Catalog Search Results
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2017]
Language
English
Description
Born in the Land of Israel around the year 50 C.E., Rabbi Akiva was the greatest rabbi of his time and one of the most important influences on Judaism as we know it today. Traditional sources tell how he was raised in poverty and unschooled in religious tradition but began to learn the Torah as an adult. In the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E., he helped shape a new direction for Judaism through his brilliance and...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2017]
Language
English
Description
Behind the scenes at the legendary Warner Brothers film studio, where four immigrant brothers transformed themselves into the moguls and masters of American fantasy Warner Bros charts the rise of an unpromising film studio from its shaky beginnings in the early twentieth century through its ascent to the pinnacle of Hollywood influence and popularity. The Warner Brothers-Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack-arrived in America as unschooled Jewish immigrants,...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2017]
Language
English
Description
An insider's perspective on the life and influence of Israel's first native-born prime minister, his bold peace initiatives, and his tragic assassination. More than two decades have passed since prime minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination in 1995, yet he remains an unusually intriguing and admired modern leader. A native-born Israeli, Rabin became an inextricable part of his nation's pre-state history and subsequent evolution. This revealing account...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
©2018.
Language
English
Description
"Harvey Milk--eloquent, charismatic, and a smart-aleck--was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, but he had not even served a full year in office when he was shot by a homophobic fellow supervisor. Milk's assassination at the age of forty-eight made him the most famous gay man in modern history; twenty years later Time magazine included him on its list of the hundred most influential individuals of the twentieth century. Before...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2018]
Language
English
Description
Jerome Robbins (1918-1998) was born Jerome Wilson Rabinowitz and grew up in Weehawken, New Jersey, where his Russian-Jewish immigrant parents owned the Comfort Corset Company. Robbins, who was drawn to dance at a young age, resisted the idea of joining the family business. In 1936 he began working with Gluck Sandor, who ran a dance group and convinced him to change his name to Jerome Robbins. He went on to become a choreographer and director who worked...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2019]
Language
English
Description
Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was an enormously influential artist and nurturer of artists even though his career is often overshadowed by his role as Georgia O'Keeffe's husband. This new book from celebrated biographer Phyllis Rose reconsiders Stieglitz as a revolutionary force in the history of American art. Born in New Jersey, Stieglitz later studied in Germany, where his father, a wool merchant and painter, insisted he would get a proper education....
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2019]
Language
English
Description
"He was, according to Pauline Kael, 'the greatest American screenwriter.' Jean-Luc Godard called him 'a genius' who 'invented 80 percent of what is used in Hollywood movies today.' Besides tossing off dozens of now-classic scripts--including Scarface,Twentieth Century, and Notorious--Ben Hecht was known in his day as ace reporter, celebrated playwright, taboo-busting novelist, and the most quick-witted of provocateurs. During World War II, he also...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2019]
Language
English
Description
A fast-moving, musically astute portrait of arguably the greatest composer of American popular music. Irving Berlin (1888-1989) has been called-by George Gershwin, among others-the greatest songwriter of the golden age of the American popular song. "Berlin has no place in American music," legendary composer Jerome Kern wrote; "he is American music." In a career that spanned an astonishing nine decades, Berlin wrote some fifteen hundred tunes, including...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2019]
Language
English
Description
Karl Marx (1818-1883)-philosopher, historian, sociologist, economist, current affairs journalist, and editor-was one of the most influential and revolutionary thinkers of modern history, but he is rarely thought of as a Jewish thinker, and his Jewish background is either overlooked or misrepresented. Here, distinguished scholar Shlomo Avineri argues that Marx's Jewish origins did leave a significant impression on his work. Marx was born in Trier,...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2019]
Language
English
Description
