Tag archieven: Jewish Lives

In de Jewish Lives reeks worden door Yale University Press biografieën uitgegeven van vooraanstaande, bekende en belangrijk mensen van joodse afkomst.

Jewish Lives biografieen van Yale University Press

Inmiddels omvat de reeks al enige tientallen uitgaven en komen er jaarlijks nieuwe boeken in de reeks uit. Een aantal ervan is ook in het Nederlands vertaald.

Bijpassende boeken

Biografie, Joden

Jewish Lives Biography Series

Jewish Lives Biography Series Books from Yale University Press. What books have appeared in the Jewish Lives series of biographies from Yale University Press? Which Jewish person is the biography about? Who is the author of the biography?

Jewish Lives Biography Series

Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present. Jewish Lives is a partnership of Yale University Press and the Leon D. Black Foundation.

Which new biography will appear in the Jewish Lives series in 2026?

The overview below shows the latest books in the Jewish Lives series. The newest biographies are at the top of the list. Links lead to detailed information about the biography, the author, and ordering options.

Jenna Weissman Joselit Mordecai M. Kaplan Biography reviewMordecai M. Kaplan

Restless Soul

  • Author: Jenna Weissman Joselit (United States)
  • Book type: biography
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Series: Jewish Lives
  • Released: March 17, 2026
  • Length: 320 pages
  • Format: hardcover / ebook
  • Prize: $ 32.50
  • Order book from: Amazon / Bol
  • Content: Rabbi, writer, teacher, and thinker, Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881–1983) was one of the leading Jewish personalities of twentieth-century America. Founder of the Reconstructionist movement, he was a maverick who reshaped religious faith and practice, generating controversy at every turn. Known for his relentless energy and imagination, Kaplan redefined Jewish identity, emphasizing reason over superstition, and intellectual discovery over passive inheritance. He introduced new rituals, reevaluated the role of tradition, and advocated for a Judaism that evolved with the times and fostered inclusive community…read on >

Daniel Okrent Stephen Sondheim biography reviewStephen Sondheim

Art Isn’t Easy

  • Author: Daniel Okrent (United States)
  • Book type: biography
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Series: Jewish Lives
  • Released: March 17, 2026
  • Length: 336 pages
  • Format: hardcover / ebook
  • Prize: $ 35.00
  • Order book from: Amazon / Bol
  • Content: Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021) was a towering figure in American musical theater. Celebrated for his iconic Broadway shows such as Company, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods, his accolades include eight Tony Awards, multiple Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Pulitzer Prize. In this intimate biography, Daniel Okrent follows Sondheim through the tumult of his upbringing and his parents’ divorce, his acquaintance with Oscar Hammerstein II and subsequent discovery of musical theater, and his rise to fame as both a lyricist and composer…read on >

Peter E. Gordon Walter Benjamin biography reviewWalter Benjamin

The Pearl Diver

  • Author: Peter E. Gordon (United States)
  • Book type: biography
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Series: Jewish Lives
  • Released: February 24, 2026
  • Length: 224 pages
  • Format: hardcover / ebook
  • Prize: $ 28.00
  • Order book from: Amazon / Bol
  • Content: Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Esteemed for his literary acumen and capacious imagination, he developed a unique style of criticism—his friend Hannah Arendt called it pearl-diving—that sought out fragments of redemption in the ruins of bourgeois civilization…read on >

Overview of all biographies in the Jewish Lives series

The overview of all biographies in the Jewish Lives series is categorized by the name of the Jewish person described in the book.

