Books in the Jewish lives series

Award-winning author Francine Klagsbrun reveals the complex life and work of Henrietta Szold, founder of Hadassah and a Zionist trailblazer

"Amos Oz (1939-2018) was one of Israel's most prolific and prominent writers, as well as a regular contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was the author of dozens of novels, essay collections, and novellas written between 1965 and shortly before his death. In this first published biography of Oz, the celebrated translator, literary critic, and biblical scholar Robert Alter explores Oz's relationship with his family, beginning with the suicide of his mother, Fania Klausner, when he was twelve years old, and goes on to review his time in Kibbutz Hulda, which he entered at fourteen following his separation from his father, Arieh Klausner; his family's right-wing Zionism; his writing career; his activism in support of a pluralistic Israel; and his work as an international lecturer. In examining Oz's life and work, Alter brings together testimony from Oz and his circle, as well as close readings of his central works, to present the inner world and public persona of Amos Oz.--Dust jacket.

A new portrait of Betty Friedan, the author and activist acclaimed as the mother of second-wave feminism

In tracing the life of Golda Meir, Deborah E. Lipstadt explores the history of the Yishuv and Jewish state from the 1920s through the 1973 Yom Kippur War, all while highlighting the contradictions and complexities of a person who was only the third woman to serve as a head of state in the twentieth century.

As an orphaned survivor and witness to Auschwitz, Eliezer Wiesel (1928-2016) became a torchbearer for victims and survivors of the Holocaust at a time when the world preferred to forget. This portrait presents Wiesel as both a revered Nobel laureate and a man of complex psychological texture.

An exploration of Maimonides, the medieval philosopher, physician, and religious thinker, author of The Guide of the Perplexed, from one of the world's foremost bibliophiles

Explores the extraordinary life of Sarah Bernhardt - the daughter of a courtesan who became a world famous actress.

A fresh look at Hellman's restless life, her extraordinary plays, and her autobiographical myths