# Mandel Vilar Press > Mandel Vilar Press is a nonprofit indie publisher advancing diversity and conservation in publishing. ## Posts - [Interview with author Dr. Alla Shapiro, and her memoir, Doctor on Call](https://mvpublishers.org/interview-with-author-dr-alla-shapiro-and-her-memoir-doctor-on-call/): Dr. Alla Shapiro was a pediatric hematologist in Kiev when she was sent as a first responder to Chernobyl, unprepared and misled by a government determined to hide the truth. She shares the stark contrast between the official story and the reality she faced, both as a doctor and a mother. After immigrating to the U.S., she rebuilt her medical career from the ground up. Years later, she was diagnosed with cancer, likely caused by radiation exposure, and found herself on the other side of the care she had spent a lifetime providing. Her story is a reflection on resilience,… - [Conversations with Diego Moldes](https://mvpublishers.org/conversations-with-diego-moldes/): 1 – Overview 2 – Jews and Literature - [New Release Today! When Einstein Met Kafka](https://mvpublishers.org/new-release-today-when-einstein-met-kafka/): Dear Friends and Colleagues: On this day, Mandel Vilar Press has just published both a jacketed hardcover and E-Book of Diego Moldes, When Einstein Met Kafka: Jewish Contributions to the Modern World. Since 1980 I have been publishing books by Jewish writers and scholars–first at SUNY Press, then at Indiana University Press, at Wayne State University Press, at Syracuse University Press, at University of Wisconsin Press, at Texas Tech University Press and for the last 11 years at Mandel Vilar Press. I consider this book to be one of the most important books that I have published. It provides an answer… - [Coming September 2025: When Einstein Met Kafka](https://mvpublishers.org/coming-09-25-when-einstein-met-kafka/): When Einstein Met Kafka By Diego Moldes The extraordinary breadth of Jewish contributions to Western Culture in the sciences and arts have been, and continues to be, incalculable. “This landmark contribution by a leading cultural historian, Diego Moldes, is an original achievement: the fullest and most historically grounded study of Jewish intellectual and cultural achievements and contributions. It fills a gap in the worldwide literature, at the very moment that it addresses urgent issues of the place  … in their own contexts, especially today’s challenges not only to larger understandings but to contemporary everyday lives” —Harvey J. Graff, a comparative… - [Coming September 2025: SONS OF SURVIVORS](https://mvpublishers.org/coming-09-25-sons-of-survivors/): SONS OF SURVIVORS Making Peace with Inherited Trauma By Aron Hirt-Manheimer and Marty Yura This joint memoir encapsulates  the power of friendship and love for two sons of Holocaust Survivors “Two sons of Holocaust survivors, conceived in the same Displaced Persons camp, recount the arc of their converging and diverging lives, and how they reconnected.  A memorable contribution to post-war American Jewish history and to the literature on inherited trauma.” — Jonathan D. Sarna, University Professor and Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History, Brandeis University “SONS OF SURVIVORS: Making Peace with Inherited Trauma testifies to… - [Coming September 2025: Pass the Trauma, Please](https://mvpublishers.org/coming-09-25-pass-the-trauma-please/): Pass the Trauma, Please By Todd Diamond If Mel Brooks and Amy Schumer adopted a second-generation Holocaust survivor, raised him, then sent him off to a writer’s retreat, you’d get Pass the Trauma Please. “Pass the Trauma, Please isn’t just about the death camps, the gas chambers, the incomprehensible evil. It’s about the Holocaust and its aftershocks. The unrelenting ripple effect of a unique trauma that echoes through children raised in the long shadow of tragedy.” —ABE FOXMAN, former national director of the Anti-Defamation League.  “This original, provocative, and irreverent memoir presents us with a unique second-generation Holocaust survivor viewpoint… - [It Takes Two to Torah](https://mvpublishers.org/it-takes-two-to-torah/): It Takes Two to Torah The Five Books of Moses By Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer “Abigail Pogrebin and Rabbi Dov Linzer illuminate the Torah through discussion in the most joyous, insightful, conversational way. They make what could be an academic concept –to investigate and discuss the true meaning of the Torah–into delightful banter, coming at it from two very different perspectives. They give us permission to question and interpret the layers of thetext and in so doing, realize that it is the questioning that makes us human. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and learned so much along… - [The Deadening](https://mvpublishers.org/the-deadening/): The Deadening By Jim Beane “The book’s muscular straightforward stye and deepening nightmarish tone keeps you in its grip . . . .A powerful depiction of the psychological ravages of war.”– KIRKUS REVIEWS “Even though Beane grants limited access to his antihero’s emotional and psychological state, Hickman’s restless and violent actions still give insight into the character and offer an unsparing view of combat trauma.” – PUBLISHERS WEEKLY “Jim Beane is a rising star in the East Coast literary scene who now shines his light onto the plains of Middle America and a time in history that foretold many of the… - [Still Life at Eighty, A Memoir](https://mvpublishers.org/still-life-at-eighty-a-memoir/): Still Life at Eighty: A Memoir By Nicholas Delbanco “Delbanco’s fluency, the self-reflexivity, the allusiveness and elusiveness, the wit are in service here to what feels like something new. — The Delbanco book I’ve been waiting and wanting to read for half my life. Bravo.” —David Shields,  author of Reality Hunger, The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead  “Still Life at Eighty is a triumphant, wise, and elegant memoir that beautifully explores the experience of aging, the joy of life, the inevitability of its end, and Delbanco’s remarkably influential journey through the arts.”— Charles Johnson, A National… - [Celebrating our 10th Anniversary!](https://mvpublishers.org/celebrating-our-10th-anniversary/): 10th Anniversary! It is hard to believe that it has been 10 years already! Publishing books and translations across all genres, with a focus on conservation of both our natural world and our cultural diversity. Highlighting Jewish writers and the The Holocaust, modern history and authors of color. - [Homero Aridjis wins prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize!](https://mvpublishers.org/homero-aridjis-wins-prestigious-griffin-poetry-prize/): Winner of the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize We are thrilled to announce that Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence by Homero Aridjis, translated by George McWhirter, has won the Griffin Poetry Prize. The judges write:“Self-Portrait in the Zone of Silence brings poet-translator George McWhirter’s adept English to the service of a great world-poet, Homero Aridjis. The book’s enchanting variety of tones and subjects expresses a rounded human being engaged with our total experience, from the familial to the political, from bodily sensations to dream, vision, philosophic thought, and history, from hope to foreboding. A keynote is the sense of a person… - [Book Q&A with Debora Kalb](https://mvpublishers.org/book-qa-with-debora-kalb/): Hot off the presses. Deborah Kalb is a well known book blogger who interviews new book authors about their books. This link will take you to Deborah’s interview with our author, Eva Umlauf, The Number on Your Forearm is lue Like Your Eyes. Naomi wrote an Afterword for the book that was recently reprinted on the Jewish Book Council’s website. Naomi is mixed race–and her thoughts in the afterword show a kinship with her grandmother’s plight as both she and her grandmother are/were considered, “The Other” in their respective majority populations. Erik, Eva’s son, married Natalie Williams, who is African… - [Book Launch: Eva Umlauf with Stefanie Oswalt](https://mvpublishers.org/book-launch-eva-umlauf-with-stefanie-oswalt/): The Number on Your Forearm Is Blue Like Your Eyes: A Memoir By Eva Umlauf with Stefanie OswaltTranslated from the German by Shelley Frisch. Foreword by Michael Brenner . Afterword by Naomi Umlauf Book events have just been scheduled and announced to launch Eva Umlauf’s memoir: (1) (May 2nd, a book event hosted by Brown University and the Campus Hillel–Eva Umlauf will have a public discussion of her memoir with her granddaughter who is a student at Brown University on May 2nd. Then on (2) May 6th the 92nd Street Y (92Y) in New York City will have a book… - [The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir](https://mvpublishers.org/the-23rd-psalm-a-holocaust-memoir/): The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir By George Salton and Anna Salton Eisen with a new Foreword by Michael Berenbaum has been named a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for 2022 in the Holocaust Memoir category. Dear Friends and Colleagues, Anna Salton Eisen, our author of (1) Pillar of Salt: A Daughter’s Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust (ISBN: 9781942134 824) and co-author of (2) The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir (ISBN: 9781942134848) has been a very active author speaking a both in-person and virtual events in 2022 and now again in 2023.So far She will be… - [New Partnership](https://mvpublishers.org/ftb/): Mandel Vilar Press and Fig Tree Books LLC Form A Strategic Partnership! Effective immediately, FTB has become an imprint of  MVP.   Robert Mandel said, “Fig Tree’s mission of publishing the best literature of the American Jewish  experience dovetails extraordinarily well with Mandel Vilar Press’s mission of advancing diversity and conservation in the book economy and bringing underrepresented literature of the Americas to a wide audience. ## Pages - [Refund and Returns Policy](https://mvpublishers.org/refund_returns/): Overview Our refund and returns policy lasts 30 days. If 30 days have passed since your purchase, we can’t offer you a full refund or exchange. To be eligible for a return, your item must be unused and in the same condition that you received it. It must also be in the original packaging. To complete your return, we require a receipt or proof of purchase. There are certain situations where only partial refunds are granted: Refunds Once your return is received and inspected, we will send you an email to notify you that we have received your returned item.