  • Abraham: The First Jew, by Anthony Julius
  • Rabbi Akiva: Sage of the Talmud, by Barry W. Holtz
  • Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel, by Anita Shapira
  • Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam, by Steven Nadler
  • Judah Benjamin: Counselor to the Confederacy, by James Traub
  • Walter Benjamin: The Pearl Diver, by Peter E. Gordon
  • Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade, by Rachel Cohen
  • Irving Berlin: New York Genius, by James Kaplan
  • Sarah Bernardt: The Life of Sarah Bernhardt, by Robert Gottlieb
  • Leonard Bernstein: An American Musician, by Allen Shawn
  • Hayim Nahman Bialik: Poet of Hebrew, by Avner Holtzman
  • Léon Blum: Prime Minister, Socialist, Zionist, by Pierre Birnbaum
  • Franz Boas: In Praise of Open Minds, by Noga Arika
  • Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet, by Jeffrey Rosen
  • Mel Brooks: Disobedient Jew, by Jeremy Dauber
  • Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent, by Paul Mendes-Flohr
  • Moshe Dayan: Israel’s Controversial Hero, by Mordechai Bar-On
  • David: The Divided Heart, by David Wolpe
  • Benjamin Disraeli: The Novel Politician, by David Cesarani
  • Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair, by Maurice Samuels
  • Albert Einstein: His Space and Times, by Steven Gimbel
  • Elijah: Prophet of Transformation, by Daniel C. Matt
  • Anne Frank: The Many Lives of Anne Frank, by Ruth Franklin
  • Sigmund Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst, by Adam Phillips
  • Betty Friedan: Magnificent Disrupter, by Rachel Shteir
  • Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life, by Vivian Gornick
  • Herod the Great: Jewish King in a Roman World, by Martin Goodman
  • Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want to Be One, by Mark Kurlansky
  • Peggy Guggenheim: The Shock of the Modern, by Francine Prose
  • Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures, by Adina Hoffman
  • Heinrich Heine: Writing the Revolution, by George Prochnick
  • Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life, by Dorothy Gallagher
  • Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader, by Derek Penslar
  • Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Life of Radical Amazement, by Julian E. Zelizer
  • Houdini: The Elusive American, by Adam Begley
  • Jabotinsky: A Life, by Hillel Halkin
  • Jacob: Unexpected Patriarch, by Yair Zakovitch
  • Franz Kafka: The Poet of Shame and Guilt, by Saul Friedländer
  • Mordecai M. Kaplan: Restless Soul, by Jenna Weissman Joselit
  • Carole King: She Made the Earth Move, by Jane Eisner
  • Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution, by Yehudah Mirsky
  • Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker, by David Mikics
  • Stan Lee: A Life in Comics, by Liel Leibovitz
  • Primo Levi: The Matter of a Life, by Berel Lang
  • Maimonides: Faith in Reason, by Alberto Manguel
  • Man Ray: The Artist and His Shadows, by Arthur Lubow
  • Groucho Marx: The Comedy of Existence, by Lee Siegel
  • Karl Marx: Philosophy and Revolution, by Shlomo Avineri
  • Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation, by Kenneth Turan
  • Golda Meir: Israel’s Matriarch, by Deborah E. Lipstadt
  • Moses Mendelssohn: Sage of Modernity, by Shmuel Feiner
  • Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death, by Lillian Faderman
  • Arthur Miller: American Witness, by John Lahr
  • Moses: A Human Life, by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg
  • Amos Oz: Writer, Activist, Icon, by Robert Alter
  • Marcel Proust: The Search, by Benjamin Taylor
  • Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman, by Itamar Rabinovich
  • Ayn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Success, by Alexandra Popoff
  • Walther Rathenau: Weimar’s Fallen Statesman, by Shulamit Volkov
  • Sidney Reilly: Master Spy, by Benny Morris
  • Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power, by Marc Wortman
  • Jerome Robbins: A Life in Dance, by Wendy Lesser
  • Julius Rosenwald: Repairing the World, by Hasia R. Diner
  • Philip Roth: Stung by Life, by Steven J. Zipperstein
  • Mark Rothko: Toward the Light in the Chapel, by Annie Cohen-Solal
  • Ruth: A Migrants Tale, by Ilana Pardes
  • Menachem Mendel Schneerson: Becoming the Messiah, by Ezra Glinter
  • Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah, by David Biale
  • Bugsy Siegel: The Dark Side of the American Dream, by Michael Shnayerson
  • Solomon: The Lure of Wisdom, by Steven Weitzman
  • Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn.t Easy, by Daniel Okrent
  • Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films, by Molly Haskell
  • Spinoza: Freedom’s Messiah, by Ian Buruma
  • Alfred Stieglitz: Taking Pictures, Making Painters, by Phyllis Rose
  • Barbra Streisand: Redefining Beauty, Femininity, and Power, by Neal Gabler
  • Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream, by Francine Klagsbrun
  • Leon Trotsky: A Revolutionary’s Life, by Joshua Rubenstein
  • Warner Bros: The Making of an American Movie Studio, by David Thomson
  • Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence, by Joseph Berger
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophy in the Age of Airplanes, by Anthony Gottlieb

