Who's Who In International Affairs 1998 (Who's Who in International Affairs)

Book Description

John Goddard, a career explorer and adventurer, experienced many thrilling close calls with death during his adventurous life. As told in one of the most memorable stories in the original Chicken Soul for the Soul, when he was a boy, John Goddard made a list of 127 things he would like to do in his life, from living with pygmies in Africa and headhunters in Borneo to exploring the world's greatest rivers and highest peaks. The Survivor captures some of these adventures as it follows his experiences from boyhood, through his teen years and into adulthood. Each individual adventure is sure to thrill readers-from the exquisite details of exotic locales, to the raw power of Pacific storms, to the hair-raising brushes with death-always emphasizing the danger and exhilaration intrinsic to the adventurous life. Unique to this book, though, is the author's reverence for life and all living things, his honesty in admitting his own recklessness, his awe and gratitude to the supreme force that miraculously allowed him to survive each of these close calls with death, and his ability to use his experiences and the lessons he learned to set and achieve clear, meaningful goals. This great read will entertain and inspire people to live their dreams.

Customer Reviews:

The Survivor.......2006-10-29

This is a GREAT book by the Ultimate Adventurer/Explorer, John Goddard. The book covers many daring and dangerous activities that many would not even attempt. Goddard's living-on-the-edge lifestyle will definitely leave you on the edge-of-your-seat with his thrilling brushes with potential death. A must read. Also, his book "Kayaks Down the Nile" is equally thrilling...in both books you'll be shaking your head asking yourself," HOW did he ever live through it?" Simply...he IS the ultimate survivor! I couldn't put the books down until the end.

Amazing Stories.......2002-10-09

This book is a must-have. Buy it for yourself and your kids. Relive some of the most thrilling REAL LIFE adventures ever. John Goddard's life is like a hollywood movie.

Awful.........2002-07-25

Sounded like a great story..I even used Goddard's list once for an inspirational piece for school. Halfway through the book, I realized that this poorly written book is a compilation of highfalutin' chest thumping near-death experiences. If you are interested in real adventure, read about Shackleton, Krakauer or Simpson. Don't waste your money on this book!

Book Description

Welcome to Wonderland and the topsy-turvy world of Lewis Carroll, where nothing means quite what it seems and nobody might pass you on the street! Journey down the rabbit hole and through the looking-glass and enter into the mythical, magical imagination of Lewis Carroll and his beloved heroine, Alice.

Editor Linda Sunshine, in her follow-up to the bestselling All Things Oz, has gathered together an incredible collection of artwork, quotations, letters, recipes, puzzles and games inspired by the works of Lewis Carroll. She has traveled the world for the most extraordinary examples of art from hundreds of editions of Carroll’s works, including versions from the United States, England, Italy, France, Japan and Russia. Complementing Sir John Tenniel’s classic drawings are works by such renowned illustrators as Arthur Rackham, Gwynedd Hudson, Charles Folkard, Blanche McManus, Gertrude Kay, Mabel Lucie Attwell and Milo Winter.

Also among the treasures in this collection is a short story Carroll penned for a young friend, “Isa’s Adventures in Oxford,” which has gone unpublished since 1900. Excerpts from Carroll’s letters, most of which have been seen only in scholarly texts, reveal his passion for wordplay and his unique wit. Even rare excerpts from the magazines Carroll created as a child for members of his family are featured here, alongside images of his most famous characters.

Open this book and begin a curiouser and curiouser journey with Alice and her friends: the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts, Humpty Dumpty, and, of course, the White Rabbit.

Customer Reviews:

Not nearly all things, but still a lovely book.......2005-10-21

I have been collecting Alice in Wonderland items for nearly 30 years and I am happy to add this book to my collection. The information is presented in a format that is accessible to the general public and not just the Alice afficianado. The book production is also wery pleasing. The wonder of Alice is how she shows up all over the globe in so many ways 140 years after her conception. I think the title of the book understates to what extent Alice lives in our modern popular culture.

