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
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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