Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books | 
|  | | | Title: | Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books | | Author: | Aaron Lansky | | Publisher: | Algonquin Books | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 02 September, 2005 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 1565125134 / 9781565125131 | | List Price: | $13.95 | | You Save: | $2.79 | | Amazon Price: | $11.16 | |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
In 1980, a twenty-three-year-old student named Aaron Lansky set out to rescue the world’s abandoned Yiddish books before it was too late. Twenty-five years and one and a half million books later, he’s still in the midst of a great adventure. Filled with poignant and often laugh-out-loud tales from Lansky’s travels across the country as he collected books from older Jewish immigrants—books their own children had no use for—Outwitting History also explores brilliant Yiddish writers and enables us to see how an almost-lost culture is the bridge between the Old World and the future.
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Customer Reviews:
• A Good Book About Good People 07 June, 2007
This book is the last present I bought my grandfather before he died. I walked into a small bookstore and the owner recommended it to me (you simply cannot get this kind of service from the major book chains). I must have read half the book in a day, before I sent it to him, and got to finish it only after he passed away.
I'm glad I bought this book, he loved it and so did I.
The book tells the story of a graduate student trying to rescue Yiddish books from elimination, and all the characters he meets along the way. The book is easy to read, funny, inspiring, well writing and a page turner. A story of how one man's passion triumph over the odds.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A33N05GF31KN8N
• Important Story, Self-important Author 24 September, 2007
This desire to hang on to history and heritage is noble and necessary. Bravo to the author and his colleagues. There are things that can be expressed in Yiddish, that when translated, need twice as many English words to convey their meaning. Unfortunately, this book is incorrectly marketed as an adventure---we expect to encounter Indiana Jones! With so much built up anticipation, the reader is left with a "hmmm" instead of a "WOW!" at the end.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2RGTMWKY19LSH
• Buy It, Read It, Send It To A Friend 19 December, 2007
The best book I have read in a while. A must read. Dont waist time reading this review, just get it and read it. Enjoy. I did!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A16BE32GPPYY12
• Great Read 19 February, 2007
Seller sent book in excellent shape and the story is a great read on preserving history.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3H1DX2MMVN51X
• Would Have Been A Great 30-page Essay 01 January, 2007
This is an interesting personal story about a guy doing something everyone else thought was stupid. It would have been a great 30-page essay for the Web, but in the world of commercial publishing a story needs to fit into a 5-page magazine article or be padded out to fill a 300-page book. This, then, is the padded version.
If you read between the lines of the padded version, what you learn is that this guy got books for free from people anxious to clear out their basements. Then he got Steven Spielberg to pay for the books to be digitized and got some other rich folks to give him $7 million so that he could build himself a nice office in central Massachusetts. Now he sells hardcopy reprints of these books, whose authors and publishers have all died, for $53 per copy from his Web site. It is an inspiring story of entrepreneurship perhaps, but given the digital copies and his non-profit organization's mission statement to distribute this material widely, one would rather have expected to see these books available for viewing/searching online.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1TNG2A1GAG14B
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