Otto Dov Kulka's memoir of a childhood spent in Auschwitz is a literary feat of astounding emotional power, exploring the permanent and indelible marks left by the Holocaust Winner of the JEWISH QUARTERLY-WINGATE PRIZE 2014 As a child, the distinguished historian Otto Dov Kulka was sent first to the ghetto of Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz. As one of the few survivors he has spent much of his life studying Nazism and the Holocaust, but always as a discipline requiring the greatest coldness and objectivity, with his personal story set to one side. But he has remained haunted by specific memories and images, thoughts he has been unable to shake off. Translated by Ralph Mandel. 'The greatest book on Auschwitz since Primo Levi ... Kulka has achieved the impossible' - the panel of Judges, Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize

Otto Dov Kulka's memoir of a childhood spent in Auschwitz is a literary feat of astounding emotional power, exploring the permanent and indelible marks left by the Holocaust Winner of the JEWISH QUARTERLY-WINGATE PRIZE 2014 As a child, the distinguished historian Otto Dov Kulka was sent first to the ghetto of Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz. As one of the few survivors he has spent much of his life studying Nazism and the Holocaust, but always as a discipline requiring the greatest coldness and objectivity, with his personal story set to one side. But he has remained haunted by specific memories and images, thoughts he has been unable to shake off. Translated by Ralph Mandel. 'The greatest book on Auschwitz since Primo Levi ... Kulka has achieved the impossible' - the panel of Judges, Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize

A fascinating history of Rome spanning 27 centuries with tantalizing details for history buffs and travelers to Italy From Italy's popular author Corrado Augias comes the most intriguing exploration of Rome ever to be published. In the mold of his earlier histories of Paris, New York, and London, Augias moves perceptively through twenty-seven centuries of Roman life, shedding new light on a cast of famous, and infamous, historical figures and uncovering secrets and conspiracies that have shaped the city without our ever knowing it. From Rome's origins as Romulus's stomping ground to the dark atmosphere of the Middle Ages; from Caesar's unscrupulousness to Caravaggio's lurid genius; from the notorious Lucrezia Borgia to the seductive Anna Fallarino, the marchioness at the center of one of Rome's most heinous crimes of the post-war period, Augias creates a sweeping account of the passions that have shaped this complex city: at once both a metropolis and a village, where all human sentiment-bravery and cowardice, industriousness and sloth, enterprise and laxity-find their interpreters and stage. If the history of humankind is all passion and uproar, then, as the author notes, "for centuries Rome has been the mirror of this history, reflecting with excruciating accuracy every detail, even those that might cause you to avert your gaze."

Not an autobiography in the customary sense, Benjamin's recollection of his childhood in an upper-middle-class Jewish home in Berlin's West End at the turn of the century is translated into English for the first time in book form.

A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and Winner of the Bancroft Prize. "No one has written a better book about a city…Nature's Metropolis is elegant testimony to the proposition that economic, urban, environmental, and business history can be as graceful, powerful, and fascinating as a novel." —Kenneth T. Jackson, Boston Globe

"In 1325, the Aztecs founded their capital city Tenochtitlan, which grew to be one of the world's largest cities before it was violently destroyed in 1521 by conquistadors from Spain and their indigenous allies. Re-christened and reoccupied by the Spanish conquerors as Mexico City, it became the pivot of global trade linking Europe and Asia in the 17th century, and one of the modern world's most populous metropolitan areas. However, the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan and its people did not entirely disappear when the Spanish conquistadors destroyed it. By reorienting Mexico City-Tenochtitlan as a colonial capital and indigenous city, Mundy demonstrates its continuity across time. Using maps, manuscripts, and artworks, she draws out two themes: the struggle for power by indigenous city rulers and the management and manipulation of local ecology, especially water, that was necessary to maintain the city's sacred character. What emerges is the story of a city-within-a city that continues to this day"--

Publisher description

From an award-winning writer and linguist, a scientific and personal meditation on the phenomenon of language loss and the possibility of renewal. As a child Julie Sedivy left Czechoslovakia for Canada, and English soon took over her life. By early adulthood she spoke Czech rarely and badly, and when her father died unexpectedly, she lost not only a beloved parent but also her firmest point of connection to her native language. As Sedivy realized, more is at stake here than the loss of language: there is also the loss of identity. Language is an important part of adaptation to a new culture, and immigrants everywhere face pressure to assimilate. Recognizing this tension, Sedivy set out to understand the science of language loss and the potential for renewal. In Memory Speaks, she takes on the psychological and social world of multilingualism, exploring the human brainÕs capacity to learnÑand forgetÑlanguages at various stages of life. But while studies of multilingual experience provide resources for the teaching and preservation of languages, Sedivy finds that the challenges facing multilingual people are largely political. Countering the widespread view that linguistic pluralism splinters loyalties and communities, Sedivy argues that the struggle to remain connected to an ancestral language and culture is a site of common ground, as people from all backgrounds can recognize the crucial role of language in forming a sense of self. Distinctive and timely, Memory Speaks combines a rich body of psychological research with a moving story at once personal and universally resonant. As citizens debate the merits of bilingual education, as the worldÕs less dominant languages are driven to extinction, and as many people confront the pain of language loss, this is badly needed wisdom.

A noted French thinker's poignant reflections, in words and photographs, on his visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. On a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Georges Didi-Huberman tears three pieces of bark from birch trees on the edge of the site. Looking at these pieces after his return home, he sees them as letters, a flood, a path, time, memory, flesh. The bark serves as a springboard to Didi-Huberman's meditations on his visit, recorded in this spare, poetic, and powerful book. Bark is a personal account, drawing not on the theoretical apparatus of scholarship but on Didi-Huberman's own history, memory, and knowledge. The text proceeds as a series of reflections, accompanied by Didi-Huberman's photographs of the visit. The photographs are not meant to be art—Didi-Huberman confesses that he “photographed practically everything without looking”—but approach it nevertheless. Didi-Huberman tells us that his grandparents died at Auschwitz, but his account is more universal than biographical. As he walks from place to place, he observes that in German birches are birken; Birkenau designates the meadow where the birches grow. Didi-Huberman sees and photographs the “reconstructed” execution wall; the floors of the crematorium, forgotten witnesses to killing; and the birch trees, lovely but also resembling prison bars. Taking his own photographs, he thinks of the famous photographs taken in 1944 by a member of the Sonderkommando, the only photographic documentation of the camp before the Germans destroyed it, hoping to hide the evidence of their crimes. Didi-Huberman notices a “bizarre proliferation of white flowers on the exact spot of the cremation pits.” The dead are not departed.

Toby Martinez de las Rivas is regarded as one of the most distinctive voices to have emerged in recent times; to some, a modern day William Blake. The Guardian described Terror, his first book, as 'visionary' and 'exciting', the New Statesman as 'remarkable', and all combined to praise it's brave and lucid intensity. Black Sun is a sequel of poise and clarity that is, if anything, more open and accessible than its predecessor. Beginning where Terror left off, it pursues that book's fascination with history and with theology, with preservation and redemption.