ALL THINGS ALICE - SHEER DELIGHT.......2005-01-08

I love this book. I received it yesterday at my office and read what I could on my lunch hour. I couldn't wait to get home. I bought this because I wanted to eventually introduce my 1 year old granddaughter to "Alice In Wonderland." Imagine my surprise to find that I can start reading to her now. There are extended nursery rhymes, funny sayings and a fascinating dialogue through the whole book. The illustrations are superb! I can start my granddaughter on the "white rabbit, calico cat, the queen" as well as "Alice" just from these wonderful illustrations. I can highly recommend this book for children and also adults who enjoy Lewis Carroll's wit. I cannot write enough good things about it.

Customer Reviews:

Don't bother!.......2006-07-17

This book is extremely dated. It lacks practical "how to" information and technical detail for cabochon cutting. There is more detail for faceting, but not enough to actually do faceting. The language is stilted and verbose. It is written in a "tour guide" style, you would not get the impression that the author had actually done any of this kind of work himself. Don't bother!

Great lapidary for beginners!.......2005-08-03

This book will appeal to all rock hounds. It provides great lapidary techniques for everyone, from the novice to the expert.
If you want to take a rough gem all the way to its full beauty, this book - and a few dollars that all hobbies require - will assist you through all the steps.

Average customer rating:

Good price for a good book!

Cabochon Cutting (Gembooks)
Jack R. Cox
Manufacturer: Gem Guides Book Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

A Gem Cutter's Handbook: Advanced Cabochon Cutting
The Art of Gem Cutting: Including Cabochons, Faceting, Spheres, Tumbling, and Special Techniques (Gembooks)
Introduction to Lapidary (Jewelry Crafts)
Facet Cutters Handbook (Gembooks)
Opal Cutting Made Easy (Jewelry Crafts)

ASIN: 0935182276

Customer Reviews:

Good price for a good book!.......2007-06-21

This book is a good reference for anyone working with gems and stones. Lots of pictures and detailed information at a very good price. Book is also a good size for storing at your work desk for quick reference.

A Gem Cutter's Handbook: Advanced Cabochon Cutting

Average customer rating:

A Gem Cutter's Handbook: Advanced Cabochon Cutting
Jack R. Cox
Manufacturer: Gembooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Cabochon Cutting (Gembooks)
The Art of Gem Cutting: Including Cabochons, Faceting, Spheres, Tumbling, and Special Techniques (Gembooks)
Facet Cutters Handbook (Gembooks)
Introduction to Lapidary (Jewelry Crafts)
Opal Cutting Made Easy (Jewelry Crafts)

ASIN: 0910652147

Cabochon Cutting: Gemcutter's Handbook (Gem Cutters' Handbook)

Average customer rating:

Cabochon Cutting: Gemcutter's Handbook (Gem Cutters' Handbook)
Jack R. Cox
Manufacturer: Gembooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Jewelry | Crafts & Hobbies | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Introduction to Lapidary (Jewelry Crafts)
A Gem Cutter's Handbook: Advanced Cabochon Cutting

ASIN: 0910652120

Advanced Cabochon Cutting (A Gem Cutter's Handbook)

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Advanced Cabochon Cutting (A Gem Cutter's Handbook)
Jack R. Cox
Manufacturer: Gem Guides Book Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000PHRE70

Cabochons: Make a Fast, Easy DIY Cab Cutting Machine (Master Gemology. Disc 15)

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Cabochons: Make a Fast, Easy DIY Cab Cutting Machine (Master Gemology. Disc 15)
Gerald L. Wykoff GG CSM Ph.D
Manufacturer: Adamas Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
ASIN: B000M1EKK8

Product Description

Newly published in PDF format (PCs and Macs) by Gerald wykoff, this CD-ROM provides a comprehensive tutorial on cabochon cutting that includes such advanced techniques as "running a wheel" and "chopping" to assure proper curvature. New, easy dopping techniques are covered along with the tough subject of polishing. In addition, a full section is devoted to making an improvised DIY 1-station cabochon cutting machine with a few scrounged parts. The unit features quick-change on laps, a gravity water supply-drain system and other niceties expected in commercial machines.

A Gem Cutter's Handbook Cabochon Cutting

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A Gem Cutter's Handbook Cabochon Cutting

Manufacturer: Gembooks
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000FRCGD2

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Gemcutting Tips of the Masters (CD-ROM)

ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM
ASIN: B000G7WGKE

Product Description

Every faceter-gem cutter develops methods and techniques over the years and this collection of such procedures can accelerate your ability to fashion gem crystals skillfully and accurately. The range of ideas and experience covers the entire gamut of gemstone treatments from evaluating rough, preforming gem crystals, cabbing or faceting (or both) with full attention to supplemental skills such as problem solving, optical experiments with shape and angle, facet and reflective tactics. It's all here, the experience of the world's finest gem cutters, professional and hobbyist.

