- Table View
- List View
Maran Harav Ovadia: The Revered Gaon And Posek Who Restored The Crown Of Sephardic Jewry
by Yehuda HeimowitzHe had a mind big enough to master all of Torah. A spirit big enough to lead his people. And a heart big enough to contain all of Klal Yisrael. Maran Harav Ovadia Yosef met with Prime Ministers, Presidents, great rabbis - and the humblest Jew seeking advice or a berachah. He inspired and led a revolution in Sephardic society. But whether he was the ten-year old son of a poor grocer pleading to study Torah constantly, or an ailing man in his '90s keeping a schedule that would have tired someone half his age, Harav Ovadia Yosef had only one agenda: Torah. Always Torah. And everyday life according to the Torah. The brilliant gaon was an unyielding warrior for Torah. As a young rabbi in Cairo, he courageously stood firm for halachah even as a gun was pointed at his head. In the early days of the State of Israel, he struggled to bring his Sephardic brethren back to the magnificent Torah traditions that many were abandoning with terrifying haste. His encyclopedic knowledge was breathtaking and unparalleled. In his scores of brilliant sefarim he "restored the crown to its glory," fighting the battles of Torah and maintaining the preeminence of Maran Beit Yosef. As unyielding as he was in defense of Torah, so was he compassionate in personal encounters. He loved all Jews, and they loved him. When there were hundreds of agunot after Israel's wars, it was to him that all turned to find the keys to their chains. So multifaceted a leader needs a multifaceted biography. In Maran Harav Ovadia we meet the sage, the leader, the visionary, the loving father of all in distress. Rabbi Yehudah Heimowitz, author of the bestselling biographies Rav Elyashiv and Rav Nosson Tzvi, brings us Maran Harav Ovadia Yosef's rich and historic life and includes hundreds of stories and vignettes based on recollections of his family, friends, and colleagues. Generous excerpts from Harav Ovadia's personal writings give us a first-hand glimpse of his encounters and achievements, while hundreds of photos and historical documents offer a visual history of his extraordinary life. This book is the story of a great shaper of our era, a man who brought the Torah to hundreds of thousands.
Travel Pictures: Including The Tour In The Harz, Norderney, And Book Of Ideas, Together With The Romantic School (classic Reprint)
by Heinrich Heine Peter WortsmanHeinrich Heine (1797-1856), one of Germany's most revered poets, is equally well-known for his idiosyncratic prose, the vibrant voice of which feels astonishingly modern in its familiar tone and thematic acrobatics. Travel Pictures comprises the accounts of four journeys taken at different times in his life. The opening "Harz Journey," a quirky chronicle of his walking tour in the Harz Mountains, is the text that first made him famous. But in all four accounts, Heine, seasoned by the skepticism of a born outsider, does more than climb mountains, ford streams and cross borders. In this remarkable book, Heine propels German letters into the Modern mindset. Freud cites a few of Travel Pictures' most humorous passages in Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Heine's incomparable lyric vision lifts the book into the transcendent realm of great journey literature.
Radiant: The Dancer, The Scientist, and a Friendship Forged in Light
by Liz HeineckePart hidden history, part love letter to creative innovation, this is the true story of an unlikely friendship between a dancer, Loie Fuller, and a scientist, Marie Curie, brought together by an illuminating discovery. At the turn of the century, Paris was a hotbed of creativity. Technology boomed, delivering to the world electric light, the automobile, and new ways to treat disease, while imagination blossomed, creating Art Nouveau, motion pictures, and modernist literature. A pivotal figure during this time, yet largely forgotten today, Loie Fuller was an American performance artist who became a living symbol of the Art Nouveau movement with her hypnotic dances and stunning theatrical effects. Credited today as the pioneer of modern dance, she was perennially broke, never took no for an answer, spent most of her life with a female partner, and never questioned her drive. She was a visionary, a renegade, and a loyal friend. In the early 1900s, she heard about Marie Curie's discovery of a glowing blue element and dreamed of using it to dazzle audiences on stage. While Loie's dream wouldn't be realized, her connection with Marie and their shared fascination with radium endured. Radiant is the true story of Marie Curie and Loie Fuller, two revolutionary women drawn together at the dawn of a new era by a singular discovery, and the lifelong friendship that grew out of their shared passion for enlightenment.
