In striking photography and informative text, this volume both celebrates and mourns Eastern European Jewish life of the early- to mid-twentieth century.From Odessa to Budapest, Warsaw, Prague, and Sarajevo, the Jews of Eastern Europe established thriving, traditional communities . And while there are still proud Jews who keep the Kehilla robust in the region, they are a shadow of their former glory. In The Last Jews of Eastern Europe, Yale Strom and photo...

Klezmer is Yiddish music, the music of the Jews of Europe and America, a music of laughter and tears, of weddings and festivals, of dancing and prayer. Born in the Middle Ages, it came of age in the shtetl (the Eastern European Jewish country town), where "a wedding without klezmer is worse than a funeral without tears." Most of the European klezmorim (klezmer players) were murdered in the Holocaust; in the last 25 years, however, klezmer has been reborn, with dozens of groups, often mixin...

Kid with a Guitar: The Story of Memphis Minnie by Yale Strom is an inspiring children's biography that tells the story of Lizzie Douglas, a young girl who grew up to become the legendary blues musician Memphis Minnie. The book follows her journey from a childhood surrounded by music in the American South to her rise as a powerful guitarist, singer, and songwriter who helped shape the blues. Through determination, talent, and courage, Minnie overcame obstacles in a male-dominated m...

When Ziske's klezmer band is invited to play at a wedding in Pinsk, they arrive to discover many of the people in the town very sick. But tradition says that if two orphans get married in a cemetery a miracle may happen, so Ziske sets his mind to finding the perfect couple.

Shpil: The Art of Playing Klezmer is both a history of this popular form of traditional Jewish music and an instructional book for professional and amateur musicians. Since the revival of klezmer music in the United States in the mid-1970s, Yiddish songs and klezmer dance melodies have served as the soundtrack for a resurgence of interest in Ashkenazic Jewish culture across the globe. Klezmer has taken root not only in America’s major urban centers—New York City, Chicago, San Francisco—but...

Debs In Canton is original historical audio fiction.On June 16, 1918, America’s leading voice of conscience, Eugene Victor Debs, stepped onto a stage in Canton, Ohio, and gave a soul-stirring speech against American intervention in WWI. He did so knowing the cost would be severe: Debs was charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and sentenced to ten years in a federal penitentiary for sedition. The sixty-three-year-old cofounder of the Socialist Party of America ran for pre...

Renowned Jewish vocalist and writer Elizabeth Schwartz’s first book of fiction, “The Sweet Fragrance of Life & Other Stories” is a meditation on historic European Jewish Culture seen through the lens of a woman’s point of view.As if Sholem Aleichem and Angela Carter had a child, The Sweet Fragrance of Life & Other Horror Stories explores European Jewish history, culture, and real world events through a feminist, shtetl perspective.This is an eerie collection of new Jewish t...

An award-winning journey through Johann Sebastian Bach's six cello suites and the brilliant musician who revealed their lasting genius.One fateful evening, journalist and pop-music critic Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites—an experience that set him on an epic quest to uncover the mysterious history of the entrancing compositions and their miraculous reemergence nearly two hundred years later. In pursuit of his musicolog...

MAKE A SOUND INVESTMENT IN CLASSICAL MUSICWho are the ten most important classical composers? Who in the world was Palestrina? Why did Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" cause a riot? Which five of each important composer's works should you buy? What is a concerto and how does it differ from a sonata?Maybe you don't know the answers to these questions; author Phil Goulding certainly didn't. When Goulding first tried to learn about classical music, he found himself buried in an ava...

One of The Telegraph's Best Music Books 2011Alex Ross's award-winning international bestseller, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, has become a contemporary classic, establishing Ross as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians. Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross describes his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of his writing from more than a decade at

If you enjoy great music but want to know more about how it came to be the way it is - without investing time in a graduate degree - here are the background stories of over 200 great compositions. If you're only just coming to experiment with great music, here are guideposts to help you understand and enjoy what you encounter. The stories and sounds behind the scenes: welcome to Classical Music Insights.

A beautifully composed journey through music history!Music history is a required course for all music students. Unfortunately, the typical music history book is dry and academic, focusing on rote memorization of important composers and works. This leads many to think that the topic is boring, but bestselling author Michael Miller proves that isn’t so. This guide makes music history interesting and fun, for both music students and older music lovers.