Auschwitz & The Holocaust: Eyewitness Accounts from Auschwitz Prisoners & Survivors


Ryan Jenkins - 2014
    In this companion volume to The Holocaust: An Introduction, you will go through a detailed account of the camp, its methods of killing and cruelty, and more. Buy your copy today to become educated in both the far reaches of evil in those responsible and the heights of bravery in those that survived. Here's a Preview of What You Will Learn * Origins of Auschwitz * Witold Pilecki * Auschwitz I * Auschwitz-Birkenau * First-hand accounts from the camps DOWNLOAD YOUR COPY TODAY

The Fortune Teller's Kiss


Brenda Serotte - 2006
    But whatever precautions Brenda Serotte was subjected to, they were not enough. Shortly before her eighth birthday, in the fall of 1954, she came down with polio—painfully singled out in a world already marked by differences. Her bout with the dreaded disease is at the heart of this poignant and heartbreakingly hilarious memoir of growing up a Sephardic Jew among Ashkenazi neighbors in the Bronx. This was a world of belly dancers and fortune tellers, shelter drills and vast quantities of Mediterranean food; a world of staunchly joined and endlessly contrary aunts and uncles, all drawn here in loving, merciless detail. The Fortune Teller’s Kiss is a heartfelt tribute to a disappearing culture and a paean to the author’s truly quirky clan, especially her beloved champion, her father. It is also a deft and intimate cultural history of the Bronx fifty years ago and of its middle-class inhabitants, their attitudes toward contagious illness, womanly beauty, poverty, and belonging.

Woody Allen: A Biography


John Baxter - 1998
    It also explores the real Woody Allen, the critically acclaimed filmmaker from the Upper East Side, and his amusing movie persona of a neurotic and lovable loser.Shrewdly and effectively deconstructing Woody, John Baxter's biography illuminates Allen's preoccupation with sex and mortality, his personal quirks and obsessions, his manipulation of celebrity, and his cinematic achievement as chronicler and court jester of Manhattan's intellectual elite."A splendidly written, exhaustive account and a major achievement" - The Observer"Astute and highly entertaining biography" - Daily Telegraph"A bracing corrective to the usual po-faced, sycophantic studies of the cult of Woody" - Mail on Sunday"Full of interesting information for cinema enthusiasts" - The Spectator"The saga [of Woody and Mia] makes compulsive reading" - The Guardian

The Heritage: A Jewish Historical Fiction Novel


Jack Michonik - 2015
    Thousands of Jewish families are forced to flee poverty and anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe. Fate takes two families to the magical continent of South America, which opens its generous arms to them. Many surprises await the immigrants in the New World. In this exciting story of their lives from their early teens in the “shtetl” to leisurely musings of middle age, we see the hardships immigrants face in the long journey to America, the complex process of adaptation to an unfamiliar environment and the phenomenal development of their businesses. Parallel to the story of the main characters, another story emerges: that of the birth of a typical Jewish community within a Christian city. Translated from the original Spanish book, La Descendencia, The Heritage is peppered with reflections on religion and historical events of the time regarding the Jews and the state of Israel. Throughout the narrative, the author captivates us with a fascinating story of overcoming, human conflicts and addresses issues of assimilation and identity. Though not an autobiographical novel, it could be the story of the parents or grandparents of any Jew from Central or South America. The author preferred to use a fictional provincial capital of Latin American so that the reader can recognize the history of his or her own Jewish community, as all Jewish communities in Latin America came into being in an almost identical manner.

