Yale Press Log

Israel's Independence and Churchill's Zionism

As Israel, and its millions of supporters world-wide, celebrate its 60th birthday, few realize the important role that Winston Churchill played in the establishment of the State of Israel and the shaping of the modern Middle East.

Michael Makovsky’s groundbreaking Churchill’s Promised Land, brings this and much more to light in his careful and nuanced examination of Churchill’s complex relationship with Zionism.

In exploring Churchill’s evolving and ultimately romantic interest in Zionism, Makovsky offers a fresh, more complete and revealing understanding of this great statesman’s worldview. 

Churchill’s Promised Land won the National Jewish Book Award for History (2007) and was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature (2008).

Read an excerpt, or view the table of contents. Click here to listen to an interview with Michael Makovsky on the Yale Press Podcast.

Morris's 1948 is a critics' favorite

Under the spotlight of the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence, Benny Morris's recent book, 1948, is a praised as a shining example.

Last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review features David Margolick's review, saying: "Morris relates the story of his new book soberly and somberly, evenhandedly and exhaustively."

The May 5th issue of The New Yorker hit newsstands on Monday with a feature piece by David Remnick. This piece on Israeli history centers around Morris and the publication of 1948, calling it "a commanding, superbly documented, and fair-minded study of the events that, in the wake of the Holocaust, gave a sovereign home to one people and dispossessed another."

Last Monday, David Holahan reviewed the book for the Hartford Courant. 1948, he said, is "a richly detailed and thoroughly researched primer.... A compelling 'aha' book, 1948 brings order to complex, little-understood subjects." He went on to compliment Morris on his "vivid narrative prose and masterly analysis."

Canada's National Post began running excerpts from 1948 on May 5, and will run a total of 5 installments. Read the second and third installments.

Yale Press wraps up Nat'l Poetry Month with awards and readings

At their annual awards ceremony last night, The Publishing Triangle announced Janet Malcolm, author of the critically acclaimed Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, as winner of the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. View the complete list of award winners here.

This remarkable work of literary biography and investigative journalism, turns on the mysterious survival of Stein and Toklas, as Jewish lesbians in Occupied France. Also a fascinating illumination of the world of Stein scholarship, and a stunningly perceptive work of criticism.

For those poety lovers in the New Haven area, the five most recent winners of the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets competition will read from their work on Friday, May 2nd.  Free and open to the public, the event will take place at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street, Room 208, at 4:00 p.m.

Awarded since 1919, the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize celebrates the most prominent new American poets by bringing the work of previously unpublished artists to the attention of the larger public.  Previous winners of the prize include such talents as Adrienne Rich, John Ashberry, and Robert Hass.  It is the longest-running poetry prize in the United States. More information on the event after the jump.

"Resurrection is often misunderstood", says New York Times

Just in time for Easter, the New York Times reviewed a selection of books about the Resurrection. These books correct some common myths among Jews and Christians. The New York Times reports, "The very idea of resurrection is widely and badly misunderstood." To correct these errors, the New York Times suggests Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews, by Kevin J. Madigan and Jon D. Levenson.

This book, written for religious and nonreligious people alike in clear and accessible language, explores a teaching central to both Jewish and Christian traditions: the teaching that at the end of time God will cause the dead to live again. Although this expectation, known as the resurrection of the dead, is widely understood to have been a part of Christianity from its beginnings nearly two thousand years ago, many people are surprised to learn that the Jews believed in resurrection long before the emergence of Christianity. In this sensitively written and historically accurate book, religious scholars Kevin J. Madigan and Jon D. Levenson aim to clarify confusion and dispel misconceptions about Judaism, Jesus, and Christian origins.

The New York Times said that Levenson continues the ideas he began in Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life. The Jewish Book Council awarded this book the 2006 National Jewish Book Award in Scholarship, and the Biblical Archaeology Society named it the 2007 Best Book Relating to the Hebrew Bible.

This provocative volume explores the origins of the Jewish doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Jon D. Levenson argues that, contrary to a very widespread misconception, the ancient rabbis were keenly committed to the belief that at the end of time, God would restore the deserving dead to life. In fact, Levenson points out, the rabbis saw the Hebrew Bible itself as committed to that idea.

