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.

David Noel Freedman: May 12, 1922 - April 8, 2008

We are sad to report that David Noel Freedman, eminent biblical scholar and General Editor of the Anchor Bible for fifty years, died on April 8. His family plans to hold a memorial celebration in San Diego at a later date and has suggested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the Society of Biblical Literature for a scholarship in his name.

Condolences may be sent to the family at 39 Meadow Glen, Petaluma, CA 94952.

William Propp wrote this obituary for the Society of Biblical Literature:

      On April 8, 2008, former SBL President (1975-76) David Noel Freedman, Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of California, San Diego, died at the home of his son David and daughter-in-law Genevieve in Petaluma, California.  He was 85 years old. 

      Freedman was born Noel Freedman on May 12, 1922, in New York city, to Beatrice and David Freedman.  He deeply admired his immigrant father, a successful playwright and shtik writer for the likes of Eddie Cantor and Buster Keaton.  The over-worked Freedman senior died in 1936 at age 38, and his son adopted a new first name in his honor.  In his 70s and 80s, David Noel Freedman tried to bring back his father’s memory in another way, reissuing some of his works in print and arranging for a staging of his father’s first hit, Mendel, Inc.

"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.

Remembering William F. Buckley, Jr.

The New York Times reports, "William F. Buckley Jr., who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn."

The "scourge of liberalism" may have become famous for criticizing Yale's academics, but Buckley lauded Yale University Press for the Annals of Communism series. Buckley helped raise money for the research, which he called "a historical juggernaut capable of refashioning the trendy history in which so many American scholars were once ensnared."

The Annals of Communism presents selected documents concerning the history of Soviet and international communism from Russian state and party archives. Virtually all the material contained in these archives has never before been available to Western or even Russian scholars. For more information, visit the series website here.

More of Buckley's writing can be found in Bright Pages: Yale Writers, 1701-2001, edited and with an introduction by J.D. McClatchy.

Inspiring teachers, colliding ideas, great literature--such college experiences can stamp a young writer for life. This dazzling book contains the work of dozens of writers whose education at Yale over the last three centuries exerted a powerful force on their writing lives. The galaxy of authors ranges from Noah Webster to Gloria Naylor, and a bounty of their sermons, poems, essays, passages from novels, and short stories fills these bright pages.

February is...

National African American History Month! Yale Press has a wide range of books covering this topic for you to check out. Here's just a sample:

Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, edited by Susan Earle

In paintings, murals, and book illustrations, Aaron Douglas (1899–1979) produced the most powerful visual legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, prompting the philosopher and writer Alain Locke to dub him the “father of Black American art.” Working from a politicized concept of personal identity and a utopian vision of the future, the artist made a lasting impact on American art history and on the nation’s cultural heritage. Douglas’s role, as well as that of the Harlem Renaissance in general, in the evolution of American modernism deserves close scholarly attention, which it finally receives in this beautifully illustrated book.

Women's Rights and Transatlantic Antislavery in the Era of Emancipation, edited by Kathryn Kish Sklar and James Brewer Stewart

Approaching a wide range of transnational topics, the authors ask how conceptions of slavery and gendered society differed in the United States, France, Germany, and Britain; how women’s activism reached across national boundaries; how racial identities affected the boundaries of women’s activism; and what was distinctive about African-American women’s participation as activists. Their thought-provoking answers provide rich insights into the history of struggles for social justice across the Atlantic world.

Slavery and the Commerce Power: How the Struggle Against the Interstate Slave Trade Led to the Civil War, by David L. Lightner

Despite the United States’ ban on slave importation in 1808, profitable interstate slave trading continued. The nineteenth century’s great cotton boom required vast human labor to bring new lands under cultivation, and many thousands of slaves were torn from their families and sold across state lines in distant markets. Shocked by the cruelty and extent of this practice, abolitionists called upon the federal government to exercise its constitutional authority over interstate commerce and outlaw the interstate selling of slaves. This groundbreaking book is the first to tell the complex story of the decades-long debate and legal battle over federal regulation of the slave trade.

Coming soon in paperback:

The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible, by Allen Dwight Callahan

The Bible has profoundly influenced African Americans throughout history. From a variety of perspectives this wide-ranging book is the first to explore the Bible’s role in the triumph of the black experience. Using the Bible as a foundation, African Americans shared religious beliefs, created their own music, and shaped the ultimate key to their freedom—literacy. Allen Callahan highlights the intersection of biblical images with African-American music, politics, religion, art, and literature.

