Outwitting History
The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books
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Narrated by:
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George Guidall
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By:
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Aaron Lansky
About this listen
Recipient of the MacArthur “genius” fellowship and founder of the National Yiddish Book Center, Lansky recounts his efforts to rescue the world’s abandoned Yiddish-language books before they pass out of existence. Outwitting History follows Lansky’s far-flung travels and features the engaging men and women he meets along the way.
©2004 Aaron Lansky (P)2006 Recorded Books, LLCListeners also enjoyed...
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By: David Greene
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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Without You, There Is No Us
- My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite
- By: Suki Kim
- Narrated by: Janet Song
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST).
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The King and I meets Mary Poppins
- By Michael on 02-22-15
By: Suki Kim
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Bend, Not Break
- A Life in Two Worlds
- By: Ping Fu, MeiMei Fox
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 10 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Ping Fu knows what it’s like to be a child soldier, a factory worker, and a political prisoner. To be beaten and raped for the crime of being born into a well-educated family. To be deported with barely enough money for a plane ticket to a bewildering new land. To start all over, without family or friends, as a maid, waitress, and student. Ping Fu also knows what it’s like to be a pioneering software programmer, an innovator, a CEO, and Inc. magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year.
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A true account as good as any Horatio Alger story!
- By Roy B. Paschal on 01-14-13
By: Ping Fu, and others
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Daring
- My Passages - A Memoir
- By: Gail Sheehy
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Candid, insightful, and powerful, Daring: My Passages is the story of the unconventional life of a writer who dared - to walk New York City streets with hookers and pimps to expose violent prostitution; to march with civil rights protesters in Northern Ireland as British paratroopers opened fire; to seek out Egypt's president Anwar Sadat when he was targeted for death after making peace with Israel.
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Enjoyed unexpectedly
- By Corinne O'Rourke on 09-06-23
By: Gail Sheehy
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The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
- By: Dinaw Mengestu
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Ethiopian émigré Dinaw Mengestu is a skilled observer of people who offers a colorful debut work of fiction. Insightful and swiftly paced, this novel evokes past and present in the course of its compelling narrative. It's the `70s, and one D.C. neighborhood is undergoing big changes. In the mix is Ethiopian grocery owner Sepha Stephanos - a man with a complex past who fled his homeland after seeing his father brutalized by themilitary. He hopes for new prospects in D.C.'s gentrification process.
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Great book, wonderful reader
- By Lisbeth on 11-22-11
By: Dinaw Mengestu
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And After the Fire
- A Novel
- By: Lauren Belfer
- Narrated by: Xe Sands, Simon Vance
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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In the ruins of Germany in 1945, at the end of World War II, American soldier Henry Sachs takes a souvenir, an old music manuscript, from a seemingly deserted mansion and mistakenly kills the girl who tries to stop him. In America in 2010, Henry's niece, Susanna Kessler, struggles to rebuild her life after she experiences a devastating act of violence on the streets of New York City. When Henry dies soon after, she uncovers the long-hidden music manuscript.
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Very disappointing
- By Margalarg on 06-28-19
By: Lauren Belfer
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Flesh Wounds
- By: Richard Glover
- Narrated by: Richard Glover
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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A mother who invented her past, a father who was often absent, a son who wondered if this could really be his family...Richard Glover's favourite dinner-party game is called 'Who's Got the Weirdest Parents?' It's a game he always thinks he'll win. There was his mother, a deluded snob who made up large swathes of her past and who ran away with Richard's English teacher, a Tolkien devotee, nudist and stuffed toy collector.
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Such a Meaningful Reflection
- By Awarenessing on 11-28-15
By: Richard Glover
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Under Red Skies
- Three Generations of Life, Loss, and Hope in China
- By: Karoline Kan
- Narrated by: Allison Hiroto
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower.
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An intimate view of real life in China
- By Lonnie G. Hardy, Jr. on 08-15-19
By: Karoline Kan
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The Lost
- A Search for Six of Six Million
- By: Daniel Mendelsohn
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 22 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust - an unmentionable subject that gripped his imagination from earliest childhood. Decades later, spurred by the discovery of a cache of desperate letters written to his grandfather in 1939 and tantalized by fragmentary tales of a terrible betrayal, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates.
