I am a big fan of I. B. Singer's. To me, he is the greatest short story writer of the 20th Century. His stories often tell the tale of the Jewish communities in Poland in the 100 years prior to WWII. As a result of Hitler's demonic policies, it is a society, a culture, that no longer exists. Singer's short stories are a master study of individuals; their eccentricities and struggles in that society. He has written of the present and he has written some excellent novels and novellas but his best work is in the Jewish communities in Poland. In this autobiographical work, Singer gives us some more insights into that world through the eyes of a young boy observing his Rabbi father. We start out with a number of recollections of individuals and their problems that were brought before his father. These would easily fit within the short story motif that Singer excels in. As the book get a bit past the midway point, the autobiographical nature comes to the fore-front and we eventually follow Isaac B in his early development into a young man. This is interesting and very helpful to the student of Singer. Its' shortcoming results from Singer's practice of keeping his own character, whenever present, in the background or as the story-teller. When, in the final chapters, he is the main character, the quality of writing seems to drop a notch and suddenly, the book comes to an end. First time readers of Singer might do better to start with one of his collections of short stories or, ironicaly, the sequel to this book, "More from My Father's Court". Singer is always great but he is usually greater that he was in this book.

Observing through the eyes of a young child we are led through life in the jewish community of Warshaw. Many different figures appear in the house of the boy's father, the rabbi, to ask for his advice and judgement, decisions in religious or worldly matters. Behind all that we feel the deep love of the author, not only for the chracters depicted in the many stories, but for all human beings. It is one of the books that, despite telling stories of times past, makes us aware of ourselves and our own existence, our desires and weaknesses alike.

"How can you print a piece of your own soul," Dickinson, p. 51

This is the 2nd in the Krull and Hewitt's "Lives of ..." series. The book contains 19 chapters on 20 writers in birth order: Murasaki Shikibu (973?-1025?), Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Jane Austen (1775-1817), Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875), Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Charlotte & Emily Bronte (1816-1855 & 1818-1848), Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888), Mark Twain (1835-1910), Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Jack London (1876-1916), Carl Sandburg (1878-1967), E. B. White (1899-1985), Zora Neale Hurston (1901?-1960), Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991)

This is a perfect book for young adolescents and pre-teens who as they grow and mature frequently feel awkward. Krull introduces us to the idiosyncrasies of the literary. Some of the authors were loners, eccentric, a wee bit peculiar. Michael Jackson's behaviors might seem normal when held in comparison. Some retreated into themselves. Some sought out adventures. Some as adults were unsuccessful at the ordinary.

Some worked at a young age to support the family. Some took daily walks, very long daily walks. Some were not healthy and therefore wrote in bed. There were some similarities and some differences, but they all shared a singular conviction to write and write they each did well.

Hewitt's delightful portraits of the writers are precious. My favorite portrait is of Frances Hodgson Burnett of "The Secret Garden" fame. Her hat is the secret garden.

Given the high price of the book, I was surprised that Krull did not include a list of the authors' books and/or poems and the publication years. END

This book is a fun and informative book. The pictures are filled with humorous meanings and hidden information. The book keeps the reader's attention by keeping the included information short and simple, but also makes sure that the reader gets as much possible about the author. This book is great for kids and students to use as a report source as it is filled with great information. Kids would rather use this book as an information source rather than an encylopedia since the information is easy to understand. Authors in there are some you may not know, ( Murasaki Shikibu) and some well know ones ( Charles Dickens). I am glad I purchsed this book. I really liked the pictures which are so vibrant with color. This would make a great buy.

To those who might have dismissed Isaac B. Singer because he is perceived to be a "Jewish" writer writing about "Jewish themes", I ask them to please read this book. The theme of the novel encompasses all aspects of human behavior and develops the omnipresent theme of ambivalence of action in making a decision. The book can be read in no more than two days, so put it to the top of your summer reading list.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) is one of the true literary giants of twentieth century literature. In this eight cassette, 9 hour, unabridged audiobook edition we are treated to one of his best stories, aptly narrated by Larry Keith. The Magician Of Lublin is a timeless tale of human emotions, questions, and quandaries as young Yasha's reckless courage takes him to the very edge of catastrophe. Singer had an unrivaled gift for creating very real, believable characters caught up in the vicissitudes of life and with whom we can all readily identify. The Magician Of Lublin is a "must" for the legions of Singer fans and would admirable serve to introduce a whole new generation to this master storyteller and his art.

This is the story of a group of pre-war Yiddish intellectuals transplanted from Warsaw to New York. The main character, Aaron Greidinger, is a short story and novelist writer as much as I.B.Singer was in real life. His friend Max, long thought dead, reappears and introduces his mistress Miriam. A love triangle forms, upon which other triangles will be formed with the introduction of several other characters. Aaron is attracted to Miriam and sees her as a symbolism of renewal in life and faith, but as he discovers the horrible truths behind her façade, he is led to believe the world will never heal; although he respects God he is unable to love a God who has shown no mercy upon his creation. The novel has a philosophical despairing tone, an overall feeling that indeed the world has gone "meshugah," (crazy, crazy)! This a posthumously novel published in 1994 and certainly not the best form Isaac Bashevis Singer.

