Synopses & Reviews
Beautifully written, and composed with a novelists eye for detail, this book tells the story of an exceptional man and the culture from which he emerged.
Taha Muhammad Ali was born in 1931 in the Galilee village of Saffuriyya and was forced to flee during the war in 1948. He traveled on foot to Lebanon and returned a year later to find his village destroyed. An autodidact, he has since run a souvenir shop in Nazareth, at the same time evolving into what National Book Critics Circle Awardwinner Eliot Weinberger has dubbed perhaps the most accessible and delightful poet alive today.”
As it places Muhammad Alis life in the context of the lives of his predecessors and peers, My Happiness offers a sweeping depiction of a charged and fateful epoch. It is a work that Arabic scholar Michael Sells describes as among the five must read books on the Israel-Palestine tragedy.” In an era when talk of the Clash of Civilizations” dominates, this biography offers something else entirely: a view of the people and culture of the Middle East that is rich, nuanced, and, above all else, deeply human.
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“Janet Malcolm is a crusading writer and a consummately elegant one. “Richard Eder,
Boston Globe -- Bennett Gordon - Utne Reader
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“Even as Malcolm reportsdrollyon the intrigue-filled world of Stein-Toklas scholarship, . . . she also provides a canny assessment of Steins personality and achievement, the relationship with Toklas, and a telling if melancholy parable of the biographers art.”Terry Castle,
London Review of Books -- Richard Eder - Boston Globe
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"Two Lives discloses a great deal about its subjects in a remarkably compact space, and does so via a lovely sort of Steinian circumlocution. . . . Splendidly entertaining and informative."Robert Leiter, Jewish Exponent -- Terry Castle - London Review of Books
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Named one of the top ten biographies of 2009 by Booklist -- David Pennington - Journal of the Early Republic
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Selected as one of best 20 books of the year by the Seminary Co-op -- booklist
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“[A] superb biography … a remarkable achievement.”Pankaj Mishra, New York Review of Books -- The Front Table
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“[A] poignant, persuasive biography.”Choice -- New York Review of Books
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“[This book] reads like a novel… a biography of a Palestinian writer and the sociopolitical events that informed and shaped him as well as a look at Palestinian cultural and literary history. But it is poetry that beats at the books heartthe way it moves inside of Muhammad Ali, around him, the way it surprises him and questions him as he questions it.”The American Scholar -- Choice
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"A triumph of sympathetic imagination, dogged research and impassioned writing. More than the story of one mans life [
My Happiness] brings to light entire strata of historical and cultural experience that have been neglected or purposefully covered over. For readers of English there is no comparable work."–Robyn Creswell,
The National -- American Scholar
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“Vivid and intimate, engrossing and full of memorable characters. Every scene [Hoffman] sketches comes alive.... Taha Muhammad Ali is fortunate to have had ... [her to] tell his story with such eloquence.”
Haaretz -- The National
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“A rich tapestry of the personal, the literary and the political, skillfully woven by a sympathetic writer ... Hoffmans intense but often humorous book is a powerful reminder of the singularity and complexity of this most intractable of conflicts and of the ability of the human spirit to be creative in adversity."
The Guardian -- Haaretz
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“Luminous …. Looking past the usual strident politics, Hoffman presents readers with a subtle, moving evocation of the human realities of the Palestinian experience, rooted in land and memory.”
Publishers Weekly, starred review
-- The Guardian
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“[Hoffman] has learned the language, prowled civilian and military archives, walked the ground and interviewed countless individuals, probing their memories of cataclysmic events occurring more than a half-century ago. The result is not just a biography of a remarkable man, but a focused history of a region…. A lovingly researched, well-rendered portrait.”