Matching books

Biografie, Duitse filosoof

Peter E. Gordon – Walter Benjamin biography

Peter E. Gordon Walter Benjamin biography review and information book about the Jewish-German culture philosopher and writer. Yale University Press will publish the new book in the Jewish Lives series on Walter Benjamin, The Pearl Diver, February 24, 2026. Here you can read information about the content of the book, the author and the publication.

Peter E. Gordon Walter Benjamin biography review

  • “By reading Benjamin’s own texts against the grain of the hagiography that has come to surround him, Peter Gordon unwinds the myths, and in the most learned and informed fashion, gives us back the human being.” (Susan Buck-Morss, CUNY Graduate Center and Cornell University)

Peter E. Gordon Walter Benjamin biography

Walter Benjamin

The Pearl Diver

  • Author: Peter E. Gordon (United States)
  • Book type: biography
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Series: Jewish Lives
  • Released: February 24, 2026
  • Length: 224 pages
  • Format: hardcover / ebook
  • Prize: $ 28.00
  • Order book from: Amazon / Bol

Blurb of the Walter Benjamin biography

An accessible and authoritative biography of Walter Benjamin that guides the reader through the complexity of his intellectual legacy and the turbulence of his time.

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) is widely considered one of the most creative cultural critics of the twentieth century. Esteemed for his literary acumen and capacious imagination, he developed a unique style of criticism—his friend Hannah Arendt called it pearl-diving—that sought out fragments of redemption in the ruins of bourgeois civilization.

Award-winning author Peter E. Gordon tells Benjamin’s story in a vivid and poetic style, inviting the reader to look beyond the image of Benjamin as a tragic figure of German-Jewish history and portraying him as a complex personality of unique and multifaceted gifts. Tracing Benjamin’s life from his Berlin childhood to his Parisian exile, through the romanticism of the youth movements and the conflicts over modernism and Marxism, Gordon brings Benjamin to life.

Peter E. Gordon teaches social theory and philosophy at Harvard University. His books include Migrants in the Profane: Critical Theory and the Question of Secularization and A Precarious Happiness: Adorno and the Sources of Normativity. He lives in Cambridge, MA.

Matching books

Biografie, Filosofie, Filosoof

Anthony Gottlieb – Ludwig Wittgenstein biografie

Anthony Gottlieb Ludwig Wittgenstein biografie recensie, review en informatie over de inhoud van het boek over de filosoof. Op 21 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Yale University Press in de reeks Jewish Lives de biografie van de Oostenrijks-Britse filosoof Ludwig Wittgenstein. Het boek is geschreven door Anthony Gottlieb . Een Nederlandse vertaling van het boek is niet verkrijgbaar.

Anthony Gottlieb Ludwig Wittgenstein biografie recensie en review

  • “With philosophical sophistication and writerly grace, Anthony Gottlieb crafts a narrative rich with historical and intellectual detail and subtlety. But though the vistas can be broad, the result is an intimate portrait of a thinker who redefined the boundaries of philosophy.” (Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York University)
  • “The outline of Wittgenstein’s life is well known. But he remains enigmatic, and in this book Anthony Gottlieb casts valuable new light on the role of his family, and of his wider intellectual and musical environment, in fashioning the strange and contradictory genius he became.” (Simon Blackburn)

Anthony Gottlieb Ludwig Wittgenstein biografie

Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy in the Age of Airplanes

  • Auteur: Anthony Gottlieb (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: biografie van de Oostenrijks-Britse filosoof
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Yale University Press
  • Reeks: Jewish Lives
  • Verschijnt: 21 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 232 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 28,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de Ludwig Wittgenstein biografie van Anthony Gottlieb

The first biography in more than three decades of the Austrian-born thinker Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century.