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Master Gemcutting Techniques (CD-ROM)

Manufacturer: Adamas Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM
ASIN: B000G7SVZS

Product Description

Multi-media demonstration of all types of gemcutting - cabochons, faceting, Ssuzeki, rock art, glypto - with introductory lessonson how to perform and enjoy rocks and gems. Varous lapidary tools and accessories are illustrated, explained and shown in use. An intro by a certified Supreme Master Gemcutter.

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Plans: Make a Cabochon Cutting Machine

Manufacturer: Adamas Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: CD-ROM
ASIN: B000G7OL98

Product Description

For less than $150 you can make a highly efficient 4-station cabochon gem cutting machine. This multi-media CD-ROM tutorial guides you to conversion of a ordinary grinder into a customized machine that functions better than $2,000 commercial machines. Some cab cutting lessons included, too.

Book Description

The Burton Barr Central Library (Phoenix Central Library) has quickly become a point in the community's pride while serving as an exciting background to the region's library and information needs. It is a regular tour stop for visitors as well as architects and scholars from around the world. This architectural masterpiece works with the beautiful desert setting, and is designed to display the natural beauty of the West. The top of the library has a great public reading room, reminiscent of older libraries, with the entire non-fiction collection. The design is a mix of futuristic aspects combined with a respect for historical detail.

Smart Play : 101 Fun, Easy Games That Enhance Intelligence
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Smart Play : 101 Fun, Easy Games That Enhance Intelligence
Barbara Sher
Manufacturer: Jossey-Bass
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Self-Help | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
General | Health, Mind & Body | Subjects | Books
Child Development | Babies & Toddlers | Parenting | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
General | Parenting | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
General | Parenting & Families | Subjects | Books
Administration | Education Theory | Education | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

Attention Games: 101 Fun, Easy Games That Help Kids Learn To Focus

Self-esteem Games: 300 Fun Activities That Make Children Feel Good About Themselves

Spirit Games: 300 Fun Activities That Bring Children Comfort and Joy

Preschool Play and Learn : 150 Fun Games and Learning Activities for Preschoolers from Three to Six Years

Live the Life You Love: In Ten Easy Step-By Step Lessons

Accessories:

Health o Meter HDC100-01 "Grow with Me" Teddy Bear Scale for Babies and Toddlers Health o Meter HDC100-01 "Grow with Me" Teddy Bear Scale for Babies and Toddlers

Braun IRT 4020 ThermoScan Ear Thermometer

ASIN: 0471466735

Book Description

101 SIMPLE WAYS TO MAKE EVERY DAY A SPECIAL DAY!

Children who move their bodies as part of the learning process are more stimulated and alert-and they retain more of what they are taught. By sharing the upbeat, joyful activities in Smart Play, you can enhance your child's intelligence, boost his or her confidence, teach academic and motor skills, and provide a lasting foundation for learning.

Developed by Barbara Sher over the course of thirty years as a parent, teacher, and play-therapy specialist, this collection of 101 delightful, easy-to-follow games helps children use their bodies to master essential mental skills and concepts. You and your family can play virtually anywhere, with any number of participants, and without special preparation or equipment. So gather the children in your life and get ready to have fun as you open their minds and hearts to new experiences and knowledge.

SPECIAL SECTIONS HIGHLIGHT:

Encouraging movement and thinking
Improving motor and social skills
Enhancing language and math skills
Fostering parent-child interaction
Building on children's love of fantasy, action, and rhythm

Download Description

Delightful games that make learning fun for kids of all abilities
From the celebrated author of Self-Esteem Games and Spirit Games comes this joyful and practical resource book of original games that will improve the learning, motor, and social skills of children of all ages. Featuring step-by-step directions for fun activities that encourage movement and thinking, this indispensable guide shows parents, teachers, and caregivers how to use children's love of action, creativity, rhythm, and fantasy to help them use their bodies to master essential mental skills and concepts. All of these games require little preparation and can be played one-on-one or in larger groups, with friends or family at parties, or with classmates at school.

