General Non Fiction

In this section we'll keep you up to date with news of books you might be interested in. The information will come from the publishers' website and we will add our reviews as often as we can.

Do also look out for events information and keep us posted if you are an organiser.

And remember, feedback is always welcome.

Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible

Robert Alter

Princeton University Press ISBN 9780691128818

April 2010

The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded American culture from the beginning--and its powerful eloquence continues to be felt even today. In this book, acclaimed biblical translator and literary critic Robert Alter traces some of the fascinating ways that American novelists--from Melville, Hemingway, and Faulkner to Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy--have drawn on the rich stylistic resources of the canonical English Bible to fashion their own strongly resonant styles and distinctive visions of reality. Showing the radically different manners in which the words, idioms, syntax, and cadences of this Bible are woven into Moby-Dick, Absalom, Absalom!, The Sun Also Rises, Seize the Day, Gilead, and The Road, Alter reveals the wide variety of stylistic and imaginative possibilities that American novelists have found in Scripture. At the same time, Alter demonstrates the importance of looking closely at the style of literary works, making the case that style is not merely an aesthetic phenomenon but is the very medium through which writers conceive their worlds.

Robert Alter has taught Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1967. The author of more than twenty books, he has also published four volumes of Bible translation, most recently The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary . In 2009, Alter received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for lifetime contribution to American letters.

Memory, Trauma and World Politics

Reflections on the Relationship Between Past and Present

Edited by Duncan Bell

Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 9780230247451

February 2010

Perceptions of the past play a vital role in shaping the contemporary world. Memory, Trauma and World Politics brings together leading scholars from across the social sciences to investigate the varied and complex ways in which social memories of traumatic events, including war, genocide and political oppression, inform and construct individual and collective identities. Drawing on diverse theoretical perspectives, they analyze issues including the possibilities for post-conflict reconciliation on the Korean peninsula, Taiwan, and the former Yugoslavia, the function of memory and forgetting in the evolution of the modern state, the relationship between trauma and ressentiment, the role of the Holocaust in shaping both German and Israeli political culture, of apartheid in current South African politics, and of 9/11 in the new world order. Theoretically innovative and thematically wide-ranging, Memory, Trauma and World Politics addresses some of the most pressing issues facing analysts of world politics today.

On the Other Hand

Chaim Bermant

Valentine Mitchell ISBN 9780853038702

February 2008

Chaim Bermant was The Jewish Chronicle’s main opinion columnist

for nearly forty years, until his death in 1998. He covered all aspects of

Jewish life in his weekly column ‘On the Other Hand’, and his witty, wise

and thought-provoking chronicling of Jewish life and concerns through

the pages of the JC still have profound resonance today. His widow

Judy has collected here a selection of his best writings as a tribute to

one of the best loved and most important recorders of and commentators on modern Anglo-Jewry. This new edition by Vallentine Mitchell contains a new foreword and article.

Chaim Bermant was born in Lithuania and spent his early childhood in Barovke (Latvia) where his father was Rabbi. At the age of nine he moved with his family to Scotland and was educated at Glasgow Rabbinical College, Glasgow University and London School of Economics. A former schoolmaster, an economist and television screenwriter, he regularly wrote for the Daily Telegraph, the Observer and Newsweek, as well as ‘On the Other Hand’, his weekly column for The Jewish Chronicle. He was author of over thirty books, both fiction and non-fiction. His posthumous autobiography, Genesis: A Latvian Childhood, was published in 1998.

Ways of Staying

Kevin Bloom

Portobello Books ISBN 9781846272653

April 2010

  As a journalist, Kevin Bloom had witnessed and reported on the rising    tide of violence in post-Apartheid South Africa. But when his own cousin was killed in a vicious random attack, the questions he’d been asking about the troubling political and social changes in his country took on a sickeningly personal urgency. Suddenly, it felt as though this South Africa was no longer the place he’d grown up in or the place which felt like home. Still stunned by the loss, Bloom begins to trace the path of violence from the murder of his cousin in the hills of Zululand to the fatal shooting of the historian David Rattray, linking these individual crimes to the riven political landscape, and the riots and xenophobic attacks of 2008.

Visceral, complicated, and compassionate, Ways of Stayingis an eloquent account of how the white community is coping with black majority rule, and in particular how one family is coping in the aftermath of their own private tragedy.

Best of Blue

Lionel Blue

Continuum  ISBN 9780826490452

September 2006

  A child of poor Jewish parentage, educated in the roughest part of the East End of London, Lionel Blue worked his way through Balliol College, Oxford and the Rabbinate to become a star of radio and stage. His ‘Thought for the Day’ broadcasts enchanted and invigorated millions of listeners. The Rabbi's humour became celebrated, making it even a regular feature of Private Eye, the satirical magazine, and his opening gambit of 'Good morning Peter, good morning Sue and good morning everyone' became famous. This new collection of the best of Lionel Blue’s writings sparkles with his characteristic and idiosyncratic humour. It is through this that his

profound wisdom has touched the hearts and minds of millions of appreciative listeners.

Rabbi Lionel Blue now lives in North London. He continues to appear frequently on radio and television. He is an honorary fellow of Grey College, University of Durham. He was once Chairman of the Beth Din of the RSGB.

Manhood for Amateurs

Michael Chabon

Fourth Estate ISBN 9780007150403

March 2010

Michael Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policeman's Union, offers his first major work of nonfiction, an autobiographical narrative as inventive, beautiful and powerful as his novels.

A shy manifesto; an impractical handbook; the true story of a fabulist; an entire life in parts and pieces: Manhood for Amateurs is the first sustained work of personal writing from Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own: as a series of reflections, regrets and re-examinations, each sparked by an encounter, in the present, that holds some legacy of the past. What does it mean to be a man today? Chabon invokes and interprets and struggles to reinvent for us, with characteristic warmth and lyric wit, the personal and family history that haunts him even as it goes on being written every day. As a son, a husband, and above all as a father of four young children, Chabon's memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played - on different instruments, with a fresh tempo and in a new key - by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.

