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Best Jewish Biographies

Man's Search for Meaning, Gift Edition
With a foreword by Harold S. Kushner, Frankl’s classic is presented here in an elegant new edition with endpapers, supplementary photographs, and several of Frankl’s previously unpublished letters, speeches, and essays. One of the classic psychiatric texts of our time, Man's Search for Meaning is a meditation on the irreducible gift of one's own counsel in the face of great suffering, as well as a reminder of the responsibility each of us owes in valuing the community of our humanity. "Dr. Frankl's words have a profoundly honest ring, for they rest on experiences too deep for deception… A gem of a dramatic narrative, focused upon the deepest of human problems." "An inspiring document of an amazing man who was able to garner some good from an experience so abysmally bad… Highly recommended."
Reviews
"Read this book, read this book."
"Those that had developed purpose and meaning to the harsh conditions got out of bed every morning to face another unbearable day."
"I cried and became distressed as I listened to Viktor Frankl's personal journey."
"Profound insight."
"A little twist of ideas as to why some people survive the worst and why others don't survive medium bad."
"I am just now to the place he talks about how thinking of his wife and having mental conversations with her gave him strength to stay alive!"
"A nice read about the importance of finding meaning in your life."
"This is a great book from both the personal story aspect as well as for its philosophical aspects."
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The Complete Maus
Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in “drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust” ( The New York Times ). Art Spiegelman’s Maus is just such a book.”. – Esquire. “A remarkable work, awesome in its conception and execution… at one and the same time a novel, a documentary, a memoir, and a comic book.
Reviews
"Browsing through the reviews and comments about Maus, I saw that there was some question as to whether the hardcover edition comprised Parts I and II."
"I really enjoyed it - not so much the subject matter (I have hard time "enjoying" the persecution of jews (or mice in this case) or reading about the horrors of naziism or the holocaust) but the format was great."
"As a reader, I can tell that Art Spiegelman spend a good amount of time drawing and writing this."
"We learn about Vladek's life, love, and battle to survive WWII as a Jew, but we also feel his son's pained relationship with him."
"Book #116 Read in 2016. Maus 2 by Art Spiegelman. This is the graphic novel sequel to Maus and picks up where that book left off."
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Man's Search for Meaning
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. Harold S. Kushner is rabbi emeritus at Temple Israel in Natick, Massachusetts, and the author of bestselling books including When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Living a Life That Matters, and When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough.
Reviews
"Read this book, read this book."
"Those that had developed purpose and meaning to the harsh conditions got out of bed every morning to face another unbearable day."
"I cried and became distressed as I listened to Viktor Frankl's personal journey."
"Profound insight."
"A little twist of ideas as to why some people survive the worst and why others don't survive medium bad."
"I am just now to the place he talks about how thinking of his wife and having mental conversations with her gave him strength to stay alive!"
"A nice read about the importance of finding meaning in your life."
"This is a great book from both the personal story aspect as well as for its philosophical aspects."
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Best Jewish Holidays

The Feasts of the Lord: God's Prophetic Calendar from Calvary to the Kingdom
The words of the Savior, His messianic claims, and Bible prophecy will all take on a rich, new relevance for you against the exciting backdrop of The Feasts of the Lord .
Reviews
"I feel he was cleAR on what WAS ordered by Jehovah and what and why later Jews added things."
"How he was buried on Passover and in the Grave on unleavened bread and arose on first fruits."
"Very interesting and informative."
"It is so very clear, beautifully illustrated and extremely well organized, besides being written in such an interesting format."
"not through yet but seems well written."
"I bought two books on the same subject and found this much better than the other."
"I really like the presentation in this book."
"This book not only gives you the feasts of the Lord from the Bible and how they operate,it also gives you a callender showing you when these dates occur,It gives tidbits of info related to the feasts like the sabbatical elevator I never knew existed,It gives the traditional (Biblical) traditions and the modern traditions on the same page for meach feast.It connects how some feast,s describe the rapture of the church and since this book is clearly written from the viewpoint of a messianic Jew,ones who do not believe Jesus is Savior will be gravely dissapointed in this book.Bottom line--great book,lotsa info."
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Best Teen & Young Adult Biography eBooks

