The Sixth Borough
The Sixth Borough

Author: Myron S. Lubell

Publisher: Author House

Published: 2013-04-03

Total Pages: 541

ISBN-13: 1481730010

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In 1951 Miami Beach, Florida was one of the most popular resort cities in America; the warm weather and tranquil beaches of this tropical paradise attracted thousands of winter visitors, mostly Jewish tourists who made the two day drive from New York. In addition, the resident population of this small island was primarily from New York. Thus, the city of Miami Beach was sometimes referred to as the SIXTH BOROUGH of New York. However, if you ventured off the island and crossed the beautiful expanse of Biscayne Bay you were in another world; you were in the deep south, where Jews were often envisioned as demons with horns, colored people were second class citizens, and racial laws were reminiscent of Nuremberg and Berlin. Myron Lindell was twelve when he moved from Chicago, where he was a secular Jew, barely aware of his religious or ethnic heritage. But, In Miami Beach, on a Jewish Island, he had an odd feeling he was different. He survived the move by blending fantasy with reality, and if reality was more than he could handle, he escaped by writing adolescent observations in a journal, creating imaginative short stories and essays, which he rarely shared with anyone except his father, a few teachers, and a street smart female classmate. This compilation of memoirs is not a documentary; it is just a testimony to the value of simple memories. Too often, historians have forgotten the individual view, the poetic view, which might be closer to reality than the consensus.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Author: Jonathan Safran Foer

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 9780618329700

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Jonathan Safran Foer emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination. Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, pacifist, correspondent with Stephen Hawking and Ringo Starr. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103-year-old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.

Central Park
Central Park

Author: Andrew Blauner

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2012-04-24

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1608197425

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Central Park is perhaps the most well-trod and familiar green space in the county. It is both a refuge from the city and Manhattan's very heart; a respite from the urban grind and a hive of activity all its own. 843 carefully planned acres allow some 37 million visitors each year to come and get lost in a sense of nature. Unsurprisingly, the park also inspires a wealth of great writing, and here Andrew Blauner collects some of the finest fiction and nonfiction-- 20 pieces in all, with classics sprinkled among 13 new ones commissioned from great New York writers. Bill Buford spends a wild night in the park; Jonathan Safran Foer envisions it as a tiny, transplanted piece of a mythical Sixth Borough; and Marie Winn answers definitively Holden Caulfield's question of where the ducks go when the park's ponds freeze over. There are bird sightings and fish sightings; Jackie Kennedy and James Brown sightings; and pieces by Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, and Francine Prose. This vibrant collection presents Central Park, in all its many-faceted glory, a 51-block swath of special magic.