Maps and Legends

HarperCollins ISBN 9780007289875

March 2010

Michael Chabon's sparkling book of nonfiction is a love song in 16 parts - a series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around 'serious' literature in favor of a wide-ranging affection. His own fiction, meanwhile, is explored from the perspective of personal history: post-collegiate desperation sparks his debut, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; procrastination and doubt reveal the way toward Wonder Boys; a love of comics and a basement golem combine to create the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; and an enigmatic Yiddish phrasebook unfurls into The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

House of Cards: How Wall Street's Gamblers Broke Capitalism

William D Cohan

Penguin ISBN 9781846141959

March 2009

On the evening of 16 March 2008, Bear Stearns, a swashbuckling

85-year-old institution in the financial world, sold itself for an

outrageously low price to JP Morgan Chase, the $2 trillion global

behemoth. Behind the scenes, the deal was brokered by Ben Bernanke,

chairman of the Federal Reserve, who feared a financial cataclysm on a

par with the market crash which precipitated the Great Depression. In

House of Cards, William Cohan gives the reader a front-row seat to the

catastrophic unravelling of a bank that had been riding high only months before.

Focusing on how Bear Stearns' demise involved subtle strands of blame that stretch around the globe, House of Cards shows how the Bear Stearns saga was a microcosm of the disastrous financial bust that followed an irrational boom. From hosting extravagant parties, the international banking world hit a slump. Suddenly, once-flush financial institutions were struggling to stay afloat.

With in-depth profiles of luminary figures such as Ace Greenberg, the legendary leader of Bear Stearns, to that of heir, hard-partying, cigar-chomping Jimmy Caynes, this is the story of a fall from grace with all the drama of a soap opera and backstabbing galore. House of Cards is a delicious narrative about corporate greed on a truly epic scale.

The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.

Penguin ISBN 9780141036892
April 2008

They amassed unimaginable fortunes and would stop at nothing to make a deal, until their titanic egos started to jeopardize everything. This is the astonishing story of Lazard Frères, the world’s most elite and legendary investment bank – and the men who reigned over it all.

For over 150 years Lazard Frères had stood apart from other Wall Street firms by offering ultra-wealthy clients the wisdom of its ‘Great Men’: from Felix Rohatyn, the escapee from Nazi-occupied France turned financial genius, to Michel David-Weill, the inscrutable French billionaire ‘Sun King’; from Steve Rattner, the boy wonder from Long Island who clashed violently with the old guard, to larger-than-life CEO Bruce Wasserstein, ‘Bid-Em-Up Bruce’, who broke with the bank’s traditions and made himself billions in the process.

In The Last Tycoons William Cohan, himself a former high-level Wall Street banker, takes us into their mysterious and secretive world, telling a story of ruthless ambition, whispered advice, explosive feuds, glamorous mistresses, decadent excesses and unimaginable wealth.

Winner of the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award

William D. Cohan was an award-winning investigative journalist before embarking on a seventeen-year career as an investment banker on Wall Street. He spent six years at Lazard Frères in New York and later became a Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase & Co. He is a graduate of Duke University and received both an MS from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and an MBA from its Graduate School of Business.

The Paradox of Anti-Semitism

Dan Cohn-Sherbok

Continuum ISBN 9780826494030

July 2007

Chinese and Jews

Irene Eber

Vallentine Mitchell ISBN 9780853036746

April 2008

This book deals with the large variety of contacts that constitute intercultural relations. These studies suggest the different areas ñ literature, history, society ñ research can take to discover the interaction of ideas and peoples. It furthermore illustrates how widely disparate cultures can communicate over time and space as well as the different means that are employed in cultural adjustment.

Contents include: Jewish Communities in China: A Brief Overview --- Kaifeng Jews: Sinification and the Persistence of Identity and History --- Destination Shanghai, Permits, and Transit Visas, 1938ñ1941 --- Translating the Ancestors: SIJ Schereschewskyís 1875 Chinese Version of Genesis --- Notes on the Early Reception of the Old Testament --- Several Psalms in Chinese Translation --- Translation Literature in Modern China: The Yiddish Author and his Tale --- Martin Buber and Daoism

The Last Jews of Kerala

Edna Fernandes

Portobello Books ISBN 9781846270987

July 2008

How does it feel to be the last survivors of a millennia-old community, to know that you will attend no more weddings, only funerals and to realize that one day soon you will close the door on your history forever?

In 70 CE, the Roman capture of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple scattered a wave of Jewish immigrants across the globe like seeds of last hope. One group settled in Kerala, southern India. Feted as foreign kings by Kerala’s rajas and lavished with land, privilege and autonomy, they lived in peace. Despite finding acceptance in this Indian paradise, despite every advantage, by the twenty first century they found themselves on the brink of demise.

This is the story of the Black and White Jews of Kerala – a community that chose to bury itself instead of burying its differences, fuelling a centuries-long feud instead of forsaking it to survive. In the end it was not persecution, pestilence or war that destroyed them, but one another. This is the story of a Jewish apartheid, a civil rights movement and finally a love affair between a Black Jew and a White Jewess who smashed apart the old divide – all set within the tranquil beauty of the backwaters of southern India.

In a land where Hindu, Christian, Muslim and Jew have lived and prayed in harmony for many centuries, the story of The Last Jews of Kerala is all the more apposite to our discordant times.

Edna Fernandes is a British Indian journalist who was born in Nairobi and grew up in London. A former foreign correspondent for the Financial Times in New Delhi and political and international business correspondent for Reuters and Dow Jones in London, her articles have been reproduced in newspapers around the world, including the Wall Street Journal and International Herald Tribune.

www.ednafernandes.com

Eating Animals

Jonathan Safran Foer

Hamish Hamilton ISBN 9780241143933

March 2010

Eating Animals is a riveting exposé which presents the gut-wrenching truth about the price paid by the environment, the government, the Third World and the animals themselves in order to put meat on our tables more quickly and conveniently than ever before.

Interweaving a variety of monologues and balancing humour and suspense with informed rationalism, Eating Animals is as much a novelistic account of an intellectual journey as it is a fresh and objective look at the ethical debate around meat-eating.