The Diary of a Young Girl
Since its publication in 1947, it has been a beloved and deeply admired monument to the indestructible nature of the human spirit, read by millions of people and translated into more than fifty-five languages. Doubleday, which published the first English translation of the diary in 1952, now offers a new translation that captures Anne's youthful spirit and restores the original material omitted by Anne's father, Otto -- approximately thirty percent of the diary. A beloved classic since its initial publication in 1947, this vivid, insightful journal is a fitting memorial to the gifted Jewish teenager who died at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, in 1945. Her marvelously detailed, engagingly personal entries chronicle 25 trying months of claustrophobic, quarrelsome intimacy with her parents, sister, a second family, and a middle-aged dentist who has little tolerance for Anne's vivacity. The diary's universal appeal stems from its riveting blend of the grubby particulars of life during wartime (scant, bad food; shabby, outgrown clothes that can't be replaced; constant fear of discovery) and candid discussion of emotions familiar to every adolescent (everyone criticizes me, no one sees my real nature, when will I be loved?).
Reviews
"I first read this book (the edited down version) when I was nine years old, I received the book as a gift, and again when I was twelve for school. There is no reason for the edited version to still be used because children read Anne Frank's diary around ages 11-14 years old which was around age when Anne herself was writing the diary. I think this should stay on school book lists because some kids these days see the Holocaust as something that happened a long time ago that is meaningless now, without realizing that genocides and racial motivated violence still happens every day. Anne Frank's diary gives kids perspective and helps makes the tragic loss of life during WWII a tangible thing they can understand. The diary is so relate-able and reflects so many feelings that all teens have had, that she becomes three dimensional to them and no longer a just some person that died a long time ago. As we read the diary we see how much potential was lost not only in Anne but in her entire family. All that potential was lost millions of times over during WWII, and this is what we feel deep in our hearts upon closing the book. Toward the end of the diary we see just how difficult things have become for the family which is not always accurately represented in the movie versions of the diary. It's so important for kids to read about these conditions and contrast them with their own in order to not only feel grateful but to feel sympathy for those who lived in these terrible times. If you want to know more about what happened to Anne Frank after the diary, there is a book called "The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank" by Willy Lindwer which includes stories from people who met her in the camps."
"A recent trip to Amsterdam and a tour of the Secret Annex prompted me to buy the book and read it again. At times, it is just overwhelming to consider what it was like for her, her parents and sister, and the other residents of the Annex, to be couped up inside for around 2 years."
"I was quite surprised as I thought everyone knew who Anne Frank was. It is VERY important that each generation understand what happened during WWII so that we can recognize and stop it from happening again."
"I bought this book because I remember reading it when I was younger in school, but could not really remember most details or events. Her diary starts off when she was living with her family in Amsterdam and they kept hearing stories of the Germans seperating families and sending them to some camps."
"There was also more information about Anne and her natural curiosity about sex. If there is ever a book that every one gets to read in their life time, The Diary of a Young Girl is it."
"The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank is a very compelling novel about the last two years of Anne's life and seven other individuals."
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Best Literary Graphic Novels

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters
When Karen’s investigation takes us back to Anka’s life in Nazi Germany, the reader discovers how the personal, the political, the past, and the present converge. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960s, 10-year-old Karen Reyes investigates the suspicious death of her glamorous neighbor and finds troubling clues lurking close to her own home. “This extraordinary book has instantly rocketed Ferris into the graphic novel elite alongside Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel and Chris Ware. “An ambitious, emotional, beautifully illustrated exploration of a 10-year-old girl’s experience growing up late ’60s Chicago, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters is an astounding debut, weaving an intricate web of plot threads that keeps the reader compelled from beginning to end.”. - The A.V. Ferris’s artwork bullies and commands the reader’s attention, each page bringing her to the brink of exhaustion because the struggle between art and words is so great, and the whole is so sensorially overwhelming.”. - The Los Angeles Review of Books.
Reviews
"Spectacular illustrations cover almost every inch of this huge volume, all printed on lined three-hole paper emulating the illustrated diary of the ten-year-old protagonist, a tough and beleaguered tomboy on the rough streets of 1960's Chicago. Ferris's illustrations also show an abiding love not just for horror movies (and particularly for our mutual Universal monster favorite, the Wolf Man) but for the great horror magazines of the 1960's from CREEPY and FAMOUS MONSTERS though the gory WEIRD and TERROR TALES varieties."
"Terrific graphic novel."
"Omygawd .... what a beautifully illustrated book."
"LOVE this book!!!"
"This book is absolutely incredible."
"The detail is amazing."
"I just started reading it, but love it already."
"I really liked this book."
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Best Law Specialties

