Books by Jim Gold

Jim Gold has been an indispensable voice in the international folk dance community as a folk dance teacher,choreographer, and musician. He is also the president of Jim Gold International and organizes folk tours to such exotic countries as Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Norway, Albania,Romania, Argentina, Cuba, Hungary, Croatia,Slovenia, and Ireland, and more. This book is a product of extensive research into the languages, cultural histories, and folk dances local people have performed for centuries. Mr. Gold intends it as the first reference work of its kind-a repository of movements and dance steps, captured in his choreographies,created over many years. To help you learn these dances, each choreography includes a YouTube video link.

It takes courage to turn a new leaf, a passion for self-discovery, and a sense of fun! This wise book, filled with surprises, describes a life lived on its own terms. Jim Gold touches our passions, fears, and hopes in ways that reveal us to ourselves with humor and insight. Comfortable in contradiction, its free spirit makes us sing, laugh, dance, and often leap. Jim Gold brings a love of people, music, languages, humor, old cultures, and new discoveries to his life's work. His adventures as author, musician, folk dance teacher, tour leader, and entrepreneur form the basis of this, his fifth book. After graduating from the High School of Music and Art in New York City, he studied violin at the Eastman School of Music and spent a year at the University of Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. He returned to earn a B.A. in history from the University of Chicago and, later, an M.A. in music from New York University. A classical and folk guitarist, he has brought his World of Guitar concert program to schools, colleges, and community concerts throughout the United States. He founded the classic guitar department at Montclair State University, has appeared on radio and television, and recorded three classical and folk guitar records. He heads his own company, Jim Gold International, teaching folk dance classes, and organizing folk music and dance weekends. Through his Mad Shoe Tours, Mr. Gold leads travel groups to exotic countries such as Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Spain, Romania, Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Croatia, and Tunisia to experience history, culture, and folklore. Jim is an avid student of languages, yoga, running, history, the Bulgarian bagpipe (gaida), and mysteries of the human mind-especially his own. In the whirlwind of vicissitudes, he struggles daily to start fresh, turn over a new leaf, and live a New Leaf life.

Wildly off-beat, whimsical, humorous, and philosophical,here is an adventure story to engross the mind,warm the heart, and quicken the imagination. world-renowned concert violinist Zoltan Zanyhas been sitting in his living room armchair for an entireyear, contemplating-with the help of his unconventionalfriends and austrian housekeeper-the future directionof his life. Meanwhile, his etymologist son, attila, along with an israeli linguistand archaeologist named isaac mashugi, is traveling-in search of thefirst word uttered by man-to eastern turkey's mt. ararat, where theybelieve this original ur-word can be found by discovering Noah's ark. they are joined there by the elder Zany. They discover the word and, on a quest for further adventure, return to America to launch a new kind of travel business-Posthumoustours, specializing in dead customers and raising funds by selling reincarnationinsurance.