Coming soon:

A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar
This book is the first to chronicle the lives of African American women in the urban north during the early years of the republic. A Fragile Freedom investigates how African American women in Philadelphia journeyed from enslavement to the precarious status of “free persons” in the decades leading up to the Civil War and examines comparable developments in the cities of New York and Boston.

And for more Yale Press books on African American history, click here.

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."

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.

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.

Bloggers pick up Parsi's article for The Nation

Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, wrote an article for the November 19 issue of The Nation. Parsi's article, "The Iranian Challenge," reassesses American assumptions about Iran, and it has caught the attention of bloggers all across the web, including AlterNet, Iran Coverage, Mahler's Prodigal Son, Dictynna's Net, and Still Hangin' on a Cross & Snarking from Golgotha.

Trita Parsi (Yale Press Podcast) is president, National Iranian American Council, and adjunct professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University SAIS.

Here's Parsi's article, "The Iranian Challenge," that everyone's reading and sharing:

Iran will be the top foreign policy challenge for the United States in the coming years. The Bush Administration's policy (insistence on zero enrichment of uranium, regime change and isolation of Iran) and the policy of the radicals around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (unlimited civilian nuclear capability, selective inspections and replacing the United States as the region's dominant power) have set the two countries on a collision course. Yet the mere retirement of George W. Bush's neocons or Ahmadinejad's radicals may not be sufficient to avoid the disaster of war.

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.

Spine-tingling books from YUP

In honor of the Halloween spirit, check out these spooks--I mean books--from Yale University Press.

Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality by Paul Barber

In this engrossing book, Paul Barber surveys centuries of folklore about vampires and offers the first scientific explanation for the origins of the vampire legends. From the tale of a sixteenth-century shoemaker from Breslau whose ghost terrorized everyone in the city, to the testimony of a doctor who presided over the exhumation and dissection of a graveyard full of Serbian vampires, his book is fascinating reading.

Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity by J. E. Lendon

What set the successful armies of Sparta, Macedon, and Rome apart from those they defeated? In this major new history of battle from the age of Homer through the decline of the Roman empire, J. E. Lendon surveys a millennium of warfare to discover how militaries change—and don’t change—and how an army’s greatness depends on its use of the past.

The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult by Clément Chéroux, Andreas Fischer, Pierre Apraxine, Denis Canguilhem, and Sophie Schmit

This fascinating book assembles more than 250 photographic images from the Victorian era to the 1960s, each purporting to document an occult phenomenon: levitations, apparitions, transfigurations, ectoplasms, spectres, ghosts, and auras. Drawn from the archives of European and American occult societies and private and public collections, the photographs in many cases have never before been published.

Ghost Ships: A Surrealist Love Triangle by Robert McNab

This book tells the story of a secret journey made by three significant figures in the Surrealist movement—the painter Max Ernst, Paul Eluard (cofounder of Surrealism), and Eluard’s wife Gala—exploring their ménage à trois and the impact of the trip on their work.

Whether you're hiding under the covers or hiding under the hardcovers, Yale University Press wishes you a Happy Halloween!

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.

Yale Press Podcast, Episode 9

Episode 9 of the Yale Press Podcast is now available.

In Episode 9, Chris Gondek speaks with (1) Trita Parsi about about his behind-the scenes revelations about events in the Middle East and the geopolitical competition between Israel, Iran, and the United Staes, and with (2) James Prosek, author, watercolorist, and musician about the Yale Anglers' Journal tenth anniversiary as well as its rise as one of world's premier literary journals devoted to the sport.

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

Comments are welcome.

BREAKING NEWS: Yale University Press Acquires Anchor Bible Series from Doubleday

For Immediate Release: September 25, 2007

Yale University Press Acquires
Anchor Bible Series from Doubleday

New York and New Haven— The Anchor Bible Series, a prestigious collection of more than 115 volumes of biblical scholarship, has been acquired by Yale University Press from Doubleday.  Yale University Press will publish all backlist and new volumes in the series, to be renamed Anchor Yale Bible, going forward.  Stephen Rubin, President and Publisher of the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, and John Donatich, Director of Yale University Press, jointly announced the deal today.  Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

This sale will enable Doubleday to enhance its existing focus on publishing general religious titles for the trade market.  Yale University Press will be adding a highly-regarded line of books that strengthens its existing publishing program and serves its mandate to publish serious works that further scholarly investigation and advance interdisciplinary inquiry.  Yale Press plans to develop the series with new interdisciplinary ways of studying the bible while taking advantage of the new technologies within digital platforms.