Dog Company: A True Story of American Soldiers Abandoned by Their High Command
The Army does not want you to read this book. Hill and Scott then led Dog Company into combat in Afghanistan, where a third of their men became battlefield casualties after just six months. ROGER HILL is an advocate for military veterans and first responders, and is active in the fight against human trafficking.
Reviews
"If you're a student of conflict, love true-to-life combat stories, are politically aware or conscious of the issues that affect the sons & daughters we send to war, or if you're just a proud American, then this book is for you."
"I'm glad the truth is out, this book tells everything that happened on FOB Airborne. The book so far has been very well written, can't wait to continue reading."
"I know Tommy Scott and Rodger Hill truly care for their men, and their men love them!! So he took me to Tommy Scott's house."
"The fact - seen all too frequently - that we rely on locals with an entirely different culture of truth and integrity for help on the bases? In Erik Prince's book about Blackwater he made it clear- the US military couldn't function without them, nor could it without contractors on the ground. I've read thousands of pages of WWII history and never heard anything that suggested that the platoons would take a day off for mourn and have a funeral. It is wonderful that our culture celebrates the loss of 2 men so thoroughly, but I never heard of anything like that in WWII when thousands were being killed a day. Sure, there were truces so that the sides could fetch their dead, but i think it was culturally inconceivable that they'd stop the battle of Monte Cassino or Kasserine to have a funeral. In Atkinson's trilogy there was a very offhand story about a group of americans celebrating, I believe, a push up into France or Italy by getting drunk, and the general, and damned if I can remember his name - I think he was from Vermont or Delaware - ordered them executed. In addition, this entire thing about hearts and minds, putting americans on these far flung bases to deal with taliban and treacherous locals, without adequate supplies, with joystick jockeys back in North CArolina countermanding their decisions, just doesn't work. Get 'em out, put 'em to work here guarding our borders, and redirect the resources we're wasting to clear up the Islamofascist fifth column and its useful idiots (the media) here."
"This is AWESOME!"
"The Warrior who craves to honorably lead his soldiers into the fray with all intentions of completing the mission and bringing all his men home, is becoming a relic and increasingly at risk with the politicization of the military and the rise of political elites."
"In the risk adverse environment of the military, independent thinking is ripe to second guessing and arm chair quarterbacks sitting inside the wire--or even worse, the beltway of Washington."
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Best Ceramic Art

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance
When he inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, he wanted to know who had touched and held them, and how the collection had managed to survive. Yet by the end of the World War II, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire. In this family history, de Waal, a potter and curator of ceramics at the Victoria & Albert Museum, describes the experiences of his family, the Ephrussis, during the turmoil of the 20th century. A somewhat rambling narrative with special appeal to art historians, this account is nonetheless rich in drama and valuable anecdote.
Reviews
"His efforts with the innumerable German, Viennese and French words in de Waal's book go from bad to comically miserable to utterly mystifying."
"I dread it - but I want to know how some of this family survived and managed to save their one bit of art - a collection of over 200 netsuke.The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss."
"A set of over 200 Netsuke, Japanese figurines of animals, plants and more, hold the souls and voices of his family history – that of the storied Jewish Ephrussis who in late 18th century Odessa started one of Europe’s greatest financial houses that led to enormous wealth and stature in Vienna and Paris."
"The author's quest to personally reclaim the family history of a collection of antique netsuke (of which he is the current owner), is a real page-turner."
"Instead of a predictable tale from Mitteleuropa about lost grandeur, the author takes a (slightly Proustian) shortcut that leads to unexpected and sometimes deeply moving places. One of the illustrious ancestors collected tiny but incredibly intricate Japanese carvings called netsuke used in early modern Japan as toggles for purse strings. Through this device, De Waal manages to both narrate the story of the rise and fall of the Ephrussi and also sketch the myriad objects they owned and collected during their century and a half of eminence."
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Best Holocaust History