Kirkus Reviews -- Publisher's Weekly
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"Taha Muhammad Alis . . . poems show the power of beauty in difficult times in addition to the vivid imagination, humor, and honesty of a storyteller. Biographer, essayist, and literary critic Hoffman masterfully captures the life and work of this highly original poet. An exceptional introduction to a literary world that has, until now, been little known to English-language readers, this is highly recommended for all libraries."Library Journal -- Kirkus Reviews
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"Hoffmans lively, insightful, artistically contextualized portrait of a great and accessible poet provides a corrective perspective on Palestinian culture and offers new evidence of literatures transcendent power."Booklist, starred review -- Library Journal
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"Beautifully written. . . . In tracing [Muhammad Alis] life . . . Hoffman manages to illuminate the experience of an entire people. She is scrupulously even-handed. . . . [This] is not only the biography of a remarkable man; it is an act of reclamation against the erosions of memory."Eric Ormsby, Times Literary Supplement -- Booklist
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"Adina Hoffmans portrait of Taha Muhammad Ali brings to life character after character, each one viewed with the authors singular humanity. The poet himself is a figure of great originality and integrity, and his life becomes a mirror of a world which we have glimpsed, until now, largely in broken fragments. I hope this landmark book will be widely, and carefully, read."W.S. Merwin
-- Times Literary Supplement
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"From Adina Hoffmans extraordinary book, I have not only learned about the life of that wise, sweet, cunning, superbly gifted and totally original Palestinian poet, Taha Muhammad Ali, but I have learnedmore than ever beforeabout Jewish and Arab history in Palestine. The book is heartbreaking, riveting, and beautifully written. Moreover its one of a kind, courageous, and deeply honest."Gerald Stern, National Book Award–winner for
This Time: New and Selected Poems -- W.S. Merwin
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"Adina Hoffmans writing is historical magic. She relates world-scale political history on a human scale, so that the ‘Israeli-Palestinian conflict is rendered, with clarity and fairness, the story of one family, one village, one exodus, one return. At the end of the day, the meaning of this history is explored and contemplated in the ways a great novel achieves that kind of contemplation. A series of brilliantly told and searing stories, this is at once a page-turner and a book to be savored."María Rosa Menocal, author of
The Ornament of the World -- Gerald Stern
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"Reading Adina Hoffmans remarkable book we are consoled that, in the face of terrible brutalities and sufferings, the enduring power of poetry might restore in wordsand celebratea measure of what has been lost in reality."Azar Nafisi, author of
Reading Lolita in Tehran -- Maria Rosa Menocal
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"Adina Hoffman has given us a superbly composed meditation upon memory, truth, and conflict in the Middle East. The texture of her prose, the improbable transformations of key characters, and above all their human depth and complexity, contribute to a luminous portrait of the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali and of his world. I would place
My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness among the five must read books on the Israel-Palestine tragedy."Michael Sells, John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature in the Divinity School, The University of Chicago
-- Azar Nafisi
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"There is never a bad time for compassion. But could there possibly be a better time than now? Adina Hoffmans incredibly well-researched, thoughtful, wise biography of the fascinating Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali might be the kind of project that serves as model for all that might save a region. Someone paying deep and loving attention to someone elsesomeone listening, not only to his words, but to the details and context of his whole life and the experience of his people. This book is a profoundly humane and tender experience, and should not be missed by anyone who cares about a better future and respect for the past."Naomi Shihab Nye, author of
You and Yours -- Michael Sells
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“Author Hoffman has done an admirable job of assembling this life story while it can still be told in the first person.”--
Saudi Aramco World -- Naomi Shihab Nye
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"The Madonna of 115th Street defined a generation of scholarship in American religion. This new edition demonstrates how its East Harlem world continues to inspire scholars and readers far beyond its parish boundaries.”Kathryn Lofton, Yale University -- Ron Radosh - The Weekly Standard
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"The Madonna of 115th Street has over the last quarter century become a classic of American religious history. There are few books that I have enjoyed teaching more over the years and even fewer that have taught me as much about American Catholic history."Leigh E. Schmidt, author of Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment -- Kathryn Lofton
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"Robert Orsis Madonna is the rarest of the rare, a book that carries us across a threshold and in doing so transforms our understanding of religion."David D. Hall, Harvard University -- Leigh E. Schmidt
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and#8220;Mabel Barltrop created one of the most bizarre and irresistibly comic religions ever . . . [Shaw] argues convincingly that the Panacea Society holds important lessons for the sociology of religion.and#8221;and#8212;Adam Kirsch, Barnes and Noble Review
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and#8220;Shaw writes with understanding and humor, and although there is sometimes some archness in what is a truly funny story of eccentrics, she is never condescending. . . . Shaw's history of [this] movement is funny and instructive.and#8221;and#8212;Rob Hardy,
the Dispatch (Columbus, Mississippi)
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and#8220;[A] careful, selectively sympathetic portrait . . . and#160;impressive . . . Without shying from the parodic potential embedded in their eccentricity, Shaw does serious justice to the Panaceans, and especially to the charismatic woman who anchored and inspired them.and#8221;and#8212;Lindsay Reckson, Los Angeles Review of Books
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Winner of the 2012 San Francisco Book Festival award for History. Lindsay Reckson - Los Angeles Review of Books
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“Impressive empathy . . . a comprehensive yet nuanced book.”—Margrethe Løøv, Nova Religio Lindsay Reckson - Los Angeles Review of Books
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and#8220;Impressive empathy . . . a comprehensive yet nuanced book.and#8221;and#8212;Margrethe Land#248;and#248;v, Nova Religio
Synopsis
The little-known story of the charismatic, utopian leader Octavia and her devoted followers in the interwar years
In 1919, in the wake of the upheaval of World War I, a remarkable group of English women came up with their own solution to the world's grief: a new religion. At the heart of the Panacea Society was a charismatic and autocratic leader, a vicar's widow named Mabel Bartlrop. Her followers called her Octavia, and they believed that she was the daughter of God, sent to build the New Jerusalem in Bedford.