Unlike most other books on the subject, Eating Animals also explores the possibilities for those who do eat meat to do so more responsibly, making this an important book not just for vegetarians, but for anyone who is concerned about the ramifications and significance of their chosen lifestyle.

Passionate, humane and compelling, Eating Animals is an urgent examination of the meat industry and our relationship with it, by one of our most brilliant younger writers.

Blood Matters: A Journey along the Genetic Frontier

Masha Gessen

Granta Books ISBN 9781862079946

July 2008

In 2004 genetic testing revealed that Masha Gessen had a mutation

that predisposed her to ovarian and breast cancer. The discovery initiated Gessen into a club of sorts: the small (but exponentially expanding) group of people in possession of a new and different way

of knowing themselves through what is inscribed in the strands of their DNA. As she wrestled with a wrenching personal decision - what to do with such knowledge - Gessen explored the landscape of this brave

new world, speaking with others like her, and with experts including medical researchers, historians, and religious thinkers. "Blood Matters" is a much-needed field guide to this unfamiliar and unsettling territory. It explores the way genetic information is shaping the decisions we make, not only about our physical and emotional health but about who we marry, the children we bear, even the personality traits we long to have.And it helps us come to terms with the radical transformation genetic information is engineering in our most basic sense of who we are and what we might become.

Masha Gessen is a journalist who has written for Slate, the New Republic, the New York Times, and other publications. She is the author of two previous books, Dead Again and Two Babushkas. She lives in Moscow.

McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers
Misha Glenny

Bodley Head ISBN 9780224075039

April 2008

In this powerful and groundbreaking book, Misha Glenny takes us on a journey through the new world of international organised crime. For three years, he has been recording the stories of gun runners in Ukraine, money launderers in Dubai, drug syndicates in Canada, cyber criminals in Brazil, racketeers in Japan and many more, including a chilling chapter on Israel. During his investigation of the dark side, he has spoken to gangsters, policemen and victims of organised crime while also exploring the ferocious consumer demand for drugs, trafficked women, illegal labour and arms across five continents.

The journey begins with an appalling and inexplicable murder in England’s stockbroker belt and continues with stories that are often horrifying, sometimes inspiring, usually bizarre and occasionally funny. But together they build a breathtaking picture of the shadow economy that has grown so fast that it may now account for about 20% of the world's GDP.

Usually the preserve of sensationalist reporting in the tabloid press, organised crime has seeped into our lives in so many ways and often without our knowledge. This consistently riveting account unveils the nature of crime in today's world but it also offers profound insights into the pitfalls of a globalisation where the rules dividing the legal from the illegal are often far from clear. McMafia unpicks the nexus of crime, politics and money worldwide which have become entangled and interdependent in entirely novel forms since the 1980s. It argues that conventional policing methods are no longer appropriate to deal with a problem whose roots lie in global poverty and the ever widening divisions between rich and poor.

The Divided Self
Israel and the Jewish Psyche Today
David J. Goldberg
IB Tauris ISBN 9781845110543

March 2006

How should Jews respond to an age of militant Zionism and resurgent anti-Semitism? Is insisting on a separate sense of identity anachronistic and dangerous, or is it the only way of preserving the Jewish cultural heritage? Rabbi David Goldberg, one of today's most respected and outspoken Jewish leaders, grapples with the dilemmas of contemporary Jewishness with characteristic candour, and sketches the emerging faultlines in the Jewish sense of identity. He offers up a completely fresh reading of Jewish history, arguing that the narrative of relentless woe and suffering popularised by nineteenth-century writers, such as George Eliot was based on a highly selective reading of the past. Goldberg retraces the history of the Jews, and rejects the mythology of eternal victimhood. Instead, he focuses on the survival strategies that have been pursued throughout the centuries. He contrasts the pragmatic flexibility of the Jewish Diaspora with the military assertiveness of modern Israel. With wit, insight and compassion he highlights the growing gulf between Israeli and Diaspora Jewishness. Following G.B. Shaw's quip about Britain and America, Goldberg argues that Israeli and Diaspora Jews are in danger of becoming divided by a common heritage. This book will stimulate, engage and provoke readers of all beliefs and cultures.

The Thoughtful Dresser

Linda Grant

Virago ISBN 9781844085569

March 2009

'A good handbag makes the outfit. Only the rich can afford cheap shoes. The only thing worse than being skint is looking as if you're skint.'

For centuries, an interest in clothes has been dismissed as the trivial pursuit of vain empty-headed women. Yet, clothes matter, whether you are interested in fashion or not because what we choose to dress ourselves in defines our identity.

For the immigrant arriving in a new country to the teenager who needs to be part of the fashion pack or the woman turning forty who must reassess her wardrobe, the truth is that how we look and what we wear, tells a story. And what a story.

The Thoughtful Dresser tells us how a woman's hat saved her life in Nazi Germany, looks at the role of department stores in giving women a public place outside the home, savours the sheer joy of finding the right dress.

Here is the thinking woman's guide to our relationship with what we wear: why we want to look our best and why it matters. The Thoughtful Dresser celebrates the pleasure of adornment

ID: The Quest for Identity in the 20th Century

Susan Greenfield

Hodder & Stoughton ISBN 9780340936016

May 2008

Our individuality is under attack as never before. Two huge new forces new technology and the rise in fundamentalism are in their different ways combining to threaten the control of our own minds and so the whole way our society functions. We have never more urgently needed to look at what we want for ourselves as individuals for our children, and for our future society. This book will draw on the latest findings in neuroscience to show how far we are and can be in control of the development of our brains and minds and the actions we need to take now both to safeguard our individuality and to find the fulfilment which our current unfettered materialism cannot provide. All this inevitably poses many questions about human nature, our past, what makes us individual, the connection between the brain and the mind, what a society of fulfilled individuals would actually mean.all of which this book attempts to answer.

Baroness Susan Greenfield is Professor of Pharmacology at Oxford University and Director of the Royal Institution. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the College of Physicians and has received 24 honorary degres from universities all over the world. Neuroscientist, broadcaster and author, she has received the Michael Faraday medal from the Royal Society for developing public understanding of science and made the Daily Mail's 100 Most Influential Women in Britain list in 2003.