Read the entire New York Times article here.

The New Republic on Obama's economic guru and Gordin's yikhes

In the March 12th issue of The New Republic, Noam Scheiber writes of the effect of Richard Thaler's economic theories on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Scheiber writes, "Thaler is revered by the leading wonks on Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Though he has no formal role, Thaler presides as a kind of in-house intellectual guru, consulting regularly with Obama's top economic adviser." Thaler and Cass Sunstein recently wrote Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Read more about Thaler's influence on Obama here.

Elsewhere in that same issue of The New Republic, Stephen Greenblatt discusses the yikhes--"status or honor" in Yiddish--of playwright Jacob Gordin. Greenblatt positively reviews The Jewish King Lear: A Comedy in America, saying that "the late Ruth Gay's fine and lively translation of Gordin's most famous play, along with the richly informative accompanying biographical and interpretative essays by Gay and Sophie Glazer, enable readers without Yiddish to understand what stirred Gordin's original audience so deeply." Read the entire review here.

The New Republic also extensively reviewed The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial by James Q. Whitman for their February 27th issue. TNR subscribers can read that review here.

Leading specialist lauds Foxbats over Dimona

Writing for the Middle East Journal, Mark N. Katz favorably reviewed Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez. Professor Katz, an expert on Moscow's foreign policy toward the Middle East, was blown away by the book's compelling argument and unique viewpoint. Here's what he had to say:

I was highly skeptical about these bold claims when I began reading this book. “Moscow made us do it” seemed to be too neat an explanation for Israel’s actions in 1967. Long before reaching the book’s end, though, I became convinced that Ginor and Remez have gotten it right....

I must concur ... with Sir Lawrence Freedman’s judgment that Ginor and Remez have presented such a strong case for their argument that “the onus is now on others to show why they are wrong.”

Read more from his review of Foxbats over Dimona after the jump.

This groundbreaking history shatters many assumptions about the Six-Day War of 1967. New research in Soviet archives and testimonies from participants in the Israeli/Egyptian conflict reveal the extent of the Kremlin’s involvement, plans for the use of nuclear weapons in the Mid-East, and willingness to precipitate a global crisis.

Click here to listen to an interview with Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez on the Yale Press Podcast.

Kazin biography is "rich," "absorbing," and "truly resonant"

Reviewers are praising Richard M. Cook for his recent Yale Press release, Alfred Kazin: A Biography. Here's just a sampling of what they have to say.

In a February 7 review, San Francisco Chronicle complimented Cook on "a fine job in recounting and interpreting his subject's life." They applaud Cook's ability "to produce a much fuller and rounded portrait" than in all three of Kazin's autobiographies. Cook is a "very sympathetic biographer," with a "sure grasp of the issues at stake" in Kazin's life. They especially admired Cook's "sensitive exploration of the touchy topic of Kazin's Jewish identity.... Cook handles this difficult subject with exemplary finesse." Read the entire review here.

The Chicago Tribune's February 2 review similarly commends Cook's biography, saying that "thanks to Cook's exhaustive research -- synthesizing scores of interviews, distilling the thousands of words from the archive of Kazin's journals -- we now have a vivid chronology of the life of a major literary figure in the 20th Century." Read the entire review here.

Bookforum in their review that Cook's work is "fine, able, and intelligent." They compliment "the way Cook lets Kazin speak and think for himself." Later, they say that "Cook's account of Kazin's mature years is rich and laden with anecdotes." Read the entire review here.

Alfred Kazin, the son of barely literate Jewish immigrants, rose from near poverty to become a dominant figure in literary criticism and one of America’s last great men of letters. This book provides the first complete portrait of Kazin, his troubled personal life, his relationships with such figures as Lionel Trilling and Hannah Arendt, and his prodigious contributions as a public intellectual.

Malcolm's Two Lives makes NBCC's Good Reads List

Two Lives by Janet Malcolm made the National Book Critics Circle's Good Reads Long List for Nonfiction. The list is comprised of "the nonfiction titles which received multiple votes" from the NBCC. It was announced this morning on the NBCC blog here, where you can find the entire list, along with other NBCC Good Reads lists for Fiction and Poetry.