Ghostbelly
by Elizabeth HeinemanEveryone loves to blame a mother for making the "wrong" choices, and Elizabeth Heineman makes plenty of unpopular ones: being of advanced maternal age, having a home birth with a midwife, communing with her dead baby. In Ghostbelly, Heineman's brave, disarming, and stunning memoir, she recounts her indescribable grief after delivering a stillborn son, her shocking and intimate bonding with the baby's body before the burial, and the impossible task of saying goodbye.In 2008 Elizabeth McCracken's memoir broke the silence surrounding stillbirth, which account for one in 160 pregnancies in the United States. Now Ghostbelly provides a searing tale of motherhood, the need to invent our own rituals of grieving, and the unexpected space we occupy when birth and death coincide.
Black Virgin Mountain: Return to Vietnam
by Larry HeinemannIn 1967 Larry Heinemann was sent to Vietnam as an ordinary soldier. It was the most horrific year of his life, truly altering him--and his family--forever. In his powerful memoir, Heinemann returns to Vietnam, riding the train from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh city and confronting the memories of his war year. Black Virgin Mountain confirms Heinemann's legendary plain-spoken reputation as one of the essential chroniclers of our war in Vietnam.
Lost German Chicago (Images of America)
by Joseph C. Heinen Susan Barton HeinenBy 1900, one in four Chicagoans was either German born or had a German-born parent. No other ethnic group's thumbprint has been larger in helping establish Chicago as a major economic and cultural center nor has any group's influence been more erased by the passage and vicissitudes of time. Lost German Chicago traces the mosaic of German life through the tumultuous events of the Beer Riots, Haymarket Affair, Prohibition, and America's entry into two world wars. The book is a companion piece to the Lost German Chicago exhibition debuting in the newly created DANK-Haus German American Cultural Center museum, located in what is still known today as the "German town" of the north side of Chicago. Entrusted as the caretaker of many archives, artifacts, and historical documents from many now defunct German organizations, the DANK-Haus German American Cultural Center has been committed to preserving history, traditions, and contributions of Germans and German Americans for over 50 years.
Into the Planet: My Life As A Cave Diver
by Jill HeinerthTaking you to places no one has ever gone before, and blending memoir, adventure, and science, Into the Planet is a riveting account of one of the most dangerous yet exhilarating pursuits in the world: diving to the centre of the earth."If I die, it will be in the most glorious place that nobody has ever seen."As one of the most celebrated cave divers in the world, Jill Heinerth has seen the planet in a way almost no one has. In a workday, she might swim below your home, through conduits in volcanoes or cracks in the world's largest iceberg. She's an explorer, a scientist's eyes and hands underwater—discovering new species and examining our finite freshwater reserves—and a filmmaker documenting the wonders of underwater life. Often the lone woman in a male-dominated domain, she tests the limits of human endurance at every tight turn, risking her life with each mission. To not only survive in this world but excel, Jill has had to learn how to master self-doubt like no other.With gripping storytelling that radiates intimacy, Into the Planet will transport you deep into the most exquisite, untouched corners of the earth, where fear must be reconciled and the innermost parts of the human condition are revealed.
Into the Planet: My Life as a Cave Diver
by Jill HeinerthFrom one of the world’s most renowned cave divers, a firsthand account of exploring the earth’s final frontier: the hidden depths of our oceans and the sunken caves inside our planetMore people have died exploring underwater caves than climbing Mount Everest, and we know more about deep space than we do about the depths of our oceans. From one of the top cave divers working today—and one of the very few women in her field—Into the Planet blends science, adventure, and memoir to bring readers face-to-face with the terror and beauty of earth’s remaining unknowns and the extremes of human capability.Jill Heinerth—the first person in history to dive deep into an Antarctic iceberg and leader of a team that discovered the ancient watery remains of Mayan civilizations—has descended farther into the inner depths of our planet than any other woman. She takes us into the harrowing split-second decisions that determine whether a diver makes it back to safety, the prejudices that prevent women from pursuing careers underwater, and her endeavor to recover a fallen friend’s body from the confines of a cave. But there’s beauty beyond the danger of diving, and while Heinerth swims beneath our feet in the lifeblood of our planet, she works with biologists discovering new species, physicists tracking climate change, and hydrogeologists examining our finite freshwater reserves.Written with hair-raising intensity, Into the Planet is the first book to deliver an intimate account of cave diving, transporting readers deep into inner space, where fear must be reconciled and a mission’s success balances between knowing one’s limits and pushing the envelope of human endurance.
