A fascinating story of a unique book collector, worthy of attention by scholars and lay readers alike.
One man’s vast library provides a glimpse into the era of early modern Judaism.
In his debut book, Teplitsky (History/Stony Brook Univ.) explores the extraordinary personal library of Rabbi David Oppenheim (1664-1736), one of the most important Jewish leaders of his day. Through his examination of this library, the author touches on a number of topics: Jewish learning and hierarchy of the times, the place of Jews in early modern Europe, and, more broadly, the importance of books and the passion behind collecting. Oppenheim, chief rabbi of Prague and scion to one of central Europe’s most influential Jewish families, began deliberately collecting books and other printed materials in Hebrew and Yiddish at an early age. By the height of his influence, the library he had amassed represented the largest collection of Judaica in existence, serving as a storehouse of intellectual, political, and religious power. Teplitsky makes clear that books in the late-17th and early-18th centuries were revered objects, “never free of their status as a store of value, nor were they empty of sentimental and even metaphysical power.” This respect for published works accorded Oppenheim additional status and power in his role. “Oppenheim’s library,” writes the author, “offered him a means to assert superiority over his rabbinic colleagues on account of his ability to marshal and manage an ever-growing body of documentation and knowledge.” Despite the respect he received, Oppenheim found himself embroiled in controversies with Catholic authorities over his role in helping publish Jewish works as well as the authority with which he acted in his own community, in a time and place where Jewish nationality was questioned and threatened with regularity. Finally, Teplitsky explores the meaning of the library as a symbol of Judaism itself, a collection that represents diaspora; in the end, it was purchased away from the Jewish community to be housed at the Bodleian Library of Oxford.
A fascinating story of a unique book collector, worthy of attention by scholars and lay readers alike.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-300-23490-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2018
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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