Malcolm’s Two Lives, a remarkable work of literary biography and investigative journalism, turns on the mysterious survival of Stein and Toklas, as Jewish lesbians in Occupied France. Also a fascinating illumination of the world of Stein scholarship, and a stunningly perceptive work of criticism. 

The New York Times Book Review named Two Lives an Editors' Choice and said, "Sharp criticism meets playful, absorbing biography in this study of Stein and Toklas."

Read an excerpt, or view the table of contents.

Cook's Alfred Kazin a complex, fascinating subject

Richard M. Cook's Alfred Kazin: A Biography, about one of the most important literary critics of the 20th century, has in turn become the subject of articles by literary critics from The New York Sun, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, and The New York Times Book Review.

In his Jan. 23 review for the New York Sun, Adam Kirsch praised Cook's biography, despite Kazin's complex character: "Mr. Cook has a judicious appreciation of Kazin's work as a memoirist and literary critic, and he has mastered the tempestuous literary-political milieu of the New York intellectuals to which Kazin uncomfortably belonged." Kirsch found especially interesting the period of Kazin's life in the 1920s and '30s.

On the other hand, Richard Eder, writing a review for The Los Angeles Times Book Review, delighted in "the complications of this genial, acerbic figure." He finds it admirable that what "Cook brings out, appealingly, is his subject's mix of brashness and humility." He finds that "Cook is best at tracing Kazin's growing use of his Jewishness in his books."

William Grimes, in his Jan. 2 review for the New York Times Book Review , would agree with Eder, finding that "Cook amply documents" Kazin's life with an "even-tempered, judicious biography of this notoriously prickly critic." With a "discerning eye" and a "deft hand," Cook "introduces... hundreds of illuminating passages from Kazin’s unpublished journals to round out the picture.... In Mr. Cook’s hands Kazin emerges as an arresting hybrid."

Novelist Brian Morton wrote on the book as well for the Jan 27 New York Times Book Review. Morton, when he met Kazin, "could only envy the astonishing vitality of his mind." He thinks that "Cook’s biography, the first that has appeared of Kazin, is a respectable effort, well written and well researched."

National Jewish Book Award names Eva Hesse finalist

Congratulations to Elisabeth Sussman and Fred Wasserman, authors of Eva Hesse: Sculpture, which is a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in the Visual Arts category.

Each year, the National Jewish Book Awards honor some of the best and most exciting authors in the field of Jewish literature. After more than fifty years of presenting these awards, hundreds of books have received the prestigious National Jewish Book Award, including titles by the top authors on the American Jewish literary scene.

The work of Eva Hesse (1936–1970), one of the greatest American artists of the 1960s, continues to inspire and to endure in large part because of its deeply emotional and evocative qualities. Her latex and fiberglass sculptures in particular have a resonance that transcends the boundaries of minimalist art in which she had her roots. Hesse’s breakthrough solo exhibition—Chain Polymers at the Fischbach Gallery in New York in 1968—was a turning point in postwar American art.

Eva Hesse: Sculpture focuses on the artist’s large-scale sculptures in latex and fiberglass and provides a rare opportunity to look at Hesse’s artistic achievement within the historical context of her life in never-before-seen family diaries and photographs. Essays consider Hesse’s art from a variety of angles: Elisabeth Sussman discusses the sculptures shown in the 1968 solo exhibition; Fred Wasserman delves into the Hesse family’s life in Nazi Germany and in the German Jewish community in New York in the 1940s; Yve-Alain Bois examines Hesse’s works within the context of the art and aesthetic theories of the 1960s; and Mark Godfrey analyzes the importance of Hesse’s celebrated hanging sculptures of 1969–70. In addition to color reproductions of the artist’s sculpture, the book features a copiously illustrated chronology of the artist’s life.

For the full list of winners and finalists, click here.