… - [Awards](https://mvpublishers.org/awards/): Awards & Endorsements “Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories” by Blume Lempel: Modern Language Association’s Leviant Prize for the best Yiddish translated published book form (2014-2019) Theodore Bikel’s and Aimee Ginsburg Bikel’s “The City of Light”: Skipping Stones Magazine’s annual award for Honor Award for Children’s Multicultural literature in (2019) Bob Mankoff, “Have I Got A Cartoon For You: The Moment Magazine’s Book of Jewish Cartoons”: Foreword Reviews Magazine’s, Silver Medal Awards for the best book published by an Independent Press in the category of Adult Nonfiction Humor and Nonfiction Children’s Literature (2019) Edna Itturalde’s book “Green Was My Forest”:… - [Readers Guides](https://mvpublishers.org/readers-guides/): Reader’s & Teacher’s Guides Download Download Download - [About](https://mvpublishers.org/about/): About Mandel Vilar Press Advancing Diversity and Conservation in Publishing by bringing underrepresented and diverse literature of the Americas to a larger English speaking readership, MVP serves as a conduit of multicultural exchange and its availability plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy and vibrant democracy. Mission MVP — The nonprofit publishing arm of Americas for Conservation + the Arts, MVP is one of only a handful of publishers dedicated to connecting the literature of the Americas. We unite the works of the best writers of Central and South America with the leading ethnic and minority writers of North… - [My account](https://mvpublishers.org/my-account/) - [Checkout](https://mvpublishers.org/checkout/) - [Cart](https://mvpublishers.org/cart/) - [Shop](https://mvpublishers.org/shop/) - [Privacy Policy](https://mvpublishers.org/privacy-policy/): Who we are Our website address is: https://www.mvpublishers.org/ Comments When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection. An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment. Media If you upload images to… - [Authors](https://mvpublishers.org/authors/): Authors Burt Geller Candy Carson Drew Berrymore Jessica Ford Ken Clark Linda Hamilton Inspire Daily Reading Visit Our Blog and Page Find Out Daily Inspiration Quotes from the Best Authors View Our Blog - [Home](https://mvpublishers.org/): Discover Your Next Book WHEN EINSTEIN MET KAFKA $29.95 SONS OF SURVIVORS $27.95 Pass The Trauma, Please $24.95 Still Life at Eighty $21.95 The Deadening $18.95 It Takes Two to Torah $27.95 DISCOVER MORE BOOKS Advancing Diversity and Conservation in Publishing The Publishing Arm of the Nonprofit Most Recent Articles Events2 hours ago Interview with author Dr. Alla Shapiro, and her memoir, Doctor on Call Book Releases1 day ago Conversations with Diego Moldes Book ReleasesSeptember 25, 2025 New Release Today! When Einstein Met Kafka Book ReleasesJuly 30, 2025 Coming September 2025: When Einstein Met Kafka View more Bringing Stories Alive… - [Our Team](https://mvpublishers.org/our-team/): Our Team Dr. Robert A. Mandel PUBLISHER & PRESS DIRECTOR linkedinRead more Irene Vilar CO-PUBLISHER & EDITOR linkedinRead more Dr. Dena Mandel CO-FOUNDER & SENIOR EDITOR linkedinRead more Mary Beth Hinton MANUSCRIPT & PRODUCTION EDITOR linkedinRead more Sophie Appel Production and Design Manager linkedinRead more Inspire Daily Reading Visit our blog and find out about all of our latest news, updates, events and book releases! View Our Blog - [Contacts](https://mvpublishers.org/contacts/): Contact Us 19 Muriel St Freeport, NY 11520 USA +8 800 841 25 69 info@email.com I agree that my submitted data is being collected and stored. - [Blog List](https://mvpublishers.org/blog-list/) - [Blog Standard](https://mvpublishers.org/blog-standard/) ## Products - [WHEN EINSTEIN MET KAFKA](https://mvpublishers.org/product/when-einstein-met-kafka/): In April 1911, Prague artists, writers, and intellectuals often gathered nightly at the Café Louvre, an intellectual center where music was played and high-level discussions were held. Many of the attendees were German-speaking Jews, such as Franz Kafka and his faithful friend Max Brod, Hugo Bergmann, Oskar Kraus, Franz Werfel, the mathematician Georg Pick, and a new arrival to the city, thirty-two-year-old Albert Einstein. Is it possible that Kafka and Einstein met and exchanged ideas? Did they influence each other from a philosophical or deep-thinking perspective? In neither Kafka's nor Einstein’s correspondence there is not even the slightest mention of each other. But Einstein and Kafka, two icons of our modern era, serve as the starting point for this book on the enormous contributions in the fields of the empirical sciences, humanities, letters, and arts by individuals of Jewish origin in modernity. In this book, the reader will encounter numerous names in the pages that all spring from the fountainhead of these two antecedents, the Einsteinian and the Kafkian. WHILE JEWS ACCOUNT FOR 0.2 PERCENT OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION and no more than 2.5 percent of any country except Israel, they have made some of the greatest contributions to Western Culture in diverse fields that range from physics and philosophy to music and art. One register of these contributions is Nobel Prizes: from its first recipients in 1901, 26 percent of awardees in the Nobel’s six fields — among them, physics, physiology/medicine, and economics — have been Jews. What accounts for the extraordinary breadth of these achievements? This is a question that Diego Moldes examines in When Einstein Met Kafka. Among his answers are the history of Jewish culture itself, whether Orthodox or secular, with its emphasis on literacy, learning, and especially inquiry and questioning. Until the European Enlightenment in the 18th century, Jews did not have full citizenship and civil rights — they were barred from universities, from government, and from entire professions. The Enlightenment opened the doors! Despite the outbreaks of violent anti-Semitism — or what Diego Moldes calls Judeophobia —and continuing discrimination in all western countries, Jews now had legal rights, and they persevered. In a near-encyclopedic fashion, he profiles just how thousands of individual Jews, by name, made original contributions to fields as diverse as medicine artificial intelligence, philosophy, history, economics, business, world finance, computing, sports, film, architecture, and more! The book itself is an extraordinary achievement of twenty years of intensive research, yet written in an immensely engaging style that has been translated and adapted for English readers from the Spanish by Steven Capsuto. - [SONS OF SURVIVORS](https://mvpublishers.org/product/sons-of-survivors/): The authors of this dual memoir are second-generation Holocaust survivors. They did not live through the trauma of the Holocaust, they inherited it. Whether survivor-parents revealed what they endured or erected barriers of silence, the horrors they experienced permeated the lives of their children. Aron Hirt-Manheimer and Marty Yura grew up in the close-knit community of Yiddish-speaking refugees in America. After meeting in Los Angeles as high school students, the two became fast friends with much in common including the fact that they were both conceived in the same displaced persons camp in US-occupied Germany. This memoir traces their colorful growing-up adventures through fast-paced alternating passages. Though the Holocaust formed the backdrop of their lives, they didn’t talk much about it—until, as older adults, they embraced the imperative to bear witness. They set out to discover everything they could about what happened to their parents and other relatives in Poland during World War II. For Aron, the most powerful revelations were contained in a nearly forgotten memoir written by his uncle fifty years earlier in Argentina. Marty’s breakthrough came after participating in a Zen Peacemakers immersion retreat on the killing fields of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Navigating through this haunted terrain together, the friends realized that the love they inherited from their parents transcends the trauma. Their joint memoir attests to a legacy of love against hate. - [Pass The Trauma, Please](https://mvpublishers.org/product/pass-the-trauma-please/): PASS THE TRAUMA, PLEASE is a comedy-drama memoir that presents the most brutal moment of Jewish history in an unorthodox manner. It honors the life lessons of a Holocaust survivor who reveals long-buried truths about surviving as an orphan and soldier who fought for Israeli independence. His scandalous secrets are disclosed to his son during an unforgettable Sunday night dinner in a Chinese restaurant. But it’s not just stories that were passed down from a survivor to his children. Genetically Inherited Holocaust Trauma hitches a ride, resulting in his son’s dysfunctional relationships and dubious behaviors. Like many books about the Holocaust, PASS THE TRAUMA, PLEASE addresses loss. But there’s also drug smuggling, attempts to reverse a circumcision, brothels, kibbutz ambushes, divorce, death camp visits, decadent nights at Studio 54, and tales of lost virginity. Despite his own insecurities as a writer, plus deep concerns that other genocides might soon eclipse the Holocaust, a catalyst that drives the author is... will he finish the book while his father, one of the last Holocaust survivors, is still alive? Another motivation for the book’s unique structure and irreverent tone is the challenge thrown down by Todd Diamond’s father who said, “Do me a favor, son. No long-winded descriptions of the smells in the Ghetto, the corpses. Everyone knows this already. Elie Wiesel, Primo Levy, Anne Frank, that guy who wrote the comic book about the mouse, they all covered it. Don’t be afraid to slip in a few jokes. What do you call it again… that bullshit you always say… oh yeah, write something poster-punk.” He meant to say, post-punk. Todd’s father concluded his appeal by saying, “And besides, you’re no Elie Wiesel.” So, while PASS THE TRAUMA, PLEASE probes the darkness of humanity, you’ll also find an equal amount of irreverence and humor that distinguishes it from most holocaust memoirs. The unrelenting ripple effect of a unique trauma that echoes through children raised in the long shadow of tragedy.  He writes his story and the story of his parents and his extended family who perished in the Holocaust in a provocative and irreverent style to hopeful appeal and educate a broader readership. To that end, Todd finds light and humor amidst the wreckage,  a real testament to the power of memory. - [Still Life at Eighty](https://mvpublishers.org/product/306/): Novelist, critic, essayist, screenwriter, teacher, traveler, and art aficionado, Nicholas Delbanco has compiled a mosaic of his life as he glances backwards and forwards from the vantage point of his eightieth year. In episodic riffs, Still Life at Eighty revisits seven houses where Delbanco welcomed a panoply of literati, such as Mary Ruefle, Mary Lee Settle, Mary Robison, John Ashbery, John Cheever, John Irving, and John Updike. Each abode becomes a receptacle of memory, as he recalls his friendships with the likes of James Baldwin, Grace Paley, Frederick Busch, Donald Barthelme, and Russell Banks. The memoir is saturated with artistic appreciation, which colors Delbanco’s life from early childhood to his eightieth year. The grandson of collectors (whose paintings were plundered by the Nazis), nephew of a London gallerist, son of an accomplished painter, and a collector himself, Delbanco summons his reminiscences of art, artifacts, and artists as he pivots from a youthful artistic apprenticeship to become a prolific professional writer. - [The Deadening](https://mvpublishers.org/product/the-deadening/): SET IN 1921, HARRELL HICKMAN AND WILLEM REDD have returned from no man’s land and the brutality of war in the trenches in France. Neither has been able to resume what they were or might have been after living through the senselessness of crushing deaths from machine gun fire, poisonous gas, and mortars day after day after day. Back in the U.S., Hickman walks away from an overcrowded veteran’s hospital where he is being treated for what British field doctors called “shell shock,” a devastating mental disease that now goes under the benign abstraction of PTSD. Redd, who barely survived shattering wounds returns to his family and home in Wisdom, Nebraska. Both Hickman and Redd happen to meet in Wisdom, where Hickman ends up after hopping multiple freight trains west. The chance encounter of these damaged young men leads to a number of dramatic clashes that in their unfolding bear the semblance of foreordained Greek tragedy. - [It Takes Two to Torah](https://mvpublishers.org/product/it-takes-two-to-torah/): For the first time, in a single volume, readers can take a tour of the entire Torah through the medium of one challenging, instructive, irreverent, animated conversation. Rabbi Dov Linzer, an Orthodox rabbi, and Abigail Pogrebin, a Reform journalist talk their way through the Five Books of Moses with candor, humor, emotion, personal revelation, and scholarship. Rabbi Linzer is President and Rabbinic Head of YCT Rabbinical School (a Modern Orthodox seminary,) and Abigail Pogrebin is a veteran journalist, author of “My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew” and former producer for “60 Minutes.” Dov is a renowned expert in Torah and Talmud, whose personal values run liberal and egalitarian, but who also has clear parameters about what is halachically correct and comfortable when it comes to Jewish law and tradition. Abby is our relatable every-Jew in America, deeply engaged in Jewish life, but less through strict observance and prayer as through study, reporting, synagogue, and community. This book is the product of two people literally meeting in the middle to bring us their most honest intellectual and relevant understanding of the Torah. Pogrebin and Linzer engaged in short dialogues on a podcast for Tablet