Kirjahaku

BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ACCORDING TO THE NEW YORKER AND KIRKUS 'Devorah Baum is a visionary writer. Her intellectual depth, her emotional precision and her searing insight can only be gathered under an old fashioned word: wisdom' Zadie SmithA shining exploration of why we marry from writer and academic Devorah BaumFor better or worse, for richer for poorer, till death us do part – we’ve always done it and we’re still doing it. Of all our cultural institutions, marriage is the most ancient, but also the most puzzling.In this compelling and delightful book, Devorah Baum examines the many meanings we have given to marriage, interweaving the personal with insights from a host of writers, artists and thinkers.From Freud to Ferrante, and One Thousand and One Nights to Fleabag, she looks at marriage in all of its forms – from act of love to leap of faith, and asks: what are we really doing when we say ‘I do’?Both celebration and critique, On Marriage is a guide like no other to the landscape of marriage.'A hugely thought-provoking, witty, warm tour around every significant writer and thinker on love to have emerged since Adam and Eve' Alain de Botton

BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 ACCORDING TO THE NEW YORKER AND KIRKUS 'Devorah Baum is a visionary writer. Her intellectual depth, her emotional precision and her searing insight can only be gathered under an old fashioned word: wisdom' Zadie SmithA shining exploration of why we marry from writer and academic Devorah BaumFor better or worse, for richer for poorer, till death us do part – we’ve always done it and we’re still doing it. Of all our cultural institutions, marriage is the most ancient, but also the most puzzling.In this compelling and delightful book, Devorah Baum examines the many meanings we have given to marriage, interweaving the personal with insights from a host of writers, artists and thinkers.From Freud to Ferrante, and One Thousand and One Nights to Fleabag, she looks at marriage in all of its forms – from act of love to leap of faith, and asks: what are we really doing when we say ‘I do’?Both celebration and critique, On Marriage is a guide like no other to the landscape of marriage.'A hugely thought-provoking, witty, warm tour around every significant writer and thinker on love to have emerged since Adam and Eve' Alain de Botton

In this sparkling debut, a young critic offers an original, passionate, and erudite account of what it means to feel Jewish—even when you’re not. Self-hatred. Guilt. Resentment. Paranoia. Hysteria. Overbearing Mother-Love. In this witty, insightful, and poignant book, Devorah Baum delves into fiction, film, memoir, and psychoanalysis to present a dazzlingly original exploration of a series of feelings famously associated with modern Jews. Reflecting on why Jews have so often been depicted, both by others and by themselves, as prone to “negative” feelings, she queries how negative these feelings really are. And as the pace of globalization leaves countless people feeling more marginalized, uprooted, and existentially threatened, she argues that such “Jewish” feelings are becoming increasingly common to us all. Ranging from Franz Kafka to Philip Roth, Sarah Bernhardt to Woody Allen, Anne Frank to Nathan Englander, Feeling Jewish bridges the usual fault lines between left and right, insider and outsider, Jew and Gentile, and even Semite and anti-Semite, to offer an indispensable guide for our divisive times.

A compulsively readable, startling, and philosophically rich book about marriage, from an acclaimed critic and filmmaker A New Yorker Best Book of the Year - A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year - A Seminary Coop Notable Book of 2023 "Baum is an erudite and entertaining guide through the landscape of marriage. . . . A fascinating exploration."--Stephanie Merritt, The Guardian "As far back as our history books go, we have no record of a time preceding marriage. Isn't that an extraordinary fact?" So writes Devorah Baum in this searching and revelatory book. Marriage, for better or for worse, is how humans have organized their world and told their story. Straight, queer, coupled, single: none live outside the remit of marriage. One might as well try to live beyond language. But when confronted with the question "What do intellectuals think of marriage?" Baum concludes that most philosophers have preferred to avoid the subject. Is marriage then an intellectual blind spot? To fill in the gaps, she draws on a wide range of cultural material, from the classical to the contemporary, while interweaving reflections on her own experiences of matrimony to both critique and celebrate marriage's many contradictions and its profound effects on us all. In doing so, she reveals how marriage has worked as a cover story for power and its abuses on the one hand, and for subversive and even utopian relational practices on the other. Entertaining, illuminating, consoling, and candid, On Marriage is an unprecedented investigation of what we are really talking about when we talk about marriage.

The Jewish joke is as old as Abraham, and like the Jews themselves it has wandered over the world, learned countless new languages, worked with a range of different materials, been performed in front of some pretty hostile crowds, and yet still retained its own distinctive identity. So what is it that animates the Jewish joke? Why are Jews so often thought of as "funny"? And how old can a joke get?With jokes from Lena Dunham to Woody Allen, as well as Freud and Marx (Groucho, mostly), Baum balances serious research with light-hearted humor and provides fascinating insight into this wellknown and much loved cultural phenomenon.

Heard the one about the Rabbi and the cow from Minsk yet? Look no further for laughter than this fascinating and revealing celebration of the great Jewish Joke