Yale Press Podcast, Episode 12

Episode 12 of the Yale Press Podcast is now available.
Download Episode 12

In Episode 12, Chris Gondek speaks with (1) Victoria Clark about Zionism and the American evangelical communtity and (2) Daniel J Solove about the permanent and global nature of the Internet is affecting people’s reputations.

Download it for free here, on iTunes, and everywhere else that podcasts can be found.

Comments are welcome.

In Episode 12, Chris Gondek speaks with (1) Victoria Clark about Zionism and the American evangelical communtity and (2) Daniel J Solove about the permanent and global nature of the Internet is affecting people’s reputations.

Download it for free here, on iTunes, and everywhere else that podcasts can be found.

Comments are welcome.

Janet Malcolm at a Chelsea reading

BandofThebes.com has put up this excellent picture of Yale Press author Janet Malcolm at a reading for her book Two Lives in Chelsea on Wednesday night.

Stephen Bottum, the blogger behind BandofThebes.com, likes Two Lives for the "many fascinating revelations in the slim book, which manages to say something new and important about the nature of biography, the quirks of writing, the work of reading, the unknowability of human actions, the ways in which biographers 'use' their minor characters, and how a scholar's overwhelming fear of not living up to early promise can ultimately prevent him from completing any work." He called the book "always engaging."

You can read his entire blog post here.

Michael Makovsky named Sami Rohr Prize Finalist

Michael Makovsky, author of Churchill's Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft, has been named one of five finalists for this year's Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. The Jewish Book Council, who administers the award, considers Churchill's Promised Land to be "a book of exceptional literary merit that stimulates an interest in themes of Jewish concern." One of the finalists will receive the $100,000 prize next spring. For more information on the prize, click here.

This book is the first to explore fully the role that Zionism played in the political thought of Winston Churchill. Tracing the development of Churchill’s positions toward Zionism and the Jewish people throughout his long career, Michael Makovsky offers a fresh and balanced insight into one of the twentieth century’s greatest figures.

Michael Makovsky has a Ph.D. in diplomatic history from Harvard and is foreign policy director of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. He lives in Washington.

Read an excerpt. View the table of contents. Listen to an interview with Michael Makovsky on the Yale Press Podcast.

2007 top picks, part 2: Yale books in holiday gift lists

Here is just a sample of some titles that editors and websites have picked in their year-end lists.

William Grimes at the New York Times assembled a gift guide of 15 perfect books for this holiday season, including Bears: A Brief History by Bernd Brunner. Grimes warmly recommends "this little gem."

The Washington Post put out their list of the best books of 2007, featuring four YUP titles. They called Hugh Brogan's Alexis de Tocqueville a monumental achievement. West from Appomattox, an "engaging" book by Heather Cox Richardson, also made the list. Ali A. Allawi brings "a valuable new voice to the ongoing debate" in The Occupation of Iraq, they said. And they praise Janet Malcolm's Two Lives as a "lucid and elegant meditation on literature and morality."

In addition, the Washington Post rounded up a list of art gift books. Among them are Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art by Jeffrey Spier, and George Stubbs, Painter, the catalogue raisonne by Judy Egerton.

Library Journal has named Hotel: An American History, by A. K. Sandoval-Strausz a December Best Book Pick. Along with having a "sound historical method," Sandoval-Strausz writes with "that rare blend of erudition and clarity that most of us can only dream of possessing."

Also, the Yale Holiday Sale has been extended. Free shipping is available for all web orders through December 31, 2007, and select titles are 50% off. And don't forget to check out our Holiday Selections.

Show Notes for Episode 11 of the Yale Press Podcast

Posted by Chris Gondek, Producer/Host of the Yale Press Podcast.

One year ago today, Yale University Press posted the first episode of the show. 12 months, 11 shows and 32 interviews later, and here we are. I wish I could convey in words how much I enjoy doing this show, and how much fun I have had interviewing these men and women. I can only hope for many more anniversaries.

No particularly funny stories in this episode, though I must say that I now have a bit of a William Steig obsession after reading the Steig book. It is currently on the top of my bookshelf, waiting for some other Steig books to keep it company.

Since I won't be posting again until 2008, have a very happy holiday season and thanks for listening.