The first major biography in English in over thirty years of the seminal modern Jewish thinker Martin Buber. An authority on the twentieth-century philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965), Paul Mendes-Flohr offers the first major biography in English in thirty years of this seminal modern Jewish thinker. Organized around several key moments-such as his sudden abandonment by his mother when he was a child of three-Mendes-Flohr shows how this foundational...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2020]
Language
English
Description
Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) was a virtuoso German poet, satirist, and visionary humanist whose dynamic life story and strikingly original writing are ripe for rediscovery. In this vividly imagined exploration of Heine’s life and work, George Prochnik contextualizes Heine’s biography within the different revolutionary political, literary, and philosophical movements of his age. He also explores the insights Heine offers contemporary readers into...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2020]
Language
English
Description
"In 1916, the war in Europe having prevented a tour abroad, Harry Houdini wrote a film treatment for a rollicking motion picture. Though the movie was never made, its title, 'The Marvelous Adventures of Houdini: The Justly Celebrated Elusive American,' provides a succinct summary of the Master Mystifier's life. Born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874, Houdini grew up an impoverished Jewish immigrant in the Midwest and became world-famous thanks to talent,...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2020]
Language
English
Description
Few artists have had as much of an impact on American popular culture as Stan Lee. The characters he created-Spider-Man and Iron Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four-occupy Hollywood's imagination and production schedules, generate billions at the box office, and come as close as anything we have to a shared American mythology. This illuminating biography focuses as much on Lee's ideas as it does on his unlikely rise to stardom. It surveys his cultural...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
©2020.
Language
English
Description
An engrossing biography of one of the most influential filmmakers in cinematic history, Kubrick grew up in the Bronx, a doctor's son. From a young age he was consumed by photography, chess, and, above all else, movies. He was a self-taught filmmaker and self-proclaimed outsider, and his films exist in a unique world of their own outside the Hollywood mainstream. Kubrick's Jewishness played a crucial role in his idea of himself as an outsider. Obsessed...
Author
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
"In a brief life that led to a violent end, Benjamin 'Bugsy' Siegel (1906-1947) rose from desperate poverty to ill-gotten riches, from an early-twentieth-century family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side to a kingdom of his own making in Las Vegas. In this captivating portrait, author Michael Shnayerson sets out not to absolve Bugsy Siegel but rather to understand him in all his complexity. Through the 1920s, 1930s, and most of...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
2021.
Language
English
Description
Judah P. Benjamin (1811-1884) was a brilliant and successful lawyer in New Orleans, and one of the first Jewish members of the U.S. Senate. He then served in the Confederacy as secretary of war and secretary of state, becoming the confidant and alter ego of Jefferson Davis. In this new biography, author James Traub grapples with the difficult truth that Benjamin, who was considered one of the greatest legal minds in the United States, was a slave...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
"Hyman George Rickover (1900-1986), born Chaim Godalia Rykover in the Polish shtetl of Maków-Mazowiecki in czarist Russia at the dawn of the 20th century, was an almost mythical figure in the United States Navy. A man of ferocious will, engineering brilliance, combative personality, and indefatigable work ethic, he personally oversaw the development of nuclear marine propulsion. During his thirty-five years as chief of Nuclear Reactors, Rickover...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Description
A great theater critic brings twentieth-century playwright Arthur Miller's dramatic story to life with bold and revealing new insights "Lahr's cogent analyses are revelatory. . . . He does not reduce the work to the life, but shows how it explains the life from which it emerges."-Willard Spiegelman, Wall Street Journal "New Yorker critic Lahr shines in this searching account of the life of playwright Arthur Miller. . . . It's a great introduction...
Author
Series
Publisher
Yale University Press
Pub. Date
[2022]
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
In the Bible Elijah is a zealous prophet, attacking idolatry and injustice, championing God. He performs miracles, restoring life and calling down fire. When his earthly life ends, he vanishes in a whirlwind, carried off to heaven in a fiery chariot. Was this a spectacular death, or did Elijah escape death entirely? The latter view prevailed. Though residing in heaven, Elijah revisits earth-to help, rescue, enlighten, and eventually herald the Messiah....
Didn't find it?
Can't find what you are looking for? Try our Materials Request Service. Submit Request