Suburban Shaman – Tales from Medicine’s Frontline

Cecil Helman

Hammersmith Press ISBN: 9781905140084

January 2006

For 27 years, Cecil Helman was a family practitioner in and around London

as well as a medical anthropologist, comparing a wide variety of medical

systems and other forms of healing.This unique combination of frontline

health worker and detached academic informs the many stories that make

up this fascinating book. It also informs the author’s insights into what

human suffering can teach us about ourselves and our own attitudes to

health and illness, whether we are deliverers or recipients of health care.

Dr Helman’s stories take the reader on a journey from apartheid South Africa, where he did his medical training, to the London of the early 1970s, where for a short time he foreswore medicine to become an anthropologist and poet; from ship’s doctor on a Mediterranean cruise to family practitioner in London.

While trained in the Western tradition, Dr Helman’s anthropological insight leads him to view illness in a wider personal, social and cultural context, considering elements beyond the purely physical. In pleading for this holistic approach he celebrates family medicine.

Dr Cecil Helman is currently Professor of Medical Anthropology at Brunel University and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Primary Care & Population Sciences, Royal Free & University College Medical School, London, UK. He is the author of Culture, Health and Illness which has been used in 42 countries and several books of poetry.

God's Troublemakers: How Women of Faith Are Changing the World

Katharine Rhodes Henderson

Continuum ISBN 9780826429254

May 2008

This is a book about women who are changing the world as leaders in the public arena. Whether Christian, Jewish or Muslim—their work is religiously or spiritually motivated. They are religious or socio-ethical entrepreneurs, who have invented organizations or movements to repair the world. What shaped and formed them? How do they integrate a progressive social agenda with their faith? How do they exercise public leadership in a world where women’s public roles are sometimes still suspect? The book is thematically organized and touches on many of the most relevant topics being discussed today: separation of church and state, the intersection of politics and religion, the silence of the progressive left and the embodiment of authentic religious pluralism. This book claims space for progressive forms of religion in an area dominated by the Religious Right.

 God's Troublemakers is based on extensive interviews with 11 women social entrepreneurs. The 3 best known are Sr. Helen Prejean, the anti-death-penalty activist; Ruth Messenger, former Manhattan Borough President and now executive director of American Jewish World Service; and Helen LaKelly Hunt, who has been a national activist funding women’s causes and a leader in persuading secular feminists to make common cause with religious women. 

Katharine Rhodes Henderson is an ordained Presbyterian minister, who for the past decade has been the executive vice president of Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. She is co-founder of Face to Face/Faith to Faith, a multifaith leadership bringing together teenagers--Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus--from the Middle East, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and the US.

Jewish Travel Guide

Vallentine Mitchell  ISBN 9780853038801

For almost fifty years the Jewish Travel Guide has been the essential reference book for all Jewish travellers worldwide, whether travelling on business, for pleasure, or to seek their historical roots. Rigorously edited and up-dated every year, each country has a short commentary including demographic details, emergency numbers, and dialling codes. Other information includes restaurants, mikvaot, synagogues, theatres, embassies, museums, hotels, booksellers, cultural festivals, media, community organisations, groceries, bakeries, kosher food, butchers, delicatessens, libraries, and tourist sites. There's even a guide to kosher fish across the world.

The Jerusalem Post comments, "The Guide offers a well-rounded demographic portrait of world Jewry today, serving as much as a handbook and resource for professionals in the Jewish world, as a travel guide."

Jewish Year Book 2009

Stephen W. Massil

Vallentine Mitchell  ISBN 9780853037354


The Jewish Year Book provides a comprehensive directory of the communal institutions and organisations that make up the fabric of British Jewish society. It is a guide to the structures and networks of the religious, social, educational, cultural, and welfare organisations of the Jewish community across the British Isles and reports the ever-changing pattern of websites, now such a pervasive feature of communal management and presentation. It also offers an extensive guide to the primary organisations of the Jewish communities of the world and a substantial survey of Israel and its organisations that have associations with British Jewry, including a comprehensive list of Israel’s overseas embassies and missions. It sets out the basic facts of the history of Jewish settlement in Britain and an up-to-date statement of UK legislation specifically concerned with the place of the Jews and Jewish identity in Britain. Updated annually, edited to provide the latest, up-to-date information, it includes contact details for Jewish institutions, local and international organisations, details on leading Jewish personalities, obituaries, and major events as well as principal festivals and fasts. There is also a detailed calendar, including the Jewish calendar for thirty years and evening twilight regional variations.

Loving Every Child: Wisdom for Parents

Janusz Korczak

Edited by Sandra Joseph

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill ISBN 9781565124899

Born in 1878 in Poland, Janusz Korczak was a doctor, broadcaster, philosopher, and fighter for the rights of the child. A visionary and an activist, he spoke of the need for a Declaration of Children’s Rights long before one was adopted by the League of Nations in 1924.

How to Love a Child makes Korczak’s philosophy available in the United States for the first time. This collection of 150 quotations illuminates the lives of children.As relevant and true as if it had been written today, its simple, basic premise is that understanding our children is the key to being able to take care of them, respect them, and love them.Korczak held strong convictions: A child hungry for advice and direction will absorb it, digest it and assimilate it. Overfed with moral rules the child will suffer from nausea; offered expert advice: If a child trusts you with her secret, be grateful. For her confidence is the highest

prize; and was a candid observer of human nature: Adults are unfair. When they’re in a good mood then everything is allowed, but when they’re cross, every little thing disturbs them.

We hope Korczak’s wisdom, presented in gift-book format, will inspire yet another generation of mothers, fathers, and teachers.

Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century

Eric Kaufmann

Profile Books ISBN 9781846681448

March 2010

Perhaps Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have won the argument for secularism with the majority of the West. But the facts point in the other direction: what no one has noticed is that far from declining, religious populations are actually multiplying. This extraordinary demographic phenomenon indicates that the more religious people are, the more children they will have.