Chris

Three YUP books make NYT's Notable list

Yale University Press is proud to announce that three of our books have been chosen by the New York Times for their list of 100 Notable Books of 2007. Those books are Hugh Brogan's Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life, Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, and Tim Jeal's Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer.

For their annual Holiday Books edition, the New York Times Sunday Book Review selects 100 "outstanding works from the last year." These three YUP books were selected from all of the books reviewed by the NYT since last year's list was printed on December 3, 2006. A print version of the list will run in the December 2, 2007 edition of the Book Review.

Read the NYT reviews for Alexis de Tocqueville, Two Lives, and Stanley. See the entire list here. Hear the Yale Press Podcast of Hugh Brogan discussing his book here.

In last year's 100 Notable Books of 2006, NYT chose Francis Fukuyama's America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. You can read their review for that book here.

Janet Malcolm reading at Book Culture, NYC

On Monday, November 26 at 7 pm, Book Culture bookstore in New York City will host a reading with Yale University Press author Janet Malcolm. Malcolm will start off the evening with passages from her new book and close the evening with a book signing. Book Culture is located at 536 W. 112th St., New York, NY.

Malcolm's new book, Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, has received major attention in major media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and the Boston Globe. Two Lives was recently chosen as an Editors' Choice in The New York Times Book Review: "Sharp criticism meets playful, absorbing biography in this study of Stein and Toklas."—Editors' Choice, New York Times Book Review

Janet Malcolm is the author of The Journalist and the Murderer, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and Reading Chekhov, among other books. She writes for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books and lives in New York City.

YUP authors across America

From San Francisco to Washington D.C., Yale University Press authors are speaking across the country.

According to the Washington Post Literary Calendar, Daniel J. Solove will appear tonight at 6:30 P.M. at the Borders Books in downtown Washington D.C. He's going to discuss and sign copies of his new book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet. For more information, call 202-466-4999, or click here.

Daniel J. Solove is associate professor, George Washington University Law School, and an internationally known expert in privacy law. He is frequently interviewed and featured in media broadcasts and articles, and he is the author of The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age. He lives in Washington, D.C., and blogs at the popular law blog http://www.concurringopinions.com.

Also in Washington D.C., Politics and Prose will host Janet Malcolm, author of Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice tomorrow at 7 P.M. For more information on this free event, click here.

Janet Malcolm is the author of The Journalist and the Murderer, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and Reading Chekhov, among other books. She writes for The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books and lives in New York City.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, will be speaking to the World Affairs Council of Northern California. Tomorrow at 6 P.M., he will discuss the relations between Israel, Iran, and the United States. Registering online in advance is recommended to assure seating. For more information, or to register online, click here.

Later this week, Parsi will be the keynote speaker at the annual dinner for the North Suburban Peace Initiative in Evanston, IL. The dinner will be on Saturday, November 10th, from 6 to 9 P.M. Reservations can be made today online. For more information, click here.

Trita Parsi is president, National Iranian American Council, and adjunct professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University SAIS. He writes frequently about the Middle East and has appeared on BBC World News, PBS News Hour, CNN, and other news programs. He lives in Washington, D.C.

R.B. Kitaj remembered

Artist R. B. Kitaj, who The New York Times says "became the first American artist since John Singer Sargent to be elected to the Royal Academy," passed away at his home in Los Angeles on Sunday, October 21, 2007. Martha Schwendener of The New York Times writes that Kitaj "became influential in Britain with figurative and Pop Art paintings that ran against the grain of 1960s and '70s abstraction."

"He draws better than almost anyone else alive," wrote art critic Robert Hughes. Kitaj also wrote books about his connection with Judaism, one of which, The Second Diasporist Manifesto, was published recently by Yale University Press.

This book, a follow up to Kitaj’s influential First Diasporist Manifesto (1989), is a personal reflection on the Jewish Question in contemporary art as it is lived and painted and imagined by one of today's most innovative and controversial artists. In 615 distinct propositions that deliberately echo the Commandments of Jewish Law, Kitaj here channels his ideas for a new Diasporist art in a daring stream of consciousness. Including 41 images of the artist’s work chosen by him to accompany the text, this beautifully crafted volume is a unique and fascinating look into an artist’s unusual life and work.