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Exquisite Narration, Breathtakingly Heartfelt Book
- By Gillian on 08-14-16
What listeners say about Outwitting History
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Janine
- 12-26-22
wanted this to never end
A deeply meaningful story beautifully told with empathy, humour, humility and respect. I wanted this never to end.
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- F Shaw
- 12-14-23
Fascinating bit of History with a Brilliant Reader
This was very educational and kind of sweet/sad and often funny, about the loss of the Yiddish language. It was an important
common language for Jews around the world. I was impressed by what readers the Jewish people of the 19th and 20th centuries were. We need to value their literary input and influence. The book is full of moving and often funny stories of the
haphazard but passionate collecting of the author. I have always appreciated the voice of George Guidall and in this book he is fantastic. He has a great intonation and flow, very appropriate. I don't speak Yiddish but it sure sounds like he does. You can listen to it in bits, like short stories. It does have a lot of similarities in some chapters but they really are all unique.
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- Michael Lainoff
- 05-26-20
It will make you think, feel, laugh and cry—
Very entertaining and informative. A multi-dimensional masterpiece—the improbable saga of the rescue and restoration of Yiddish literature, a detailed description of a very successful nonprofit organization’s rise from its humble beginnings, interesting side trips into contemporary culture personalities.
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- Marsha L. Woerner
- 10-03-23
First language of book to be digitised
(As posted in Goodreads)
I didn't love this book as much as the other people in my book club, but probably just because the topic was not my style.
The endeavor was monumental and historical, and I compare the head of the cause , and the author of the book was a 23 year old grad student with my 23 year old son, and there is no comparison! Aaron, author and instigator was an amazing figure! Yiddiish is a potentially dying slash dead language that many people hold dear. And even I was tempted to learn Yiddish after reading the book, because it ties so many people together.
And the humor... the humor is both intrinsic and obvious! The thought of driving a mooning truck full of ancient books down the streets of New York and other places, is both gut busting funny and paralysingly terrifying. And then there were the donors that kept feeding the volunteers/ drivers!
Anyway, It was a great look at the Yiddish Revival, specifically, the Yiddish BOOK revival
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Overall
- BabsD
- 08-05-11
I laughed, I cried
I saw Aaron Lansky interviewed in the Sholem Aleichem documentary recently, and I thought that he was articulate and entertaining. I'm SO glad I listened to this book rather than just read it. Although I know some Yiddish, it was so lovely to hear the book read by the narrator----whose Yiddish seemed native. The book itself is so much more than the story of Lansky's book center. It includes wonderful portraits of the people who owned the books, touching stories about Lansky's travels, from a tiny community in Cuba to the bombed-out synagogue in Argentina to the towns in Latvia, Estonia, and Belorus, where Jews had no Yiddish books and yearned for them. Loved the story about Arlo Guthrie and his mom, about the woman in England who had no idea of her Polish husband's political tracts, of the fight to save the Newark library's collections, and many many more. Loved the jokes, menus, poetry, even tales of romance: all of the touching stories about a language and a people who have suffered so greatly and whose culture and language was almost decimated......but, with people like Lansky and his friends, live on. I listened to this book during long commutes....sometimes I had trouble seeing the road because of the tears in my eyes.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Jane
- 09-10-15
Fascinating and moving story. Learned alot
Learned a lot about modern Jewish history. the book is very wwll written and the story is very engaging.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sanford H.
- 12-18-14
A Truly Great Story of Rescue
What did you love best about Outwitting History?
It is rare to be so captivated by a book from the first moment."Outwitting History" is a book of immense power, told about the saving of a people's literature from oblivion. Aaron Lansky is to be applauded for what he has succeeded in accomplishing and in relating it to the world in such a powerful way. I cannot begin to express my appreciation for his saving the mama loshon--the language of my mother, Yiddish, from extinction.
Which scene was your favorite?
Each chapter has its own specialness.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
This book is truly worthy of a one sitting listen.
Any additional comments?
Aaron Lansky is the author of the book and to my mind its hero. He does a superb job on all accounts. The narrator,George Guidall's, English and Yiddish are both beautiful. I was convinced that it was Lansky himself. This is one book not to be missed. A friend in Sydney, Australia suggested the book to me. I am forever grateful. I cannot stop talking about how wonderful this audiobook is.
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