According to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), philosophy is a “battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” This audacious idea changed the way many of its practitioners saw their subject. In the first biography of Wittgenstein in more than three decades, Anthony Gottlieb evaluates this revolutionary idea, explaining the evolution of Wittgenstein’s thought and his place in the history of philosophy.

Wittgenstein was born into an immensely rich Viennese family but yearned to live a simple life, and he gave away his inheritance. After studying with Bertrand Russell in Cambridge, he wrote his famous Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus while serving in World War I. He then took several positions as a primary-school teacher in rural Austria before returning as a fellow to Cambridge, where a cultlike following developed around him. Wittgenstein worked not only as a philosopher and schoolteacher, but also as an aeronautical engineer in Manchester and as an architect in Vienna.

Gottlieb’s meticulously researched book traces the itinerant and troubled life of Wittgenstein, the development of his influential ideas, and the Viennese intellectual milieu and family background that shaped him.

Anthony Gottlieb is born in 1956. He is an author, book critic, and former executive editor of The Economist. He is the author of The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance and The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy.

Bijpassende boeken

Biografie, Joden

Jenna Weissman Joselit – Mordecai M. Kaplan biography

Jenna Weissman Joselit Mordecai M. Kaplan biography review and information book about the rabbi, writer, teacher, and thinker.Yale University Press will publish the new book in the Jewish Lives series on Mordecai M. Kaplan, Restless Soul, March 17, 2026. Here you can read information about the content of the book, the author and the publication.

Jenna Weissman Joselit Mordecai M. Kaplan biography review

  • “To capture Mordecai Kaplan’s long and astonishingly productive life takes skill and discernment and a deep understanding of American Jewish life. All these qualities are on display is Joselit’s wonderful volume. She has done justice to a remarkable man.” (Rabbi David Wolpe, author of David: The Divided Heart)

Jenna Weissman Joselit Mordecai M. Kaplan Biography

Mordecai M. Kaplan

Restless Soul

  • Author: Jenna Weissman Joselit (United States)
  • Book type: biography
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Series: Jewish Lives
  • Released: March 17, 2026
  • Length: 320 pages
  • Format: hardcover / ebook
  • Prize: $ 32.50
  • Order book from: Amazon / Bol

Blurb of the Mardecai M. Kaplan biography

An engaging biography that goes behind the myths to reveal the complex life of a transformative figure in modern American Judaism.

Rabbi, writer, teacher, and thinker, Mordecai M. Kaplan (1881–1983) was one of the leading Jewish personalities of twentieth-century America. Founder of the Reconstructionist movement, he was a maverick who reshaped religious faith and practice, generating controversy at every turn. Known for his relentless energy and imagination, Kaplan redefined Jewish identity, emphasizing reason over superstition, and intellectual discovery over passive inheritance. He introduced new rituals, reevaluated the role of tradition, and advocated for a Judaism that evolved with the times and fostered inclusive community.

Drawn extensively from Kaplan’s private diaries and correspondence with family and close friends, Jenna Weissman Joselit’s intimate portrait of this influential and iconoclastic thinker sheds new light on the meaning of American Judaism, identity, the limits of belonging, and the role of faith in modern society.

Jenna Weissman Joselit is the Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and professor of history at the George Washington University. The author, most recently, of Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments, she lives in New York.

Matching books

Amerikaanse muziek, Biografie, Muziek

Daniel Okrent – Stephen Sondheim biography

Daniel Okrent Stephen Sondheim biography review and information book about the Jewish-American composer and songwriter. Yale University Press will publish the new book in the Jewish Lives series on Stephen Sondheim, Art Isn’t Easy, March 17, 2026. Here you can read information about the content of the book, the author and the publication.

