In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death...more

A humorous and witty reflection of life experiences and memories, like the Chicken Soup for the Soul, but with a distinctive Yiddish flavor of Leos Bronx roots. Stories are grouped into sections such as Lifes Little Lessons; All in the Family; Growing Up Jewish; Old Times in the Old Neighborhood; Celebrating Jewish Style; School More Than Just An ...more

With this extraordinary first volume in what promises to be an epoch-making masterpiece, Neal Stephenson hacks into the secret histories of nations and the private obsessions of men, decrypting with dazzling virtuosity the forces that shaped this century.In 1942, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse - mathematical genius and young Captain in the U.S. Navy...more

A fascinating exploration of the science of the impossible—from death rays and force fields to invisibility cloaks—revealing to what extent such technologies might be achievable decades or millennia into the future.One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic bomb were beyond the realm of physical p...more

The generation of the late twentieth century experienced a rupture in Jewish time. As a result of our confrontation with Modernity, the integration of Jews into the American mainstream, the shattering tragedy of the Holocaust, and the miraculous rebirth of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel, we can no longer look easily to the past for le...more