The Homing Instinct: Meaning & Mystery in Animal Migration
by Bernd Heinrich&“A noted naturalist explores the centrality of home in the lives of humans and other animals . . . A special treat for readers of natural history&” (Kirkus Reviews). Every year, many species make the journey from one place to another, following the same paths and ending up in the same places. Every year since boyhood, the acclaimed scientist and author Bernd Heinrich has done the same, returning to a beloved patch of western Maine woods. Which led him to wonder: What is the biology in humans of this primal pull toward a particular place, and how is it related to animal homing? In The Homing Instinct, Heinrich explores the fascinating mysteries of animal migration: how geese imprint true visual landscape memory; how scent trails are used by many creatures to locate their homes with pinpoint accuracy; and how even the tiniest of songbirds are equipped for solar and magnetic orienteering over vast distances. And he reminds us that to discount our human emotions toward home is to ignore biology itself. &“A graceful blend of science and memoir . . . [Heinrich&’s] ability to linger and simply be there for the moment when, for instance, an elderly spider descends from a silken strand to take the insect he offers her is the heart of his appeal.&” —Julie Zickefoose, The Wall Street Journal &“Deep and insightful writing.&” —David Gessner, The Washington Post
Racing the Clock: Running Across a Lifetime
by Bernd HeinrichAn award-winning, much-loved biologist turns his gaze on himself, using his long-distance running to illuminate the changes to a human body over a lifetimePart memoir, part scientific investigation, Racing the Clock is the book biologist and natural historian Bernd Heinrich has been waiting his entire life to write. A dedicated and accomplished marathon (and ultra-marathon) runner who won his first marathon at age thirty-nine, Heinrich looks deeply at running, aging, and the body, exploring the unresolved relationship between metabolism, diet, exercise, and age. Why do some bodies age differently than others? How much control do we have over that process and what effect, if any, does being active have? Bringing to bear research from his entire career and in the spirit of his classic Why We Run, Heinrich probes the questions of how we use energy and continue to adapt to our mutable surroundings and circumstances. Beyond that, he examines how our bodies change while we age but also how we can work with, if not overcome, many of these changes—and what all this tells us about evolution and the mechanisms of life, health, and happiness.Racing the Clock offers fascinating and surprising conclusions, all while bringing the reader along on Heinrich’s compelling journey to what he says will be his final race—a fifty-kilometer race at age eighty.
The Snoring Bird
by Bernd HeinrichAlthough Gerd Heinrich, a devoted naturalist, specialized in wasps, Bernd Heinrich tried to distance himself from his "old-fashioned" father, becoming a hybrid: a modern, experimental biologist with a naturalist's sensibilities. In this extraordinary memoir, the award-winning author shares the ways in which his relationship with his father, combined with his unique childhood, molded him into the scientist, and man, he is today. From Gerd's days as a soldier in Europe and the family's daring escape from the Red Army in 1945 to the rustic Maine farm they came to call home, Heinrich relates it all in his trademark style, making science accessible and awe-inspiring.
The California Missions
by Ann HeinrichsDescribes the beginning of the Spanish mission system in California, its expansion, and the effects of the missions on the native peoples of that area.
De Soto: Hernando De Soto Explores the Southeast (Exploring the World)
by Ann HeinrichsA biography of the sixteenth-century Spaniard who explored Florida and other southern states, and became the first white man to cross the Mississippi River.
The Emancipation Proclamation
by Ann HeinrichsLooks at the political and moral issues that caused President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, the 1863 document that freed many slaves, and at the immediate and long-term consequences of his action.