Magazine, and they have now been collected and edited so that the full, fascinating exploration can be found in one place. This book is a Torah conversation-starter for families on Shabbat, for religious school instructors with students of all ages, for individuals who have never found a way to read the entire Torah in bite-size, relatable nuggets, and for young clergy looking for some sermon ideas if they’re stuck! Most of all, it is a snapshot of what Torah study is meant to be: a real-time, candid, instructive, challenging exchange of responses to ancient text. “It Takes Two to Torah” is not just an education, it’s an invitation – to join the oldest Book Club in the world. - [The Jewish Underground of Samarkand: How Faith Defied Soviet Rule](https://mvpublishers.org/product/the-jewish-underground-of-samarkand-how-faith-defied-soviet-rule/): The Jewish Underground of Samarkand: How Faith Defied Soviet Rule (October 31, 2023; Mandel Vilar Press) by Rabbi Hillel Zaltzman relates the largely unknown story of the Chassidic Jewish underground that operated in Samarkand under the watchful eyes of the KGB—a story of faith, courage, and resilience. When the Nazis invaded Ukraine, throngs of Jews fled eastward to the Soviet provinces of Central Asia. Members of the Chabad stream of Chassidism settled in the cities of Samarkand and Tashkent in Uzbekistan. Hillel Zaltzman’s family was among these refugees. After the war, Jewish communities across the Soviet Union faced renewed efforts by Stalin and the Soviet regime to shut down their religious institutions and eliminate Jewish religious identity. As a child, Hillel studied in secret with Chassidic teachers who could have been sent to Siberia if discovered. At sixteen, Hillel was recruited to join Chamah, an underground organization founded by a small group of young men to promote Jewish life through education. This clandestine group succeeded in establishing a network of underground Jewish schools for more than 1,500 children, as well as a secret yeshiva in Samarkand for older students. Zaltzman describes the memorable people he worked with and the sacrifices they made to share their love of Torah and Jewish learning. He also recalls some of their more colorful adventures—their attempts to celebrate Jewish holidays in secret, hold prayer services, make their own Passover matzah, and obtain religious texts when it was illegal to do so. In 1971, after fifteen years of waiting, Zaltzman finally received his exit visa and emigrated to Israel with his family. There he helped reestablish Chamah—this time to help new immigrants from the Soviet Union settle in their new homes and reclaim their Jewish identity. - [Rewriting ILLNESS: A View of My Own](https://mvpublishers.org/product/rewriting-illness-a-view-of-my-own/): What happens when a novelist with a “razor-sharp wit” (Newsday), a “singular sensibility” (Huff Post), and a lifetime of fear about getting sick finds a lump where no lump should be? Months of medical mishaps, coded language, and Doctors Who Don’t Get It. With wisdom, self-effacing wit, and the story-telling artistry of an acclaimed novelist, Elizabeth Benedict recollects her cancer diagnosis after discovering multiplying lumps in her armpit. In compact, explosive chapters, interspersed with moments of self-mocking levity, she chronicles her illness from muddled diagnosis to “natural remedies,” to debilitating treatments, as she gathers sustenance from family, an assortment of urbane friends, and a fearless “cancer guru.” Benedict’s sagacity jackets her fears, which are personal, political, and ultimately global. Amidst weighty concerns of the Covid pandemic and an all-consuming obsession over her ailments, Rewriting Illness is suffused with suspense, secrets, and the unexpected solace of silence. - [Prayers for the Living](https://mvpublishers.org/product/prayers-for-the-living/): As a novel both grand in its vision and loving in its familiarity, Prayers for the Living presents a series of conversations between grandmother, Minnie Bloch and her companions unfolding a layered portrait of three generations of the Bloch family, whose members are collapsing under everyday burdens and betrayals. Her son, Manny is a renowned, almost legendary rabbi. Respected by his congregants, and surrounded by family, no one suspects that he yearns for a life of greater personal glory, but when an oracular bird delivers what Manny believes to be a message from his deceased father, he abandons his congregation in pursuit of a life in business and his entire life spirals out of control. - [The Sea Beach Line A Novel](https://mvpublishers.org/product/the-sea-beach-line-a-novel/): Fans of Nathan Englander's For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, and Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union will relish to Ben Nadler's combined mystery, love story, and homage to text and custom. Set in post-Giuliani New York City, The Sea Beach Line melds mid-20th- century pulp fiction and traditional Jewish folklore as it updates the classic story of a young man trying to find his place in the world. After being expelled from Oberlin for hallucinogenic drug use, Izzy Edel seeks out his estranged father--a Polish Jew turned Israeli soldier turned New York Street vendor named Alojzy who is reported to be missing, possibly dead. To learn about Alojzy's life and discover the truth behind his disappearance, Izzy takes over his father's outdoor bookselling business and meets the hustlers, gangsters, and members of a religious sect who peopled his father's world. He also falls in love. As Izzy soon discovers, appearances can deceive; no one, not even his own father, is quite whom he seems to be. Vowing to prove himself equal to Alojzy's legacy of fearlessness, Izzy plunges forward on a criminal enterprise that will bring him answers--at great personal cost. - [Safekeeping A Novel](https://mvpublishers.org/product/safekeeping-a-novel/): A dazzling debut novel about love, loss, and the courage it takes to start over. It's 1994 and Adam, a drug addict from New York City, arrives at a kibbutz in Israel with a medieval sapphire brooch. To redress a past crime, he must give the priceless heirloom to a woman his grandfather loved when he was a Holocaust refugee on the kibbutz fifty years earlier. But first, he must track this mystery woman down--a task that proves more complicated than expected. On the kibbutz Adam joins other lost souls: Ulya, the ambitious and beautiful Soviet émigré; Farid, the lovelorn Palestinian farmhand; Claudette, the French-Canadian Catholic with OCD; Ofir, the Israeli teenager wounded in a bus bombing; and Ziva, the old Socialist Zionist firebrand who founded the kibbutz. Driven together by love, hostility, hope, and fear, their fates become forever entangled as they each get one last shot at redemption. In the middle of that fateful summer glows the magnificent brooch with its perilous history spanning three continents and seven centuries. With insight and beauty, Safekeeping tackles that most human of questions: How can we expect to find meaning and happiness when we know that nothing lasts? - [The Book of Stone](https://mvpublishers.org/product/the-book-of-stone/): The Book of Stone examines the evolution of the terrorist mentality and the complexities of religious extremism, as well as how easily a vulnerable mind can be exploited for dark purposes. Matthew Stone has inherited a troubling legacy: a gangster grandfather and a distant father--who is also a disgraced judge. After his father's death, Matthew is a young man alone. He turns to his father's beloved books for comfort, perceiving within them guidance that leads him to connect with a group of religious extremists. As Matthew immerses himself in this unfamiliar world, the FBI seeks his assistance to foil the group's violent plot. Caught between these powerful forces, haunted by losses past and present, and desperate for redemption, Matthew charts a course of increasing peril--for himself and for everyone around him. Lyrical and incendiary, The Book of Stone is a masterfully crafted novel that reveals the ambiguities of "good" and "evil". - [A River Could Be a Tree](https://mvpublishers.org/product/a-river-could-be-a-tree/): Angela Himsel was raised in a German American family, one of eleven children who shared a single bathroom in their rented ramshackle farmhouse in Indiana. The Himsels followed an evangelical branch of Christianity--the Worldwide Church of God--which espoused a doomsday philosophy. Only faith in Jesus, the Bible, significant tithing, and the church's leader could save them from the evils of American culture--divorce, television, makeup, and even medicine. Himsel believed that the Bible was the guidebook to being saved, and only strict adherence to the church's tenets could allow her to escape a certain, gruesome death, receive the Holy Spirit, and live forever in the Kingdom of God. With self-preservation in mind, she decided, at nineteen, to study at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. But instead of strengthening her faith, Himsel was introduced to a whole new world--one with different people and perspectives. Her eyes were slowly opened to the church's shortcomings, even dangers, and fueled her natural tendency to question everything she had been taught, including the guiding principles of the church and the words of the Bible itself. Ultimately, the connection to God she so relentlessly pursued was found in the most unexpected place: a mikvah on Manhattan's Upper West Side. This devout Christian Midwesterner found her own form of salvation--as a practicing Jewish woman. - [Jacobo’s Rainbow](https://mvpublishers.org/product/jacobos-rainbow/): Jacobo's Rainbow is an historical literary novel set primarily in the nineteen sixties during the convulsive period of the student protest movements and the Vietnam War. It focuses on the issue of being an outsider the 'other' an altogether common circumstance that resonates with readers in today's America. It is a story of triumph over adversity (hypocrisy, loss, lies, murder, concealment, prejudice) that is told with vivid descriptions, perceptive insights, humor, and sensitivity, which enables the reader to identify with the characters who come to life in a realistic fashion to illustrate who we are, how we behave, and what causes us to change. - [My Mother’s Son](https://mvpublishers.org/product/my-mothers-son/): My Mother's Son, the meticulously crafted debut novel from David Hirshberg, is a story told by a radio raconteur revisiting his past in post-World War II Boston, the playground and battleground for two brothers whose lives are transformed by discoveries they never could have imagined. From the opening line of the book, ‘When you're a kid, they don't always tell you the truth,’ the stage is set for this riveting coming-of-age story that plays out against the backdrop of the Korean War, the aftermath of the Holocaust, the polio epidemic, the relocation of a baseball team, and the shenanigans of politicians and businessmen. Hirshberg deftly weaves together events, characters, and clues and creates a rich tapestry of betrayal, persecution, death, loyalty, and unconditional love that resonates with today's America. - [The Pawnbroker](https://mvpublishers.org/product/the-pawnbroker/): For most people, remembering the Holocaust requires effort; we listen to stories, watch films, read histories. But the people who are known as “survivors” could not avoid their memories. Sol Nazerman, the protagonist of The Pawnbroker, is one such sufferer. At 45, Nazerman, who survived Bergen-Belsen concentration camp—although his wife and children did not—runs a Harlem pawnshop. Nazerman’s dreams are haunted by visions of his past tortures.  