2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards: Yale University Press takes Gold

This year's Independent Publisher Book Awards ("IPPY" Awards) were released this week, with several Yale University Press titles taking top honors in the following National Categories:

FINE ARTS
Gold:
Eva Hesse, Catalog Raisonne edited by Renate Petzinger and Barry Rosen, with Annette Spohn (vol. 1); Edited by Barry Rosen and Renate Petzinger, with Jörg Daur (vol. 2)
These lavishly illustrated and revelatory books examine Eva Hesse’s paintings and sculptures––some previously unknown––and feature fascinating archival images.

Bronze:
Saul Steinberg: Illuminations by Joel Smith
This book is the first comprehensive look at the extraordinary contribution Saul Steinberg made to 20th-century art.

ARCHITECTURE
Silver:
Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future edited by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Donald Albrecht
Featuring extensive new archival material, previously unpublished photographs, plans, and working drawings, this major new study of Saarinen––one of the most important and inventive practitioners of modern architecture––offers a wide-ranging look at the entire scope of his career.


Bronze:
London: An Architectural History by Anthony Sutcliffe
With over 300 color illustrations, this book presents an absorbing look at the unique architectural heritage of London, one of the world’s greatest cities, across two thousand years of development.

ENVIRONMENT/ECOLOGY/NATURE
Bronze:
Green to Gold by Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston
This indispensable guide explains what every manager should know and do with respect to the environment. Filled with examples and pragmatic how-to advice, the book shows how corporations can meet environmental challenges and become more profitable by building eco-thinking into their business strategies.

RELIGION
Bronze:
A Republic of Mind and Spirit by Catherine L. Albanese
This pathbreaking book tells the story of American metaphysical religion for the first time, along the way revising the entire panorama of American religious history. The author argues that metaphysical religion has been more influential than previously recognized and that it offers key insights into mainstream American religion.

SCIENCE
Bronze:
The Origins of the Future: Ten Questions for the Next Ten Years by John Gribbin
Dramatic scientific progress may soon provide answers to some of the most compelling questions about our universe, predicts John Gribbin in this accessible book. He focuses on today’s cutting-edge research and what it can tell us about the creation of the universe, the possibility of other forms of life, and the fate of the expanding cosmos.

For a full listing of winners, click here.

Yale University Press author wins 2007 Otto Gründler Prize

Charles B. McClendon's book The Origins of Medieval Architecture: Building in Europe, A.D. 600-900 has won the 2007 Otto Gründler Prize sponsored by Western Michigan University.

Presented at the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies, the Otto Gründler Prize is awarded to the author of a book or monograph judged by the selection committee as an outstanding contribution to the field. It has become a major international prize for scholarship in the area of medieval studies. The Medieval's Institute's Congress attracts some 3,000 scholars from around the globe to Western Michigan University each May, making it one of the largest medieval studies events in the world. For more details on this year's 42nd annual Congress and The Medieval Institute, please click here.

Published by Yale University Press, The Origins of Medieval Architecture: Building in Europe, A.D. 600-900 draws on rich documentary evidence and archaeological data, demonstrating that medieval Romanesque and Gothic churches owe much more to the architectural achievements of the Early Middle Ages than has been thought. Charles B. McClendon, a distinguished historian of architecture, examines the transformation of the Early Christian basilica from 600 to 900 A.D. McClendon is the author of The Imperial Abbey of Farfa: Architectural Currents of the Early Middle Ages, also published by Yale University Press.

Show Notes for Episode 4, "America"

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

Episode 4 turned out to be a theme show, and I say turned out because I don't believe there was a conscious choice to pick a series of books built around a theme. Although the episode has been titled "America", it could just as easily have been titled, "Democracy in America", because each book took a look how American Democracy has functioned, with three of the books taking a hard look at the 19th century. The books also tend to comment on one another, though not explicitly. Richardson and Garfinkle both look at Lincoln and the Robber Barons, Brogan and Callahan both discuss the ramifications of having slaves in a free society, Richardson and Callahan both look at African-Americans and reconstruction; the books do fit together in a way that I would not have thought of when I began reading.

There, the high-minded thinking aside, I will tell you that, from a purely sound production point of view, if I never have to say the name "Alexis de Tocqueville" again, I will shed no tears. The raw sound files of the show contain so many examples of me stumbling over his name that it borders on the absurd. Also, I am aware that I pronounce it Toek-ville and Hugh Brogan pronounces it Tock-ville. He is right, but I couldn't go back and edit it properly, so I left in my glaring mispronounciation in, to be listened to for all eternity. To all my French teachers throughout my life, I do apologise.

