" Meticulous research brings alive in equal measure some of the best-known and least remembered, but fascinating, episodes in Chicago Jewish history." —Michael Feldberg, Executive Director, American Jewish Historical SocietyWalter Roth delves deep into the archives of Chicago's Jewish past in this collection of illuminating essays. The presence of Jews in Chicago goes back to 1841 and, Roth, a scholar of Jewish history in the city, looks at the more colorful and li...

Essays chronicling the Jewish history of Chicago, from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II.The history of Jews in Chicago is a fascinating, complex, and largely unknown story. Thanks to the unstinting efforts of Walter Roth, much of this history has been preserved. Now, for the first time, this material has been distilled into a single volume, chronicling events and people from the late nineteenth century to the end of World War II.There ...

It was a bitter cold morning in March, 1908. A nineteen-year-old Jewish immigrant traversed the confusing and unfamiliar streets of Chicago–a one-and-a-half-hour-long journey–from his ghetto home on Washburne Avenue to the luxurious Lincoln Place residence of Police Chief George Shippy. He arrived at 9 a.m. Within minutes after knocking on the front door, Lazarus Averbuch lay dead on the hallway floor, shot no less than six times by the chief himself. Why Averbuch went to the police chief'...

The first text devoted exclusively to this topic!A widely popular option for vision correction, contact lenses are also useful for the treatment of many serious optical disorders. Like any therapeutic tool, however, they have both positive and negative effects, and a variety of complications can result from their use. Diagnosing and treating these complications and injuries - which sometimes mimic eye diseases - can be complex.Drawing on more than ...

A brilliant, sweeping, and unparalleled look at the extraordinarily rich culture and turbulent politics of New York City between the years 1945 and 1950, The Brazen Age opens with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s campaign tour through the city’s boroughs in 1944. He would see little of what made New York the capital of modernity—though the aristocratic FDR was its paradoxical avatar—a city boasting an unprecedented and unique synthesis of genius, ambition, and the avant-garde. While co...

Part of the Jewish Encounters seriesThe first general-interest biography of the legendary editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, the newspaper of Yiddish-speaking immigrants that inspired, educated, and entertained millions of readers; helped redefine journalism during its golden age; and transformed American culture.Already a noted journalist writing for both English-language and Yiddish newspapers, Abraham Cahan founded the Yiddish daily in New York...

Three New York Times bestsellers chronicle the rise of America's most influential Jewish families as they transition from poor immigrants to household names.In his acclaimed trilogy, author Stephen Birmingham paints an engrossing portrait of Jewish American life from the colonial era through the twentieth century with fascinating narrative and meticulous research.The collection's best-known book, "Our Crowd" follows nineteenth-century Germa...

**One of the New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2016One of NPR's 10 Best Books of 2016"Heartachingly relevant...the Eleanor Roosevelt who inhabits these meticulously crafted pages transcends both first-lady history and the marriage around which Roosevelt scholarship has traditionally pivoted." -- The Wall Street JournalThe final volume in the definitive biography of America's greatest first lady.**“Monumental and inspirational…Coo...

Jews in the American Labor Movement is a concise but complete summary of how Jews have influenced, and been influenced by, the Labor Movement in America. From the early beginnings on the Lower East Side, to Hollywood, to present day labor and race issues, Jews have been at the center of the power struggles that working people face. This short retelling looks at aspects of Secular Jewish culture and traditional Jewish beliefs, and how those have inspired workers in America to organize and d...

From “Birthers” who claim that Barack Obama was not born in the United States to counter-jihadists who believe that the Constitution is in imminent danger of being replaced with Sharia law, conspiratorial beliefs have become an increasingly common feature of our public discourse. In this deeply researched, fascinating exploration of the ideas and rhetoric that have animated extreme, mostly right-wing movements throughout American history, Arthur Goldwag reveals the disturbing pattern of fe...

It is widely known that the Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg, worked in Budapest, Hungary, during WWII to save the lives of over 100,000 Jews from Nazi extermination. But what happened after the hero disappeared in 1946? This never-before told story reveals Wallenberg's detention by the Russians and relates the legal and diplomatic efforts of the author, Morris Wolff, and others to gain (or impede) his release from the Soviet Union. Playing a role in the saga are such participants as Chi...

Between 1933 and 1939, representations of the Nazis and the full meaning of Nazism came slowly to Hollywood, growing more ominous and distinct only as the decade wore on. Recapturing what ordinary Americans saw on the screen during the emerging Nazi threat, Thomas Doherty reclaims forgotten films, such as Hitler's Reign of Terror (1934), a pioneering anti-Nazi docudrama by Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.; I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany (1936), a sensational true tale of "a Holl...