The novel is likewise a valuable exploration of the fraught relationships between Jews and other American minority groups. - [My Jewish Year: 18 Holidays, One Wondering Jew](https://mvpublishers.org/product/my-jewish-year-18-holidays-one-wondering-jew/): Although she grew up following some holiday rituals, Pogrebin realized how little she knew about their foundational purpose and current relevance. She wanted to understand what had kept these holidays alive and vibrant, in some cases for thousands of years. Her curiosity led her to embark on an entire year of intensive research, observation, and writing about the milestones on the Jewish calendar. My Jewish Year travels through this calendar's signposts with candor, humor, and a trove of information, capturing the arc of Jewish observance through the eyes of a relatable, wandering--and wondering--Jew. The chapters are interspersed with brief reflections from prominent rabbis and Jewish thinkers. If you're seeking an accessible, digestible roadmap for Jewish life or a fresh exploration of what you've mastered, you'll be educated, entertained, and inspired by Pogrebin's unusual journey--and by My Jewish Year. - [Compulsion](https://mvpublishers.org/product/compulsion/): Judd Steiner and Artie Straus have it all: wealth, intelligence, and the world at their feet as part of the elite, upper-crust Jewish community of 1920s Chicago. Artie is handsome, athletic, and popular, but he possesses a hidden, powerful sadistic streak and a desire to dominate. Judd is a weedy introvert, a genius who longs for a companion whom he can idolize and worship. Obsessed with Nietzsche's idea of the superhuman, both boys decide to prove that they are above the laws of man by arbitrarily picking and murdering a Jewish boy in their neighborhood. This new edition of Meyer Levin's classic literary thriller Compulsion reintroduces the fictionalized case of Leopold and Loeb - once considered the crime of the century - to a new generation. This incisive psychological portrait of two young murderers seized the imagination of an era and is generally recognized as paving the way for the first non-fiction novel. Compulsion forces us to ask what drives some further into darkness, and some to seek redemption. Heartbreaking as it is gripping, Compulsion is written with a tense and penetrating force that led the Los Angeles Times to call Levin, "the most significant Jewish writer of his times." - [Saving Free Speech … from Itself](https://mvpublishers.org/product/saving-free-speech-from-itself/): In an era of political correctness, race-baiting, terrorist incitement, the 'Danish' cartoons, the shouting down of speakers, and, of course, 'fake news, ' liberals and conservatives are up in arms both about speech and its excesses, and what the First Amendment means. Speech has been weaponized. Everyone knows it, but no one seems to know how to make sense of the current confusion, and what to do about it. Thane Rosenbaum's provocative and compelling book is what is needed to understand this important issue at the heart of our society and politics. Our nation's founders did not envision speech as a license to trample on the rights of others. And the Supreme Court has decided cases where certain categories of speech are already prohibited without violating the Constitution. Laws banning hate speech are prevalent in other democratic, liberal societies, where speech is not valued above human dignity, and yet in Germany, France, the UK and elsewhere, life continues, freedoms have not rolled to the bottom of the bogeyman of a 'slippery slope, ' and democracies remain vibrant. There is already a great deal of second guessing about the limits of free speech. In 1977, courts permitted neo-Nazis to march in a Chicago suburb populated by Holocaust survivors. Today, many wonder whether the alt-right should have been prevented from marching in Charlottesville in 2017. Even the ACLU, which represented both groups, is having doubts as to whether the First Amendment should override basic notions of equality and citizenship. - [Maestros & Monsters](https://mvpublishers.org/product/maestros-monsters/): Robert Boyers’ memoir of his 50-years of friendship with Susan Sontag and George Steiner focuses an  insider’s lens on two celebrated intellectuals. As the founding editor of Salmagundi, the acclaimed literary quarterly, Boyers formed a lifelong friendship with Susan Sontag shortly after he published “On Susan Sontag and the New Sensibility” in the pages of his journal. Over the years, Sontag collaborated with Boyers, planning several of the magazine’s symposia and regularly participating in the New York State Summer Writers Institute in Saratoga Springs. In 1965, Boyers petitioned for admission to the seminar of the celebrated essayist and cultural critic, George Steiner, at New York University.  Boyers participation in that fateful course, developed into a lifelong friendship, a transcontinental correspondence, and frequent collaborations with world renowned intellectuals. Although close to both Sontag and Steiner, Boyers was aware of their mutual antipathy, yet managed to bring them together on several frosty occasions. Maestros & Monsters recounts the highs and lows of friendship with these two intellectual icons whose ambitions and achievements were, to say the least, outsized. Brilliant though they were, Sontag and Steiner could also be demanding and difficult — to Boyers and others as well. Their encounters with other leading thinkers--Arthur Koestler, Irving Howe, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Edward Said, Philip Rieff, James Wood— sparked debates and at times, bitter recriminations.  Though Sontag and Steiner often tested Boyers’ patience, his loyalty remained steadfast — and it was rewarded with their trust in him and their lifelong bond. - [The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir](https://mvpublishers.org/product/the-23rd-psalm-a-holocaust-memoir/): A National Jewish Book Awards Finalist The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir is the prequel to Pillar of Salt: A Daughter's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust. Both are soon to be the basis of the groundbreaking documentary film In My Father's Words. Twenty years since its first publication, this new anniversary edition of the Holocaust memoir of George Salton (then Lucjan Salzman), gives readers a personal and powerful account of his survival through one of the darkest periods in human history. With heartbreaking and honest reflection, the author shares a gripping first-person narrative of his transformation from a Jewish eleven-year-old boy living happily in Tyczyn, Poland with his brother and parents, to his experiences as a teenage victim of growing persecution, brutality and imprisonment as the Nazis pursued the Final Solution. The author takes the reader back in time as he reveals in vivid and engrossing details the painful memories of life in his childhood town during Nazi occupation, the forced march before his jeering and cold-eyed former friends and neighbors as they are driven from their homes into the crowded and terrible conditions in the Rzeszow ghetto, and the heart-wrenching memory of his final farewell as he is separated from his parents who would be sent in boxcars to the Belzec extermination camp. Alone at age 14, George begins a three-year horror filled odyssey as part of a Daimler-Benz slave labor group that will take him through ten concentration camps in Poland, Germany, and France. In Płaszów he digs up graves with his bare hands, in Flossenbürg he labors in a stone quarry and in France he works as a prisoner in a secret tunnel the Nazis have converted into an armaments factory. In every concentration camp including Sachsenhausen, Braunschweig, Ravensbrück and others, George recounts the agonizing and excruciating details of what it was like to barely survive the rollcalls, selections, beatings, hunger, and despair he both endured and witnessed. Of the 465 Jewish prisoners with him in the labor group in the Rzeszów ghetto in 1942, less than fifty were alive three years later when the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division liberated the Wöbbelin concentration camp on the afternoon of May 2, 1945. George recalls not only the painful details of his survival, but also the tales of his fellow prisoners, a small group who became more than friends as they shared their meager rations, their fragile strength, and their waning hope. The memoir moves us as we behold the life sustaining powers of friendship among this band of young prisoners. With gratitude for his courageous liberators, Salton expresses his powerful emotions as he acknowledges his miraculous freedom: "I felt something stir deep within my soul. It was my true self, the one who had stayed deep within and had not forgotten how to love and how to cry, the one who had chosen life and was still standing when the last roll call ended." This new and substantially reworked Twentieth Anniversary Edition incorporates research based on recently discovered documents related to George Salton's concentration camp experience, a new foreword by Michael Berenbaum, a new afterword of George Salton's unpublished speeches, and an insert with newly discovered documents, photographs and artwork by George Salton of his Holocaust experiences, including his self-portrait on the cover. - [Asylum, A Memoir of Family Secrets](https://mvpublishers.org/product/asylum-a-memoir-of-family-secrets/): How much do we really know about the lives of our parents and the secrets lodged in their past? Judy Bolton-Fasman’s fascinating saga, Asylum: A Memoir of Family Secrets, recounts the search for answers to the mysteries embedded in the lives of her Cuban-born mother, Matilde Alboukrek Bolton and her elusive, Yale-educated father, K. Harold Bolton. In the prefatory chapter, “Burn This,” Judy receives a thick letter from her father and conjectures that the contents will reveal the long-hidden explanations, confessions, and secrets that will unlock her father’s cryptic past. As she is about to open the portal to her father’s “transtiendas,” his dark hidden secrets, Harold Bolton phones Judy and instructs her to burn the still unopened letter. With the flick of a match, Judy ignites her father’s unread documents, effectively destroying the answers to long held questions that surround her parents’ improbable marriage and their even more secretive lives. Judy Bolton, girl detective, embarks on the life-long exploration of her bifurcated ancestry; Judy inherits a Sephardic, Spanish/Ladino-speaking culture from her mother and an Ashkenazi, English-only, old-fashioned American patriotism from her father. Amid the Bolton household’s cultural, political, and psychological confusion, Judy is mystified by her father’s impenetrable silence; and, similarly confounded by her mother’s fabrications, not the least of which involve rumors of a dowry pay-off and multiple wedding ceremonies for the oddly mismatched 40-year-old groom and the 24-year-old bride. Contacting former associates, relatives, and friends; accessing records through the Freedom of Information Act; traveling to Cuba to search for clues, and even reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish for a year to gain spiritual insight into her father; these decades-long endeavors do not always yield the answers Judy wanted and sometimes the answers themselves lead her to ask new questions. Among Asylum’s most astonishing, unsolved mysteries is Ana Hernandez’s appearance at the family home on Asylum Avenue in West Hartford, Connecticut. Ana is an exchange student from Guatemala whom Judy presumes to be her paternal half-sister. In seeking information about Ana, Judy’s investigations prove to be much like her entire enterprise--both enticing and frustrating. Was Ana just a misconstrued memory, or is she a living piece of the puzzle that Judy spent her adult life trying to solve? Readers will relish every step and stage of Judy’s investigations and will begin to share in her obsession to obtain answers to the mysteries that have haunted her life. The suspense, the clairvoyant prophecies, the discoveries, the new leads, the dead-ends, the paths not taken—all capture our attention in this absorbing and fascinating memoir. - [Smyrna in Flames](https://mvpublishers.org/product/smyrna-in-flames/): Homero Aridjis’s dramatic storytelling of the final days of Smyrna floods our senses as only a master poet can do. Smyrna, September 13–22,1922. The Turkish army under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and its irregulars, known as chettes, attack Greeks and Armenians in this ancient “City of Tolerance.” They randomly murder the men, rape, and torture the women and young girls, set buildings aflame, and plunder at will. Nicias Aridjis, after years of fighting in the Greco-Turkish War, has come to Smyrna to rescue Eurydice, the woman