Daniel Okrent Stephen Sondheim biography review

  • “An intricate, elegant tour through the life and psyche of an uneasy genius. Okrent’s book is stuffed with new matter and fascinating insights even for specialists like me who’ve been immersed in Sondheim’s biography and art for decades.” (Laurie Winer, author of Oscar Hammerstein II and the Invention of the Musical)
  • “In this compact, densely pleasurable life of Stephen Sondheim, Daniel Okrent has achieved the remarkable feat of bringing to fresh life an endlessly chronicled subject in a compellingly readable and authoritative way.” (James Kaplan, author of Irving Berlin)

Daniel Okrent Stephen Sondheim biography

Stephen Sondheim

Art Isn’t Easy

  • Author: Daniel Okrent (United States)
  • Book type: biography
  • Publisher: Yale University Press
  • Series: Jewish Lives
  • Released: March 17, 2026
  • Length: 336 pages
  • Format: hardcover / ebook
  • Prize: $ 35.00
  • Order book from: Amazon / Bol

Blurb of the Stephen Sondheim biography

A revelatory look at the complex inner world of one of the twentieth century’s most beloved theatrical composers.

Stephen Sondheim (1930–2021) was a towering figure in American musical theater. Celebrated for his iconic Broadway shows such as Company, Sweeney Todd, and Into the Woods, his accolades include eight Tony Awards, multiple Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and a Pulitzer Prize. In this intimate biography, Daniel Okrent follows Sondheim through the tumult of his upbringing and his parents’ divorce, his acquaintance with Oscar Hammerstein II and subsequent discovery of musical theater, and his rise to fame as both a lyricist and composer.

Okrent shines new light on Sondheim’s tormented emotional life, wavering self-confidence, and alcoholism, drawing on the artist’s intimate correspondence with such notable figures as Hal Prince, Leonard Bernstein, and Arthur Laurents; exclusive interviews with his close friends and collaborators, including James Lapine and John Weidman; and Sondheim’s own oral history, which remained closed until his death. As Okrent explores the ways Sondheim’s music and lyrics express the inner man, he reveals a life that was defined by two parallel arcs: the movement from alienation to connection, and from ambivalence to resolution.

Daniel Okrent had careers as a book and magazine editor and was the first public editor of the New York Times. He is the prize-winning author of six books, including The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. He lives in New York City and on Cape Cod.

Matching books

Amerikaanse Schrijvers, Biografie

Steven J. Zipperstein – Philip Roth biografie

Steven J. Zipperstein Philip Roth biografie recensie, review en informatie over de inhoud van het boek over de Amerikaanse schrijver. Op 14 oktober 2025 verschijnt bij Yale University Press in de reeks Jewish Lives de nieuwe Philip Roth biografie. Het boek is geschreven door Steven J. Zipperstein. Een Nederlandse vertaling van het boek is niet verkrijgbaar.

Steven J. Zipperstein Philip Roth biografie recensie en review

  • “Steven Zipperstein’s appreciation of Philip Roth is literary biography at its best. Acute and original judgments of Roth’s written worlds come embraided with revelatory portrayals of the worlds Roth inhabited, scrutinized, and provoked, and of Roth himself, solemn and hilarious, voraciously curious, a boundless sensual spirit riven by his craft.” (Sean Wilentz)
  • “This is one of the fairest and finest literary biographies I have read, with the emphasis on literary. Zipperstein does Philip Roth and his life’s work more than justice. He has produced a book that is a work of literature itself. Not every writer is what Roth called (and was called) ‘a writer’s writer.’ And not every scribe who undertakes to write a major life is truly a writer’s biographer. Zipperstein is one.” (Judith Thurman)

Steven J. Zipperstein Philip Roth

Philip Roth

Strung by Life

  • Auteur: Steven J. Zipperstein (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: biografie
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Yale University Press
  • Reeks: Jewish Lives
  • Verschijnt: 14 oktober 2025
  • Omvang: 368 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 28,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de biografie van Philip Roth door Steven J. Zipperstein

A landmark biography of one of our most prominent chroniclers of American life.