Read the entire article.

Trita Parsi's Treacherous Alliance on the radio and in print

Trita Parsi, author of recently-released Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, was a guest on The Diane Rehm Show to talk about his new book.

Listen to the show, or downloand this segment using Real Audio or Windows Media Player.

Parsi's Treacherous Alliance was also reviewed by Peter W. Galbraith for the October 11 issue of The New York Review of Books. Galbraith calls Parsi's book a "wonderfully informative account of the triangular relationship among the US, Iran, and Israel."

Read the entire review.

In today’s world of conflict and threatened nuclear violence, few books, if any, could be more important than this one. Middle East expert Trita Parsi untangles the complex and often duplicitous relations among Israel, Iran, and the United States from 1948 to the present and spells out how American policies can avert catastrophe and lead the region toward peace.

Trita Parsi is president, National Iranian American Council, and adjunct professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University SAIS. He writes frequently about the Middle East and has appeared on BBC World News, PBS News Hour, CNN, and other news programs. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Read an excerpt.

View the table of contents.

Show Notes for Episode 9 of the Yale Press Podcast

Posted by Chris Gondek, Producer/Host of the Yale Press Podcast.

I can't deny that my heartbeat quickened when I heard the theme music to the show again. I was putting together the main show, and when I put in the opening theme and started the fade, I felt very happy. Two months is far too long between shows. I go through withdrawl.

You'd be hard pressed to find a book that is as timely as Trita Parsi's Treacherous Alliance, a book that everyone who wants a sense of what is really going on between Israel and Iran should pick up and read. Then, once the adrenaline has subsided, the essays in Tight Lines are music to the ear of any angler. I know that I'll be picking up a copy to send to a college roommate of mine who is a devoted fly fisherman. When you look at all he has accomplished, James Prosek could very well be the coolest angler on the planet.

News and reviews for Kiernan's Blood and Soil

Reviewers are finding Ben Kiernan's newest book, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, to be an engaging look at an important and timely subject.

In a review for the October 8th issue of The New Republic, Michael Ignatieff calls Blood and Soil "a formidable and important book.... Ben Kiernan has provided the most extensive history of [humanity's] genocidal propensities that I have ever read."

Subscribers to The New Republic can read the whole article here.

Graeme Wood of The New York Sun says that the book "plumbs the mens rea of the ethnic cleanser.... Each case is written sharply enough to escape the aroma of potted history that sometimes afflicts comparative studies of this type or political accounts."

Read the entire New York Sun review here.

Also, Jerry Fowler of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum talked to Ben Kiernan on his program Voices on Genocide Prevention. You can hear a podcast of that interview, or read the transcript.

Read an excerpt of Blood and Soil.

View the table of contents.

Malcolm's new book is "...a page turner..." says NY Times Book Review

The New York Times Sunday Book Review of Two Lives, opens with the statement: "One would not naturally pair Janet Malcolm, a clear, analytic writer, with Gertrude Stein and her modernist shenanigans."

Reviewer Katie Rophie goes on, "Malcolm's writing in Two Lives is brilliant, penetrating and playful.  There is in her cleverest, most arcane intellectual analysis a grace, a lightness of touch, that one rarely finds in a work of scholarship . . . Here in this slender, elegant book is much wisdom, not only about Stein and Toklas and their peculiar menage, but also about the creation of personal mythologies in general.  If Two Lives has a weakness, it is that one wishes, at the end, for more."

Read the entire review.

Recently published by Yale University Press, Two Lives is a remarkable work of literary biography and investigative journalism, which turns on the mysterious survival of Stein and Toklas, as Jewish lesbians in Occupied France. Also a fascinating illumination of the world of Stein scholarship, and a stunningly perceptive work of criticism. 

Read an excerpt.
View the table of contents.

Janet Malcolm's Two Lives news and reviews

Her first book in over five years, Janet Malcolm's Two Lives is reaching readers -- and listeners -- with more reviews to come.

