This historical magnum opus covers 4,000 years of the extraordinary history of the Jews as a people, a culture, and a nation, showing the impact of Jewish character and imagination upon the world.

    The first "graphic history book" of its kind, The Story of the Jews celebrates the major characters and events that have shaped the Jewish people and culture, illustrating what it means to be Jewish. You will visit all the major Jewish happenings from biblical times to the twenty-first century--from Abraham and Sarah on the banks of the Euphrates to the Diaspora, intermarriage, and the State of Israel. Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, The triumph of King David, The creation of the Talmud, The rise of Christianity and Islam, The Crusades, The Inquisition, The Enlightenment, Life in the new Babylon (the United States), The birth of the state of Israel, And--of course--the world's first "Oy!"

    Topics range from ruminations on why Charles Dickens was among the best of writers and the worst of men to the haunting science fiction of J.G. Ballard; from the enduring legacies of Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell to the persistent agonies of anti-Semitism and jihad. Hitchens even looks at the recent financial crisis and argues for the enduring relevance of Karl Marx. The book forms a bridge between the two parallel enterprises of culture and politics. It reveals how politics justifies itself by culture, and how the latter prompts the former. In this fashion, Arguably burnishes Christopher Hitchens' credentials as (to quote Christopher Buckley) our "greatest living essayist in the English language."

    There’s a famous piece of writing advice—offered by Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, and myriad writers in between—not to use -ly adverbs like “quickly” or “fitfully.” It sounds like solid advice, but can we actually test it? If we were to count all the -ly adverbs these authors used in their careers, do they follow their own advice compared to other celebrated authors? What’s more, do great books in general—the classics and the bestsellers—share this trait?In Nabokov’s Favorite Word Is Mauve, statistician and journalist Ben Blatt brings big data to the literary canon, exploring the wealth of fun findings that remain hidden in the works of the world’s greatest writers. He assembles a database of thousands of books and hundreds of millions of words, and starts asking the questions that have intrigued curious word nerds and book lovers for generations: What are our favorite authors’ favorite words? Do men and women write differently? Are bestsellers getting dumber over time? Which bestselling writer uses the most clichés? What makes a great opening sentence? How can we judge a book by its cover? And which writerly advice is worth following or ignoring?

    Tolkien assembled in this new paperback edition were with one exception delivered as general lectures on particular occasions; and while they mostly arose out of Tolkien’s work in medieval literature, they are accessible to all. Two of them are concerned with Beowulf, including the well-known lecture whose title is taken for this book, and one with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, given in the University of Glasgow in 1953.Also included in this volume is the lecture English and Welsh; the Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford in 1959; and a paper on Invented Languages delivered in 1931, with exemplification from poems in the Elvish tongues. Most famous of all is On Fairy-Stories, a discussion of the nature of fairy-tales and fantasy, which gives insight into Tolkien’s approach to the whole genre.The pieces in this collection cover a period of nearly thirty years, beginning six years before the publication of The Hobbit, with a unique ‘academic’ lecture on his invention (calling it A Secret Vice) and concluding with his farewell to professorship, five years after the publication of The Lord of the Rings.

    

    It is also the most enigmatic, shrouded in secrecy. Mossad: The Greatest Missions of the Israeli Secret Service unveils the defi ning and most dangerous operations that have shaped Israel and the world at large from the agency's more than sixty-year history, among them: the capture of Adolf Eichmann, the eradication of Black September, the destruction of the Syrian nuclear facility, and the elimination of key Iranian nuclear scientists.Through intensive research and exclusive interviews with Israeli leaders and Mossad agents, authors Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal re-create these missions in riveting detail, vividly bringing to life the heroic operatives who risked everything in the face of unimaginable danger. In the words of Shimon Peres, president of Israel, this gripping, white-knuckle read "tells what should have been known and isn't--that Israel's hidden force is as formidable as its recognized physical strength."

    In this book she describes the perplexing crises which modern society faces as a result of the loss of meaning of the traditional key words of politics: justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory. Through a series of eight exercises, she shows how we can redistill once more the vital essence of these concepts.

    Collins & Lapierre weave a tapestry of shattered hopes, valor & fierce pride as the Arabs, Jews & British collide in their fight for control of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem! meticulously recreates this historic struggle. It penetrates the battle from the inside, exploring each party's interests, intentions & concessions as the city of their dreams teeters on the brink of destruction. From the Jewish fighters & their heroic commanders to the Arab chieftain whose death in battle doomed his cause along with the Mufti of Jerusalem's support for Hitler and the extermination of the Jews, but inspired a generation of Palestinians, O Jerusalem! tells the 3-dimensional story of this high-stakes, emotional conflict.

    Nothing of the anti-Semite either in his subtle form as a snob, or in his crude form as a gangster, escapes Sartre's sharp eye, and the whole problem of the Jew's relationship to the Gentile is examined in a concrete and living way, rather than in terms of sociological abstractions.

