Supriya Ghosh (Editor)

Outwitting History

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
8.4
/
10
1
Votes
Alchetron
8.4
1 Ratings
100
90
81
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Rate This

Rate This

Originally published
  
October 2004

Genre
  
Non-fiction

4.2/5
Goodreads

Author
  
Aaron Lansky

Outwitting History t0gstaticcomimagesqtbnANd9GcRMPoYg8OsdTrhFY

Similar
  
The English is Coming, Toponymity: An Atlas of Words, Righting the Mother Tongue, The world in a phrase, Casual Lex: An Informal

Home book summary outwitting history the amazing adventures of a man who rescued a million yidd


Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky is a book about Lansky and his book-saving adventures. At age 23 Lansky read that thousands of the few remaining Yiddish books in North America were being discarded by the children of the books' original Yiddish-speaking owners. The books meant nothing to many of those who had inherited them, as they had no knowledge of Yiddish. Thousands of volumes were thus being consigned to dumpsters and a whole literature was in danger of being lost. Lansky felt compelled to preserve the language, and issued a public appeal for unwanted Yiddish books. He received a very large number of responses and set out, with a team of volunteers, to retrieve and store the remaining Yiddish books.

Contents

Aaron Lansky's accomplishments

Today Aaron Lansky is the president of the Yiddish Book Center, which holds more than 1 million Yiddish books. In 1985 he received a MacArthur Fellowship for his efforts in saving Yiddish books.

Outwitting History won the 2005 Massachusetts Book Award.

References

Outwitting History Wikipedia