Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

This fall, trav­el through his­to­ry with lit­er­a­ture: Vivian Gor­nick presents a por­trait of an ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry rad­i­cal icon; Umber­to Eco brings us back to the con­spir­a­cies of the 19th cen­tu­ry; and Rab­bi Lawrence Hoff­man allows read­ers to lis­ten in on the Jew­ish con­ver­sa­tion as it has expand­ed – from the Hebrew Bible to the ear­ly 21st century.

Emma Gold­man: Rev­o­lu­tion as a Way of Life, Vivian Gor­nick (Octo­ber 2011, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press)
A few top­ics that struck Emma Goldman’s fan­cy in 1910: anar­chism, free love, birth con­trol, women’s rights, homosexuality.

The Prague Ceme­tery, Umber­to Eco; Richard Dixon, trans. (Novem­ber 2011, Houghton Mif­flin Har­court)
Eco’s high­ly antic­i­pat­ed nov­el set in nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry Europe. From the uni­fi­ca­tion of Italy to the Paris Com­mune to the Drey­fus Affair to The Pro­to­cols of the Elders of Zion, Europe is in tumult and every­one need’s a scape­goat. But what if, behind all of these con­spir­a­cies, both real and imag­ined, lay one lone man?”

One Hun­dred Great Jew­ish Books: Three Mil­len­nia of Jew­ish Con­ver­sa­tion, Rab­bi Lawrence A. Hoff­man (Novem­ber 2011, Blue­Bridge)
One hun­dred great Jew­ish books includ­ing biog­ra­phy, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, poet­ry, fic­tion, his­to­ry, and polit­i­cal theory.

Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.