In this groundbreaking literary biography, Steven J. Zipperstein captures the complex life and astonishing work of Philip Roth (1933–2018), one of America’s most celebrated writers. Born in Newark, New Jersey—where his short stories and books were often set—Roth wrote with ambition and awareness of what was required to produce great literature. No writer was more dedicated to his craft, even as he was rubbing shoulders with the Kennedys and engaging in a spate of famous and infamous romances. And yet, as much as Roth wrote about sex and self, he viewed himself as socially withdrawn, living much like an “unchaste monk” (his words).

Zipperstein explores the unprecedented range of Roth’s work—from “Goodbye, Columbus” and Portnoy’s Complaint to the Pulitzer Prize–winning American Pastoral and The Plot Against America. Drawing on extensive archival materials and over one hundred interviews, including conversations with Roth about his life and work, Zipperstein provides an intimate and insightful look at one of the twentieth century’s most influential writers, placing his work in the context of his obsessions, as well as American Jewishness, freedom, and sexuality.

Steven J. Zipperstein is born in 1950. He is the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jewish Culture and History at Stanford University. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Rosenfeld’s Lives: Fame, Oblivion, and the Furies of Writing and Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Bijpassende boeken

Amerikaanse muziek, Biografie, Muziek, Popmuziek

Jane Eisner – Carole King biografie

Jane Eisner Carole King biografie recensie, review en informatie over de inhoud van het boek over de Amerikaanse zangeres en songwriter. Op 16 september 2025 verschijnt bij Yale University Press in de reeks Jewish Lives de Carole King biografie. Het boek is geschreven door Jane Eisner. Een Nederlandse vertaling van het boek is niet verkrijgbaar.

Jane Eisner Carole King biografie recensie en review

  • “Jane Eisner movingly traces King’s journey to become one of the most celebrated singer-songwriters of all time. This masterful biographer’s evocative interpretations of King’s music will spur readers to update their playlists to listen, with new appreciation, to her songs.” (Pamela S. Nadell)
  • “Eisner’s portrait is a thoughtful, nuanced, and intelligent take on a reluctant pop star.” (June Sawyers, Booklist)

Jane Eisner Carole King Biografie

Carole King

She Made the Earth Move

  • Auteur: Jane Eisner (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: biografie, muziekboek
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Yale University Press
  • Reeks: Jewish Lives
  • Verschijnt: 16 september 2025
  • Omvang: 280 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 28,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de biografie van Carole Kings de zangeres en songwriter

Jane Eisner traces the professional accomplishments and personal challenges of pop icon Carole King, exploring her unique contribution to American music.

Carole King’s extraordinary career has defined American popular music for more than half a century. Born in New York City in 1942, she shaped the soundtrack of 1960s teen culture with such songs as “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” one of many Brill Building classics she wrote with her first husband, Gerry Goffin. She was a leading figure in the singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s, with dozens of Billboard Hot 100 hits and music awards—her 1971 album Tapestry won a record four Grammys. Yet she struggled to reconcile her fame with her roles as a wife and mother and retreated to the backwoods of Idaho, only to emerge in recent years as a political activist and the subject of the Tony-winning Broadway show Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.

Journalist and author Jane Eisner places King’s life in historical and cultural context, revealing details of her humble beginnings in Jewish Brooklyn, the roots of her musical genius, her four marriages, and her anguish about public life. Drawing on numerous interviews as well as historical and contemporary sources, this book brings to life King’s professional accomplishments, her personal challenges, and her lasting contributions to the great American songbook.

Jane Eisner is born on 31 December 1955. She is a widely published journalist who held leadership positions at the Philadelphia Inquirer and The Forward. She is the author of Taking Back the Vote. Eisner lives in New York City.

Bijpassende boeken

Antropologie, Biografie

Noga Arikha – Franz Boas biografie

Noga Arikha Franz Boas biografie recensie, review en informatie boek over de in Duitsland geboren, Amerikaanse antropoloog. Op 13 mei 2025 verschijnt bij Yale University Press in de reeks Jewish Lives de biografie van een van de grondleggers van de antropologie Fraz Boas. Hier lees je informatie over de inhoud van het boek, de auteur en over de uitgave.