Here is just a sampling of the current attention around this new release:

• Entertainment Weekly gives Two Lives an "A" calling the book, "a fascinating portrait...and hard to put down...."
• NPR's Maureen Corrigan reviewed the book in a recent program segment on Fresh Air. Listen to it here.
• BookLoon reviewer Tim Davis called the book, "wonderfully perceptive...fresh look at Stein and Toklas....Two Lives is an absolute must read book." Read the entire review.
• Charlotee Abbot of The Advocate, "A deliciously bitchy study of the modernist writer and her partner—and a disquieting biographical hit-and-run."

Two Lives was also featured in The Washington Post's Fall Preview column "The Most Anticipated Books of the Season" (entire list) and The San Franscico Chronicle's "Fall Books Preview" (entire list).

ABOUT THE BOOK:
“How had the pair of elderly Jewish lesbians survived the Nazis?” Janet Malcolm asks at the beginning of this extraordinary work of literary biography and investigative journalism.

Show Notes for Episode 8 (July 2007) of the Yale Press Podcast

Posted by Chris Gondek, Producer/Host of the Yale Press Podcast.

One of the reasons I have been asked to write up these show notes is to give listeners a behind the scenes view of what goes on in the production of an episode. Recently, it has been a bit dull behind the scenes. I've started to engineer the show at another studio, though I still speak to Steven on a regular basis. Still, the production side of the show has been running fairly smoothly.

The books for this show are an odd mix: Churchill's views on Zionism and urban nuisances in England are certainly interesting, but Tennent Bagley's first hand account of the Nosenko defection is not only a great book on the history of espionage, but it's a real page turner that ends in an unsolved mystery. Were there multiple KGB moles in the CIA in the 60's? Has there been a whitewash and a cover up about Agency work?
Read the book and come to your own conclusions.

Yale Press Podcast, Episode 8

Episode 8 of the Yale Press Podcast is now available.

In Episode 8, Chris Gondek speaks with (1) Michael Makovsky about Winston Churchill’s views on Zionism, (2) Tennant Bagley about the controversy surrounding a KGB defector in the early 1960s, and (3) Emily Cockayne about urban nuisances people suffered in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries.

Download it for free here, on iTunes, and everywhere else that podcasts can be found.

Comments are welcome.

Show Notes for the June 2007 Episode of the Yale Press Podcast

Posted by Chris Gondek, Producer/Host of the Yale Press Podcast.

It must be summer. I've spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out how to start these show notes, but I find my attention being drawn out my window and towards the early evening midsummer sunlight. lamenting the fact that my Giants just got swept by Boston and are sitting in the cellar in the National League West. If you are now waiting breathlessly seeing how I can link the underperforming San Francisco nine to Soviet machinations during the Six-Day War, Professor Etzioni's third way of organizing foreign policy, or the history of allergies and the American landscape, you have a greater faith in my writing prowess than I do. The best I've got is that the Giants' bats have seemed to be allergic to Rawlings baseballs during this month.

This was the first show that was not engineered by that master of sound, Steven Kray. Steven is fine, but the studio isn't; it is currently being gutted and rebuilt, so I handled the engineering for this show at my home studio. Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez were at their home in Israel, and before the interview, I asked Gideon how good Israeli phones were, since some of the interviews I have done with guests who were outside of North America have been of spotty sound quality. Gideon assured me that the phones were great and he wasn't kidding. They might have the best phone system I've ever heard.

National Jewish Book Council Awards

Four books by Yale University Press authors were recently honored by the Jewish Book Council in its 2006 National Jewish Book Awards program.

Caviar and Ashes by Marci Shore has been selected as a winner in the Eastern European Studies category.

Jon Levenson’s Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel has been chosen as a winner in the Scholarship category.

Writing a Modern Jewish History, edited by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, has been chosen as a winner in the Anthologies and Collections category.

Numbered Days by Alexandra Garbarini has been selected as a runner-up in the Holocaust category. 

Remembering Richard Gilman

Richard Gilman, noted theater critic and former professor at the Yale School of Drama, passed away last fall at his home in Kusatsu, Japan at the age of 83.

Yale University Press published three books by Mr. Gilman: Chekhov’s Pl