How the Other Half Lives


Jacob A. Riis - 1890
    With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

We Stand Divided: Competing Visions of Jewishness and the Rift Between American Jews and Israel


Daniel Gordis - 2019
    From National Jewish Book Award Winner and author of Israel, a bold reevaluation of the tensions between American and Israeli Jews that reimagines the past, present, and future of Jewish life

All the Rivers


Dorit Rabinyan - 2014
    Charismatic and handsome, Hilmi is a talented young artist from Palestine. Liat, an aspiring translation student, plans to return to Israel the following summer. Despite knowing that their love can be only temporary, that it can exist only away from their conflicted homeland, Liat lets herself be enraptured by Hilmi: by his lively imagination, by his beautiful hands and wise eyes, by his sweetness and devotion.Together they explore the city, sharing laughs and fantasies and pangs of homesickness. But the unfettered joy they awaken in each other cannot overcome the guilt Liat feels for hiding him from her family in Israel and her Jewish friends in New York. As her departure date looms and her love for Hilmi deepens, Liat must decide whether she is willing to risk alienating her family, her community, and her sense of self for the love of one man.Banned from classrooms by Israel’s Ministry of Education, Dorit Rabinyan’s remarkable novel contains multitudes. A bold portrayal of the strains—and delights—of a forbidden relationship, All the Rivers (published in Israel as Borderline) is a love story and a war story, a New York story and a Middle East story, an unflinching foray into the forces that bind us and divide us. “The land is the same land,” Hilmi reminds Liat. “In the end all the rivers flow into the same sea.”

Le Road Trip: A Traveler's Journal of Love and France


Vivian Swift - 2012
    Le Road Trip combines the appeal of the iconic American quest with France's irresistible allure, offering readers a totally new perspective of life on the road.Le Road Trip tells the story of one idyllic French honeymoon trip, but it is also a witty handbook of tips and advice on how to thrive as a traveler, a captivating visual record with hundreds of watercolor illustrations, and a chronicle depicting the incomparable charms of being footloose in France. Armchair travelers, die-hard vagabonds, art journalists, and red wine drinkers will all find something to savor in this story.

Angels in America


Tony Kushner - 1993
    Prior is a man living with AIDS whose lover Louis has left him and become involved with Joe, an ex-Mormon and political conservative whose wife, Harper, is slowly having a nervous breakdown. These stories are contrasted with that of Roy Cohn (a fictional re-creation of the infamous American conservative ideologue who died of AIDS in 1986) and his attempts to remain in the closet while trying to find some sort of personal salvation in his beliefs.

Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth


Noa Tishby - 2021
    The small strip of arid land is 5,700 miles away but remains a hot-button issue and a thorny topic of debate. But while everyone seems to have a strong opinion about Israel, how many people actually know the facts? Here to fill in the information gap is Israeli American Noa Tishby. But “this is not your Bubbie’s history book” (Bill Maher, host of Real Time with Bill Maher). Instead, offering a fresh, 360-degree view, Tishby brings her “passion, humor, and deep intimacy” (Yossi Klein Halevi, New York Times bestselling author of Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor) to the subject, creating an accessible and dynamic portrait of a tiny country of outsized relevance. Through bite-sized chunks of history and deeply personal stories, Tishby chronicles her homeland’s evolution, beginning in Biblical times and moving forward to cover everything from WWI to Israel’s creation to the disputes dividing the country today. Tackling popular misconceptions with an abundance of facts, Tishby provides critical context around headline-generating controversies and offers a clear, intimate account of the richly cultured country of Israel.

The Longest Ride: My Ten-Year 500,000 Mile Motorcycle Journey


Emilio Scotto - 2007
    Promptly he announced his plan to make a route that would pass through all the countries of the world, a route he named BLUE ROAD ONE. When, some years later, he found himself astride a black 1100 Honda Gold Wing motorcycle, Blue Road One beckoned, and Scotto set off on a journey that would last more than a decade, take him virtually everywhere in the world, and land him in the Guinness Book of World Records. This is his story, a thrill ride that begins in his native Argentina, crosses Panama in the tumultuous time of Noriega, Mexico in the midst of an earthquake, and finds him broke in L.A. where, in a chance meeting, Muhammad Ali gives him fifty dollars and a signed book. Breaching the Iron Curtain, crossing the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie, being blessed by the Pope, set upon by cannibals in Sierra Leone, fleeing Somalia on a freighter, Scotto's adventures would be unbelievable if they weren't true. His tale of touring the world from Tunisia to Turkey, Petra to Afghanistan, Yugoslavia to Singapore, traveling miles enough to take him to the moon and back, is unlike any ever told. Come along, for the ride of a lifetime.

Hush


Eishes Chayil - 2010
    But when thirteen-year-old Gittel learns of the abuse her best friend has suffered at the hands of her own family member, the adults in her community try to persuade Gittel, and themselves, that nothing happened. Forced to remain silent, Gittel begins to question everything she was raised to believe.A richly detailed and nuanced book, one of both humor and depth, understanding and horror, this story explains a complex world that remains an echo of its past, and illuminates the conflict between yesterday's traditions and today's reality.

