Cultural Legacy Booksellers

News	Read more...
Cultural Legacy Booksellers is IndieBound; but what is IndieBound? IndieBound is movement that rallies passionate readers around a celebration of independent stores and independent thinking. It’s about raising awareness, it’s about reaching out, and it’s about taking pride in your community. When you shop at an independently-owned business, your entire community benefits:

EVENTS

Look here for new, in-house reviews of books we have found interesting and worthy of recommending.

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi
by Bascomb, Neal

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009, $26.00, cloth
ISBN 978 0 618 85867 5
Neil Bascomb is an author and journalist of the superlative. His books, “The Perfect Mile”, “Higher” and “Red Mutiny” all concern the extreme or paradigmatic: the fastest runner, the tallest skyscraper, and mutiny on the world’s most powerful battleship. In “Hunting Eichmann“, Mr. Bascomb has created a mainly chronological narrative that describes the search for Adolf Eichmann, the most notorious Nazi. By looking through the windows of Eichmann’s wartime activities, escape from Europe, and resettlement in Argentina, it tells the story (at least the part that can be told) of how the Israelis became aware of his location, confirmed his identity, and subsequently planned and executed his capture and removal to Israel to stand trial.
When Eichmann was captured, I was eight years old. I remember hearing about it on television and listening to my mother as she showed me a newspaper headlining the event. I still recall the sense of revulsion and disgust at the mere name of Eichmann that had been instilled in me by the news reports. It was then that I understood that Israel was a Jewish country, and that the Nazis had killed approximately six million Jews, and that Eichmann was somehow largely responsible for this.
In “Hunting Eichmann“, images flash between Nazis and their victims, between Argentina and Israel in the 1950’s, and between the expectations and the realities of the post-war period. It is telling that, once Eichmann had been discovered, not the government in Argentina, not the West German government, and not even the U.S. government could be trusted and approached for help in apprehending him. Argentina was sympathetic to former Nazis, and the West Germans and Americans wanted their help in challenging Communists.
A joy for me in reading history is appreciating how the smaller bits and pieces of the story can illustrate the whole - General Patton vomiting against a wall during the liberation of the death camp at Ohrdurf; Eichmann dressed as a hunter, walking away from the prisoner of war camp at Ober-Dachstetten; journalist Willem Sassen’s extensive interviewing of Eichmann in Argentina; Eichmann’s capture by Mossad agents near his home on Garibaldi Street and his later attempt to pray with his captors in Hebrew, telling them that he “loved Jews”.
Bascomb’s work is adventurous, dramatic and skillfully done. He is talented and displays expertise in diligent research and scholarship. Recommended for non-fiction readers who enjoy military history.
Steve Brehm

Quote of the Day

"Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson
The American Scholar
From The Quotable Book Lover (Lyons Press)

Books For Kids

We'got a fantastic list to share with you. They are the nominees for the E.B White Read Aloud Award for 2009

Visitor for Bear
by Becker, Bonny, Denton, Kady MacDonald
Cheery persistence wears down a curmudgeonly bear in a wry comedy of manners that ends in a most unlikely friendship.
Bear is quite sure he doesn't like visitors. He even has a sign. So when a mouse taps on his door one day, Bear tells him to leave. But when Bear goes to the cupboard to get a bowl, there is the mouse -- small and gray and bright-eyed. In this slapstick tale that begs to be read aloud, all Bear wants is to eat his breakfast in peace, but the mouse -- who keeps popping up in the most unexpected places -- just won't go away