Levi Strauss, A.L. Gump, Yehudi Menuhin, Gertrude Stein, Adolph Sutro, Congresswoman Florence Prag Kahn--Jewish people have been so enmeshed in life in and around San Francisco that their story is a chronicle of the metropolis itself. Since the Gold Rush, Bay Area Jews have countered stereotypes, working as farmers and miners, boxers and mountaineers. They were Gold Rush pioneers, Gilded Age tycoons, and Progressive Era reformers. Told through an astonishing range of characters and events, Cosmopolitans illuminates many aspects of Jewish life in the area: the high profile of Jewish women, extraordinary achievements in the business world, the cultural creativity of the second generation, the bitter debate about the proper response to the Holocaust and Zionism, and much more. Focusing in rich detail on the first hundred years after the Gold Rush, the book also takes the story up to the present day, demonstrating how unusually strong affinities for the arts and for the struggle for social justice have characterized this community even as it has changed over time. Cosmopolitans, set in the uncommonly diverse Bay Area, is a truly unique chapter of the Jewish experience in America.

The Portola has a long and unique history dating back to the late 1800s. Too often misidentified with neighboring districts, it has its own story to reveal. Originally settled by Jewish immigrants, the area evolved into a community populated by nurserymen and their families who grew much of the citys flowers. The Road, as San Bruno Avenue was affectionately referred to by the locals, hosted businesses that included bakeries, grocery stores, pharmacies, and a theatre. In recent years, the Portola has undergone changes as community leaders have enacted programs to beautify the neighborhood and attract new businesses and families to this locale.

When Hannah G. Solomon looked around Chicago, the city where she was born, she saw unfairness all around her. Many people were poor and living in terrible conditions. Immigrants from other countries struggled to survive in their new home. Hannah decided to help change that. When she grew up, she founded the National Council of Jewish Women—the first organization to unite Jewish women around the country—and fought to make life better for others, especially women and children, in Chicago and beyond.

Movie-Made Jews focuses on a rich, usable American Jewish cinematic tradition. This tradition includes fiction and documentary films that make Jews through antisemitism, Holocaust indirection, and discontent with assimilation. It prominently features the unapologetic assertion of Jewishness, queerness, and alliances across race and religion. Author Helene Meyers shows that as we go to our local theater, attend a Jewish film festival, play a DVD, watch streaming videos, Jewishness becomes part of the multicultural mosaic rather than collapsing into a generic whiteness or being represented as a life apart. This engagingly-written book demonstrates that a Jewish movie is neither just a movie nor for Jews only. With incisive analysis, Movie-Made Jews challenges the assumption that American Jewish cinema is a cinema of impoverishment and assimilation. While it’s a truism that Jews make movies, this book brings into focus the diverse ways movies make Jews.

The independent media are arguably more important than ever today, as corporate media’s line reads increasingly like a government press release rather than a free society’s analysis of the day’s important events. But there’s a lot to sort through: Independent newsmagazines and newspapers, local cable-TV access, and independent and microtransmitted radio are everywhere, offering a vast array of news, opinions, and information. New Indymedia activists alone now have direct links to more than sixty-five grassroots news sites around the world. The challenge we are faced with is two-fold: We must make these news sources widely accessible, but we must also find ways to compile, sort, and collectively release this real news to millions of people—a project that this invaluable guide for diversifying your access to information can make much more achievable.