Within Judaism, the Ultra-Orthodox will almost certainly achieve a majority status over their liberal counterparts this century. Evangelical and neo-traditional Christians will follow suit and Islamist Muslims and are not far behind. Not only will the religious eventually triumph over the non-religious, but it is those who are the most extreme who have the largest families. Drawing on extensive demographic research, and considering questions of multiculturalism, nationalism and terrorism, Kaufmann examines the implications of the decline in liberal secularism as religious conservatism rises – and what it will mean for the future of western modernity.

The Jewish Body

Melvin Konner

Shocken Books ISBN 9780805242362 

January 2009

Melvin Konner, a renowned doctor and anthropologist, takes the measure of the “Jewish body,” considering sex, circumcision, menstruation, and even those most elusive and controversial of microscopic markers—Jewish genes. But this is not only a book that examines the human body through the prism of Jewish culture. Konner looks as well at the views of Jewish physiology held by non-Jews and how those views seeped into Jewish thought. He describes in detail the origins of the first nose job, and he writes about the Nazi ideology that categorized Jews as a public health menace on a par with rats or germs.

A work of grand historical and philosophical sweep, The Jewish Body discusses the subtle relationship between the Jewish conception of the physical body and the Jewish conception of a bodiless God. It is a book about the relationship between a land—Israel—and the bodily sense not merely of individuals but also of a people. As Konner describes, a renewed focus on the value of physical strength helped generate the creation of a Jewish homeland and continued in the wake of it.

Melvin Konner, Ph.D., M.D., is the author of nine books and is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology at Emory University in Atlanta, where he teaches in the anthropology, human biology, and Jewish studies programs. He has written for the New York Times, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Science, and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Cartoons and Extremism: Israel and the Jews in Arab and Western Media
Joel Kotek
Vallentine Mitchell ISBN 9780853037521
June 2008

The outrage sparked by the Danish cartoon affair  -the publication of images of the Prophet Muhammad in the European press- was a sharp reminder of the potency of the cartoon in the modern media. It is one of the most popular and effective means of communication. By exaggerating and exasperating, cartoons by their very nature lack neutrality, and the cartoon is an important weapon in the Middle Eastern crisis.

In response to the Danish cartoon affair, an Iranian newspaper announced a competition for cartoons about the Holocaust, even though it had nothing to do with Israel or the Jewish people. Antisemitic cartoons have long been rife in the Arab-Muslim media.

The September 2001 Durban Conference against Racism, intended to denounce and combat racism in all its forms, also featured the distribution of antisemitic cartoons by an Arab organization, yet this elicited no reaction from Western NGOs at the conference.

This event set the author on a trail that revealed thousands of such drawings. In the name of anti-Zionism, Jews are depicted as sadistic and bloodthirsty monsters, solely interested in money and power. This return to anti-Jewish hatred is of a new order, in line with current trends - an Arab-Muslim form unexpectedly metamorphosed from the antisemitism traditionally linked with the Christian West.

By reproducing more than 400 of these cartoons, taken from both Arab and Western media, this book denounces the use of hatred in the media and hopes to raise the alarm.

The Believers: How America Fell for Financier Bernard Madoff $65 Billion Investment Scam

Adam LeBor

Weidenfeld ISBN 9780297859192

October 2009

It was luxurious Palm Beach, by the manicured lawns and Olympic-sized swimming pool, that financier Bernard Madoff ravaged the world of philanthropy and high society he had strived so hard to join, vaporising the assets of charities, foundations and individuals that had trusted him with their funds. It seems nothing was sacrosanct to Madoff, possibly the greatest con-man in history. Even Elie Wiesel's foundation has lost tens of millions. How could Madoff, a pillar of the Jewish community, do this to a Nobel Laureate and Auschwitz survivor? But Wiesel was hardly alone in trusting the rogue financier. How could some of the most sophisticated and worldly people in America fall victim to a collective delusion for year after year?

The Believers answers these unsettling questions. It opens up the clubbish world where Madoff operated, tracing the links from Palm Beach and The Hamptons to the salons and clubs of Manhattan society. It details the network of relationships across which flows hundreds of millions of dollars. The Believers shows how despite material success and acclaim, some human impulses remain eternal. It reveals how an underlying sense of insecurity still shapes some of the richest and most successful individuals in America, making them crave ever more status and peer acclaim. By focusing on Madoff's connection to, and catastrophic impact on, the American Jewish community, The Believers dramatically humanises a story that is part financial scandal and part Greek tragedy.

http://www.adamlebor.com/

A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs

David Lehman

NextBook Press ISBN 9780805242508

2009

An acclaimed poet, anthologist, and cultural critic, David Lehman guides us through America in the golden age of song, when “Embraceable You”; “White Christmas”; “Easter Parade”; “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”; “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man of Mine”; “My Romance”; “Cheek to Cheek”; and countless others became nothing less than the American sound track. The stories behind these songs and the composers and lyricists who wrote them give voice (one that has a discernible Yiddish accent) to a specifically American saga of love, longing, assimilation, and transformation. Lehman’s analytical skills, wit, and exuberance infuse this book with an energy and tone like no other: at once sharply observant, personally searching, and attuned to the songs that all of us love.

David Lehman is the editor of The Oxford Book of American Poetry; and the author of seven books of poems, most recently When a Woman Loves a Man. He lives in New York City.

Genocide in the Age of the Nation State: The Meaning of Genocide

Mark Levene

IB Tauris ISBN 9781845117528

September 2008

How should we understand genocide in the modern world? As an

aberration from the norms of a dominant liberal international society?

Or rather as a guide to the very dysfunctional nature of the international

system itself? "The Meaning of Genocide" is the first work of its nature to

consider the phenomenon within a broad context of world historical

development. In this book, Mark Levene sets out the conceptual issues

in the study of genocide, addressing the fundamental problems of defining genocide and understanding what we mean by perpetrators

and victims, before placing it in the context of world history. "The Meaning of Genocide" is the first of a major four-volume survey which will become the definitive work on the subject.

Mark Levene is Reader in Comparative History at the University of Southampton, and in the Parkes Centre for Jewish:non-Jewish relations. His works include War, Jews and the New Europe (1992) which was awarded the annual Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History, and with Penny Roberts ed., The Massacre in History (1999). He is also a peace and environmental activist, and co-founder of the Forum for the Study of Crisis in the 21st century.

