grounds that he had been baptized as an infant by a family servant. Despite the efforts of his family, Jews in Italy and abroad, and foreign ambassadors and rulers, he was never returned to his family. Pope Pius IX defended the Church's policy of remaining true to its salvationist ideology, and refused to surrender the boy. Edgardo ultimately chose not to return to Judaism but to become a priest. (He died in a Belgian abbey in March 1940.) The case is shown to be pivotal in terms of the unification of Italy and the loss of papal power. Describes the various ways Jews attempted, unsuccessfully, to free Mortara: quiet diplomacy, legal means, the involvement of influential Jews, the Jewish and non-Jewish press, and self-defense organizations (the Alliance Israélite Universelle was founded in reaction to the kidnapping). Reveals much about Christian-Jewish relations on the political and social level, one aspect of which was relations between Jewish employers and Christian servants.

"An eminent historian recounts the Nazi rise to power from his unique perspective as a young Jewish boy in Munich, living with Adolf Hitler as his neighbor. Watching events unfold from his window, Edgar bore witness to the Night of the Long Knives, the Anschluss, and Kristallnacht. Jews were arrested; his father was imprisoned at Dachau. In 1939 Edgar was sent on his own to England, where he would make a new life, a career, have a family, and strive to forget the nightmare of his past--a past that came rushing back when he decided, at the age of eighty-eight, to tell the story of his buried childhood and his infamous neighbor"--Provided by publisher.

"Historian Jonathan Ned Katz uncovers the forgotten story of radical lesbian feminist Eve Adams, and her long-lost book Lesbian Love. Born Chawa Zloczewer into a Jewish family in Poland, Eve Adams emigrated to the United States in 1912, took a new name, befriended anarchists, sold radical publications, and ran lesbian-and-gay-friendly speakeasies in Chicago and New York. Then, in 1925, Adams risked all to write and publish a book titled Lesbian Love. Adams's bold activism caught the attention of the young J. Edgar Hoover and the US Bureau of Investigation, leading to her surveillance and arrest. Adams was convicted of publishing an obscene book and of attempted sex with a policewoman sent to entrap her. Adams was jailed and then deported back to Europe, and ultimately murdered by Nazis in Auschwitz. In The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams, acclaimed historian Jonathan Ned Katz has recovered the extraordinary story of an early, daring activist. Carefully distinguishing fact from fiction, Katz presents the first biography of Adams, and the publisher reprints the long-lost text of Adams's rare, unique book Lesbian Love."--Publisher's website.

Includes material on Leon Trotsky, Isadora Duncan, John Reed, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Vladimir Lenin, William Jennings Bryan, Emma Goldman, George Bernard Shaw, Theodore Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover, Tito, Benito Mussolini, Sinclair Lewis, Ernest Hemingway, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Ralph Nader.

Traces the author's involvement with the Seagram Company, and his experiences and reflections as he learned the running of the business from the ground up.

So, just how was Tarzan created? Eager to know the inside story about the legendary John Carter and the amazing cities and peoples of Barsoom? Perhaps your taste is more suited to David Innes and the fantastic lost world at the Earth?s core? Or maybe wrong-way Napier and the bizarre civilizations of cloud-enshrouded Venus are more to your liking? These pages contain all that you will ever want to know about the wondrous worlds and unforgettable characters penned by the master storyteller Edgar Rice Burroughs. ø Richard A. Lupoff, the respected critic and writer who helped spark a Burroughs revival in the 1960s, reveals fascinating details about the stories written by the creator of Tarzan. Featured here are outlines of all of Burroughs?s major novels, with descriptions of how they were each written and their respective sources of inspiration. This Bison Books edition includes a new foreword by fantasy writer Michael Moorcock, a new introduction by the author, a final chapter by Phillip R. Burger, as well as corrected text and an updated bibliography.

Edgar Morin, one of France's greatest living intellectuals, tells the story of his father, Vidal Nahoum, but also the story of Sephardic Jews, and of Europe. In this 'holographic history' Vidal's story, and that of his family, carries within it the flowering, decline, and death of Jewish culture in Spain, the passage from Empires to Nation States, the complex relations between Jews and Gentiles, between East and West, and, ultimately, the history of the twentieth century itself. Morin's work ranges from the great sweep of global historical events to the everyday details of individual lives, letters, feelings, reflections, and experiences. Vidal was born in 1894 in the Ottoman Empire's great Macedonian port. His great-grandfather came from Tuscany and spoke Italian. His mother tongue was fifteenth-century Spanish. He learned French and German as a child. When he was an adolescent, he dreamed of living in France; he was deported there as a prisoner, and then liberated by the French Prime Minister. He lived through the Balkan wars, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and two World Wars. Vidal cannot be isolated from his family. And as Edgar Morin explains, "this book also tells the stories of the men and women in his immediate family When, as his son, I inevitably come into his story... I describe him as objectively as possible. The reverence that inspired me did not call for a work of edification; it implied that I should attempt to write a truthful book. For this reason, the book is not in the least respectful, or at least not in the usual sense of the word. Vidal felt that loving someone meant being able to tease him. The author of these lines, who has inherited something of this trait, does not think it disrespectful to tease or make fun of the people he loves."