Barbara Sher, MA (Whitethorn, CA), has 35 years of experience as a teacher and occupational therapist, specializing in pediatrics. She conducts workshops for parents, teachers, therapists, and children around the world.

Book Description

Includes: After You * All of You * Buddie * Beware * C'est Magnifique * Easy to Love * From this Moment On * I Happen to Like New York * I Love You * It's De-Lovely * Love for Sale * Thank You So Much Lowsborough-Goodby * Night and Day * So in Love * You Do Something to Me * You're Sensational * You're the Top and more.

Book Description

City Codes is a study of the representation of the city in the modern novel that takes difference as its point of departure, so that cities are read according to the cultural and social position of the urbanite. City Codes argues that the modern urban novel, in contrast to earlier novels, is characterized by an intersection of public and private space, but that this intersection is mapped differently according to the position of the city dweller in terms of history, politics, nationality, gender, class, and race.

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A fine short intro to the life of IB Singer
Readable and informative
An unsophisticated but believable portrait
Further insight into the life of a Master

Isaac B. Singer: A Life
Florence Noiville
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel
The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
All Whom I Have Loved: A Novel
Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy, and Mishugas of the Yiddish Theater in America
Emma Lazarus (Jewish Encounters)

ASIN: 0374178003
Release Date: 2006-10-17

Book Description

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) is widely recognized as the most popular Yiddish writer of the twentieth century. His translated body of work, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978, is beloved around the world. But although Singer was a very public and outgoing figure, much about his personal life remains unknown. In Isaac Bashevis Singer, Florence Noiville offers a glimpse into the world of this much-beloved but persistently elusive figure.

An astonishingly prolific writer, Singer was able to recreate the lost world of Jewish Eastern Europe and also to describe the immigrant experience in America. Drawing heavily upon folklore, Singer’s work is noted for its mystical strain. But he was also heavily concerned with the problems of his own day, and through his novels and stories runs a strong undercurrent of social consciousness. Unafraid to celebrate peasant life, Singer was often accused of being vulgar, yet he was also recognized for a deeply moral sensibility. And much like his work, Singer’s personal life was marked by contradiction: the son of a Rabbi, he struggled with warring currents of devotion and doubt. Solicitous of affection, he was also known for his philandering. Devoted to the notion of family, he abandoned his own son before the Second World War.

Drawing on letters, personal recollections, and interviews with Singer’s friends, family, and publishing contemporaries, Florence Noiville speaks to these paradoxes. More appreciation than comprehensive biography, her narrative is rich in detail about the people, places, and ideas that shaped Singer’s world. A remarkably vivid portrait of the man and his work emerges—a compassionate, vivid, and insightful vision of one of the twentieth century’s greatest storytellers.

Customer Reviews:

A fine short intro to the life of IB Singer.......2007-01-01

When I started this book, I thought "this is just a collation of information from Singer's own autobiographical essays, along with some information from the biographies that have been published." By the second chapter, my opinion hadn't dramatically changed, but my appreciation of what Noiville had accomplished was much higher. This fine, short bio summarizes many strands of Singer's psychological complexity, whose own internal conflicts were amplified by his relationship with his older brother, his first translator (Saul Bellow), and surprisingly, even extended to his relationship to Yiddish. I learned for the first time that not only did Singer extensively revise and modify his stories as they were moved into English (this was well-known), but he has forbidden that translations be made of the Yiddish versions, and all foreign translations use the English texts. "A writer who gives up the text he has produced in his own language, a very strong, subtle, linguistically rich text; who forbids using it, consigns it to the dust, dooms it to oblivion..." (p98, quoting Henri Lewi). I may track down a recent book, edited by Seth Wolitz, called The Hidden IB Singer (2001). I also found a list of IB's favorite books (on p161): second only to the Bible, is "The Best of Pearls, by Moses Hayyim Luzzato", above Crime & Punishment (3rd), and Knut Hamsun's Pan (8th).