Globalising Hatred: The New Antisemitism

Denis MacShane

Weidenfeld & Nicholson ISBN 9780753823095  

September 2008

This book argues that what the 21st century now faces is an ideological assault based on hatred of Jews which is as serious as any major threat to universal values as the world has faced. Anti-semitism is the visible language and action of a deeper threat to world peace, to the achievements of the human spirit we call the Enlightenment, and undermines vital work to address problems like poverty and the challenges of the environment.

Denis MacShane's survey of 21st century anti-semitism is based on the All-Party Commission of Enquiry which was chaired by the author in the UK. His book considers examples in Europe and how anti-semitism is now a linking mechanism between different extremisms, usually but not exclusively of the Right. It lists in detail the anti-semitism in national party politics, including the European Parliament, and it examines how Holocaust denial is not a question of liberal free-expression issues but an organised ideological position. The new anti-semitism arises from three main sources: state-sanctioned anti-semitism; that of terrorist movements like Al Qaeda; and that of political movements like the Muslim Brotherhood and its off-shoots and spokesmen.

The book is both a cri de coeur for a new tolerance and a resolution to throw light on 21st century anti-semitism, which has left Europe to become a new form of mobilising politics across many continents.

On God: An Uncommon Conversation

Norman Mailer with Michael Lennon

Continuum ISBN 9781847062864

February 2008

Norman Mailer speaks intimately about the nature of God, His power and creativity, and the three way relationship between God, the devil, and man.

Anyone who's read Norman Mailer's work - from The Naked and the Dead to The Castle in the Forest - knows throughout his career he's been grappling with questions of good and evil. That lifetime search for truth has led Mailer to his largest subject yet, God. In God: An Uncommon Conversation, Mailer speaks intimately about the nature of God, His power and creativity, and the three way relationship between God, the devil, and man. Mailer's theological worldview is surprisingly centrist: he abhors the false piety of fundamentalism while at the same time rejects the bleakness of atheism. His God is not limited to the God of Christianity, Judaism, or any other organized religion. Rather, he views God as an artist, a divine creator, a superior being in constant struggle to create a better version of humanity. Here, Mailer speaks with astonishing intimacy and wisdom.

God: An Uncommon Conversation is written as a series of ten Platonic dialogues - the wise man speaking to his disciple about his philosophy. Yet you don't need to be familiar with Plato to understand the appeal of this form: by its very nature it's highly conversational, accessible, and humane. For the reader, it feels like sitting down one-on-one with Norman Mailer to discuss the large existential questions that we all struggle to understand.

Norman Mailer was born in 1923 and published his first book, The Naked and the Dead, in 1948. The Armies of the Night won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in 1969; Mailer received another Pulitzer in 1980 for The Executioner's Song. He died in 2007.

J. Michael Lennon is Emeritus Professor of English at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania and serves as Norman Mailer's literary executor and archivist. The author of six books on the works of Norman Mailer, he is the president of the Norman Mailer Society.

The City of Words

Alberto Manguel

Continuum ISBN 9781847062703

March 2008

What is the role of the storyteller in 21st Century society? Do stories possess the power to change the world we live in?

In this most original and stimulating study Alberto Manguel, award winning author of A History of Reading, sets out to investigate the ways in which stories can lend an identity to a whole society. From Gilgamesh to the Bible, from Don Quixote to The Fast Runner, Manguel explores how books can hold the secret to what binds us together. His thesis is argued here in an engrossing and highly personal book that encompasses narratives of autobiography, mythology, history and theology. He also raises concerns that technological developments – the internet, for one –  may well fatally undermine the publishing industry and threaten the survival of the individual around whom the entire literary industry was originally constructed: the beleaguered author. Do innovations like CD-Rom replace creative readers with passive viewers?
This book is also about the art of reading, at a time when Manguel argues that it is still possible for stories to change us and the world we live in.

The Library at Night

Yale University Press ISBN 9780300139143

May 2008

Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. 'Libraries', he says, 'have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I've been seduced by their labyrinthine logic'. In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries.Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends from his childhood bookshelves to the 'complete' libraries of the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria as well as the personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thought - the Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral 'memory libraries' kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, the library of books never written - Manguel illuminates the mysteries of libraries as no other writer could.With scores of wonderful images throughout, The Library at Night is a fascinating voyage through Manguel's mind, memory, and vast knowledge of books and civilizations.

Alberto Manguel was born in Buenos Aires but moved to Toronto early on in his life. He now lives in France. He is the author of some hugely successful books including A Dictionary of Imaginary Places and A History of Reading. He is a Guggenheim Fellow.

The NHS: Beginning, Middle and End? The autobiography of Dr John Marks
John Marks
Foreword by Nicholas Timmins, Public Policy Editor, Financial Times

Radcliffe Publishing Ltd  ISBN-13: 9781846192722

May 2008

John Marks is something of a national treasure. Warm, funny, passionate, opinionated and occasionally contrary, he is a man whose life for more than 40 years marched in beat with that of the National Health Service. There is scarcely a medical issue or controversy in which John Marks was not involved.
‘Abortion law reform, the doctors’ 1970s revolt against the General Medical Council, the foundation of the Royal College of General Practitioners, countless NHS reorganisations, and the bloody battle over NHS pay beds and the pay of junior doctors are just a sample. Then there was the fierce, principled battle over how the medical profession and the public should respond to the terror of a new disease – AIDS. And the great war that was fought over the Conservatives introduction of market forces into the NHS in the late 1980s and early 1990s – an approach to running the NHS that lives on, reincarnated, under the current Labour government.
‘In all of these John Marks played more than a walk-on part. In many he was a principal actor.
‘For anyone wanting fully to understand the BMA’s role in all this, this book is thus required reading. But it is much more than just a dry history of times past. It is laced with anecdote, from the horrifying to the hilarious, and on to high politics.
‘John Marks’ account of his life and times provides the tale of a warm, human, liberal and occasionally buccaneering man whose passion for life and causes leaves even those who do not always agree with him eager to count him among their friends.’
Nicholas Timmins in his Foreword

The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation and Hope

are Reshaping the World
Dominique Moïsi

Bodley Head ISBN 9780224082099

May 2009

In 1993 Samuel Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations offered a vision of a world divided by cultural differences, national interests, and political ideologies. In The Geopolitics of Emotion, Dominique Moïsi brilliantly demonstrates that we are now in the midst of a ‘clash of emotions’.

