Posted by harvey frommer on March 24, 1999 at 17:23:23:
In Reply to: Re: Jewish book fairs, Jewish book clubs posted by Barry Chamish on October 27, 1998 at 07:29:10:
COMING THIS FALL ----
GROWING UP JEWISH IN AMERICA : AN ORAL HISTORY
By Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer
University of Nebraska Press
These childhood memories of one hundred men and women, ranging in age from twenty-two to ninety-nine, create a vivid portrait of American Jewish life in the twentieth century. Vibrant, complex, humorous, contradictory-some recollections are common to all growing-up-in-America sagas, others are undeniably unique to the Jewish experience.
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Noted oral historians Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer are professors at Dartmouth College. They are authors of: It Happened on Broadway, It Happened in Brooklyn and It Happened in the Catskills_.
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Highly acclaimed public speakers, the Frommers are now booking lecture dates for Fall l999 for GROWING UP JEWISH IN AMERICA when it will be released in paperback.
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*******Talks also available for IT HAPPENED ON BROADWAY, IT HAPPENED IN THE CATSKILLS, IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN.
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Please call 603-795-2753 or e-mail to set up speaking dates.
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A REVIEW SAMPLER
Presents a kaleidoscopic view of twentieth-century life from immigrant and minority perspectives --- LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
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The most compelling reason to study twentieth-century Jewish life in America is to hear and read the wealth of amazing stories, vivid anecdotes, memories, and wisdom, a diverse array of which the Frommers have collected. The participants in this oral history range from the grandson of a Civil War veteran to a journalist who was born during Israel's Six Day War. Some of those who discuss their lives are well known, such as media critic Neil Postman, but each person's stories enlighten. An account of riding freight cars as a teenager during the Great Depression and another about farming in South Dakota during the 1950s are as revealing as the more common descriptions of New York's Lower East Side. There's even a story about the discovery of Ivory Soap. Moeover, the Frommers find several intriguing threads that link the contributors' outlooks, despite differences in age and geography. Chapters about the Holocaust, communal ties, and rituals reveal that traditions have been maintained amid the temptations of comfortable assimilation. This thought-provoking amalgam should please ethnography students of all stripes. --BOOKLIST
"A heightened sense of how wide the American_Jewish spectrum can be." The Washington Post.
"A lively work with wonderful nuggets, details, and texture."
Jewish Exponent
"A rich and personal view of history." ----Outlook Magazine
"A breezy but informative look at Jewish childhood in 20th-century America. What makes this book tick is the wide variety of people profiled and their unique life stories. They show what it is like to be a Jewish child in various geographical regions in various times and how anti-Semitism is a common experience to all. And they show how even Jews brought up in orphanages or residing temporarily in refugee camps can find creative expression for their experiences. In many ways this is a reassuring book. The interviewees are not all of one Jewish movement or outlook, and yet most have a positive Jewish identity." -- Library Journal
"In the 1920s, the whole world seen from the Dorchester and Mattapan area near Boston appeared to be Jewish. I felt sorry for the occasional gentile I met; he didn't appear to be having as much fun as I was." So remembers Arthur Kantor. For Marilyn Cohen in New York City, the perspective was somewhat different: "Hollywood created images of what I thought America was, people who looked like June Allyson and Van Johnson. We looked nothing like them." But Frank Rich scrutinized the media for entertainers who were more like himself. "When I was a kid, the media images of families were Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It to Beaver. They were not Jewish. But there was also a whole strain of popular entertainment that even if I couldn't pinpoint it as Jewish, was so ethnic to me, had such a Jewish feel: Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Phil Silver." One comes away from this book with a heightened sense of how wide the American-Jewish spectrum can be." -- Detroit News