Readable and informative.......2006-12-14

As a fan of Singer's writing, I was pleased to learn more about the man from this engaging short biography. Noiville is respectful, curious, insightful. My only disappointment is that she makes no effort to chronicle Singer's work per se. Individual pieces are mentioned as they fit into the narrative of his life, but there's no comprehensive survey of the work. Nevertheless, Singer's character emerges vividly. Noiville is also attentive to the essential role in Singer's success played by a number of devoted women. - LJ

An unsophisticated but believable portrait.......2006-12-08

Isaac Bashevis Singer appears in this biography like many of his characters from his stories and novels. He is suspended between the narrow world of Talmudic and Hassidic Judaism in Poland and the wider world of secular knowledge and learning, unable really to choose between them. He is no saint but his sinner status, largely based on finding women irresistible, is not very great since his sins seem more imaginary than actual. The stories he wrote on Krochmalna Street in pre-Holocaust Warsaw were about Jews tormented by demons, poverty, crime, and gentile hatreds. Those he wrote after coming to America were about Jews tormented about the Holocaust they had lived through or heard about.

There are few saints here, even among the mullah-like rabbis, and lots of ordinary people who could be called sinners if they had really achieved anything sinful beyond greed and lechery.

Yet the story of Singer is very helpful in understanding his outstanding achievement in fiction. He wrote in Yiddish, a dying tongue and one close to extinction but he understood that translation into living modern languages would help his reputation; the result was finally a 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature. The story of his going to Stockholm to meet the King of Sweden is told charmingly and wonderfully, as are many other incidents in his long life.

The author, Noiville, is not a psychologist and her explanations are happily not clinical but based on common sense observation. Singer would not have liked to be subjected to psychological analysis. It was enough for him to be known to have suffered like everyone else from God's insufficient concern with what men and women really need.

This biography will be superseded some day but for the time being it is a very good introduction to a very fine author.

I wish the author had mentioned what I like the most about Singer. In his novel Sosha he remarks that while his people had lived for about 700 years in Poland they knew no Polish nor any other modern language but only Aramaic and Hebrew; they studied no modern books but only the Talmud which concerned itself with the proper celebration of liturgical matters in a Temple which had been destroyed 1900 years ago. This brief description of the fossil-like nature of rabbinic Judaism is priceless and could only have come from the pen of Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Further insight into the life of a Master .......2006-11-19

This biography is another contribution to the growing Literature about the Yiddish language master who is arguably one of the world's greatest short- story writers. Noiville a LeMonde correspondent who published this book originally in France in 2003 has her work elegantly translated here by Catherine Temerson. She does not aim at a comprehensive study but rather one which illuminates certain points of Singer's life, including his childhood background, his revolt against Orthodoxy, his dedication of his life to two passions, Women and Literature- his devotion to Yiddish, his complex depiction of world's lost, his literary genius.
In one of the many interesting anecdotes Noiville tells of the four -year old Singer amazing his mother with descriptions of the place they left when Singer was only one year old. His genius at observing and above all remembering would go with him all his life and help him bring back the lost worlds of his childhood and youth when he wrote about them years later in America.
Singer was many many things, an improbable collection of one who had rejected Orthodoxy and yet somehow knew more about Jewish life and practice, and cared more than almost any other writer I can think of. No one I think compares to his 'inner Jewishness' his feeling for every nuance of Jewish life and culture. His tremendously lively imagination confronted the most perplexing of philosophical questions about the meaning of human life. He lived at times in deep depression and yet a capacity to surprise and startle with the most powerful perceptions of life. His depictions of misery and suffering of the Jews of pre- war Poland are part of his providing a picture of a world which was to be lost.
This book is a valuable contribution to what will hopefully be more works about this great master of modern Literature.

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A Paper Bridge

Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life
Janet Hadda
Manufacturer: University of Wisconsin Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Master of Dreams: A Memoir of Isaac Bashevis Singer

ASIN: 0299186946

Amazon.com

Yiddish scholar and psychoanalyst Janet Hadda takes a bracingly unreverential look at the Nobel laureate too often viewed simplistically as a folksy chronicler of Jewish shtetl culture. Hadda's depiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-91) as a sophisticated, self-conscious artist won't surprise admirers of The Family Moskat, Yentl, and his other works of fiction. They will undoubtedly be dismayed, however, by her contention--with reasonable supporting evidence--that he was a cold, distant sibling, a cruel husband, and a capricious, manipulative womanizer. Hadda's warts-and-all portrait seems fair, though not overly generous.

