Here we meet Shalev’s amazing Grandma Tonia, who arrived in Palestine by boat from Russia in 1923 and lived in a constant state of battle with what she viewed as the family’s biggest enemy in their new land: dirt. Grandma Tonia was never seen without a cleaning rag over her shoulder. She received visitors outdoors. She allowed only the most privileged guests to enter her spotless house. Hilarious and touching, Grandma Tonia and her regulations come richly to life in a narrative that circles around the arrival into the family’s dusty agricultural midst of the big, shiny American sweeper sent as a gift by Great-uncle Yeshayahu (he who had shockingly emigrated to the sinful capitalist heaven of Los Angeles!). America, to little Meir and to his forebears, was a land of hedonism and enchanting progress; of tempting luxuries, dangerous music, and degenerate gum-chewing; and of women with painted fingernails. The sweeper, a stealth weapon from Grandpa Aharon’s American brother meant to beguile the hardworking socialist household with a bit of American ease, was symbolic of the conflicts and visions of the family in every respect. The fate of Tonia’s “svieeperrr”—hidden away for decades in a spotless closed-off bathroom after its initial use—is a family mystery that Shalev determines to solve. The result, in this cheerful translation by Evan Fallenberg, is pure delight, as Shalev brings to life the obsessive but loving Tonia, the pioneers who gave his childhood its spirit of wonder, and the grit and humor of people building ever-new lives.

    Doc Norton, leader of 3d Force Recon, recounts his team's experiences behind enemy lines during the tense patrols, sudden ambushes and acts of supreme sacrifice that occurred as they gathered valuable information about NVA operations right from the source.

    Very touching, page turner.

    Keneally tells the tale of the unlikely encounter that propelled him to write about Oskar Schindler and of the impact of his extraordinary account on people around the world.  Thomas Keneally met Leopold “Poldek” Pfefferberg, the owner of a Beverly Hills luggage shop, in 1981. Poldek, a Polish Jew and a Holocaust survivor, had a tale he wanted the world to know. Charming, charismatic, and persistent, he convinced Keneally to relate the incredible story of “the all-drinking, all-screwing, all-black-marketeering Nazi, Oskar Schindler. But to me he was Jesus Christ.”  Searching for Schindler is the engrossing chronicle of Keneally’s pursuit of one of history’s most fascinating and paradoxical heroes. Traveling throughout the United States, Germany, Israel, Poland, and Austria, Keneally and Poldek interviewed people who had known Schindler and uncovered their indelible memories of the Holocaust. Keneally’s powerful narrative rose quickly to the top of bestseller lists. Steven Spielberg’s magnificent film adaptation went on to fulfill Poldek’s dream of winning “an Oscar for Oskar.” (Keneally’s anecdotes about Spielberg, Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, and other cast members will delight film buffs.)  Written with candor and humor, Seaching for Schindler is an intimate look at Keneally’s growth as a writer and the enormous success of his portrait of Oskar Schindler.

    Born into the ruins of a Syrian Jewish family that once had it all, David is painfully displaced. Trapped in an insular religious community that excludes him and a family coming apart at the seams, he is plunged into suicidal depression. Through adolescence, David tries to suppress his homosexual feelings and fit in, but when pushed to the breaking point, he makes the bold decision to cut off his family, erase his past, and leave everything he knows behind. There's only one problem: who should he be? Bouncing between identities he steals from the pages of fashion magazines, tomes of philosophy, sitcoms and foreign films, and practically everyone he meets—from Rastafarians to French preppies—David begins to piece together an entirely new adult self. But is this the foundation for a life, or just a kind of quicksand?Moving from the glamour and dysfunction of 1970s Brooklyn, to the sybaritic materialism of Reagan’s 1980s to post-9/11 New York, Lot Six offers a quintessentially American tale of an outsider striving to reshape himself in the funhouse mirror of American culture. Adjmi’s memoir is a genre bending Künstlerroman in the spirit of Charles Dickens and Alison Bechdel, a portrait of the artist in the throes of a life and death crisis of identity. Raw and lyrical, and written in gleaming prose that veers effortlessly between hilarity and heartbreak, Lot Six charts Adjmi’s search for belonging, identity, and what it takes to be an artist in America.

    Soon wielding syringes, this forty-something husband and father of two children becomes the doper next door.During his yearlong odyssey, Tilin is transformed. He becomes stronger, hornier, and aggressive. He wades into a subculture of doping physicians, real estate agents, and aging women who believe that Tilin’s type of legal “hormone replacement therapy” is the key to staying young—and he often agrees. He also lives with the price paid for renewed vitality, worrying about his health, marriage, and cheating ways as an amateur bike racer. And all along the way, he tells us what doping is really like—empowering and scary.