Moïsi contends that both Europe and the United States are dominated by a fear of the ‘other’ and of the loss of their national identity and purpose. For Muslims and Arabs, the combination of historical grievances, exclusion from the economic boon of globalization, and civil and religious warfare extending from their homelands to the Muslim diaspora has created a culture of humiliation that is quickly devolving into a culture of hatred. As the West and the Muslim world lock horns, Asia, able to concentrate on building a better future, has become ‘the culture of hope’.

By understanding the driving emotions behind our cultural differences, The Geopolitics of Emotion offers a better understanding of the world we live in and perhaps a more peaceful solution to the ignorance and differences that plague us.

Not Dead Yet: A Manifesto for Old Age

Julia Neuberger

HarperCollins ISBN 9780007226474

May 2008

Julia Neuberger addresses the question of what life will actually be like for us as we get old, and suggests answers for making our later years as good as when we were young.

Britain is getting old – and fast. Due to the combination of a decline in birth rates and an increase in life expectancy we are rapidly heading towards a crisis – in health, housing, finance and long-term care.

Despite this seismic shift in our demographic makeup, the way we view and treat the old has barely adjusted. It is shocking, for example, that despite less than 1 in 20 British people wanting to reside in a care home in their old age, 1 in 5 die in one.

Why is housing not being built so that the less mobile amongst us can continue to look after ourselves for longer? Why when we have so much experience and no less intelligence are we not able to find work which benefits everyone? What are we supposed to do for fun? There must be more to life than bingo and bowls! Why is our approach to care so poor? If we neglect carers, will they not neglect us?

The opportunity to make life better as we age is being missed, but not necessarily because the solutions are so difficult… Are we even asking ourselves the obvious questions?
A manifesto on age that aims to change the way we think and to galvanise ourselves into action.

365 Ways to Change the World

Michael Norton

Harper Perennial ISBN 9780007242306

Suicide Terrorism

Ami Pedahzur

Polity ISBN 9780745633824

2005

Suicide terrorism in its modern form made its first appearance in Lebanon in the early 1980s. Over the last quarter century, terrorist attacks perpetrated by suicide bombers have spread to many corners of the world and have become a major threat for both the governments and citizens of numerous countries. Can this devastating phenomenon be attributed to a specific religion or culture? What are the causes and motivations that lead ordinary people to embark upon suicide attacks? How are potential bombers trained for their mission? And is it possible for democratic governments to effectively cope with this challenge?

Ami Pedazhur investigates the root causes of suicide terrorism and its rapid proliferation in recent years. Drawing on a variety of sources, the book explores the use of human bombs in Lebanon, Israel, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Chechnya, Iraq, and the ostentatious attacks of Al-Qaeda and the global jihad. It is the only book to offer such an in-depth, up-to-date, cross cultural analysis of suicide terrorism in the twenty-first Century.

Londonistan

Melanie Phillips

Gibson Square ISBN 9781906142308 

The suicide bombings carried out in London in 2005 by British Muslims revealed an alarming network of Islamist terrorists and their sympathizers. Under the noses of British intelligence, London became the European hub for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamist terror and extremism - so much so that it has been mockingly dubbed 'Londonistan'. In this ground-breaking book, Melanie Phillips pieces together the story of how Londonistan developed as a result of the collapse of British self-confidence and national identity and its resulting paralysis by multiculturalism and appeasement. The result is an ugly climate in Britain of irrationality and defeatism, which now threatens to undermine the alliance with America and imperil the defence of the free world.

"Melanie Phillips’s Londonistan is a last-minute warning for Britain and for much of the free world ... This book is powerful and frightening, but also courageous. In dictatorships, you need courage to fight evil; in the free world, you need courage to see the evil."  Natan Sharansky.

The Necessity of Anti-Semitism

Frederic Raphael

Carcanet ISBN 9781857543247

September 1997

The essays and causeries gathered in this collection of Frederic Raphael's provocative and corrective `occasional writings' are not all on Jewish themes. But the author is undeniably a Jew, a sceptical Jew of Anglo-American parents and largely European experience and habit. He is a liberal, middle-class novelist and screen-writer for whom modern literary and social history is a puzzlement demanding close analytical attention. As the title, with its wry allusion to Shelley, suggests, it is impossible to forget the past. Raphael is, after all, an accomplished classicist. But how shall we make `reasonable' sense of a world that has proven and proves unreasonable time after time? By close attention to facts and what they can mean, to the written word and what it can mean and conceal; by a refusal to acquiesce in inhumanity.
`Art', he declares, `is the only means by which we can combine truth with a certain hope.'

The essays, in a wonderfully readable and persuasive way, seek to indicate how a humane secular society can and must retain its roots in what it has perforce to transcend.

The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law

Albie Sachs

Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199571796

June 2009

From a young age Albie Sachs played a prominent part in the struggle for justice in South Africa. As a result he was detained in solitary confinement, tortured by sleep deprivation and eventually blown up by a car bomb which cost him his right arm and the sight of an eye. His experiences provoked an outpouring of creative thought on the role of law as a protector of human dignity in the modern world, and a lifelong commitment to seeing a new era of justice established in South Africa.

After playing an important part in drafting South Africa's post-apartheid Constitution, he was appointed by Nelson Mandela to be a member of the country's first Constitutional Court. Over the course of his fifteen year term on the Court he has grappled with the major issues confronting modern South Africa, and the challenges posed to the fledgling democracy as it sought to overcome the injustices of the apartheid regime.

As his term on the Court approaches its end, Sachs here conveys in intimate fashion what it has been like to be a judge in these unique circumstances, how his extraordinary life has influenced his approach to the cases before him, and his views on the nature of justice and its achievement through law.