Book Description

Isaac Bashevis Singer brought the vibrant milieu of pre-Holocaust Polish Jewry to the English-speaking world through his subtle psychological insight, deep sympathy for the eccentricities of Jewish folk custom, and unerring feel for the heroism of everyday life. His novels, including The Family Moskat and Enemies: A Love Story, and his short stories, such as "Yentl" and "Gimpel the Fool," prove him a consummate storyteller and probably the greatest Yiddish writer of the twentieth century.

Customer Reviews:

A Paper Bridge.......2002-09-19

When Isaac Bashevis Singer first arrived in New York to take up the writing assignments arranged for him at the Yiddish paper the "Forverts" by his more successful brother Israel Joshua, he wrote to a friend in the Warsaw ghetto where all his own baby steps toward an individual literary identity had been taken and was not hopeful: "In spite of everything, it's sad, and it's sad because here in New York I see even more clearly than in Poland that there is no Yiddish literature, that there is no one to work for. There is a crazy Jewish people here which keeps slightly kosher and peddles...and awaits Marxism for the people of the world. But it doesn't need Yiddish literature. We built on a paper bridge."

In a career spanning some sixty further years he did not significantly disprove his initial estimate and his troubled, complex relationship with his Jewish past both theological and familial, his aspiration and despair for the Yiddish language, his desire and contempt for the English audience through translation which was finally to be his only avenue to worldly success, all make his career an oddly emblematic one for the Jew in the twentieth century, seeking to retain an identity but selling it out at the same time. Janet Hadda's "Isaac Bashevis Singer, A Life" gives the outlines and some colour of his travails.

It was only when Israel Joshua died that Isaac Bashevis really came into his own, completing his first - wild, delirious, frenzied, sexual - novel about, significantly, the time of the social order shattering messiah Sabbatai Zevi, "Satan in Goray". Isaac, Hadda tells us, was a strange mixture of his weakly emotional father and coldly tough, rational mother - the grandson and son of rabbis whose father was far less suited to the role of judge and advisor than his mother. His sister, Hinde Esther, also a writer, was a turbulent, passionate, too close and perhaps sexual involvement in the home which Isaac never escaped - though he was cold and callous to her in person in later life, witholding particularly financial help in her difficult post war existance, he surrounded himself with emotional substitutes for her - mad, turbulent women - and what he did for himself he did for his fictional counterparts.

Again and again, in life and in fiction (the same triangle was in his modern set novels "Shadows on the Hudson" and "Enemies: A Love Story", as well as historical ones), Singer finds creative tension, the material for his output and his day to day entertainment, in a triangular state of play, the mistresses alternating, sometimes helping with translations among other duties. One of Hadda's most engaging finds, a Singer story in outline, has Singer's long suffering wife Alma coming to Israel to confront him with his mistress in a hotel. This could not go on, she said. He told her it had been going on five years. She was dumbfounded. Sensing an opening Isaac leapt in, asked her if it had really bothered her at all all of this time, and the three wound up going together to visit retirement homes that might suit the mistress's mother.

There is not enough of this sort of thing. Deep details of the texture and taste of this most sensual writer's life are missing, not just in the sections about the Warsaw writer's world, which justifiably will have evaded the biographer's reconstructing steps by disappearing, but also in New York, a city whose buildings are there, more often than not, and whose neighbourhoods survive, if occupied by new ethnicities, a different time. I know New York and would have welcomed a charting of this late century's Jewish odyssey up the rungs of the city's economic life and out via the career of this writer. But you cannot tell where Singer lived when he wrote which book, in Hadda's account, you can't tell where he walked. Writers, as much as bankers and bricklayers, are creatures of money and time, and what street a book was written on matters as much as its historical wellsprings. A friend of mine, living in New York in the eighties, said he'd see Singer walking some blocks regularly - he walked fast, focused, and unstoppable to where he was going. You were not going to impede this old man from going anywhere.