he left behind and return with her to Greece. Nicias, our eyewitness, wanders through crowds of Greeks and Armenians who are desperate to escape genocide. Then a catastrophic fire wipes off the map the Greek and Armenian quarters of Smyrna. Victims number in the tens of thousands; as many as 100,000 refugees manage to flee. This surrealistic narrative draws on the memoirs of the author’s father, and on historical studies. Lorna Scott Fox’s remarkable translation preserves the poetic prose of author Homero Aridjis, whom Kenneth Rexroth described as a “visionary poet of lyrical bliss.” Aridjis immortalizes the last apocalyptic days of 3,000-year-old Smyrna, soon to be replaced by Izmir. Over nine days in September 1922, the Turkish army and its sadistic irregulars brutalized and murdered the Greeks and Armenians of Smyrna and set fire to their municipal quarters. “So many hacked bodies …. the whole of Smyrna is an abattoir,” says Nicias Aridjis to himself as he wanders through the city in search of his lost love. Through his eyes, we witness the Asia Minor Catastrophe, about which much has been written. Yet no writer has captured the unfolding tragedy so vividly—and so poetically—as Homero Aridjis, whose narrative is based on the memoirs of his father. The real Nicias Aridjis was there—and managed to escape. - [Pillar of Salt: A Daughter's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust](https://mvpublishers.org/product/pillar-of-salt-a-daughters-life-in-the-shadow-of-the-holocaust/): From Anna Salton Eisen, a National Jewish Book Awards Finalist for The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir, comes this moving sequel to her father's Holocaust memoir. As the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Anna Salton Eisen's memoir, Pillar of Salt: A Daughter's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust, breaks down the barrier of silence that was intended as a protective shield for her parents and their children. From early childhood, Anna, as a second-hand witness to the Holocaust, felt overwhelmed by the unspoken but ever-present trauma of her parents' past. Her father, born as Lucjan Salzman, survivor of ten different concentration camps, is enveloped in impenetrable grief and his history encased in secrecy. But Anna is determined to look backwards, breaking through her father’s reticence to confront the unspoken terrors of the past. The entire Salton family embarks on a journey through Poland unlocking a history sealed in silence and buried by time. The Salton family's quest takes them to the towns where Anna's parents lived as children under Nazi occupation. The family returns to the ghetto where a 15-year-old Lucjan experienced his first selection and bid farewell to his parents before they were herded into a boxcar and sent to their deaths at the Belzec concentration camp. They continue their travels through the picturesque Polish countryside, still pockmarked by the remnants of former concentration camps and a spattering of Holocaust memorials. By the end of her odyssey, Anna acquires a new understanding of her legacy as a child of Holocaust survivors and how trauma is revisited upon subsequent generations. By revisiting those places of trauma with her father as her guide, Anna Salton Eisen's tour of terrors provide her with a new understanding of how her identity has been shaped under the shadow of the Holocaust. Anna confides that by looking back like Lot's wife, and by taking in the whole story, "I could carry the pain of the Holocaust and find there is more to me than a pillar of salt." Building on Salton Eisen’s own background as a Holocaust author—she co-wrote The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memoir with her father George Salton—Pillar of Salt completes their story. The book will be launched with a documentary film about Anna and her father with a global release. Part memoir, part travelogue, Pillar of Salt tells the story of the daughter of Holocaust survivors—one growing more pressing with the aging of the remaining Holocaust survivors. This book differs from other second-generation memoirs because the author was able, at her father’s side, to learn about his past and return with him on a trip to Poland, including saying the Jewish prayer of Kaddish at the place where his parents were killed in a gas chamber. Pillar of Salt shares a new kind of personal testimony, one that sheds light on the human side of the Holocaust. - [The Hot Summer of 1968, A Novel](https://mvpublishers.org/product/the-hot-summer-of-1968-a-novel/): In the spring of 1968, the Czechoslovakian Communist Party introduced “socialism with a human face”—known as “Prague Spring.” Suddenly the citizens of Czechoslovakia enjoyed the freedom of the Press, an end to arbitrary wiretaps, and the right to travel without prior authorizations and visas. Their borders opened to the West, consumer goods appeared in the stores, and the winds of freedom blew over the country. These reforms were not well received by the Soviet Union. After failed negotiations, suddenly in late August, the USSR sent half a million Warsaw Pact troops and tanks to occupy Czechoslovakia and put an end to this brief experiment. Every citizen had to make a choice: leave or stay? Thousands of Slovaks fearing retribution fled their homeland—some escaped to Vienna—only an hour away by train, others fled farther afield to England, Israel, South America, Canada and the United States. With a humanism and with a talent for constructing his novel on real testimonies, Slovakia’s foremost writer and playwright, Viliam Klimáček, focuses his novel on characters whose lives were irrevocably affected by both Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion. Vividly retelling their stories,  Klimáček reveals how these political events changed their lives and futures forever. By fleeing totalitarianism and repression, they all made the decision to leave their homeland and depart on the perilous journey seeking refuge and freedom in new countries. Some saw their families torn apart; others lost all their possessions or were dispossessed. And, like all immigrants, on arriving at  their destinations they had to rebuild their lives and livelihoods. What were their challenges? How successful or happy were they? Would they ever be able to return or reconnect with their families in their homeland? They all now became part of a growing Slovak diaspora in the modern world. - [Doctor on Call](https://mvpublishers.org/product/doctor-on-call/): Dr. Alla Shapiro was a first physician-responder to the worst nuclear disaster in history: the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station in Ukraine on April 26, 1986. First responders were not given detailed instructions or protective clothing. Amid an eerie and pervasive silence, Dr. Shapiro treated traumatized children and witnessed frightened civilians running barefoot across radioactive ground carrying stretchers to save others. First responders triaged and administered first aid, extinguished fires, and cleaned up radioactive debris. No protocols to mitigate the nuclear disaster were in place because no one had prepared for the possibility of a nuclear accident. From the outset of the disaster, the Soviet government worsened matters by spreading misinformation, and first responders were ordered to participate in the deception of the public. The bureaucratic cover-up angered and disheartened Dr. Shapiro. This painful experience, combined with decades of personal and professional discrimination that she endured as a Jewish citizen of the USSR, led Dr. Shapiro and her family to immigrate to the United States in the late 1980s. As émigrés, the Shapiro family were restricted to taking no more than forty pounds of possessions and no more than ninety dollars in cash per person. On their harrowing journey, four generations of the Shapiro family travelled to Vienna, Austria, and then to Italy, where they remained for six months awaiting permission to enter the United States. Even after her arrival in the United States, Alla Shapiro faced innumerable difficulties, including traversing miles of red tape involved in validating her medical credentials. After successfully passing the exams for foreign-trained medical graduates, she began her pediatric residency at Georgetown University Hospital in Washington, DC. Following the completion of her residency, Alla Shapiro was accepted to the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, where she completed a three-year fellowship in pediatric hematology- oncology. From 2003 to 2019, Dr. Shapiro worked at the US Food and Drug Administration where she reviewed applications submitted by pharmaceutical companies, private investigators, and academicians attempting to develop safe and effective medical countermeasures (MCM) against chemical, radiological, and nuclear threats. Motivated by her experiences as a physician-responder at Chernobyl, Dr. Alla Shapiro became one of the world’s leading experts in medical countermeasures against radiation exposure. - [Small Bibles for Bad Times: Selected Poems and Prose of Liliane Atlan](https://mvpublishers.org/product/small-bibles-for-bad-times-selected-poems-and-prose-of-liliane-atlan/): FOR LILIANE ATLAN (1932-2012), visionary French writer of plays, poetry, and prose, her creative quest was to “find language to say the unsayable. . . to [find a way] to integrate within our conscience, without dying in the attempt, the shattering experience of Auschwitz.” After spending the war years as a child in hiding, she later studied at the groundbreaking Gilbert Bloch school in Paris where she studied Torah, Talmud, and Kabbalah, alongside science and contemporary literature. As a writer, Atlan defies easy categorization―she was known as “a Jewish writer,” “a Holocaust writer,” an originator of French feminist writing, and a pioneering theater artist. Her writings are steeped in Jewish sources and her French is inflected with Hebrew, Ladino, and Yiddish. This background helped make her into a genre-defying, feminist, and political writer, active in both France and Israel. This bi-lingual French-English language collection of Liliane Atlan’s poetry and non-fiction prose introduces Liliane Atlan, to the greater world English language reading audience. Thematically she draws upon her personal experiences during the War, the testimonials of Holocaust survivors, and her intensive study of Jewish literature. All these experiences became the wellsprings for her writings which focus on the psychological effects of the Holocaust. Given the recent rise and spread of Anti-Semitism in France and world-wide, Atlan’s work is being rediscovered and she is once again being recognized as an acclaimed and respected voice for new generations of readers both in Europe and in the United States, Great Britain, and other parts of the world English language readership. When Liliane died in Israel in 2012. she engraved on her tombstone her final wish: “The one I used to be no longer exists. But her light shines again. What light? The fight for love in spite of human horror.” This new translation of her work resurrects her voice anew and helps insure her legacy. - [Can Robots Be Jewish? Inspirational rabbis answer pressing questions of modern life](https://mvpublishers.org/product/can-robots-be-jewish-inspirational-rabbis-answer-pressing-questions-of-modern-life/): A smart, hip and provocative book for anyone interested in the rich diversity of Jewish thought on contemporary questions. Just as devoted readers of The New Yorker magazine immediately peruse the cartoons in each new issue, when a new issue of Moment Magazine--the premier Jewish magazine of our time--arrives every other month, its loyal readers immediately turn to its highly popular and long-running “Ask The Rabbis” feature. Every issue, rabbis of different denominations consider some of the most difficult and provocative questions of the present day. The rabbis’ responses span the range of modern Jewish thought and include Independent, Humanist, Jewish Renewal, Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Sephardic, Chabad perspectives. Sometimes they agree—but not often. Argument is a Jewish pastime and even a form of worship; it's been that way throughout the ages, ever since rabbis sat on dirt floors in Babylonia and disputed the words of