Kirjahaku

Born to survivors of Auschwitz and Terezin, the author recounts her private quest to come to terms with her parents' past, a quest which took her to Israel and into the home of other children of concentration-camp survivors

In 1993, Helen Epstein, a scientist working with a biotechnology company searching for an AIDS vaccine, moved to Uganda, where she witnessed first-hand the suffering caused by the HIV virus. The Invisible Cure, dramatic, illuminating and beautifully written, recounts the struggle of international health experts, governments and ordinary Africans to understand the devastating spread of HIV in Africa, and traces how their responses to the crisis have changed in light of new medical developments and political realities. The AIDS epidemic in Africa is uniquely severe, but Epstein argues that there are ways to address this crisis that may be simpler than many people imagine. A deeply affecting story of scientific breakthroughs and false starts, and of the human costs of policymakers' missteps and inaction, The Invisible Cure will change the way we think about AIDS, a disease without precedent.

Self-made impresario, controversial producer, contentious champion of human rights and the First Amendment, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival, and unquestionably the most dynamic force in American theatre in the last quarter century, Joseph Papp (1921-1991) changed forever America's cultural landscape. He was the first to demand and to provide,against enormous odds,free Shakespeare to the public, and the first to pioneer colourblind casting and minority-group theatre. He discovered and showcased at the Public theatre playwrights like David Rabe, John Guare, and Vaclav Havel directors like Michael Bennet and James Lapine actors like Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Denzel Washington and produced such classic American plays as Hair, Sticks and Bones, Streamers, The Normal Heart , and A Chorus Line, the longest running musical in Broadway history. Joe Papp offers readers a compassionate, unsparing portrait of a complex man who inspired both anger and admiration, but whose far-reaching impact on American theatre remains unsurpassed.

A provocative analysis of the AIDS epidemic in Africa looks at the social, economic, and political factors that have caused and exacerbated the situation; its impact on gender relations and the spread of HIV; the devastating effects of the disease on entire countries; and possible solutions to the crisis. Reprint. 15,000 first printing.

This intrepid memoir tracks sexual harassment and sexual abuse in the life of a veteran American journalist. It also describes the long and ultimately successful psychotherapy the author undertook to heal. The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma "invents its own genre," wrote Sherry Turkle. "The author suspects sexual abuse in her childhood and investigates with the toolkits of an historian and ethnographer." The result is a memoir that is what Eva Hoffman calls, "a true labor of memory, in which the story of the body is inseparable from the narrative of the self."This memoir is the third of a non-fiction trilogy, following Helen Epstein's Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors (Putnam, 1979) and Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History (Little, Brown, 1997), both widely translated. As Gloria Steinem wrote, "In Epstein's hands, truth becomes not only stranger than fiction but more magnetic.""Clear-eyed, fearless, taboo-breaking... This trilogy is unusual not only because nearly 40 years separate the first and last volumes - with the second positioned midway at the 20-year mark - but also because the works differ so greatly in style, structure, and content... The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma's major contribution is its willingness to talk openly and place forefront a personal trauma of sexual abuse in its post-Holocaust context... Helen Epstein has consistently rejected sanitizing Jewish history - including women's history... She has refused to keep secrets that she knew needed to be told and she has avoided idealization, nostalgia, and hagiography." - Irena Klepfisz, Tablet Magazine"Epstein takes the reader through her decades-long process of self-discovery, understanding and healing accomplished through a strong bond of friendship, a solid and supportive family, and the powerfully restorative effects of psychoanalysis... written with page-turning clarity, openness and complete honesty... This is a ground-breaking memoir in style and in its contribution to the issues of sexual abuse." - Berkshire Eagle"In this poignant, vividly written and fearlessly frank memoir, Helen Epstein probes, with sensitivity and insight, the multi-layered ambiguities of love, intimate relationships, and post-Holocaust American lives. More than a chronicle of events, this is a true labor of memory, in which the story of the body is inseparable from the narrative of the self." - Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation"In midlife, well settled in marriage and motherhood, Epstein is impelled to revisit the legacy of her childhood. As she risks both her own sanity and the relationships she holds most dear, Epstein illustrates the complex moral and psychological effects of trauma, and the gritty process of recovery." - Judith Herman, M.D., author of Trauma and Recovery"This is heroic writing, and belongs in the canon of accounts of mothers and daughters, of wounds lost in the depth of childhood, and the valiant determination of a woman to live in uncertainty with grace." - Patricia Hampl, author of I Could Tell You Stories"In this riveting book, Helen Epstein probes the dark corners of her childhood with sensitivity and remarkable candor. This memoir reads like a detective story and asks questions that affect us all: how does our sexual nature get formed or deformed, and how can it change? Unflinching writing." - Anne Karpf, author of The War After: Living with the Holocaust"Courageously peeling back layers of her own psyche, Helen Epstein describes how one is able to withstand and survive trauma, and perhaps even more difficult to heal from it... Epstein offers a riveting cultural history of America in the late twentieth century." - Helen Fremont, author of After Long Silence

This daughter's profile of Czechoslovak swimmer and water polo player Kurt Epstein (1904-1975) traces the history of Jewish athletes in Central Europe and provides a case study of one such life-long athlete. Epstein grew up a stone's throw from the Elbe River and began swimming before the First World War, when his town of Roudnice nad Labem was still part of Austria-Hungary. In high school, he became a competitive rower and swimmer, challenging prevailing stereotypes about Jews and becoming a leading Czechoslovak water polo player and swimming coach, representing his country at two Olympic Games, in 1928 and 1936. In addition to describing the cultural background of the Epstein family in the Bohemian countryside, the book examines Kurt Epstein's decision to participate in the 1936 Berlin "Nazi" Olympics, and follows him through a series of Nazi concentration camps back to Prague, where he was elected member of the Czechoslovak National Olympic Committee. After the Communist putsch of 1948, Epstein vowed to flee "in a swimsuit if necessary" and, at 44, emigrated to New York City where he became a cutter in the garment district, swam weekly at the St. George pool in Brooklyn, and served as Treasurer of The Association of Czechoslovak Sportsmen in Exile in the Western World.