Breaking the Line: The Season in Black College Football That Transformed the Sport and Changed the Course of Civil Rights


Samuel G. Freedman - 2009
    Two rival football teams. Two legendary coaches. Two talented quarterbacks. Together they broke the color line, revolutionized college sports, and transformed the NFL.1967. TWO RIVAL FOOTBALL TEAMS. TWO LEGENDARY COACHES. TWO STAR QUARTERBACKS. TOGETHER THEY BROKE THE COLOR L INE, REVOLUTIONIZED COLLEGE SPORTS, AND TRANSFORMED THE NFL. In September 1967, after three years of landmark civil rights laws and three months of devastating urban riots, the football season began at Louisiana’s Grambling College and Florida A&M. The teams were led by two extraordinary coaches, Eddie Robinson and Jake Gaither, and they featured the best quarterbacks ever at each school, James Harris and Ken Riley. Breaking the Line brings to life the historic saga of the battle for the 1967 black college championship, culminating in a riveting, excruciatingly close contest. Samuel G. Freedman traces the rise of these four leaders and their teammates as they storm through the season. Together they helped compel the segre­gated colleges of the South to integrate their teams and redefined who could play quarterback in the NFL, who could be a head coach, and who could run a franchise as general manager. In Breaking the Line, Freedman brilliantly tells this suspenseful story of character and talent as he takes us from locker room to state capitol, from embattled campus to packed stadium. He captures a pivotal time in American sport and society, filling a missing and crucial chapter in the movement for civil rights.

Total Immersion


Allegra Goodman - 1989
    But when the president of the synagogue absconds with a small fortune, far deeper—and more troubling—rifts emerge...In "The Closet," Evelyn's sister flees her family to take up residence in the attic—while the shunned Evelyn finds herself slipping into the waters of her sister's soul....In "Wish List," an expert on terrorism, vacationing at an academic retreat in England,receives a late-night phone call from National Public Radio. Asked for commentary on a hostage situation of which he is ignorant, Ed can whisper only: "It's unspeakable."Total ImmersionIn these and other exquisite stories, Allegra Goodman fills rooms with laughter and voices, captures dinner parties, seaside picnics, academic grudges, shul politics, and the kind of hurts that only families and lovers can know. Featuring two new stories previously published in The New Yorker, Total Immersion is Allegra Goodman's first collection of short fiction—a masterful work from one of the most powerful and eloquent voices on the American literary landscape.

The Lonely Tree


Yael Politis - 2008
    She hates the hardships of life in Kfar Etzion - an isolated kibbutz south of Jerusalem - clearing rocky hillsides, bathing in rationed cups of trucked-in water, and being confined behind barbed wire. Her own dreams have nothing to do with national self-realization; she longs for steaming bubble baths and down comforters, but most of all for a place on earth where she can feel safe. She is in love with Amos, but refuses to acknowledge these feelings. She knows he will never leave his homeland and Tonia plans to emigrate to America. But can she really begin a new life there? Tonia's story in The Lonely Tree is interwoven with the true story of Kfar Etzion, a kibbutz that was overrun by the Arab Legion during pre-War of Independence hostilities.

The Other Half of My Soul


Bahia Abrams - 2007
    The book raises profound questions about personal choices, commitments, responsibility, and the most basic truths of the human race. Rayna is born into wealth and privilege. She is raised in a community steeped in orthodox Judaism and Syrian culture. Rebelling against an unwritten law dictating that a female does not leave her family home until marrying a man approved by her parents, Rayna breaks away and attends the University of Maryland to study journalism. Rami is a clever and discerning eighteen year old, part of the underprivileged Shi-ite minority in his country. His family barely ekes out a living at their pastry stand in the Aleppo Souk. Al-Shahid, the Syrian-backed terrorist group, offers Rami a scholarship to study in America at the University of Maryland. He dares not refuse. Rami and Rayna meet at college. Their strong Syrian culture quickly bonds them and the forbidden happens. They fall in love. Grappling for survival, they collide with conflicts and hatreds that divide Muslim and Jew, endure intolerance and harsh backlash from their families, and suffer under the control of an irrational terrorist leader. Drawn from life experiences, historical events, current happenings, and actual places, The Other Half of My Soul; journeys across four continents, uncovering the barbaric behavior of humanity. In the end, the book bears a powerful message about unconditional love and the ability to defeat the hateful dictates of ideology.

In My Mother's House


Margaret McMullan - 2003
    The story of Elizabeth and her mother Jenny is remarkable for its fullness of details: the pieces of family silver the grandmother mails to Jenny, piece by piece, over the years; Jenny's vivid memories of her uncle's viola d'amore lessons; the smell of the wood floors in the family's Vienna home. It's an emotional story of what is inherited from one generation to the next.