Man's Search for Meaning
At the time of Frankl's death in 1997, Man's Search for Meaning had sold more than 10 million copies in twenty-four languages. The book begins with a lengthy, austere, and deeply moving personal essay about Frankl's imprisonment in Auschwitz and other concentration camps for five years, and his struggle during this time to find reasons to live. The second part of the book, called "Logotherapy in a Nutshell," describes the psychotherapeutic method that Frankl pioneered as a result of his experiences in the concentration camps.
Reviews
"Read this book, read this book."
"Those that had developed purpose and meaning to the harsh conditions got out of bed every morning to face another unbearable day."
"Frankl is able to find meaning in a concentration camp."
"One of the best works you can take in."
"Life would have been easier if I had read this book sooner in life."
"A little twist of ideas as to why some people survive the worst and why others don't survive medium bad."
"If you're a student of any religion or ideology trying to figure out how to reach a point where you can take control of your own experience of life, and truly see the world from your internal perspective rather than from your external perspective this is an invaluable text for you to read through."
"The second part of the book is an analysis of logotherapy and a description of Frankl's studies on the subject."
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Best Existential Psychology

Man's Search for Meaning, Gift Edition
With a foreword by Harold S. Kushner, Frankl’s classic is presented here in an elegant new edition with endpapers, supplementary photographs, and several of Frankl’s previously unpublished letters, speeches, and essays. One of the classic psychiatric texts of our time, Man's Search for Meaning is a meditation on the irreducible gift of one's own counsel in the face of great suffering, as well as a reminder of the responsibility each of us owes in valuing the community of our humanity. "Dr. Frankl's words have a profoundly honest ring, for they rest on experiences too deep for deception… A gem of a dramatic narrative, focused upon the deepest of human problems." "An inspiring document of an amazing man who was able to garner some good from an experience so abysmally bad… Highly recommended."
Reviews
"Read this book, read this book."
"Those that had developed purpose and meaning to the harsh conditions got out of bed every morning to face another unbearable day."
"One of the best works you can take in."
"Life would have been easier if I had read this book sooner in life."
"A little twist of ideas as to why some people survive the worst and why others don't survive medium bad."
"The second part of the book is an analysis of logotherapy and a description of Frankl's studies on the subject."
"I am just now to the place he talks about how thinking of his wife and having mental conversations with her gave him strength to stay alive!"
"I have been questioning again and again about meaning of my life and many suffering that I'd passed through and this book has changed my perspective about life."
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Best Talmud

The Book of Legends/Sefer Ha-Aggadah: Legends from the Talmud and Midrash
The Hebrew poet Hayim Nahman Bialik and the renowned editor Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky, the architects of this masterful compendium, selected hundreds of texts from the Talmud and midrashic literature and arranged them thematically, in order to provide their contemporaries with easy access to the national literary heritage of the Jewish people -- the texts of Rabbinic Judaism that remain at the heart of Jewish literacy today. The arrangement of this compendium reflects the theological concerns of the Rabbinic sages: the role of Israel and the nations; God, good and evil; human relations; the world of nature; and the art of healing. To have Book of Legends/Sefer Ha-Aggadah available in English is to open to the entire English-reading world -- Jew, non-Jew, religionist, secularist -- one of the very great creations of humankind: a rich and intricately woven tapestry of tales, homilies, legends and dreams that come to us from the very roots of the imagination. "Bialik and Ravnitzky's great compendium of Rabbinic legend and homily has been an indispensable resource ever since its publication in Hebrew eight decades ago....English readers are very fortunate to be able at last to avail themselves of this extraordinary compilation."
Reviews
"Both serve as wonderful inspirations to build a solid, intense and rewarding prayer life."
"As a reference resource The Book of Legends adds to the stories found in the early Biblical accounts of the Jewish peoples."
"Scripture is coming alive, as a result of having this rich resource !"
"very good book,i was impressed by. the range of subjects covered ."
"Prompt efficient service."
"I gave this a top rating but maybe it should have been less than perfect because the printing is very small, If there is a next edition maybe it should be two volumes."
"A wonderful book in every way."
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