revival

"Over the last forty years, Aaron Lansky has jumped into dumpsters, rummaged around musty basements, and crawled through cramped attics. He did all of this in pursuit of a particular kind of treasure, and he's found plenty. Lansky's treasure was any book written in Yiddish, the language of generations of European Jews. When he started looking for Yiddish books, experts estimated there might be about 70,000 still in existence. Since then, the MacArthur Genius Grant recipient has collected close to 1.5 million books, and he's finding more every day. Told in a folkloric voice reminiscent of Patricia Polacco, this story celebrates the power of an individual to preserve history and culture, while exploring timely themes of identity and immigration"--From the publisher's web site.

Aaron Lansky shares the story of his twenty-five-year quest to rescue the world's abandoned Yiddish books, a mission that led to the establishment of the National Yiddish Book Center, and provides information about the origins of the Yiddish language, as well as introductions to notable Yiddish writers.