the sages. That thirst for wisdom is as strong now as ever. As the old joke goes, ask two Jews a question, and you’ll get three opinions. With ten or more rabbis debating creative questions, you get all that, and more: intelligent discussion of topics both timely and timeless; deep interrogation of Jewish text, law and commentary, often cited in surprising and original ways; and an unparalleled look at the breadth and creativity and the continued relevance of the Jewish tradition. The debate is registered in short takes, and the rabbis’ voices are lively and accessible, so you don't need to be a scholar yourself to follow the arguments. The questions and their responses open a portal to the vast riches of Jewish wisdom—intellectual, spiritual, literary, folkloric—for even the casual reader. The rabbis’ repartee illuminates the diversity within Jewish thinking over time and today, creating cross-denominational discussion that leads to a deeper understanding. Readers will meet these rabbis and see their personalities unfold as they address different aspects of life. Regulars include the renowned Yitz Greenberg, a Modern Orthodox pioneer who met with the Dalai Lama; the Reconstructionist Rabbi Caryn Broitman, who leads a small but star-studded congregation on Martha's Vineyard; and rabbis from New York to Minneapolis and on to Los Angeles. Readers will learn their stories and hear their responses to some of our favorite questions, including: Does Jewish anxiety have a theological basis? In what ways, if any, do science and Judaism conflict? Is whistleblowing a Jewish obligation? Are there things that cannot be forgiven? Is Judaism good for women? Is there a Jewish way to parent? Should Jews strive to be happy? What sins should we atone for in or use of social media? Is it kosher to tell a white lie? Should we edit our children’s genes? Can a robot be Jewish? What is the Jewish relationship to time? Is democracy Jewish? Does Jewish law forbid racism? Is there such a thing as romantic love? Do Jews believe in an afterlife? Should there be an eleventh commandment, and if so, what should it be? Are Jews still expecting a Messiah? Should Jews be for or against the right to bear arms? In these Solomon-like deliberations, the rabbis answer these and many more contemporary questions about modernity’s most pressing questions. - [Growing Up Below Sea Level: A Kibbutz Childhood](https://mvpublishers.org/product/growing-up-below-sea-level-a-kibbutz-childhood/): This beautifully written memoir is composed of linked stories about growing up on a kibbutz in Israel in the 1950s and 60s, when children spent most of their time, from birth on, in a Children’s House. This memoir starts with a Prologue drawn from the diaries of Rachel Biale’s mother and the letters her parents exchanged while her father served in the British army. With excerpts from these documents, she describes how the long trials and tribulations that encompassed her parents dangerous escape from Eastern Europe to Israel – fleeing from the Nazis from Prague in 1939, five years of dangerous sea voyages, and long internments in British refugee camps. Throughout these ordeals, her parents socialist and Zionist values sustained them and eventually brought them to their kibbutz. The middle and main section of the memoir is devoted to Rachel's growing up as a kibbutz child. While Rachel's parents soon realized that no community can live up to its utopian ideals, Rachel's youth on kibbutz was a robust and buoyant one. Rachel pens 24 beautifully written and engaging stories about her kibbutz childhood -- from earliest memories at age three as part of a children's society, to her army service at age twenty. The stories focus on the world of children, but also offer a window into the lives of the adult kibbutz members, including Holocaust survivors. The book ends with a Postscript—as Rachel revisits her kibbutz and updates the stories of her childhood companions. - [I Am My Mother’s Daughter: Wisdom on Life, Loss, and Love](https://mvpublishers.org/product/i-am-my-mothers-daughter-wisdom-on-life-loss-and-love/): For most of her adult life, Dara Kurtz kept a Ziploc bag of letters written by her mother who passed away from cancer when she was twenty-eight years old. The bag also included other letters written by her long-departed grandmothers. Many times, when facing different life crises and turning points, she longed to talk with her mother and grandmothers to gain their advice and hear what they think about the life she had created for herself. This was especially true after Dara, like her mother before her, was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of forty-two. For many years, the Ziploc bag of letters remained buried somewhere in her house as Dara feared reading them would bring back the pain and sadness she had worked so hard to overcome. For a long time, she never had the courage to find the bag and re-read these letters. Then suddenly, at the age of forty-eight, after a random sequence of very challenging life events, Dara remembered the Ziploc bag and finally felt courageous enough to open it and re-read them. These letters, written so long ago by the three Jewish women who had loved and raised her, brought Dara an unexpected sense of peace, love, and connection to her mom and her grandmothers. They brought back many beautiful family memories and refreshed her admiration for the women whom she had loved and lost. These letters gave Dara a glimpse into their lives and personalities at the time the letters were written. They offered her so much wisdom and relevance and taught her so many beautiful, life lessons that Dara decided to share their story, the incredible love between Jewish mothers and daughters, and the wisdom passed on from one generation to the next. As a mother, Dara has passed down these family traditions and wisdom to her two daughters, who now carry on the legacy contained in the Ziploc bag bridging the generations of women in their family. She unexpectedly discovered that this is best done through the lens of love and through the hand-written word. After being diagnosed with breast cancer herself at the age of 42, Dara left her 20-year career as a personal banker and financial planner to focus on a new career in writing, speaking and mentoring. Today her personal blog, "Crazy Perfect Life" (www.crazyperfectlife.com) reaches over 180,000 followers. - [The City of Light](https://mvpublishers.org/product/the-city-of-light/): When legendary and beloved actor, singer and activist Theo Bikel wrote a short story, shortly before his passing in 2015, about his happy childhood as a Jewish boy in Vienna—confused by rising anti-Semitism, and ultimately forced to flee after the Nazi takeover—he never could have imagined that Jewish children in the US, at the start of 2020, would have to ask their parents the same questions he had asked his own parents: Why are we hated? Why must I be afraid to be who I am? In The City of Light , Theodore poignantly recounts moments from his childhood in Vienna— at first the happy memories of family, sweet cakes, and holidays; and then darker times, when he experienced and witnessed brutal and violent anti-Semitism as Nazi influence grew. Set in Vienna in 1937-38 during Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria, a young Jewish boy witnesses Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass,” and elderly Jews being spat upon and forced to clean the sidewalks with their coats. Once at home in the city, he is ostracized and beaten. One night, the boy dreams that his favorite Jewish superhero, Judah Maccabee, has arrived to save Vienna’s Jews. But when he awakens, there has been no Maccabean rescue. Years pass and the boy, now an old man, returns to Vienna and finds its Jewish community and Temple have been restored. He looks for the eternal light in the Temple and can’t find it. Then suddenly it becomes clear to him: “The light was there all the time; it was in my own heart.” This special book, gentle and bittersweet in its tone, also includes a three-page Yiddish glossary, a recipe for Honey Cake from Bikel's grandmother, and sheet music of a little-known Hanukkah song "Little Candle Fires" with a link to a website where you can hear Theo singing it. Theodore Bikel’s The City of Light is receiving critical acclaim, loved by adults who have followed Bikel for decades, as well as young people struggling to make sense of the acts of hatred and bigotry they are now exposed to daily. Aimee Ginsburg Bikel, Theo’s widow and veteran journalist, has added a backstory, several glossaries, and an afterword about an event in Bikel’s life with stunning historic significance. Noah Phillips’ moving illustrations bring the story to life. - [Have I Got a Cartoon for You! The Moment Magazine Book of Jewish Cartoons](https://mvpublishers.org/product/have-i-got-a-cartoon-for-you-the-moment-magazine-book-of-jewish-cartoons/): Bob Mankoff grew up Jewish in Queens, NY in the 1950s and 1960s. As a kid, he visited the Borscht Belt and reveled in the hilarious performances of some of the best Jewish comedians such as Jerry Lewis, Buddy Hackett, and Rodney Dangerfield, among others. These early experiences helped shape Mankoff’s view of life and led him to become a creative master practitioner of humor and cartoons. He started his career unexpectedly by quitting a Ph.D. program in experimental psychology at The City University of New York in 1974 and submitting his cartoons to the New Yorker. Three years and over 2,000 cartoons later, he finally made the magazine and has since published over 950 cartoons. He has devoted his life to discovering just what makes us laugh and seeks every outlet to do so, from developing The New Yorker’s web presence to founding The Cartoon Bank, a business devoted to licensing cartoons for use in newsletters, textbooks, magazines and other media. In this new book, Have I Got a Cartoon for You! this successful cartoonist, speaker and author, presents his favorite Jewish cartoons. In his foreword to this entertaining collection, Mankoff shows how his Jewish heritage helped him to become a successful cartoonist, examines the place of cartoons in the vibrant history of Jewish humor, and plumbs Jewish thought, wisdom and shtik for humorous insights. Mankoff has written: “I always think that it’s strange that the Jews, The People of the Book, eventually became much better known as The People of the Joke. Strange because laughter in the Old Testament is not a good thing: When God laughs, you’re toast. If you say, ‘Stop me if you’ve heard this one,’ he does for good.” A major influence on his cartoons about religion derives from Jewish culture’s disputatiousness, the questioning everything just for the hell of it and then the questioning of the questioning to be even more annoying. He recalls: “When, I was first dating my wife, who is not Jewish, we once were having what I thought was an ordinary conversation and she said, ‘Why are you arguing with me?’ I replied, ‘I’m not arguing, I’m Jewish.’ I thought that was clever. She didn’t. Some humor scholars claim this stems from the practice in the Talmud of pilpul, which Leo Rosten has described as ‘unproductive hair-splitting that is employed not so much to radiate clarity ... as to display one’s own cleverness.’ I go along with that except I like to think that some clarity and cleverness are not mutually exclusive. Anyway, that’s my aim in cartoons like these. Now, am I worried that these jokes will bring His wrath down upon me down with a bolt from the blue. Not really, but every time there’s a thunderstorm, I hide in the cellar.” - [Elie Wiesel, An Extraordinary Life and Legacy: Writings, Photographs and Reflect](https://mvpublishers.org/product/elie-wiesel-an-extraordinary-life-and-legacy-writings-photographs-and-reflect/): Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) is best known as the author of Night, survivor of Auschwitz and a powerful, enduring voice of the Holocaust. A recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he was a hero of human rights, professor and author of more than 50 books. Among his accomplishments, Wiesel co-founded Moment Magazine with Leonard Fein in 1975 to be a place of conversation for America’s Jews. For editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein, he became a mentor and friend after she took over the magazine in 2004. In this striking volume, Epstein shares her memories of Wiesel and brings together 36 interviews with friends, colleagues and others who knew him – including, his son Elisha, Michael Berenbaum, Wolf Blitzer, Father Patrick Debois, Ronald S. Lauder, Bernard Henri-Levi, Kati Marton, Natan Sharansky, Ben Kingsley, and Oprah Winfrey. The foreword is by British Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and the afterword is by broadcaster Ted Koppel. To celebrate this humanitarian and keep his inspiration alive, Epstein presents readers with a visual history of Wiesel’s life and examines the influence of Night. This chilling story of the Holocaust has already gripped the souls of millions of readers. Epstein includes a selection of his speeches and writings, lively conversations with teenagers about Night and discussion questions. The book features more than 100 photos. Says Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: "This book of reflections is a fitting tribute to the legacy of Elie Wiesel. In its pages and through the words of its contributors, you will feel a promise, not just to the souls who perished, but also to Elie and all those who survived Europe’s darkest night." - [My Real Name is Hanna](https://mvpublishers.org/product/my-real-name-is-hanna/): Hanna Slivka is on the cusp of fourteen when Hitler's army crosses the border into Soviet-occupied Ukraine. Soon, the Gestapo closes in, determined to make the shtetele she lives in "free of Jews." Until the German occupation, Hanna spent her time exploring Kwasowa with her younger siblings, admiring the drawings of the handsome Leon Stadnick, and helping her neighbor dye decorative pysanky eggs. But now she, Leon, and their families are forced to flee and hide in the forest outside their shtetele—and then in the dark caves beneath the rolling meadows, rumored to harbor evil spirits. Underground, they battle sickness and starvation, while the hunt continues above. When Hanna's father disappears, suddenly it's up to Hanna to find him—and to find a way to keep the rest of her family, and friends, alive. Sparse, resonant, and lyrical, weaving in tales of Jewish and Ukrainian folklore, My Real Name Is Hanna celebrates the sustaining bonds of family, the beauty of a helping hand, and the tenacity of the human spirit. Reader and Teachers Guide - [Immigration Reform: The Corpse That Will Not Die](https://mvpublishers.org/product/immigration-reform-the-corpse-that-will-not-die/): Finalist for "The Best Book in American History" published by an Independent Press by Foreword Reviews Magazine Finalist for the 2020 International Latino Book Awards in the Best Political/Current Affairs Book: English category. This book is an insider's history and memoir of the battle for The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986: its evolution, passage, impact, and its legacies for the future of immigration reform. Charles Kamasaki has spent most of his life working for UnidosUS, formerly the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the nation's largest Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization. He was a direct participant in the many meetings, hearings, mark-ups, debates, and other developments that led to the passage of the last major immigration reform legislation, The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). He reveals the roles of key lawmakers and a coalition of public interest lobbyists that played a role in opposing, shaping, and then implementing IRCA. His account underscores the centrality of racial issues in the immigration reform debate and why it has become a near-perpetual topic of political debate. - [The Berlin Woman](https://mvpublishers.org/product/the-berlin-woman/): Lena is a married, chronically infidelitous Berlin-based European writer, devoted only to gratifying her ambitions and hard-driving libido. Nathan is a footloose womanizing American author, unable to produce the big novel for which he’s been contracted. When both writers meet in the Alps, they fall into a mad kind of addictive love, chasing each other selfishly, sexually and even digitally across Europe and America, turning their affair into a high-stakes reckless game of jealousy, rivalling ambitions, gender conflict, political combat and artistic outrage. But beneath it all, their hearts are breaking, dark secrets haunt their pasts, while overshadowing their love is a fast-changing, ruthless world in which not only is The Holocaust denied or forgotten but across the social and political spectrum a new kind of totalitarianism -- spearheaded by a new breed of “strongmen” leaders -- threatens to sweep Lena, Nathan, and all of humanity, to the very brink of annihilation. Fast-paced, written in contagious gonzo style, and with leading characters whose wild bohemian lives make for binge-worthy compulsive reading, The Berlin Woman is a new kind of no-holds barred love story written by Alan Kaufman, an author known for his storytelling power and who’s been not only praised by everyone from Dave Eggers, Etgar Keret and Sapphire to David Mamet, Hubert Selby Jr. and Thane Rosenbaum but has been compared by critics to such prose masters as Henry Miller, I.B. Singer and Jack Kerouac. - [How Sweet It Is!](https://mvpublishers.org/product/how-sweet-it-is/): Set in Miami Beach in 1972, this novel follows the Posner family, two Holocaust survivors, Sophie and Jacob, and their son, Adam doing everything they can to avoid one another in a city with an infinite supply of colorful diversions. In '72 Miami hosted both the Republican and Democratic political conventions and experienced the rise of the counterculture, the Cold War, and the desegregation of the old South. Miami Beach was to be the Posner's salvation. Instead they discover their lives quickly turning into a Disney World of funhouse mirrors and chaotic rides that give them front row seats through a transformational year in American culture, politics, and history. - [Wicked Weeds: A Zombie Novel](https://mvpublishers.org/product/wicked-weeds-a-zombie-novel/): Set at the contact zones between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, this is a polyphonic novel, an intense and sometimes funny pharmacopeia of love lost and humanity regained; a most original combination of Caribbean noir and science-fiction addressing issues of global relevance including novel takes on ecological/apocalyptical imbalance bound to make an impact. A Caribbean zombie-smart, gentlemanly, financially independent, and a top executive at an important pharmaceutical company becomes obsessed with finding the formula that would reverse his condition and allow him to become "a real person." In the process, three of his closest collaborators (cerebral and calculating Isadore, wide-eyed and sentimental Mathilde, and rambunctious Patricia), guide the reluctant and baffled scientist through the unpredictable intersections of love, passion, empathy, and humanity. But the playful maze of jealousy and amorous intrigue that a living being would find easy to negotiate represents an insurmountable tangle of dangerous ambiguities for our "undead" protagonist. Wicked Weeds is put together from Isadore's scrapbook, where she has collected her boss' scientific goals and existential agony, as well as her own reflections about growing up as a Haitian descendant in the Dominican Republic and what it really means to be human. The end result is a precise combination of Caribbean noir and science-fiction, Latin American style. Wicked Weeds, A Zombie Novel combines Cabiya's expertise in fiction, graphic novels and film to create a memorable literary zombie novel of a dead man's search for his lost humanity that can now take its place alongside other leading similar novels like Jonathan Mayberry's Patient Zero, S.G. Browne's Breathers: A Zombie's Lament, Daryl Gregory's Raising Sony Mayhall, World War Z by Max Brooks, and The Reapers Are The Angels by Alden Bell. As for the novel's immersion in orality and Caribbean folk traditions and noir it can very well align with Wade Davis' The Serpent and the Rainbow and Karen Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. - [Oedipus in Brooklyn and Other Stories](https://mvpublishers.org/product/oedipus-in-brooklyn-and-other-stories/): Winner of the Modern Language Association’s Fania & Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize in Yiddish Studies (2018) Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub (the translators) on encountering Blume Lempel’s stories wrote: "When we began reading and translating, we didn’t know we were going to find a mother drawn into an incestuous relationship with her blind son. We didn’t know we’d meet a young woman lying on the table at an abortion clinic. We didn’t know we’d meet a middle-aged woman full of erotic imaginings as she readies herself for a blind date. Buried in this forgotten Yiddish-language material, we found modernist stories and modernist story-telling techniques imagine reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez with the conversational touch of Grace Paley." Lempel (1907-1999) was one of a small number of writers in the United States who wrote in Yiddish into the 1990s. Though many of her stories opened a window on the Old World and the Holocaust, she did not confine herself to these landscapes or themes. She often wrote about the margins of society, and about subjects considered untouchable. her prize-winning fiction is remarkable for its psychological acuity, its unflinching examination of erotic themes and gender relations, and its technical virtuosity. Mirroring the dislocation of mostly women protagonists, her stories move between present and past, Old World and New, dream and reality. While many of her stories opened a window on the Old World and the Holocaust, she also wrote about the margins of society, about subjects considered untouchable, among them abortion, prostitution, women's erotic imaginings, and even incest. She illuminated the inner lives of her characters mostly women. Her storylines migrate between past and present, Old World and New, dream and reality, modern-day New York and prewar Poland, bedtime story and passionate romance, and old-age dementia and girlhood dreams. Immigrating to New York when Hitler rose to power, Blume Lempel began publishing her short stories in 1945. By the 1970s her work had become known throughout the Yiddish literary world. When she died in 1999, the Yiddish paper Forverts wrote: "Yiddish literature has lost one of its most remarkable women writers." Ellen Cassedy, translator, is author of the award-winning study "We Are Here", about the Lithuanian Holocaust. With her colleague Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, they received the Yiddish Book Center 2012 Translation Prize for translating Blume Lempel. Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of several books of poetry, including "Prayers of a Heretic/Tfiles fun an apikoyres" (2013),"Uncle Feygele"(2011), and "What Stillness Illuminated/Vos shtilkayt hot baloykhtn (2008)." - [Isra-Isle: A Novel](https://mvpublishers.org/product/isra-isle-a-novel/): This novel is inspired by a true historical event. Before Theodore Herzl there was Mordecai Manuel Noah, an American journalist, diplomat, playwright, and visionary. In September 1825 he bought Grand Island, downriver from Niagara Falls, from the local Native Americans as a place of refuge for the Jewish people and called it “Ararat.” But no Jews came. What if they had followed Noah’s call? In Nava Semel’s alternate history Jews from throughout the world flee persecution and come to Ararat. Isra Isle becomes the smallest state in the US. Israel does not exist, and there was no Holocaust. In exploring this what-if scenario, Semel stimulates new thinking about memory, Jewish/Israeli identity, attitudes toward minorities, women in top political positions, and the place of cultural heritage. The novel is divided into three parts. Part 1, a detective story, opens in September 2001 when Liam Emanuel, an Israeli descendant of Noah, learns about and inherits this island. He leaves Israel intending to reclaim this “Promised Land” in America. Shortly after he arrives in America Liam disappears. Simon T. Lenox, a Native American police investigator, tries to recover Israel’s missing son.” Part 2 flashes back to the time and events surrounding Mordecai Noah’s purchase of the island from the local Native Americans. Part 3 poses an alternate history: the rise of a successful modern Jewish city-state, Isra Isle, on the northern New York and Canadian border a metropolis that looks remarkably like New York City both before and after 9/11 in which the Jewish female governor campaigns to become president of the United States. - [Where We Lived: Essays on Places](https://mvpublishers.org/product/where-we-lived-essays-on-places/): Pulitzer Prize-winner Henry Allen brings alive nearly five centuries of family by describing places where they lived—from plantations in South Carolina and Guadeloupe to a boarding house in Queens; a sadly grand old house in Orange, New Jersey; farmhouses, mansions, apartments, ships, tents, and dormitories; towns in Rhode Island and Connecticut. He vividly describes his family’s historical journey through Indian wars, a witchcraft trial, privateering, wagon trains, a split over slave trading, the friendship of presidents, the dwindling of the old Anglo-Saxon hegemony, and the heartless mysteries of money, alcohol, and gentility. I feared my children and their children would never know about the lost worlds of our family—love, moral stands, disappointment, Christmas dinners, the ancient and ordinary sunlight that transported us like aliens from galaxies of the past. These galaxies not only existed but persisted despite the apathy of their inheritors. Consider this book a last will and testament, an attempt to stave off the probate of oblivion. - [Zion's Fiction: A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature](https://mvpublishers.org/product/zions-fiction-a-treasury-of-israeli-speculative-literature/): This anthology showcases the best Israeli science fiction and fantasy literature published since the 1980s. The stories included come from Hebrew, Russian, and English-language sources, and include well-known authors such as Shimon Adaf, Pesach (Pavel) Amnuel, Gail Hareven, Savyon Liebrecht, Nava Semel and Lavie Tidhar, as well as a hot-list of newly translated Israeli writers. The book features: an historical and contemporary survey of Israeli science fiction and fantasy literature by the editors; a foreword by revered SF/F writer Robert Silverberg,; an afterword by Dr. Aharon Hauptman, the founding editor of Fantasia 2000, Israel’s seminal SF/F magazine; an author biography for each story included in the volume; and illustrations for each story by award winning American-born Israeli artist, Avi Katz. - [Kill the Ámpaya! The Best Latin American Baseball Fiction](https://mvpublishers.org/product/kill-the-ampaya-the-best-latin-american-baseball-fiction/): A rich variety of baseball fiction exists south of the Florida Straits and the Rio Grande, but almost none available in English. This collection translates for the first time stories ranging from the highly literary to the vernacular. These inventive and entertaining stories reveal the place of baseball in Latin America. Mixing fan and fandom, baseball and politics, rural and urban life, sexism and poverty, Kill the Ampaya! reveals how baseball shapes the social fabric of everyday Latin American life. The collection includes well known writers such as Leonardo Padura from Cuba (The Man Who Loved Dogs), Sergio Ramírez from Nicaragua (Divine Punishment, A Thousand Deaths Plus One). Others are well known writers in their home countries such as Arturo Arango and Eduardo del Llano in Cuba, Alexis Gómez Rosa and José Bobadilla in the Dominican Republic, Yolanda Arroyo Pizarro in Puerto Rico, Vicente Leñero in Mexico as well as emerging literary figures such as Salvador Fleján and Rodrigo Blanco Calderón in Venezuela, Sandra Tavarez and Daniel Reyes Germán in the D.R., Carmen Hernández Peña in Cuba. - [Questioning Return: A Novel](https://mvpublishers.org/product/questioning-return-a-novel/): A year in Jerusalem questioning American Jews who "return" to Israel and to traditional religion changes Wendy Goldberg's life forever. Every year, 700,000 Americans visit Israel. Wendy Goldberg spends a year in Jerusalem questioning the lives of American Jews who do "Aliya"—a return both to Israel itself and to traditional religious practices. Are they sincere? Are they happier? The unexpected answers and Wendy's experiences (a bus bombing, a funeral, an unexpected suicide, a love affair, and a lawsuit) lead her to reconsider her own true Jewish identity. The ambitious graduate student is certain she's on the path to academic glory. But from the moment her plane takes off Wendy is confronted with unanswerable questions of faith and identity. As she becomes immersed in the rhythm of Israeli life, her sense of distance from it fades. Her ability to be an outside observer terminates abruptly when a student commits a horrible act immediately after his interview with her. Wendy is not sure how or if she is implicated in his action, but in her search for understanding, she is led to knowledge and love in unforeseen places. - [The Book of Norman, A Novel](https://mvpublishers.org/product/the-book-of-norman-a-novel/): The Book of Norman probes Mormon-Jewish relationships and traditions with humor and thoughtfulness. A sibling rivalry erupts between brothers Norman and Jon Gould, who compete for their dead father's soul in this wild theological ride set in southern California during the Summer of Love. Norman, a recent drop-out from the New York Jewish Seminary, wants to catch up on his generation's sex, love, and rock 'n' roll. Yet when his doper brother Jon gets a buzz cut, sells his stash, and becomes a Mormon-in- training, the battle is engaged. As the religious tug-of- war ensues, Norman tries to pull his brother back to Judaism while Jon tries to prove to Norman that Mormonism is the truer path. The struggle culminates in a monumental and hilarious game of basketball pitting Norman and two gorgeous Jewish angels, Tali and Aviva, against a Mormon team headed by Wes, the Elder, and his compatriots. - [13 Stradomska Street: A Memoir of Exile and Return](https://mvpublishers.org/product/13-stradomska-street-a-memoir-of-exile-and-return/): When Andrew Potok was eight he fled with his family from Warsaw, leaving home and business to escape the invading Nazis. The family made it to American, but Andrew’s memories of violence, Jew hatred, and betrayal--including that of his father--erupted into nightmares and eventually formed the backdrop of his rich, though at times turbulent, life as an artist and writer. When, late in Andrew's life, a Polish lawyer offers to help him reclaim property in Krakow that was wrongfully inherited by a relative, he and his wife revisit Poland, with its still-virulent anti-Semitism. The visit awakens long-dormant memories and provokes deep reflections on the nature of evil. The ongoing lawsuit becomes emblematic of the book’s central theme: There can be no closure for survivors of the Holocaust--no justice for either victims or perpetrators, no compensation, and no forgiveness. - [News of the Earth](https://mvpublishers.org/product/news-of-the-earth/): News of the Earth chronicles Homero Aridjis’s relationship with the natural world through his writings and his activism as president of the Grupo de los Cien [Group of 100], Mexico’s influential environmental group composed of one hundred prominent personalities in the arts, culture, and science, which Aridjis founded in 1985. Under his leadership, the group’s efforts led to a ban on the capture and commercialization of sea turtles, legislation reducing the amount of lead in gasoline, daily monitoring of air quality in Mexico City, and official designation of sanctuaries for the monarch butterfly. Aridjis waged a lifelong battle against threats to endangered ecosystems and wildlife in his country, many with global implications, including campaigns to save the gray whale, bottle-nosed dolphin, bee population, giant saguaro cactus, endangered coral reefs, and rainforests of Mexico. This book highlights these crucial battles, with detailed documentation of critical environmental victories. - [Maria the Monarch](https://mvpublishers.org/product/maria-the-monarch/): Each year, in the Mexican town of Contepec, migrating Monarch butterflies spend the winter in the temperate forests of Mexico. This children’s book is an adventure story about two courageous cousins Eréndira and Corina. With the help of their community as well as Maria the Monarch butterfly, who speaks to them in their dreams, they save the lives of millions of Monarch butterflies threatened by illegal logging and traffickers of wild animals. Together they help preserve the natural and cultural wealth of their homeland. In an afterword “The Monarch: A Tireless Traveler” Betty Ferber describes the life and evolution of the Monarch butterfly, its migration from North to South America, and the establishment of the sanctuaries in Mexico and the laws that protect them. - [Green Was My Forest](https://mvpublishers.org/product/green-was-my-forest/): Green Was My Forest is an illustrated collection of twelve short stories about each of Ecuador's six remaining Amazon indigenous groups, told from the point-of-view of the indigenous children themselves. In simple, yet beautiful language, the stories explore the culture, customs and ancestral wisdom of the indigenous groups living in the Ecuadorian Amazon, highlighting their collective love, respect and custodianship of the natural world. These stories offer a rare perspective on these indigenous peoples whose culture and way of life are continuously being threatened by outsiders and the forces of modernization. They portray the way of life of the people who live in Ecuadorian Amazonia known for its forest, exotic animals, and indigenous towns. After traveling to this little-known region and meeting the people who inhabit it, Iturralde studied their way of life, observed their culture, and then wrote these imaginative entertaining stories remaining faithful to these tribes and their world. - [Good Fortune Next Time: Life, Death, Irony, and the Administration of Very Small Colleges](https://mvpublishers.org/product/good-fortune-next-time-life-death-irony-and-the-administration-of-very-small/): Will Wootton, at various junctures in his life, has been a horse wrangler in Colorado, a sous-chef in southern Vermont, and the editor of a Chinese-English newspaper in Boston. While Good Fortune Next Time touches on these endeavors, its real focus is on the joys and tribulations of administering small liberal arts colleges in New England. This literary memoir tracks Wootton's twenty-nine- year odyssey through the halls of academia, ending with his six years as president of Sterling College in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, where he paces back and forth on the "porch of worry," coaxing the small but beloved college back to life. - [Breaking Ground: How Jackie Robinson Changed Brooklyn](https://mvpublishers.org/product/breaking-ground-how-jackie-robinson-changed-brooklyn/): Portrays Robinson’s career from a new perspective that of an adoring nine-year-old fan who saw him play up close, at Ebbets Field. Through this boy’s eyes, we see how the borough of Brooklyn embraced Jackie Robinson, the man and the player, as their own. - [Searching for Wallenberg: A Novel](https://mvpublishers.org/product/searching-for-wallenberg-a-novel/): Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Budapest Jews in 1944-45, was arrested by the Soviets and taken to Moscow where he disappeared. Now, more than 70 years after these events, many mysteries about Wallenberg’s life and fate persist. As both a literary detective story and historical investigation Alan Lelchuk uses a fictional investigation to explore what really happened. - [Max Baer and the Star of David: A Novel](https://mvpublishers.org/product/max-baer-and-the-star-of-david-a-novel/): In this bewitching tale, fictional characters, the African American couple Horace and Joleen Littlejohn, interact with a real historical character, boxing champion Max Baer. Presenting themselves as husband and wife, Horace and Joleen are, in fact, brother and sister. They become constant companions and sometime lovers to Max in this story about Max’s life in and out of the ring. [comment]: # (Generated by Hostinger Tools Plugin)