Jewtopia: The Chosen Book for the Chosen People


Bryan Fogel - 2006
    It contains the Jewish nursery blueprint, complete with panic room, fireproof wallpaper and guardian ninja, the top-ten list of Jewish 'dont's', the complete timeline of Jewish expulsion, and much more.

Crash Course in Jewish History: The Miracle and Meaning of Jewish History, from Abraham to Modern Israel


Ken Spiro - 2010
    

If a Place Can Make You Cry: Dispatches from an Anxious State


Daniel Gordis - 2002
    They planned to be there for a year, during which time Daniel would be a Fellow at the Mandel Institute in Jerusalem. This was a euphoric time in Israel. The economy was booming, and peace seemed virtually guaranteed. A few months into their stay, Gordis and his wife decided to remain in Israel permanently, confident that their children would be among the first generation of Israelis to grow up in peace.Immediately after arriving in Israel, Daniel had started sending out e-mails about his and his family’s life to friends and family abroad. These missives—passionate, thoughtful, beautifully written, and informative—began reaching a much broader readership than he’d ever envisioned, eventually being excerpted in The New York Times Magazine to much acclaim. An edited and finely crafted collection of his original e-mails, If a Place Can Make You Cry is a first-person, immediate account of Israel’s post-Oslo meltdown that cuts through the rhetoric and stridency of most dispatches from that country or from the international media. Above all, Gordis tells the story of a family that must cope with the sudden realization that they took their children from a serene and secure neighborhood in Los Angeles to an Israel not at peace but mired in war. This is the chronicle of a loss of innocence—the innocence of Daniel and his wife, and of their children. Ultimately, through Gordis’s eyes, Israel, with all its beauty, madness, violence, and history, comes to life in a way we’ve never quite seen before.Daniel Gordis captures as no one has the years leading up to what every Israeli dreaded: on April 1, 2002, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared that Israel was at war. After an almost endless cycle of suicide bombings and harsh retaliation, any remaining chance for peace had seemingly died.If a Place Can Make You Cry is the story of a time in which peace gave way to war, when childhood innocence evaporated in the heat of hatred, when it became difficult even to hope. Like countless other Israeli parents, Gordis and his wife struggled to make their children’s lives manageable and meaningful, despite it all. This is a book about what their children gained, what they lost, and how, in the midst of everything, a whole family learned time and again what really matters.From the Hardcover edition.

Small Miracles Ii


Yitta Halberstam - 1998
    Each Small Miracles book is a collection of more than sixty heartwarming stories that recall remarkable coincidences that have changed people's ordinary lives.

The Haindl Tarot: The Major Arcana (Haindl Tarot)


Rachel Pollack - 1990
    The Major Arcana show us the story of the soul as it confronts life, develops consciousness, and ultimately finds mystic enlightenment.

A Narrow Bridge


J.J. Gesher - 2017
    HIs faith shattered, Jacob flees the comforts of his community and disappears. He lands up in a predominantly black town in rural Alabama, where he meets Rosie, the single mother of a young son. Their developing relationship, along with the rekindling of his love of music, precipitate events that will change both their lives. This debut novel is a powerful page-turner that follows a complex man on a journey of salvation after tragedy.J.J. Gesher is the pen name for co-authors Joyce Gittlin and Janet B. Fattal. Together, Janet and Joyce have won several prestigious screenwriting awards, including the Geller Prize and the Screenwriting Award at the Austin Film Festival. Their first screenwriting collaboration was produced as a Lifetime Television feature.Joyce Gittlin has written and directed such television shows as Wings, Frasier, and Everybody Loves Raymond and has written more than ten feature films for Disney, Paramount, and 20th Century Fox. She has an MFA from NYU.Janet B. Fattal has a masters in Comparative Literature from UCLA and has taught literature and writing at the college level. The editor of several memoirs, Janet leads many Los Angeles–area book groups, including for the Skirball Cultural Center, Hadassah, and the Brandeis alumni association. The co-authors both live in Los Angeles.