Arundhati Roy

Barbara Epstein

A Mosaic

India

Robert B. Silvers

27 contributors to The New York Review of Books tell of their deep and abiding friendships with other poets, writers, artists, composers, and scientists of equal stature.

Writers on Unforgettable Friendships

The Company They Kept

Drawing from engrossing survivors' accounts, many never before published, The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943 recounts a heroic yet little-known chapter in Holocaust history. In vivid and moving detail, Barbara Epstein chronicles the history of a Communist-led resistance movement inside the Minsk ghetto, which, through its links to its Belarussian counterpart outside the ghetto and with help from others, enabled thousands of ghetto Jews to flee to the surrounding forests where they joined partisan units fighting the Germans. Telling a story that stands in stark contrast to what transpired across much of Eastern Europe, where Jews found few reliable allies in the face of the Nazi threat, this book captures the texture of life inside and outside the Minsk ghetto, evoking the harsh conditions, the life-threatening situations, and the friendships that helped many escape almost certain death. Epstein also explores how and why this resistance movement, unlike better known movements at places like Warsaw, Vilna, and Kovno, was able to rely on collaboration with those outside ghetto walls. She finds that an internationalist ethos fostered by two decades of Soviet rule, in addition to other factors, made this extraordinary story possible.

Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism

The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943

A Continuing Cartel : Report

International Electrical Association

From her perspective as both participant and observer, Barbara Epstein examines the nonviolent direct action movement which, inspired by the civil rights movement, flourished in the United States from the mid-seventies to the mid-eighties. Disenchanted with the politics of both the mainstream and the organized left, and deeply committed to forging communities based on shared values, activists in this movement developed a fresh, philosophy and style of politics that shaped the thinking of a new generation of activists. Driven by a vision of an ecologically balanced, nonviolent, egalitarian society, they engaged in political action through affinity groups, made decisions by consensus, and practiced mass civil disobedience. The nonviolent direct action movement galvanized originally in opposition to nuclear power, with the Clamshell Alliance in New England and then the Abalone Alliance in California leading the way. Its influence soon spread to other activist movements—for peace, non-intervention, ecological preservation, feminism, and gay and lesbian rights. Epstein joined the San Francisco Bay Area's Livermore Action Group to protest the arms race and found herself in jail along with a thousand other activists for blocking the road in front of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. She argues that to gain a real understanding of the direct action movement it is necessary to view it from the inside. For with its aim to base society as a whole on principles of egalitarianism and nonviolence, the movement sought to turn political protest into cultural revolution.

Nonviolent Direct Action in the 1970s and 1980s

Political Protest and Cultural Revolution

Impact of Public Procurement

Politics of Trade in Power Plant

Rea S. Hederman

"Some of the essays foreshadow contemporary events: Elizabeth Hardwick's moving report on the Watts riots in Los Angeles in 1966, and Hannah Arendt's "Reflections on Violence," which examines a "century of wars and revolution," written in 1969. Others, such as Susan Sontag's "On Photography" and Joan Didion's "In El Salvador," led to books that have since become widely known.".

30 Years of the New York Review of Books

The First Anthology

Barbara Epstein

Books

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