An Underground Life

That a Jew living in Nazi Berlin survived the Holocaust at all is surprising. That he was a homosexual and a teenage leader in the resistance and yet survived is amazing. But that he endured the ongoing horror with an open heart, with love and without vitriol, and has written about it so beautifully is truly miraculous. This is Gad Beck's story.

Orbach's memoir is a stylish and inspiring account of his life in Berlin's underworld of "divers" where young Jews survived by street smarts and an indomitable spirit which he delicately portrays. After his father is arrested and his mother and sister go into hiding, the young man is left to his own devices finding company among other survivors who outwit the Nazis in surreal adventures. Finally, betrayed by an informer, Orbach is sent to Auschwitz. But, as he says himself, he has left that part of his journey for others to tell, concentrating instead on the humanity and faith which he found on Berlin's streets. Distributed by Paul and Company. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

By turns thrilling and terrifying, Underground in Berlin is the autobiographical account of a young Jewish woman who ripped off her yellow star and survived the war by going underground from 1942 to 1945. Berlin, 1941. Marie Jalowicz Simon, a 19-year-old Jewish woman, makes an extraordinary decision. All around her, Jews are being rounded up for deportation, forced labour and extermination. Marie decides to survive. She takes off the yellow star, turns her back on the Jewish community and vanishes into the city. In the years that follow, Marie lives under an assumed identity, moving between almost 20 different safe houses. She is forced to accept shelter wherever she can find it, and many of those she stays with expect services in return. She stays with foreign workers, committed communists and even convinced Nazis. Any false move might lead to arrest. Never certain who can be trusted and how far, it is her quick-witted determination and the most amazing and hair-raising strokes of luck that ensure her survival. Underground in Berlin is Marie's extraordinary story, told in her own voice with unflinching honesty, for the first time after more than 50 years of silence.

Down and In: Life in the Underground was originally published in 1987 and traces the development of New York's underground scene by way of Lower Manhattan's hotspots from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s. A dialogic and semi-autobiographical report, Down and In taps the immediate wealth of experience of many subterraneans down and in as voiced in face-to-face interviews with the narrator. "Making this book was more than bar-hopping down memory lane. It is a collaborative cross-cultural construction with a star-studded road gang helping Ron find the way to his own history. And more." -- New York Times Book Review This newly designed edition of Down and In is Volume 10 of The Ronald Sukenick Edition. RONALD SUKENICK (1932-2004) was one of the most important innovators, editors, and critics of US-American literature. His eight novels, three collections of short stories, and four books of nonfiction/theory, published between 1968 and 2005, have variously been described as avantgarde, energetically performative, dissident, revisionistic, and a threat to all hierarchies. Educated at Cornell University, New York, and Brandeis University, Massachusetts, Sukenick taught as Professor of English at the University of Colorado, Boulder, from 1975 to 1999, where he was also director of the creative writing program. Sukenick co-founded the publishing house the Fiction Collective (now FC2) and edited the journals American Book Review and Black Ice Magazine.

“Honest and funny, passionate and contrite, meticulously researched and deeply philosophical: an essential document on the ’60s.” —Washington Post Mark Rudd, former ’60s radical student leader and onetime fugitive member of the notorious Weather Underground, tells his compelling and engrossing story for the first time in Underground. The chairman of the SDS and leader of the 1968 student uprising at Columbia University, Rudd offers a gripping narrative of his political awakening and fugitive life during one of the most influential periods in modern U.S. history.

In Budejovice, a quiet village in the Czech Republic, during the Second World War, a plot of land by the river was allocated to the Jewish youth of the village. There, some brave young people decided to create a newspaper. This book chronicles the lives of the young people who were the newspaper's creators and contributors.

Many mammals like to dig in the dirt, but few call it home. Those that do, such as mole-rats, zokors, and tuco-tucos, have developed novel adaptations to their subterranean life, including bones and muscles modified for efficient digging and ways to "see" underground without using their eyes. These unusual traits, adopted independently by unrelated groups around the world, also make subterranean rodents fascinating subjects for biologists. Life Underground provides the first comprehensive review of the biology of subterranean rodents. Arranged by topic rather than by taxon to facilitate cross-species comparisons, chapters cover such subjects as morphology, physiology, social behavior, genetic variation, and evolutionary diversification. Two main questions run throughout the book. First, to what extent has subterranean life shaped the biology of these animals, leading to similar adaptations among otherwise dissimilar species? Second, how have the distinct evolutionary histories of these groups led to different solutions to the challenges posed by life underground?