Father Robert Drinan

Rev. Robert Drinan, an internationally known human rights advocate, Jesuit priest, lawyer, and former U.S. Congressman, died Sunday after a long illness. He was 86.

Father Drinan, professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, authored thirteen books, including  Can God and Caesar Coexist?: Balancing Religious Freedom and International Law and The Mobilization of Shame: A World View of Human Rights, published by Yale University Press.

He was awarded the American Bar Association Medal in 2004, the organization's highest honor for service to the cause of American jurisprudence, and received the Distinguished Service Award last May from then-Speaker Dennis Hastert and then Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on behalf of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter wrote of “The Motivation of Shame" - “Father Drinan’s credentials as a humanitarian, religious leader, and thinker are unassailable. . . . His astute grasp of practical solutions to world problems enables him to debate policy as a scholar and practitioner, as well as a religious leader."

Quotationeer Shapiro

William Safire dubs Fred Shapiro "Quotationeer Shapiro" in Sunday's New York Times Magazine:

On the analogy of “Dictionary Johnson,” we call Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the just-published Yale Book of Quotations (well worth the $50 price), “Quotationeer Shapiro.” Like that harmless drudge, as Sam defined “lexicographer,” Shapiro does original research, earning his 1,067-page volume a place on the quotation shelf next to Bartlett’s and Oxford’s.

Two hundred famous “film lines” are deliciously collected: “Follow the money,” never said in real life by Mark Felt but spoken by Deep Throat in “All the President’s Men” in the creation of the screenwriter William Goldman. “Round up the usual suspects” is from “Casablanca,” by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch. “Go on, Heathcliff, run away. Bring me back the world!” from Ben Hecht’s screenplay for “Wuthering Heights.” And the dying word “Rosebud” from “Citizen Kane,” by Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles.

Here’s one for the next edition, submitted by Esther Lafair of Philadelphia, in belated answer to my query this spring, not originating in a John Wayne film after all. In his 1939 Depression-era novel “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck has his character Pa Joad say to Uncle John a gritty line that the actor Wayne later made part of American folklore: “A fella got to do what he got to do.”

Rethinking Resurrection

Only rarely in biblical scholarship does a book come along that topples a monolith of scholarly consensus. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life, a new book by Harvard professor Jon D. Levenson that explores the origins of the Jewish notion of the resurrection of the dead, tries to do just that.

Peter Steinfels, in a review of the book that appeared in the New York Times, elaborates:

Resurrection of the dead, it is argued, is a Johnny-come-lately notion, not found in the ancient texts of the Hebrew Bible, which treated mortality matter-of-factly. Instead, the doctrine was an innovation of the Maccabean period, found in the Book of Daniel, written between 167 and 164 B.C.E, when faithful Jews were being persecuted by the Hellenistic monarch Antiochus IV. With ideas borrowed from Zoroastrianism and other foreign sources, resurrection solved the puzzle of understanding divine justice when fidelity to the Law brought about not prosperity and length of years but martyrdom.

Professor Levenson’s new book, "Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life" (Yale University Press), is a frontal challenge to this account....

Professor Levenson does not deny that an unambiguous belief in resurrection of the dead makes a late appearance in Judaism, or that some groups, like the Sadducees, mentioned in the Gospels and by the historian Josephus, never accepted it.

He argues, however, that this late appearance was "both an innovation and a restatement of a tension that had pervaded the religion of Israel from the beginning." The full-fledged doctrine of resurrection was not primarily a response to the needs of the moment or the challenge of martyrdom. It flowed from "deeper and long-established currents in the religion of Israel."

To make this case, Professor Levenson works his way, step by step, through ancient texts and concepts. He explores the nature of Sheol, the Bible's gloomy abode of the departed, and whether anyone was thought to have escaped it. He illuminates differences between modern understanding of individual identity and the ancient Israelite understanding of the self as embedded in family and nation — and what, therefore, overcoming death means in each case.

For him, resurrection is distinct from the afterlife that philosophers from the Greeks to Kant have posited on the basis of an immaterial and imperishable soul or that New Age teachers envision as a result of one’s own inward journeying. Resurrection is dependent on a gracious act of God, and it is intimately linked to an eschatology: a vision of the final culmination of history.

Read an excerpt from the first chapter of the book, "The Modern Jewish Preference for Immortality."

Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist

"The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so that they believe they are as clever as he." - Karl Kraus

If you've never heard of Karl Kraus, the Austrian satirist who inflicted withering and witty critiques on the mass media, the military-industrial complex, and German culture in the early decades of the last century, get in line. "For years, Kraus's work gathered dust, and he is now all but unknown in America," laments Jack Willoughby in Barron's. "Very little of his work has been translated into English because of the complexity of his rich German prose. But he is undergoing something of a renaissance, thanks in no small part to [Edward] Timms," author of the massively erudite two-volume biography, Karl Kraus: Apocalyptic Satirist.

The second volume of the biography, subtitled The Postwar Crisis and the Rise of the Swastika, takes up Kraus's story in November 1918, when the satirist responded to the creation of the new republics with a defiant hope, invoking international law against the dual threat of reactionary politics and irresponsible media. Timms refutes the legend that Kraus responded with stunned silence to Hitler's seizer of power: His career culminated in Third Walpurgis Night, a harsh polemic of Nazi ideology that has proved enduringly influential. He concludes that Kraus's lifelong critique of the media, combining Orwellian political radicalism with Joycian linguistic playfulness, incisively anticipates the propaganda techniques of our own age.

In the Summer issue of BookForum, Marjorie Perloff calls Timms' two-volume biography of Kraus "a richly documented account of Kraus's brilliant and merciless exposure of political spin and moral hypocrisy in the early twentieth century; it provides, moreover, extraordinarily detailed information about the cultural and political life of modern Vienna."

In Memoriam: Jaroslav Pelikan

"What you have received as an inheritance from your fathers, you must possess again in order to make it your own." - Jaroslav Pelikan's motto, from Goethe's Faust

Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and one of the foremost scholars on the history of Christianity, died last week at his home in Hamden, Connecticut. He was 82.

Pelikan was the author or editor of scores of articles and nearly forty books, many of which were published by Yale University Press. His acclaimed scholarly works included the five-volume magnum opus The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine; his original translation of Luther's writings in twenty-two volumes; the acclaimed multi-volume Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition; and Credo. Pelikan was also a bestselling author whose popular works included Jesus Through the Centuries, The Illustrated Jesus Through the Centuries, and Mary Through the Centuries. But his academic interests ranged widely, and Pelikan made important contributions in fields as diverse as political and legal theory (Interpreting the Bible and the Constitution), music (Bach Among the Theologians), and education (The Idea of the University). 

"We will miss Jary profoundly at the Press," says John Donatich, director of Yale University Press.  "As the long-time chief of our Publications Committee, active member of our Board of Governors, and steady friend, Jary embodied a profound faith in scholarship and was an inspiration to us all.  To honor him, Yale University Press has established the Jaroslav Pelikan Publication Prize, an endowed fund that will support lectures and books by scholars in the history of religion.”   

During his distinguished career Pelikan received dozens of honors and awards, including 42 honorary degrees. In 2004 he was awarded the John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences--sometimes described as the Nobel Prize for the humanities--by the Library of Congress. In previous years Pelikan served as president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1994-97), founding chairman for the Council of Scholars at the Library of Congress (1980-83; 1988-94), and chairman of the board of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (2003-04). He was also appointed by President Bill Clinton to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

In 1998 Pelikan was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws at Harvard University. The citation provides an apt summation of his exceptional achievement:

Your vast scholarship has brought us an enriched and broadened knowledge of our culture at the same time it has made you the foremost historian of Christian thought. Your magisterial inquiry into the theological history of Christianity in its Eastern and Western, Catholic and Protestant dimensions has immeasurably enriched our understanding of the range and profundity of the Christian tradition and illuminated the cultures for which that tradition provided religious and intellectual sustenance.

Listen to a 2003 conversation with Pelikan, rebroadcast last week, on NPR's Speaking of Faith.

We Wept Without Tears

Tomorrow, the 27th of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar, is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. This day is set aside each year to remember the approximately six million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, since, as Elie Wiesel said, "For us, forgetting was never an option. Remembering is a noble and necessary act."

We Wept Without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz, by Gideon Greif, preserves the memories and experiences of those Jewish prisoners who were forced by the Germans to facilitate the mass extermination. Though never involved in the killing itself, the Sonderkommando were compelled to be "members of staff" of the Nazi death-factory. The book, translated for the first time into English from its original Hebrew, consists of interviews with the very few survivors who witnessed first hand the unparalleled horror of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.

"This is a book that must be read by all who dare draw close to the killing, those who dare to come close--as close as non-survivors can come--to the inferno," says Michael Berenbaum. The book provides direct testimony about the "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem" and documents the helplessness and powerlessness of the one-and-a-half million people, ninety percent of them Jews, who were brutally murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Read an excerpt from We Wept Without Tears.