Noga Arikha Franz Boas biografie recensie, review en informatie

  • “Noga Arikha presents a wonderfully three-dimensional portrait of Franz Boas: family man, secular German Jew, cosmopolitan polymath, scientific anti-racist, a model of empathy and tolerance, and a beacon of light in challenging times.” (Adam Kuper, author)
  • “Noga Arikha successfully depicts the life, work, thought, and influence of Franz Boas, the towering figure who shaped the development of modern American anthropology. She perceptively stresses his lifelong battle against racism, ethnocentrism, eugenics, and for freedom of thought.” (Herbert S. Lewis, author)

Noga Arikha Franz Boas biografie

Franz Boas

In Praise of Open Minds

  • Auteur: Noga Arika 
  • Soort boek: biografie
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Yale University Press
  • Reeks: Jewish Lives
  • Verschijnt: 13 mei 2025
  • Omvang: 280 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek
  • Prijs: $  28,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol

Flaptekst van de biografie van antropoloog Franz Boas

A thought-provoking account of the life and work of Franz Boas and his influential role in shaping modern anthropology

Franz Boas born on 9 July 1858 in Minden, Germany en died 21 December 1942 in New York City is widely acknowledged for his pioneering work in the field of cultural anthropology. His rigorous studies of variations across societies were aimed at demonstrating that cultures and peoples were not shaped by biological predispositions. This book traces Boas’s life and intellectual passions from his roots in Germany and his move to the United States in 1884, partly in response to growing antisemitism in Germany, to his work with First Nations communities and his influential role as a teacher, mentor, and engaged activist who inspired an entire generation.

Drawing from Boas’s numerous but rarely read writings, Noga Arikha brings to life the man and the ideas he developed about the complex interplay of mind and culture, biology and history, language and myth. She provides a comprehensive picture of the cultural contexts in which he worked, of his personal and professional relationships, and of his revolutionary approach to fieldwork. He was celebrated in his lifetime for the cultural relativism he developed and the arguments he marshaled against entrenched racialism. But his was a constant battle, and Arikha shows how urgently relevant his voice and legacy have become again today.

Noga Arikha is a research associate at the European University Institute in Florence. She is the author of The Ceiling Outside: The Science and Experience of the Disrupted Mind and Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours. She currently lives in Florence, Italy.

Bijpassende boeken

Bijbel, Biografie, Israël

Anthony Julius – Abraham

Anthony Julius Abraham recensie, review en informatie biografie van de aartsvader van de Israëlieten . Op 11 februari 2025 verschijnt bij Yale University Press in de reeks Jewish Lives de biografie Abraham, The First Jew, geschreven door de professor aan Faculty of Laws, University College in Londen. Hier lees je informatie over de inhoud van de biografie, de auteur en over de uitgave.

Anthony Julius Abraham recensie, review en informatie

  • “This brilliantly original and often deeply moving book tells the story of Abraham so as to set out a narrative of ‘faith’ itself—the relation of faith to reason, the abiding tension between claimed conviction and inescapable or tragic questioning, the way in which, like Abraham, we may be both ‘residents’ and ‘aliens’ in the world of discourse about God. A unique and searching masterpiece.” (Rowan Williams, theologian and poet, University of Cambridge)
  • “Fascinating and profound, scholarly and playful, philosophical and aesthetic, Anthony Julius’s Abraham is an original and compelling hybrid that brings Abraham to life and through him discusses the nature of faith and his own personal philosophy.”(Simon Sebag Montefiore, author of Jerusalem: The Biography)

Anthony Julius Abraham

Abraham

The First Jew

  • Auteur: Anthony Julius (Engeland)
  • Soort boek: biografie
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Yale University Press
  • Reeks: Jewish Lives
  • Verschijnt: 11 februari 2025
  • Omvang: 392 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 30,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de biografie van Abraham de aartsvader van de Joden

The story of Abraham, the first Jew, portrayed as two lives lived by one person, paralleling the contradictions in Judaism throughout its history.