French Americans
by Ann HeinrichsThe richness of French American culture has given America some of its most colorful features. French Americans takes students on a trip through the past to learn why some of the French left their homeland to start new lives in the New World.
Gerardus Mercator: Father of Modern Mapmaking
by Ann HeinrichsMercator was destined to be one of the most famous mapmakers in history. Before his time, many maps were as much about myths as geographical reality, filled with exotic creatures and fabled lands. But he turned cartography, or map-making, into a science. He based his maps on firsthand reports, using mathematical calculations whenever possible to pinpoint locations.
La Salle: La Salle and the Mississippi River (Exploring the World)
by Ann HeinrichsA biography of the seventeenth-century French explorer who was the first European to travel the entire length of the Mississippi River, claiming for France not only the river, but also all the land whose waters fed into it.
Mahatma Gandhi (Trailblazers of the Modern World)
by Ann HeinrichsStraight from the pages of the Noted Personalities section of The World Almanac -- the most frequently referenced information in the most popular reference book of all time -- comes this refreshingly original series of biographies. Chronicling the lives of the most important people of the 20th century, these books give student readers a powerful resource for understanding how their world came to be what it is today. Enriched with historic photos of the life and times of the people being profiled, and with excerpts from primary source documents, this series will inspire critical thinking, further research, and additional reading. Each book is more than just the story of an individual. It is a powerful social history of the world one person was born into, and how that person was affected by and, in turn, changed that world forever.
Nanotechnologist (Cool Science Careers)
by Ann HeinrichsDid you ever wonder what it would be like to work with things so tiny you need special microscopes to see them? That is exactly what nanotechnologists do. These specialists work with the smallest units of matter to make new products and improve existing ones.
Norwegian Americans
by Ann HeinrichsNorwegian Americans tells the story of Norwegian immigrants who came to America for opportunity while attempting to maintain their cultural ties without losing them in the New World.
Patrick Henry: Orator and Patriot
by Ann HeinrichsPatrick Henry gave a mighty and thunderous voice to the cause of liberty and freedom in America. His words inspired our country to revolution. Kids will surely enjoy the story of this pivotal figure in the cause of freedom in America.
Ponce De León: Juan Ponce De León Searches for the Fountain of Youth (Exploring the World)
by Ann HeinrichsA biography of the Spanish explorer who first came to the New World with Columbus, went on to become governor of Puerto Rico, and later came to Florida looking for the Fountain of Youth.
Samuel Adams: Father of the Revolution
by Ann HeinrichsSamuel Adams is known as the Father of the American Revolution. Young readers will gain insight and knowledge into the buildup to revolution in America and the important role that Samuel Adams played in it and in what came after, the start of a new nation.
William Jefferson Clinton (Profiles of the Presidents)
by Ann HeinrichsA biography discussing the personal life, education, and political career of the forty-second President of the United States, Bill Clinton.
Hitler: Memoirs of Hitler From Those Who Knew Him
by Heinz A. HeinzHeinz A. Heinz was the only writer authorised by the Nazi Party to draw a biography of the Fhrer for publication in the English speaking world. The result was the 1938 authorised biography of Adolf Hitler entitled Germany's Hitler.The book was based on interviews supplied first hand by those friends, helpers and comrades who had believed in him from the beginning of his political career. Heinz A. Heinz was a professional journalist and author, he interviewed Hitler's old school friends, army colleagues, landlords, his jailer, and early party comrades including an invaluable interview with Anton Drexler to produce an unprecedented insight into Adolf Hitler as viewed by his acquaintances during the inter-war period.These remarkable interviews were given by those who had stood by him in his darkest days, and who lived to see one of the most astounding political achievements in history. Included are vivid and unique descriptions of Hitler at school, his First World War battlefield experiences, the early political struggles, the full story behind the 9th November Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler in prison, and the struggle to power from 1926 to 1933.Featuring a new introduction by Emmy Award winning writer and historian Bob Carruthers, this book is a vital primary source reference work for anyone interested in understanding how and why Hitler won the total adulation and support of such a large section of the German people.