Roads Taken

Between the late 1700s and the 1920s, nearly one-third of the world’s Jews emigrated to new lands. Crossing borders and often oceans, they followed paths paved by intrepid peddlers who preceded them. This book is the first to tell the remarkable story of the Jewish men who put packs on their backs and traveled forth, house to house, farm to farm, mining camp to mining camp, to sell their goods to peoples across the world. Persistent and resourceful, these peddlers propelled a mass migration of Jewish families out of central and eastern Europe, north Africa, and the Ottoman Empire to destinations as far-flung as the United States, Great Britain, South Africa, and Latin America. Hasia Diner tells the story of millions of discontented young Jewish men who sought opportunity abroad, leaving parents, wives, and sweethearts behind. Wherever they went, they learned unfamiliar languages and customs, endured loneliness, battled the elements, and proffered goods from the metropolis to people of the hinterlands. In the Irish Midlands, the Adirondacks of New York, the mining camps of New South Wales, and so many other places, these traveling men brought change—to themselves and the families who later followed, to the women whose homes and communities they entered, and ultimately to the geography of Jewish history.

The work of student affairs professionals is demanding and unpredictable. This book addresses the particular challenges that it presents to women in mid-career.While much has been written about new graduate students, new professionals and senior administrators in student affairs, scant attention has been paid to the issues of mid-career, and particularly as they impact women.Here are the stories of over twenty women, from widely different backgrounds, reflecting on their lives at mid-career. They describe the choices they made and share the lessons they have learned, particularly the ever-present concerns about reconciling the demands of work and responsibilities to family and partners . The volume focuses on issues that have particular and significant meaning for women. The individual narratives are grouped into five sections, each beginning with a scholarly introduction to its topics. The sections deal with education and self development, such as the life implications of embarking on a doctorate; dual career couples and such decisions as relocation; choices about having children and responsibilities for the care of aging parents; arriving at mid-career; and alternatives to traditional, linear career progression in student affairs administration.This volume is a particular gift to women currently in mid-career positions in student affairs, women embarking on their personal and professional journey in student affairs, the partners of such women, their colleagues, and the individuals who supervise them.

The never-before-told story of countless Jewish on-the-road peddlers who crossed the globe in search of better lives

A child of the Second World War, Alan Young developed two passions early in life; music and literature. In his twenties, having flunked an interview for the BBC, he decided to leave the world of academia behind and seek adventure in East Africa, using his academic experience to teach native Kenyans under the Teachers for East Africa scheme and becoming, briefly, an Outward Bound instructor helping to lead a party up Kilimanjaro. Roads Taken is his account of those vividly remembered days in a strange land which became a second home to him and where he made friends from all races and backgrounds.ÿ

A journalist, diplomat, and writer, William Christian Bullitt (1891–1967) negotiated with Lenin and Stalin, Churchill and de Gaulle, Chiang Kai-shek and Goering. He took part in the talks that ended World War I and those that failed to prevent World War II. While his former disciples led American diplomacy into the Cold War, Bullitt became an early enthusiast of the European Union. From his early (1919) proposal of disassembling the former Russian Empire into dozens of independent states, to his much later (1944) advice to land the American troops in the Balkans rather than in Normandy, Bullitt developed a dissenting vision of the major events of his era. A connoisseur of American politics, Russian history, Viennese psychoanalysis, and French wine, Bullitt was also the author of two novels and a number of plays. A friend of Sigmund Freud, Bullitt coauthored with him a sensational biography of President Wilson. A friend of Bullitt, Mikhail Bulgakov depicted him as the devil figure in The Master and Margarita. Taking seriously Bullitt’s projects and foresights, this book portrays him as an original thinker and elucidates his role as a political actor. His roads were not taken, but the world would have been different if Bullitt’s warnings had been heeded. His experience suggests powerful though lost alternatives to the catastrophic history of the twentieth century. Based on Bullitt’s unpublished papers and diplomatic documents from the Russian archives, this new biography presents Bullitt as a truly cosmopolitan American, one of the first politicians of the global era. It is human ideas and choices, Bullitt’s projects and failures among them, that have brought the world to its current state.

In Roads Not Taken, Earl J. Wilcox and Jonathan N. Barron bring a new freshness and depth to the study of one of America's greatest poets. While some critics discounted Frost as a poet without technical skill, rhetorical complexity, or intellectual depth, over the past decade scholars have begun to view Robert Frost's work from many new perspectives. Critical hermeneutics, cultural studies, feminism, postmodernism, and textual editing all have had their impact on readings of the poet's life and work. This collection of essays is the first to account for the variety of these new perceptions.

Sometimes you need to let go of the wheel and see what happens. A coming-of-age story with a twist: When Malcolm thinks he has found the woman of his dreams, he is forced into reevaluating his beliefs and preconceptions while exploring the meaning of love without gender.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER More than ONE MILLION copies sold A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year “Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review “A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club “Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as we might hope.” —Bill Gates “A real joyride . . . elegantly constructed and compulsively readable.” —NPR The bestselling author of A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility and master of absorbing, sophisticated fiction returns with a stylish and propulsive novel set in 1950s America In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York. Spanning just ten days and told from multiple points of view, Towles's third novel will satisfy fans of his multi-layered literary styling while providing them an array of new and richly imagined settings, characters, and themes. “Once again, I was wowed by Towles’s writing—especially because The Lincoln Highway is so different from A Gentleman in Moscow in terms of setting, plot, and themes. Towles is not a one-trick pony. Like all the best storytellers, he has range. He takes inspiration from famous hero’s journeys, including The Iliad, The Odyssey, Hamlet, Huckleberry Finn, and Of Mice and Men. He seems to be saying that our personal journeys are never as linear or predictable as an interstate highway. But, he suggests, when something (or someone) tries to steer us off course, it is possible to take the wheel.” – Bill Gates