Outwitting History

Download or read book Outwitting History written by Aaron Lansky and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2005-09-02 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Incredible . . . Inspiring . . . Important.” —Library Journal, starred review “A marvelous yarn, loaded with near-calamitous adventures and characters as memorable as Singer creations.” —The New York Post “What began as a quixotic journey was also a picaresque romp, a detective story, a profound history lesson, and a poignant evocation of a bygone world.” —The Boston Globe “Every now and again a book with near-universal appeal comes along: Outwitting History is just such a book.” —The Sunday Oregonian As a twenty-three-year-old graduate student, Aaron Lansky set out to save the world’s abandoned Yiddish books before it was too late. Today, more than a million books later, he has accomplished what has been called “the greatest cultural rescue effort in Jewish history.” In Outwitting History, Lansky shares his adventures as well as the poignant and often laugh-out-loud stories he heard as he traveled the country collecting books. Introducing us to a dazzling array of writers, he shows us how an almost-lost culture is the bridge between the old world and the future—and how the written word can unite everyone who believes in the power of great literature. A Library Journal Best Book A Massachusetts Book Award Winner in Nonfiction An ALA Notable Book

Download or read book Outwitting History written by Aaron Lansky and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2005-09-02 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Incredible . . . Inspiring . . . Important.” —Library Journal, starred review “A marvelous yarn, loaded with near-calamitous adventures and characters as memorable as Singer creations.” —The New York Post “What began as a quixotic journey was also a picaresque romp, a detective story, a profound history lesson, and a poignant evocation of a bygone world.” —The Boston Globe “Every now and again a book with near-universal appeal comes along: Outwitting History is just such a book.” —The Sunday Oregonian As a twenty-three-year-old graduate student, Aaron Lansky set out to save the world’s abandoned Yiddish books before it was too late. Today, more than a million books later, he has accomplished what has been called “the greatest cultural rescue effort in Jewish history.” In Outwitting History, Lansky shares his adventures as well as the poignant and often laugh-out-loud stories he heard as he traveled the country collecting books. Introducing us to a dazzling array of writers, he shows us how an almost-lost culture is the bridge between the old world and the future—and how the written word can unite everyone who believes in the power of great literature. A Library Journal Best Book A Massachusetts Book Award Winner in Nonfiction An ALA Notable Book

Download or read book Read On...History written by Tina Frolund and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-10-21 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Make history come alive! This book helps librarians and teachers as well as readers themselves find books they will enjoy—titles that will animate and explain the past, entertain, and expand their minds. This invaluable resource offers reading lists of contemporary and classic non-fiction history books and historical fiction, covering all time periods throughout the world, and including practically all manner of human endeavors. Every book included is hand-selected as an entertaining and enlightening read! Organized by appeal characteristics, this book will help readers zero in on the history books they will like best—for instance, titles that emphasize character, tell a specific type of historical story, convey a mood, or are presented in a particular setting. Every book listed has been recommended based on the author's research, and has proved to be a satisfying and worthwhile read.

Download or read book The Book Rescuer written by Sue Macy and published by Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recipient of a Sydney Taylor Book Award for Younger Readers An ALA Notable Book A Bank Street Best Book of the Year “Text and illustration meld beautifully.” —The New York Times “Stunning.”​ —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “Inspired...[a] journalistic, propulsive narrative.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “The story comes alive through the bold acrylic and gouache art.” —Booklist (starred review) From New York Times Best Illustrated Book artist Stacy Innerst and author Sue Macy comes a story of one man’s heroic effort to save the world’s Yiddish books in their Sydney Taylor Book Award–winning masterpiece. Over the last forty years, Aaron Lansky has jumped into dumpsters, rummaged around musty basements, and crawled through cramped attics. He did all of this in pursuit of a particular kind of treasure, and he’s found plenty. Lansky’s treasure was any book written Yiddish, the language of generations of European Jews. When he started looking for Yiddish books, experts estimated there might be about 70,000 still in existence. Since then, the MacArthur Genius Grant recipient has collected close to 1.5 million books, and he’s finding more every day. Told in a folkloric voice reminiscent of Patricia Polacco, this story celebrates the power of an individual to preserve history and culture, while exploring timely themes of identity and immigration.

Download or read book Hell, No, We Didn't Go! written by Eli Greenbaum and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2024-05-11 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As long as there have been wars, there has been conscription. And conscription has never been popular. When asked in a Gallup poll taken in August 1965 whether the US decision to send troops to Vietnam was a mistake, 60 percent of Americans polled said no. But as American casualties increased and the war escalated, polls showed fewer Americans supporting US actions in Vietnam. That, however, did not stop the drafting of Americans into military service. Later, when the leaked Pentagon Papers revealed that the United States had misled Congress and the American public about the extent of US involvement in Vietnam through lies and the withholding of information, support was driven further downward. Today, the Vietnam War is regarded as the most unpopular war of the twentieth century. In Hell, No, We Didn’t Go!, Eli Greenbaum presents firsthand accounts of men who were driven to resist or dodge the Vietnam draft at all costs. He introduces readers to a cross section of individuals who found ways to defy the draft by leaving the country, going to prison, becoming conscientious objectors, gaming the system, conspiring to fail physicals, and even enlisting—anything to avoid being drafted. These vivid essays and candid oral histories detail events that were often controversial, sometimes volatile, and almost always emotionally charged. Greenbaum brings together a chorus of first-person accounts of draft resistance and protest held together by an overarching personal narrative while providing context, commentary, and an unusual fifty-year perspective on the men’s decisions to avoid the Vietnam War, no matter what. While some men passively accepted conscription as their fate, others actively resisted it, sometimes going to extremes. Each account reveals individual motivations, fears, and hopes—everything from disagreement with American foreign policy to questions of cowardice and the meaning of patriotism, all underlined by courage and determination.

Download or read book Outwitting the State written by Peter Skalník and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A characteristic response to the imposition of state power by the conquered, oppressed, and powerless is a pattern that Peter Skalnik calls "out-witting the state." This collection of essays challenges the widespread view that the state is a natural holder of authority in society. Using examples of confrontations between European states and polities outside Europe, the authors show that the power model is not universally applicable. Examples from Africa, Oceania, Asia, and North America support this radically different conception of politics. The authors argue that this less confrontational approach to state power is not only possible but desirable. The new and different approach gives ordinary people a chance to achieve political goals without looking to the state.

Download or read book Bye-paths in Baptist History written by Joseph Jackson Goadby and published by . This book was released on 1871 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The footpaths of any country may be expected to yield some glimpses, both of the land and the people, not obtainable along the dusty and well-beaten highway. It is sincerely hoped that this may prove equally true of these Bye-Paths in Baptist History. That they occasionally cross the main roads, and now and then run parallel with them, is no more than other "Bye-paths" have done before them; but care has been taken throughout to preserve, as much as possible, their distinctive character. In the sketches thus given of the Early English Baptists, no attempt has been made to diminish their excellencies or to gloss over their defects. Their early and persistent advocacy of the broadest religious freedom (an honour of which none will now seek to rob them); their zealous regard for Scriptural precedents; and their willingness to sacrifice all things in the maintenance of what they deemed to be the truth, commend them to the warmest sympathies and loving regard of their descendants. Nor should their disputatious and angular character; their literal observance of customs now fallen into desuetude, and their vigorous and inquisitorial discipline, be judged apart from the ferment of the age in which they lived, their natural reaction against the commandments of men, and their steadfast desire that those who associated with them should live unblamable and unreprovable before God.