    Of those 34 years, 17 have been spent putting his body through hell in perhaps the toughest football competition on the planet. Lockyer has, quite literally, spent half his lifetime in the NRL. By season's end Lockyer is set to hold the all–time appearance record for club, state, and country. The remarkable longevity of Lockyer's excellence has earned him the respect of fellow athletes around the world and the adoration of fans everywhere. But while undoubtedly one of the most recognizable athletes in Australia, Lockyer has largely maintained his privacy, rarely, if ever, allowing fans a look at the man behind the man. In this book Lockyer, for the first time, opens up on the people, places, incidents, and events which have shaped the life and career of an Australian sporting icon. From his days growing up and working at the family–owned truck stop on the outskirts of a tiny Queensland town, to his arrival at the Broncos as a teenage sensation, and subsequent ascension toward rugby league immortality, Lockyer will shed new light on some of the biggest names and stories of the past two decades. Contributions from Lockyer's family and friends, as well as legendary figures give this book a unique edge, each providing a rare insight into their view on Lockyer the player, the leader, and the man.

    Featuring brand new stories and some old favorites, many of these tell-all, gritty tales were originally published on the blog Make It MAD between 2010 and 2012, and have been rereleased in their originality for this special print and digital anthology.

    Authentic, poetic translations of key texts are coupled with insightful introductions and "grace notes."

    No family in the past two centuries has been so constantly at the center of Europe's great events, has featured such varied and spectacularpersonalities, has had anything close to the wealth of the Rothschilds. In Frederic Morton's classic tale, the family is brought vividly to life. Here you'll meet characters as lively as you can imagine: Mayer, long-time advisor to Germany's princes, who broke through the barriers of a Frankfurtghetto and placed his family on the road to wealth and power; Lord Alfred, who maintained a private train, private orchestra (which he conducted), and private circus (of which he was ringmaster); Baron Philippe, whose rarefied vintages bear labels created by great artists, among them Picasso, Dali,and Haring; and Kathleen Nica Rothschild de Koenigswarter, the "jazz baroness," in whose arms Charlie Parker died. The family itself has been at the center of some of the most crucial moments in history: the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, the development of the Suez Canal, the introduction of Jewsin the House of Lords. Through it all, the Rothschild name has continued to represent the family ideal: a shrewd business and financial sense, activity in the Jewish community and the arts, and an always luxurious-and often eccentric-lifestyle. Nominated for a National Book Award when it was first published in 1962, Frederic Morton's The Rothschllds is here reissued with a new afterword by the author, bringing the tale of this extraordinary family to the present.

    When the hospital was forced to close the children that had survived were taken to the death-camps. Blady-Szwajger became a reluctant courier for the resistance. She left the ghetto and began to carry paper money pinned into her clothing to those in hiding. She and her flat-mate pretended to be good-time girls having fun and threw parties to disguise the coming and going of their male visitors. This heroic memoir pays tribute to all the men and women who paid with their lives for the safety of others.

    Some only did it in college, or got out by sheer determination, good luck . . . or suicide. Others took it on as permanent employment. And many remain haunted by nightmare scenarios where they are the sole server in a restaurant packed with complaining patrons. For all those disenchanted current and former food service employees, Darron Cardosa has your back. His career began at a Texas steakhouse in 1984, and since 2008 he’s vented his frustrations in the popular blog The Bitchy Waiter. A snarky mix of David Sedaris, Anthony Bourdain, Erma Bombeck, and Mo Rocca, Cardosa distills 30 years of food service into dark, funny tales—about crazy customers, out-of-control egos, and what really goes on in that fancy restaurant—that anyone who worked in the industry will recognize and relate to.

    Excellent Book

    Told in understated, crystalline prose, Lax begins her story as a young teen leaving her liberal, secular home to become a Hasidic Jew, then plumbs the nuances of her arranged marriage, fundamentalist faith, and Hasidic motherhood, as her creative, sexual, and spiritual longings shimmer beneath the surface.

    Gradually, what had begun as a personal journey broadened into a larger exploration of how the people of this country, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confronting their past in order to move forward into the future. How does a nation—how do successor generations, moral beings—overcome a bloody past? How do we judge the bystanders, collaborators, perpetrators, rescuers, and ourselves? These are the questions Cassedy confronts in We Are Here, one woman’s exploration of Lithuania’s Jewish history combined with a personal exploration of her own family’s place in it. Digging through archives with the help of a local whose motives are puzzling to her; interviewing natives, including an old man who wants to “speak to a Jew” before he dies; discovering the complications encountered by a country that endured both Nazi and Soviet occupation—Cassedy finds that it’s not just the facts of history that matter, but what we choose to do with them.