The Great Jewish Cities of Central and Eastern Europe: A Travel Guide and Resource Book to Prague, Warsaw, Cracow, and Budapest is the most comprehensive guidebook covering all aspects of Jewish history and contemporary life in Prague, Warsaw, Cracow, and Budapest. This remarkable book includes detailed histories of the Jews in these cities, walking tours of Jewish districts past and present, intensive descriptions of Jewish sites, fascinating accounts of local Jewish legend and lore, and practical information for Jewish travelers to the region.

During the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries a group of monks with occult interests donated what became a remarkable collection of more than thirty magic texts to the library of the Benedictine abbey of St. Augustine's in Canterbury. The monks collected texts that provided positive justifications for the practice of magic and books in which works of magic were copied side by side with works of more licit genres. In Magic in the Cloister, Sophie Page uses this collection to explore the gradual shift toward more positive attitudes to magical texts and ideas in medieval Europe. She examines what attracted monks to magic texts, works, and how they combined magic with their intellectual interests and monastic life. By showing how it was possible for religious insiders to integrate magical studies with their orthodox worldview, Magic in the Cloister contributes to a broader understanding of the role of magical texts and ideas and their acceptance in the late Middle Ages.

Gotlieb is a writer central to the Canadian science fiction canon. Though she has been called the queen of Canadian SF by Robert J. Sawyer, and though David Ketterer has suggested that she is Canadian SF, Gotlieb has been largely overlooked by SF studies. This book delves deeply into her body of work and traces her career in detail. Offering close readings of Gotlieb's novels, short stories (including ones not reprinted since their initial appearances), and SF-related poetry, this study explores Gotlieb's development as a writer and her characteristic themes. The book also references her manuscripts when the differences between them and the published stories provide insights into her working methods. The book enumerates and analyzes Gotlieb's innovative explorations of common SF tropes such as the superhuman, human-alien interaction, and the galactic empire, her prevalent thematic concerns (e.g., reproduction, colonization, the mind-body relationship, the essence of "humanity") as well as her stylistically dense and literary approach to the genre.

Goethe's Message to The 21st century: "Islam is the Rescue for Humanity" "Stupid that everyone in his case Is praising his particular opinion! If Islam means submission to God, We all live and die in Islam." Johann Wolfgang Goethe

William Shakespeare is viewed today as the quintessential English writer who has continued to influence art, poetry, philosophy and even science for over four centuries. His graphic imagery of Venice, Padua and Verona carefully braided with poignant tragic wreckages of real life circumstances, shrewdly infused with the ancient Kabbalah and transcendent Platonism was nothing short of genius. That is, if he ever put pen to paper! These chronicles reveal documentary evidence to confirm who really penned the Shakespearean canon. For centuries these works have been accoladed as the very basis of English literature, yet the author might not have been English at all! Amidst the mischief, mayhem and murder, these chronicles answer all the questions, including one of the greatest discoveries of all time - who owned the finest collection of Venetian, Italian and Byzantinian jewellery in the world - The Cheapside Hoard.

Traces the history of the golem legend and its appropriations in German texts and film as well as in post-Holocaust Jewish-American fiction, comics, graphic novels, and television. First mentioned in the Book of Psalms in the Hebrew Bible, the golem is a character in an astonishing number of post-Holocaust Jewish-American novels and has served as inspiration for such varied figures as Mary Shelley’s monster in her novel Frankenstein, a frightening character in the television series The X-Files, and comic book figures such as Superman and the Hulk. In The Golem Redux: From Prague to Post-Holocaust Fiction, author Elizabeth R. Baer introduces readers to these varied representations of the golem and traces the history of the golem legend across modern pre- and post-Holocaust culture. In five chapters, The Golem Redux examines the different purposes for which the golem has been used in literature and what makes the golem the ultimate text and intertext for modern Jewish writers. Baer begins by introducing several early manifestations of the golem legend, including texts from the third and fourth centuries and from the medieval period; Prague’s golem legend, which is attributed to the Maharal, Rabbi Judah Loew; the history of the Josefov, the Jewish ghetto in Prague, the site of the golem legend; and versions of the legend by Yudl Rosenberg and Chayim Bloch, which informed and influenced modern intertexts. In the chapters that follow, Baer traces the golem first in pre-Holocaust Austrian and German literature and film and later in post-Holocaust American literature and popular culture, arguing that the golem has been deployed very differently in these two contexts. Where prewar German and Austrian contexts used the golem as a signifier of Jewish otherness to underscore growing anti-Semitic cultural feelings, post-Holocaust American texts use the golem to depict the historical tragedy of the Holocaust and to imagine alternatives to it. In this section, Baer explores traditional retellings by Isaac Bashevis Singer and Elie Wiesel, the considerable legacy of the golem in comics, Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and, finally, "Golems to the Rescue" in twentieth- and twenty-first-century works of film and literature, including those by Cynthia Ozick, Thane Rosenbaum, and Daniel Handler. By placing the Holocaust at the center of her discussion, Baer illustrates how the golem works as a self-conscious intertextual character who affirms the value of imagination and story in Jewish tradition. Students and teachers of Jewish literature and cultural history, film studies, and graphic novels will appreciate Baer’s pioneering and thought-provoking volume.