    Read each year at the Seder table, the Haggadah recounts the miraculous tale of the liberation of the Children of Israel from slavery in Egypt, with a celebration of prayer, ritual, and song. Wiesel and Podwal guide you through the Haggadah and share their understanding and faith in a special illustrated edition that will be treasured for years to come. Accompanying the traditional Haggadah text (which appears here in an accessible new translation) are Elie Wiesel's poetic interpretations, reminiscences, and instructive retellings of ancient legends. The Nobel laureate interweaves past and present as the symbolism of the Seder is explored. Wiesel's commentaries may be read aloud in their entirety or selected passages may be read each year to illuminate the timeless message of this beloved book of redemption. This volume is enhanced by more than fifty original drawings by Mark Podwal, the artist whom Cynthia Ozick has called a "genius of metaphor through line." Podwal's work not only complements the traditional Haggadah text, as well as Wiesel's poetic voice, but also serves as commentary unto itself. The drawings, with their fresh juxtapositions of insight and revelation, are an innovative contribution to the long tradition of Haggadah illustration.

    Drawing on a wide range of  great writers, from Philip Roth to Antonin Scalia to Jane Austen, How to Write a Sentence is much more than a writing manual—it is a spirited love letter to the written word, and a key to understanding how great writing works.

    In Englander's amazingly taut and ambitious "The Twenty-seventh Man," a clerical error lands earnest, unpublished Pinchas Pelovits in prison with twenty-six writers slated for execution at Stalin's command, and in the grip of torture Pinchas composes a mini-masterpiece, which he recites in one glorious moment before author and audience are simultaneously annihilated. In "The Gilgul of Park Avenue," a Protestant has a religious awakening in the back of a New York taxi. In the collection's hilarious title story, a Hasidic man incensed by his wife's interminable menstrual cycle gets a dispensation from his rabbi to see a prostitute. The stories in For the Relief of Unbearable Urges are powerfully inventive and often haunting, steeped in the weight of Jewish history and in the customs of Orthodox life. But it is in the largeness of their spirit-- a spirit that finds in doubt a doorway to faith, that sees in despair a chance for the heart to deepen--and in the wisdom that so prodigiously transcends the author's twenty-eight years, that these stories are truly remarkable. Nathan Englander envisions a group of Polish Jews herded toward a train bound for Auschwitz and in a deft imaginative twist turns them into acrobats tumbling out of harm's way; he takes an elderly wigmaker and makes her, for a single moment, beautiful. Again and again, Englander does what feels impossible: he finds, wherever he looks, a province beyond death's dominion.For the Relief of Unbearable Urges is a work of stunning authority and imagination--a book that is as wondrous and joyful as it is wrenchingly sad, and that heralds the arrival of a profoundly gifted new storyteller.

    Her father, Leon, was a boulevardier who conducted business on the elegant terrace of Shepheard's Hotel, and later, in the cozy, dark bar of the Nile Hilton, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit. But with the fall of King Farouk and Nasser's nationalization of Egyptian industry, Leon and his family lose everything. As streets are renamed, neighborhoods of their fellow Jews disbanded, and the city purged of all foreign influence, the Lagnados, too, must make their escape. With all of their belongings packed into twenty-six suitcases, their jewels and gold coins hidden in sealed tins of marmalade, Leon and his family depart for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxta-posed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.An inversion of the American dream set against the stunning portraits of three world cities, Lucette Lagnado's memoir offers a grand and sweeping story of faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph.Winner of the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and hailed by the New York Times Book Review as a "brilliant, crushing book" and the New Yorker as a memoir of ruin "told without melodrama by its youngest survivor," The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit recounts the exile of the author's Jewish Egyptian family from Cairo in 1963 and her father's heroic and tragic struggle to survive his "riches to rags" trajectory.

    It provides practical advice on how to manage a Jewish home in the traditional way and offers fascinating accounts of the history behind the tradition. In a warm, personal style, Blu Greenberg shows that, contrary to popular belief, the home, and not the synagogue, is the most important institution in Jewish life. Divided into three large sections—"The Jewish Way," "Special Stages of Life," and "Celebration and Remembering"—this book educates the uninitiated and reminds the already observant Jew of how Judaism approaches daily life. Topics include prayer, dress, holidays, food preparation, marriage, birth, death, parenthood, and many others. This description of the modern-yet-traditional Jewish household will earn special regard among the many American Jews who are re-exploring their ties to Jewish tradition. Such Jews will find this book a flexible guide that provides a knowledge of the requirements of traditional Judaism without advocating immediate and complete compliance. How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household will also appeal to observant Jews, providing them with helpful tips on how to manage their homes and special insights into the most minute details and procedures in a traditional household. Herself a traditional Jew, Blu Greenberg is nevertheless quite sympathetic to feminist views on the role of women in Jewish observance. How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household therefore speaks intimately to women who are struggling to reconcile their identities as modern women with their commitments to traditional Judaism.