In this new biography of Abraham, Judaism’s foundational figure, Anthony Julius offers an account of the origins of a fundamental struggle within Judaism between skepticism and faith, critique and affirmation, thinking for oneself and thinking under the direction of another. Julius describes Abraham’s life as two separate lives, and as a version of the collective life of the Jewish people.

Abraham’s first life is an early adulthood of questioning the polytheism of his home city of Ur Kasdim until its ruler, Nimrod, condemns him to death and he is rescued, he believes, by a miracle. In his second life, Abraham’s focus is no longer on critique but rather on conversion and on his leadership over his growing household, until God’s command that he sacrifice his son Isaac. This test, the Akedah (or “Binding”), ends with another miracle, as he believes, but as Julius argues, it is also a catastrophe for Abraham. The Akedah represents for him an unsurpassed horizon—and in Jewish life thereafter. This book focuses on Abraham as leader of the first Jewish project, Judaism, and the unresolvable, insurmountable crisis that the Akedah represents—both in his leadership and in Judaism itself.

Anthony Julius was born 16 July 1956 in London. He is deputy chairman of the international law firm Mishcon de Reya and a professor in the Faculty of Laws, University College London. He is the author of T. S. Eliot, Anti-Semitism and Literary Form, among other books. He lives in London, United Kingdom.

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Biografie, Film, filmboek

Kenneth Turan – Louis B. Mayer en Irving Thalberg

Kenneth Turan Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg recensie, review en informatie biografie van de Amerikaanse filmproducenten. Op 4 february 2025 verschijnt in de reeks Jewish Lives een nieuwe biografie van de joodse filmproducenten Louis B. Mayer en Irving Thalberg. Hier lees je informatie over de inhoud van het boek, de auteur en over de uitgave. Een Nederlandse vertaling van de biografie is niet verkrijgbaar.

Kenneth Turan Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg recensie, review en informatie

  • “Mr. Turan has provided an entertaining primer on the men and their studio. … Sharply observant.” (Farran Smith Nehme, Wall Street Journal)
  • “A record of a paradigm-shifting partnership, this is an entertaining, literate and beautifully crafted contribution to Hollywood history.” (Charles Arrowsmith, Los Angeles Times)

Kenneth Turan Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg

Louis B. Mayer and Irvine Thalberg

The Whole Equation

  • Auteur: Kenneth Turan (Verenigde Staten)
  • Soort boek: biografie, filmboek
  • Taal: Engels
  • Uitgever: Yale University Press
  • Reeks: Jewish Lives
  • Verschijnt: 4 februari 2025
  • Omvang: 392 pagina’s
  • Uitgave: gebonden boek / ebook
  • Prijs: $ 30,00
  • Boek bestellen bij: Amazon / Bol / Libris

Flaptekst van de biografie van filmproducenten Louis B. Mayer en Irving Thalberg

Kenneth Turan brings to life the extraordinary partnership of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg and their role in creating the film industry as we know it.

One was a tough junkman’s son, the other a cosseted mama’s boy, but they dreamed the same mighty dream: that the right movies could make a profit and change both the culture and individual lives. Sharing a religion and an evangelical zeal for film, Louis B. Mayer (1884–1957) and Irving Thalberg (1899–1936) were unlikely partners in one of the most significant collaborations in movie history. Over the course of their decade-long relationship, as key players at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and major players in Hollywood, they joined forces in redefining and mastering the template for the film industry.

Mayer, older by more than a dozen years, was the business-minded face of the studio, while Thalberg worked closely with the creative corps, especially writers; together they rarely set a foot wrong. And while Mayer initially viewed Thalberg as the son he never had, the two would go from passionate friends to near enemies before Thalberg’s shocking death at the age of thirty-seven.

In the first joint biography of the two men in fifty years, film critic Kenneth Turan traces their fraught relationship while examining the complicated history of Jewish identity in Hollywood.

Kenneth Turan was the film critic of the Los Angeles Times for nearly thirty years and was also a film critic for National Public Radio. He is the author of Not to Be Missed: Fifty-Four Favorites from a Lifetime of Film, among other books. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

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