I first read "The Slave" and fell in love with Singer's simple yet vivid story telling. Meshugah did not disappoint. I enjoyed reading about three colorful characters (Polish refugees) involved in a bizarre love triangle. Meshugah gives great insight on life after the Holocaust. Despite the horrors of WWII, Judaism, the Yiddish language, and love continue in New York City.

Although I agree with the criticisma made by other readers, I still loves "Shadows On The Hudson" and consider it a worthwhile and engrossing book.

Singer writes about a small group of exciles who survived the Holocaust be fleeing to New York City and creating a community in the shadows of the Hudson river. It was here that they contemplated their devastaing past and doubious future.

The characters are intelleigent and intense, anguished by their expulsion from their homeland and the collapse of their cultural and religious values.

This novel is long and repetitive. It originially appeared serialized in the Forward. In its unedited state, it seems that Singer felt the need to continuously remind the readers of the action from previous weeks. Character development is shallow, although Singer's ability to sketch character is masterful. Despite these problems, one must remember that this is SINGER writing, and even a lesser work by this genius is worth reading. Shadows is an important novel that details the hurtling inner lives of American Jews in the years just after the Holocaust. Singers prescient understanding of the wonders of Jewish resilience on one the hand, and the degradation of their souls on the other, is astonishing. It is as if Singer had a crystal ball to presage Jewish life today. For those students of this subject, this book is required reading. However, the general audience is likely to find the novel tiresome.

Shadows on the Hudson is one of the best novels I've ever read. The people are real--and thank god, they're deeply sexual and deeply intelligent. Some readers are irked by the one, some by the other characteristic; by me a novel flops if the people are too dumb, or too free from the driving burdens and blessings of relentless sexuality. This more or less simultaneous wrestling with sex, faith and its lack, and the problem of theodicy (why God permits evil) is Singer's forte. Only Tolstoy does it better, but there is more real flesh in Singer, while the religious issues are at least as alive as those of Tolstoy's stellar episode toward the end of Anna Karenina, in which Levin successfully struggles toward theism. Singer's characters know what Tolstoy's don't: that 6 million Jews and 20 million Russians are gone who should not be gone. This novel is art, and monumental art; not another pleasure cruise for the beach umbrella.

The story takes place in the first half of the 20th century, a bad time to be a Polish Jew. We know that the Nazis are right around the corner. This is not a story of Nazis, though. It's about the very active but painfully confused lives of Jews caught in between traditionalism and the modern world. Warsaw is as lively as New York's Lower East Side when it was throbbing with the vitality of Jewish immigrants. The main character of this book, Asa, is a young man whose grandfather was a revered rabbi, but who doesn't really believe in anything himself. His personal life is shattered, not only by traditionalism, but by his own modern faults. It's a good book but it's something of a train wreck, which is why I don't give it 5 stars.

As strange as it sounds, there is a parallel between The Family Moskat and Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude. Both start from a semi-mythic past where the family patriarch is larger than life, and then slowly spiral towards an ending in time where historical and psychological decay in the family and in society devolve into a nasty and brutish finale to the family line.

And in both, the overarching movement of history serves to eventually crush the life out of the family, despite secular individual eruptions of creativity, wealth, or love. For Marquez, history is driven by the crushing oppression of poverty and the unjust Latin American social structure. For Singer, history is driven by the crushing oppression of European anti-Semitism.

Believe me, Singer is not the writer that Marquez is--the narrative arc bogs down in parts, and he does not use magical realism to inflate his characters, as Marquez does. Singer's people remain much flatter and closer to life. They are common people, ones we can imagine meeting on the street, perhaps getting pinned in a corner at a party by one, or maybe brushing by them in a store.

But in some ways this makes The Family Moskat even more harrowing. For we know from the beginning that Polish Jewry in the early 1900's was doomed to be destroyed in the Holocaust--we already know the end with a dread certainty. Yet in this book we watch each character struggle for individual freedom, we cheer for them to succeed and rue their human failures, despite the fact that it all has to end in a pogrom or a gas chamber.

Singer shows us the full range of means Jews used to try to deny the chains of anti-Semitism that constrained their lives. There are Chasidim who fervently believe that the Messiah is coming any minute, and other Chasids who dervishly dance the Messiah home. Mystics lose themselves in the Kabbalah, if religious, or in seances, if agnostic. There are those who try to deny reality by living in the fleshly moment of sex and food, and those who live to accumulate wealth. Some run to America, and others to Palestine, and there are even those who convert to Christianity.

Communists, socialists, capitalists, the devout, converts, agnostics, atheists, scholars, debauchers--all have one thing in common; they are Jewish, and so are hated by all non-Jews around them. No matter how they try, they are defined by their birth and circumscribed and twisted by its mark. And eventually, they all will die in a chamber where the gas does not make discriminations between an agnostic Jew, a converted Jew, and a Chasid.