When the last living members of the Panacea Society revealed to historian Jane Shaw their immense and painstakingly preserved archives, she began to reconstruct the story of a close-knit utopian community that grew to include seventy residents, thousands of followers, and an international healing ministry reaching 130,000 people. Shaw offers a detailed portrait of Octavia and describes the faith of her devoted followers who believed they would never die. Vividly told, by turns funny and tragic, Octavia, Daughter of God is about a moment at the advent of modernity, when a generation of newly empowered women tried to re-make Christianity in their own image, offering a fascinating window into the anxieties and hopes of the interwar years.
Synopsis
The Enlightenment, considered an age of rationalism, is not normally associated with miracles. In this intriguing book, however, Jane Shaw presents accounts of inscrutable miracles that occurred to ordinary worshippers in early modern England. She considers the reactions of intellectuals, scientists, and physicians to these miraculous events and through them explores the relations between popular and elite culture of the time.
Miraculous events in England between the 1650s and the 1750s were experienced mainly not by Catholics, but by Protestants. The book looks at the political and social context of these events as well as interpretations and explanations of them by scientists, the Court, and the Church, as well as by preachers, pamphleteers, friends, and neighbors. Shaw links the lived religion of the time to intellectual history and amends the hitherto received view. The religious practice of ordinary people was as crucial to the development of Enlightenment thought as the philosophical and theological writings of the elite.
Synopsis
A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Robert A. Orsis classic study of popular religion in Italian Harlem. In a new preface, Orsi discusses significant shifts in the field of religious history and calls for new ways of empirically studying divine presences in human life. "The Madonna of 115th Street has over the last quarter century become a classic of American religious history. There are few books that I have enjoyed teaching more over the years and even fewer that have taught me as much about American Catholic history."Leigh E. Schmidt, author of Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment
Synopsis
The little-known story of the charismatic, utopian leader Octavia and her devoted followers in the interwar years
Synopsis
In 1919, in the wake of the upheaval of World War I, a remarkable group of English women came up with their own solution to the world's grief: a new religion. At the heart of the Panacea Society was a charismatic and autocratic leader, a vicar's widow named Mabel Bartlrop. Her followers called her Octavia, and they believed that she was the daughter of God, sent to build the New Jerusalem in Bedford.
When the last living members of the Panacea Society revealed to historian Jane Shaw their immense and painstakingly preserved archives, she began to reconstruct the story of a close-knit utopian community that grew to include seventy residents, thousands of followers, and an international healing ministry reaching 130,000 people. Shaw offers a detailed portrait of Octavia and describes the faith of her devoted followers who believed they would never die. Vividly told, by turns funny and tragic, Octavia, Daughter of God is about a moment at the advent of modernity, when a generation of newly empowered women tried to re-make Christianity in their own image, offering a fascinating window into the anxieties and hopes of the interwar years.
About the Author
Jane Shaw is Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and former Dean of Divinity, New College, Oxford. She is the author of Miracles in Enlightenment England, published by Yale University Press. She lives in San Francisco.