h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Outwitting History: How Aaron Lansky Rescued Yiddish Literature - A87933739
Author: Dmitri Gheorgheni - U1590784

Another book review. I happened across this book while browsing the Yiddish Book Center's Yiddish collection. The story was so much fun to read I couldn't put it down. I thought the Guide could use it.

Thank you! I learned a lot from this - I once attended a lecture where a recording of the last surviving native speaker of a particular language was played, which was very moving, and this Entry is similar, but also conveys the flavour of the book very well so it is a pleasure to read

Glad you liked it, Sasha. I'm really hoping people will want to read the book.

This is a lovely mixture of the amusing, the sad and the brave.

I was particularly amused by the role of 'The Designated Eater'.

I did wonder if Aaron Lansky had a job doing something else and had to find time and funding for all this book saving?

He's an academic. In between, I suspect he was teaching and writing papers for publication. He also got a MacArthur grant, aka a 'genius grant'. You can't apply for those, you have to be nominated. It was for $250,000 over five years, I believe. Now, of course, he's the director of the Book Center.

While the books were donated, they had to raise funds for gas and such. He has hair-raising stories of these low-rent trucks. One time, he, his coworker, and an elderly lady were in one with non-functional windscreen wipers. It started raining. They were on a busy bridge in Manhattan... They strung a length of rope across the windscreen, and the driver and passenger held their arms out the windows and pulled up and down.

The stories in this book are priceless. And that's before we get to the part about the Guthrie family.

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