Literati is thrilled to partner with the Institute of Humanitites at the University of Michigan to have copies of Shachar Pinsker’s new book Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture available for purchase.
About Rich Brew:
A fascinating glimpse into the world of the coffeehouse and its role in shaping modern Jewish culture Unlike the synagogue, the house of study, the community center, or the Jewish deli, the café is rarely considered a Jewish space. Yet, coffeehouses profoundly influenced the creation of modern Jewish culture from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. With roots stemming from the Ottoman Empire, the coffeehouse and its drinks gained increasing popularity in Europe. The “otherness,” and the mix of the national and transnational characteristics of the coffeehouse perhaps explains why many of these cafés were owned by Jews, why Jews became their most devoted habitués, and how cafés acquired associations with Jewishness. Examining the convergence of cafés, their urban milieu, and Jewish creativity, Shachar M. Pinsker argues that cafés anchored a silk road of modern Jewish culture. He uncovers a network of interconnected cafés that were central to the modern Jewish experience in a time of migration and urbanization, from Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, and Berlin to New York City and Tel Aviv. A Rich Brew explores the Jewish culture created in these social spaces, drawing on a vivid collection of newspaper articles, memoirs, archival documents, photographs, caricatures, and artwork, as well as stories, novels, and poems in many languages set in cafés. Pinsker shows how Jewish modernity was born in the café, nourished, and sent out into the world by way of print, politics, literature, art, and theater. What was experienced and created in the space of the coffeehouse touched thousands who read, saw, and imbibed a modern culture that redefined what it meant to be a Jew in the world.
Shachar M. Pinsker is Associate Professor of Hebrew Literature and Culture at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Literary Passports: The Making of Modernist Hebrew Fiction in Europe
Retired U.S. Navy admiral Michael Giorgione discusses his 2017 book based on interviews with commanders and his own experience as the commanding officer at Camp David from 1999-2001. Book sale, signing, & reception follow.
7 p.m., Ford Library, 1000 Beal. Free. 205-0555.
NYC-based writer (and Ann Arbor native) Brigit Young offers tips on revising your written work and how to get published. Q&A. In conjunction with the end of National Novel Writing Month, a nonprofit promotion challenging teens and adults to write a 50,000-word novel by the end of November.
6:30-8 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.
This award-winning local writer reads from and discusses Tazia and Gemma, her new novel that spans 1911-1961, moving forward in time with the story of an unwed pregnant Italian immigrant and then backward with the story of her daughter’s search for her father. Writer Deepak Singh calls it a “moving story of racial and religious conflicts.” Followed by a menorah lighting and sufganiyot (doughnuts).
7-8:30 p.m., JCC, 2935 Birch Hollow Dr. Free. Preregistration required. 971-0990.
U-M classical studies professor Ian Fielding and U-M French professor Peggy McCracken discuss Fielding’s book examining the importance of Ovid’s poetry of exile to the Latin poets writing in the social upheaval of the 4th-6th centuries, as the Roman Empire gradually collapsed.
5:30 p.m., 100 U-M Hatcher Grad Library Gallery, enter from the Diag. Free. 763-8994.
A tradition in which the current SiD cohort shares what they’ve learned in their time living, working, and taking classes in the city. Open to all, light refreshments will be served. Wednesday, December 12th from 3pm-5pm at the Cass Corridor Commons, 4605 Cass Ave, Detroit, Michigan 48201. Free
Local writer Rebecca Fortes, a U-M creative writing grad, leads a workshop to help participants tell their family and/or personal immigration stories.
Noon-1:30 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.
Join us for a holiday book signing with John U. Bacon. His book, The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I Story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism, became a national best seller when it was release on November 7, 2017. Copies of this and his previous work will be available.
About the Book
After steaming out of New York City on December 1, 1917, laden with a staggering three thousand tons of TNT and other explosives, the munitions ship Mont-Blanc fought its way up the Atlantic coast, through waters prowled by enemy U-boats. As it approached the lively port city of Halifax, Mont-Blanc‘s deadly cargo erupted with the force of 2.9 kilotons of TNT—the most powerful explosion ever visited on a human population, save for HIroshima and Nagasaki. Mont-Blanc was vaporized in one fifteenth of a second; a shockwave leveled the surrounding city. Next came a thirty-five-foot tsunami. Most astounding of all, however, were the incredible tales of survival and heroism that soon emerged from the rubble.
This is the unforgettable story told in John U. Bacon’s The Great Halifax Explosion: a ticktock account of fateful decisions that led to doom, the human faces of the blast’s 11,000 casualties, and the equally moving individual stories of those who lived and selflessly threw themselves into urgent rescue work that saved thousands.
The shocking scale of the disaster stunned the world, dominating global headlines even amid the calamity of the First World War. Hours after the blast, Boston sent trains and ships filled with doctors, medicine, and money. The explosion would revolutionize pediatric medicine; transform U.S.-Canadian relations; and provide physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who studied the Halifax explosion closely when developing the atomic bomb, with history’s only real-world case study demonstrating the lethal power of a weapon of mass destruction.
Mesmerizing and inspiring, Bacon’s deeply-researched narrative brings to life the tragedy, brvery, and surprising afterlife of one of the most dramatic events of modern times.
About the Author
John U. Bacon has worked nearly three decades as a writer, a public speaker, and a college instructor, winning awards for all three.
Bacon earned an honors degree in history (“pre-unemployment”) from the University of Michigan in 1986, and a Master’s in Education in1994. In 2005-06, the Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellowship named him the first recipient of the Benny Friedman Fellowship for Sports Journalism.
He started his journalism career covering high school sports for The Ann Arbor News, then wrote a light-hearted lifestyle column before becoming the Sunday sports feature writer for The Detroit News in 1995. He earned numerous state and national awards for his work, including “Notable Sports Writing” in The Best American Sports Writing in 1998 and 2000.
After Bacon covered the 1998 Nagano Olympics, he moved from the sports page to the Sunday front page, roaming the Great Lakes State finding fresh features, then left the paper in 1999 to free-lance for some two dozen national publications, including stories on Formula One racing in Australia for The New York Times, on Japanese hockey for ESPN Magazine, and on Hemingway’s Michigan summer home for Time.
He has authored ten books on sports, business, health, and history, five of which are New York Times best sellers
Local storyteller Jim Glenn performs the 2nd part of his storytelling program on the history of English, which ranges from Shakespeare and the King James Bible to the beginnings of American English. For grade 8-adult.
7-8:30 p.m., AADL Westgate. Free. 327-4200.
Local flavor and fragrance expert Michelle Krell Kydd, creator of the award-winning smell and taste blog Glass Petal Smoke, discusses incorporating scents with storytelling, an idea inspired by the protagonist of the urban fantasy series by German writer Walter Moers.
6:30-8:45 p.m., AADL Downtown 4th-floor meeting rm., 343 S. Fifth Ave. Free. 327-4200.