Hadda's short-comings are most evident where she quotes the interview of Richard Elman, who through a few touches picked up during interview, prises open all the tensions of Singer's relationship with non-Jewish literature and life: he translated Dostoevsky's "The Devils" into Yiddish while in Warsaw and snipes at Alma to keep quiet about it, belittling her favourite German Jewish authors Wassermann and Sholem Ash and her, then smiles at Elman as if it was a game. Hadda the Yiddishist and fellow woman is unable to pick up anything like this juicy from her interviews with Alma or the remaining friends, lovers, haters. She gets from Alma that the Singer marriage was glued together by good sex and that perhaps this was the same for Singer's own mis-matched parents, but this does not compensate for a lack of sensitivity to nuance, an inability to touch the world she is painting. If Singer is as important as she believes, and he did win the Nobel Prize, sniping at his first notable translator Bellow for beating him to it, he deserves a fuller book.

The image and other stories (G.K. Hall large print book series)
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The image and other stories (G.K. Hall large print book series)
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Manufacturer: G.K. Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

General | Foreign Languages | Reference | Subjects | Books
General | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0816140278

Isaac Bashevis Singer on Literature and Life
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The wisdom of a great storyteller

The Year that Chanukah Came In the Middle of Summer

Isaac Bashevis Singer on Literature and Life
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Manufacturer: University of Arizona Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books | Classics | Comic | Contemporary | Literary
ASIN: 0816506779

Customer Reviews:

The wisdom of a great storyteller .......2005-02-02

Singer is always interesting whether you agree with him or not. He has a clear and definite idea of Literature as storytelling, and he is one of the great storytellers. He has the idea that the reader must be entertained and not confounded with impossible intellectual puzzles aimed to show the writer's skill. His life - wisdom grows out of a rich Jewish experience of worlds no longer here, and out of his not easy life- journey as a writer. His humor and intelligence shine through everywhere, and make him a delight to read even when he is just ' talking'.

The Year that Chanukah Came In the Middle of Summer.......1998-02-08

Isaac bashevis singer

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An Isaac Bashevis Singer Reader

Manufacturer: Noonday Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0374514895

ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER. The Life of a Storyteller

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ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER. The Life of a Storyteller
Lila Perl
Manufacturer: Jewish Publication Society
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GUUV2Q

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Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Life of a Storyteller
Lila Perl
Manufacturer: Jewish Publication Society of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Authors | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Jewish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Teens | Subjects | Books

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The Jewishness of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Guo Qiang Qiao
Manufacturer: Peter Lang Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Classics | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0820459119

Lost Landscapes: In Search of Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Jews of Poland

Average customer rating:

dissapointed
a wonderful book!

Lost Landscapes: In Search of Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Jews of Poland
Agata Tuszynska
Manufacturer: William Morrow & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0688122140

Book Description

Lost Landscapes is the account of an intensely emotional journey by an award-winning Polish writer and historian who searches for the remaining traces of the culture of Polish Jews-permanently erased by the Holocaust and the subsequent forty-five years of Communist rule.

Agata Tuszynska first learned about the Jews of Poland by reading the novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer, the Polish-born Yiddish novelist and short story writer. Surrounded by silent mementos of that lost world -- a cemetery full of broken tombstones, a cinema in an ancient synagogue -- she stubbornly refused to accept its passing, deciding to re-create it from the memories of its dispersed and now aged inhabitants. Her travels took her to small Polish towns, once vibrant with Singer's heroes and now empty of any Jewish presence, to the cafes of Tel Aviv and the Jewish neighborhoods of New York. There, speaking with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust, with Singer's colleagues and co-workers, working with the patient persistence of an archaeologist, she removes layers of pain and trauma to uncover memories deeply concealed and often purposely forgotten. From these personal and tragic experiences emerges a broad and tangled tapestry of Polish and Jewish lives lived side by side, observed in brilliant and vivid detail.

Customer Reviews:

dissapointed.......2003-04-03

I expected an objective tale of a prewar life of Polish Jews in Poland. Jewish writer Tuszynska failed in my opinion. She is one of many Polish Jews who when discovered their roots try to make a living writing about Jewish subjects. Some are better than others, some worst. Tuszynska's great knowledge of Singer is unquestionable but her observations reflect deep anti-Polonizm. Maybe if she tries harder in a future she can create a masterpiece. One star for Tuszynska's book for picking the subject but I believe Singer deserves better.

a wonderful book!.......2001-01-14

Agata Tuszynska's book is written with talent, great dedication and sensitivity to tell as much as possible about Singer. The book shows the author's deep honesty in showing Singer as a person the literary world admired. I found it one of the most interestoing books I have read recently.

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