The memoir explores the profound impact of growing up as the child of Holocaust survivors, highlighting the author's journey to find solace in jazz amidst the weight of his family's past. As his mother's memories resurface, Howard Reich embarks on a quest to uncover her experiences, ultimately revealing how these stories have influenced his identity and life choices. Through this exploration, he navigates themes of trauma, resilience, and the healing power of music.
The Art of Inventing Hope offers an unprecedented, in-depth conversation between the world's most revered Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, and a son of survivors, Howard Reich. During the last four years of Wiesel's life, he met frequently with Reich in New York, Chicago and Florida--and spoke with him often on the phone--to discuss the subject that linked them: Reich's father, Robert Reich, and Wiesel were both liberated from the Buchenwald death camp on April 11, 1945. What had started as an interview assignment from the Chicago Tribune quickly evolved into a friendship and a partnership. Reich and Wiesel believed their colloquy represented a unique exchange between two generations deeply affected by a cataclysmic event. Wiesel said to Reich, "I've never done anything like this before," and after reading the final book, asked him not to change a word. Here Wiesel--at the end of his life--looks back on his ideas and writings on the Holocaust, synthesizing them in his conversations with Reich. The insights on life, ethics, and memory that Wiesel offers and Reich illuminates will not only help the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors understand their painful inheritance, but will benefit everyone, young or old.
Castigated in his time for breaching such American conversational taboos as religion, sex, censorship, and racism, Lenny Bruce proved to be a pioneer in exposing hypocrisies, the impact of which still echoes on both sides of censorship controversies. This book and soon-to-be-released private tapes are sure to bring the extent of Bruce's influence into sharp focus. Photo insert.