The Heavens are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod


Avrom Bendavid-Val - 2010
    Most lived in shtetls—Jewish communities connected to larger towns—images of which are ingrained in popular imagination as the shtetl Anatevka from Fiddler on the Roof. Brimming with life and tradition, family and faith, these shtetls existed in the shadow of their town’s oppressive anti-Jewish laws. Not Trochenbrod.Trochenbrod was the only freestanding, fully realized Jewish town in history. It began with a few Jewish settlers searching for freedom from the Russian Czars' oppressive policies, which included the forced conscriptions of one son from each Jewish family household throughout Russia. At first, Trochenbrod was just a tiny row of houses built on empty marshland in the middle of the Radziwill Forest, yet for the next 130 years it thrived, becoming a bustling marketplace where people from all over the Ukraine and Poland came to do business. But this scene of ethnic harmony was soon shattered, as Trochenbrod vanished in 1941—her residents slaughtered, her homes, buildings, and factories razed to the ground. Yet even the Nazis could not destroy the spirit of Trochenbrod, which has lived on in stories and legends about a little piece of heaven, hidden deep in the forest.Bendavid-Val, himself a descendant of Trochenbrod, masterfully preserves and fosters the memory of this city, celebrating the vibrant lives of her people and her culture, proving true the words of one of Trochenbrod’s greatest poets, Yisrael Beider: I beg you hold fast to these words of mine. After this darkness a light will shine

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.

The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between


Michael Dobbs - 2019
    This book complements the exhibition The Americans and the Holocaust that is now on view at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DCIn October 1940 the Gestapo expelled 6,504 Jews from southwest Germany, creating the first official "Jewish free zone" in the Third Reich. Interned in concentration camps in Vichy France, the deportees set out on a multi-year quest to acquire American visas. One in four eventually managed to gain entry to the U.S. or to other foreign countries; the remainder perished in French camps or, later, in Auschwitz.Among these "unwanted" refugees were Jews from the village of Kippenheim, whose stories are at the heart of this book. Drawing on previously unpublished letters, diaries, and visa records, Michael Dobbs provides a vivid picture of what it was like to live among increasingly hostile neighbors, waiting for "the piece of paper with a stamp" that meant the difference between life and death. And he recounts the debates over the fate of these refugees occurring simultaneously at the highest levels of the American government at a time when the public was deeply isolationist, xenophobic and antisemitic. Here is the riveting narrative of a small community struggling to survive amid tumultuous events and reach a safe haven despite the odds stacked against them.

A Place of Remembrance: Official Book of the National September 11 Memorial


Allison Blais - 2011
    With photographs and architectural plans never before published, paired with comments in the very voices of those who witnessed the event, those who struggled in its shadow for days and months after, and those who have dedicated the years since to rebuilding a place of hope and meditation at Ground Zero, this book will stand apart from all the rest on the tenth anniversary of that world-changing event.  Heavily illustrated and elegantly designed, the book recalls the excitement and symbolism of the Twin Towers, the horror and chaos of the attack of 9/11, the fierce devotion and exhaustion as rescue of living victims became recovery of remains. But it also carries on from that date in history to tell the inside story of the long, complex, and sometimes contentious efforts to turn eight acres of Downtown Manhattan into a lasting memorial to those lost in New York, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon. A solemn reminder, a historic keepsake, and a fascinating read, this is the official book published by and about the National September 11 Memorial, created by those who have been working for years to honor those who died that day. A special fold-out lists all the names of the victims, making the book itself an enduring memorial to those who died on September 11.

When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry


Gal Beckerman - 2010
    They lived a paradox--unwanted by a repressive Stalinist state, yet forbidden to leave. "When They Come for Us, We'll Be Gone" is the astonishing and inspiring story of their rescue.Journalist Gal Beckerman draws on newly released Soviet government documents as well as hundreds of oral interviews with refuseniks, activists, Zionist "hooligans," and Congressional staffers. He shows not only how the movement led to a mass exodus in 1989, but also how it shaped the American Jewish community, giving it a renewed sense of spiritual purpose and teaching it to flex its political muscle. He also makes a convincing case that the movement put human rights at the center of American foreign policy for the very first time, helping to end the Cold War.In cinematic detail, the book introduces us to all the major players, from the flamboyant Meir Kahane, head of the paramilitary Jewish Defense League, to Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky, who labored in a Siberian prison camp for over a decade, to Lynn Singer, the small, fiery Long Island housewife who went from organizing local rallies to strong-arming Soviet diplomats. This multi-generational saga, filled with suspense and packed with revelations, provides an essential missing piece of Cold War and Jewish history.

Chihuly: 365 Days


Dale Chihuly - 2007
    Chihuly: 365 Days is a richly illustrated photo survey of his entire four-decade career, with more than 500 pictures showing all facets of his work—from intimate smaller pieces to the tremendous outdoor installations that have thrilled millions of visitors. There are also personal photos of the artist; of “Team chihuly” at the Boathouse, his studio in Seattle, Washington; and of his marvelous drawings—all selected by the artist himself. Most of the photographs have never before been published.Quotations from and about Chihuly, as well as descriptions of his various types of works and short texts on his most prominent series pieces, accompany the images. The captions also act as a chronology of his life and work.

Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure


Ingrid Burrington - 2016
    A guided tour of the physical Internet, as seen on, above, and below the city s streets What do....