The book provides unique access to an insider's perspective on modern South Africa, and a rare glimpse into the working of a judicial mind. By juxtaposing life experiences and extracts from judgments, Sachs enables the reader to see the complex and surprising ways in which legal culture transforms subjective experience into objectively reasoned decisions. With rare candour he tells of the difficulties he has when preparing a judgment, of how every judgment is a lie. Rejecting purely formal notions of the judicial role he shows how both reason and passion (concern for protecting human dignity) are required for law to work in the service of justice.

Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

Jeffrey Sachs

Allen Lane ISBN 9780141026152  

March 2008

The twentieth century saw the end of European dominance of global politics and economics. The twenty-first century will see the end of United States dominance as well. The bloodshed in the streets of Baghdad reflects not merely poor US planning but the limits of US economic and political power. The world has become much too crowded and dangerous for more 'Great Games' in the Middle East or anywhere else. The defining challenge of the twenty-first century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate. We will flourish, or perish, together.

If we do the right things, there is room for all on the planet. We can achieve the key four goals of a global society: prosperity for all, the end of extreme poverty, stabilization of the global population and environmental sustainability. Common Wealth points the way to the course correction we must embrace for the sake of our common future.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development and the global best-selling author of The End of Poverty. He is also the BBC’s Reith Lecturer for 2007 and is internationally renowned for his work as an economic advisor to governments around the world.

Let's Schmooze: Jewish Words Today

Julian Sinclair

Continuum ISBN 9780826497116  

June 2007

Can you tell Kol Nidre from kneidlach? Gushpankas from Gematrias? Naches from nachos? At last here is the book for you. With the belated entry of schlepp, shalom, spiel and scores of other Hebrew and Yiddish words into the melting pot of mainstream usage, English speakers today need to know what these words mean, where they come from and how they are used. Julian Sinclair's book fills this need and much more. As entertaining as it is erudite, "Let's Schmooze," traces the trajectory of 150 Jewish words from the Bible and Talmud to Yiddish slang, yeshivish creole and youth movement patois. Spanning a plethora of Jewish situations and subcultures, including food, magic, lifecycle events, the Joys of Yinglish, surviving synagogue and the Kabbalah craze, Let's Schmooze uses the lens of language to provide a snapshot of Jewish society and spirituality today. With a light touch it also raises critical questions about the acculturation of minorities in a post-multicultural world.

Reborn: Early Diaries, 1947-1964

Susan Sontag
Edited by David Rieff

Hamish Hamilton ISBN 9780241144312
January 2009

The passionate, intimate and compelling diaries of one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century.

'I intend to do everything . . . I shall anticipate pleasure everywhere and find it too, for it is everywhere! I shall involve myself wholly . . . everything matters!'

So wrote Susan Sontag in May 1949 at the age of sixteen, in the early pages of this selection from her private diaries written in her youth and early adulthood.

Reborn is a kaleidoscopic self-portrait of one of America's greatest writers and intellectuals, teeming with Sontag's voracious curiosity and appetite for life. We watch the young Sontag's complex self-awareness, share in her encounters with the writers who informed her thinking and engage with the profound challenge of writing itself — all filtered through the inimitable detail of everyday life.

Ararat

Frank Westerman

Translated by Sam Garrett

Harvill Secker ISBN 9781846550898

August 2008

Ararat is a breathtaking journey along the fault-line between religion and

science, a pilgrimage by a non-believer that takes Frank Westerman to

Mount Ararat where, as biblical tradition has it, Noah’s Ark ran aground

and God made his covenant with mankind.

Mount Ararat in Armenia is now a geographical, political and cultural crossroads, bound up with the centuries-old history of warfare between different cultures in this region. As Westerman stands at its foot it poses both a physical and a religious challenge: where is the God from my children’s bible? Who or what has taken his place? Can one free oneself of a religious upbringing?

He meets geologists, priests, and, on the mountain’s high slopes, an expedition in search of the Ark’s remains. And also a Russian astronaut who observes that ‘there is something between heaven and earth about which we humans know nothing’.

Ararat is a dazzling, highly personal book about science, religion and all that lies between, by one of Europe’s most celebrated young writers.

Frank Westerman was born in 1964 and lives in Amsterdam. He is the author of five books. His work has been published in more than ten languages and has won many prizes.

Just Say Nu: Yiddish for Every Occasion (When English Just Won't Do)

Michael Wex

HarperCollins US ISBN 9780061657320

September 2008

With Just Say Nu, Michael Wex shows us how to

use this remarkable language to spice up conversations, stories, presentations, arguments, and more, when plain English will not suffice (including, of course, lots of delightful historical and cultural side trips along the way).

There is, quite simply, nothing in the world that can't be improved by being translated into Yiddish. With Just Say Nu, readers will learn how to shmooze their way through meeting and greeting, eating and drinking, praising and finding fault, maintaining personal hygiene, parenting, going to the doctor, committing crimes, going to singles bars, having sex, talking politics, talking trash, and a host of other mundane activities. Here also is a healthy schmear of optional grammar and the five most useful Yiddish words—what they mean, and how and when to use them in an entire conversation without anybody suspecting you don't have the vaguest idea about what you're actually saying.

Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods

HarperCollins US ISBN 9780061132179

July 2006

A delightful excursion through the Yiddish language, the culture it defines and serves, and the fine art of complaint

Throughout history, Jews around the world have had plenty of reasons to lament. And for a thousand years, they've had the perfect language for it. Rich in color, expressiveness, and complexity, Yiddish has proven incredibly useful and durable. Its wonderful phrases and idioms impeccably reflect the mind-set that has enabled the Jews of Europe to survive a millennium of unrelenting persecution . . . and enables them to kvetch about it!

Michael Wex—professor, scholar, translator, novelist, and performer—takes a serious yet unceasingly fun and funny look at this remarkable kvetch-full tongue that has both shaped and has been shaped by those who speak it. Featuring chapters on curse words, food, sex, and even death, he allows his lively wit and scholarship to roam freely from Sholem Aleichem to Chaucer to Elvis.

Perhaps only a khokhem be-layle (a fool, literally a "sage at night," when there's no one around to see) would care to pass up this endearing and enriching treasure trove of linguistics, sociology, history, and folklore—an intriguing appreciation of a unique and enduring language and an equally fascinating culture.