For American Jews, it is easy to forget that anti-Semitism has been a form of oppression as deep and destructive as that of the poor in Latin America. I am certain that Singer did not mean for this when he wrote The Family Moskat in the near aftermath of the Holocaust--it seems more a reverie for a lost world--yet this book is a potent reminder to never forget the dynamic of oppression and hatred that made the Holocaust not only possible, but desired by so many Europeans. It is a reminder that only a generation ago Jews shared the same oppression that others now face, so that perhaps for once someone can help the oppression end short of genocide.

This is a warm, multi-generation story about a large Jewish family in Warsaw and in my view Singer's finest novel. The focus is on the human relationships within the family, magnificently and movingly described; but the novel's edge comes from the constant intrusion of grim outside reality, the tormented history of Poland between the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the second-world-war Nazi storming of the Warsaw Ghetto. Counterpoint between inner and outer reality, between public and private life, between flesh and spirit, makes this book not just another family saga but a statement about Jewish (and non-Jewish) humanity at large. In that, "The Family Muskat" is characteristic of Singer's work - it is his universality, not his particularity, which makes him one of the most respected writers in modern times.

The story takes place in the first half of the 20th century, a bad time to be a Polish Jew. We know that the Nazis are right around the corner. This is not a story of Nazis, though. It's about the very active but painfully confused lives of Jews caught in between traditionalism and the modern world. Warsaw is as lively as New York's Lower East Side when it was throbbing with the vitality of Jewish immigrants. The main character of this book, Asa, is a young man whose grandfather was a revered rabbi, but who doesn't really believe in anything himself. His personal life is shattered, not only by traditionalism, but by his own modern faults. It's a good book but it's something of a train wreck, which is why I don't give it 5 stars.

As strange as it sounds, there is a parallel between The Family Moskat and Marquez's 100 Years of Solitude. Both start from a semi-mythic past where the family patriarch is larger than life, and then slowly spiral towards an ending in time where historical and psychological decay in the family and in society devolve into a nasty and brutish finale to the family line.

And in both, the overarching movement of history serves to eventually crush the life out of the family, despite secular individual eruptions of creativity, wealth, or love. For Marquez, history is driven by the crushing oppression of poverty and the unjust Latin American social structure. For Singer, history is driven by the crushing oppression of European anti-Semitism.

Believe me, Singer is not the writer that Marquez is--the narrative arc bogs down in parts, and he does not use magical realism to inflate his characters, as Marquez does. Singer's people remain much flatter and closer to life. They are common people, ones we can imagine meeting on the street, perhaps getting pinned in a corner at a party by one, or maybe brushing by them in a store.

But in some ways this makes The Family Moskat even more harrowing. For we know from the beginning that Polish Jewry in the early 1900's was doomed to be destroyed in the Holocaust--we already know the end with a dread certainty. Yet in this book we watch each character struggle for individual freedom, we cheer for them to succeed and rue their human failures, despite the fact that it all has to end in a pogrom or a gas chamber.

Singer shows us the full range of means Jews used to try to deny the chains of anti-Semitism that constrained their lives. There are Chasidim who fervently believe that the Messiah is coming any minute, and other Chasids who dervishly dance the Messiah home. Mystics lose themselves in the Kabbalah, if religious, or in seances, if agnostic. There are those who try to deny reality by living in the fleshly moment of sex and food, and those who live to accumulate wealth. Some run to America, and others to Palestine, and there are even those who convert to Christianity.

Communists, socialists, capitalists, the devout, converts, agnostics, atheists, scholars, debauchers--all have one thing in common; they are Jewish, and so are hated by all non-Jews around them. No matter how they try, they are defined by their birth and circumscribed and twisted by its mark. And eventually, they all will die in a chamber where the gas does not make discriminations between an agnostic Jew, a converted Jew, and a Chasid.

For American Jews, it is easy to forget that anti-Semitism has been a form of oppression as deep and destructive as that of the poor in Latin America. I am certain that Singer did not mean for this when he wrote The Family Moskat in the near aftermath of the Holocaust--it seems more a reverie for a lost world--yet this book is a potent reminder to never forget the dynamic of oppression and hatred that made the Holocaust not only possible, but desired by so many Europeans. It is a reminder that only a generation ago Jews shared the same oppression that others now face, so that perhaps for once someone can help the oppression end short of genocide.

This is a warm, multi-generation story about a large Jewish family in Warsaw and in my view Singer's finest novel. The focus is on the human relationships within the family, magnificently and movingly described; but the novel's edge comes from the constant intrusion of grim outside reality, the tormented history of Poland between the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the second-world-war Nazi storming of the Warsaw Ghetto. Counterpoint between inner and outer reality, between public and private life, between flesh and spirit, makes this book not just another family saga but a statement about Jewish (and non-Jewish) humanity at large. In that, "The Family Muskat" is characteristic of Singer's work - it is his universality, not his particularity, which makes him one of the most respected writers in modern times.