Plunkett Press: 164 books

Homecoming by Joseph Wechsberg (24,000 words, 24 illustrations) Published by Knopf in 1946 as an expanded version of a two-part New Yorker article. Joseph Wechsberg and his wife left Czechoslovakia for America in 1938. Sent with the US Army to liberate Europe from the Nazis, Wechsberg...

A contemplation of the fabled city which for the Western mind is as much a myth as a physical reality. Amos Elon’s elegant, dazzling biography of Jerusalem gives a profound insight into the kaleidoscopic culture of this magical city. Battle-scarred from four thousand years of violent conflict, the...

In this memoir, Lucy S. Dawidowicz recounts her time in Vilna where she went to study in 1938-39. She also reconstructs the history of Vilna Jews through the centuries and gives a first-hand account of Vilna’s Jewish community right before its destruction by the Nazis. Dawidowicz fled days before...

The Rise and Fall of Prussia by Sebastian Haffner (translated from the German by Ewald Osers; 60,000 words) Sebastian Haffner regarded himself as “a Prussian with a British passport.” In this overview of Prussia’s 170-year history as an independent state, he depicts Prussia’s evolution...

The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions by Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon (128,000 words, 19 illustrations) Written by a sociologist and a journalist, The Death of an American Jewish Community: A Tragedy of Good Intentions recounts the death of a Boston community...

Pillars of Society, Ibsen’s first major prose play (1877), explores the boundless ambition fostered during the industrial revolution and exposes the smug self-righteousness and hypocrisy of the Victorian middle class. Karsten Bernick, a successful, shrewd and calculating shipbuilder, has made himself...

The first comprehensive study of the women in Ibsen’s life and work, this landmark book provides a close reading of actual and fictional women as it re-examines the biographical and critical record. In clear, much praised writing, Templeton traces patterns of gender throughout Ibsen’s plays, from...

“Blaedel has addressed himself to the task of writing a full-length biography that covers all facets of his subject and that emphasizes that they form part of one harmonious unity. I think that on the whole he has succeeded remarkably well. He gives an accurate picture of the man theorists of my...

Trees: For Shelter and Shade, For Memory and Magic by Charles Fenyvesi (44,000 words, 18 illustrations) Linking practical neighborly advice to the many cults of tree worship across the globe, Charles Fenyvesi offers an inspiring overview of planting, pruning, and enjoying trees. He pays homage...

When it first appeared in 1995, The Good Marriage became a best-seller. It offers timeless clues to the secret of happy, long-lasting marriages. Based on a groundbreaking study of fifty couples who consider themselves happily married, psychologist Judith Wallerstein presents the four basic types...

This biography of Fritz Haber, now abridged by the author and translated into English, illuminates the life of one of the most gifted yet controversial figures of the twentieth century. Haber, a brilliant physical chemist, carried out pioneering research in electrochemistry and thermodynamics and...

Well established on college reading lists, Prisoners Without Trial presents a concise introduction to a shameful chapter in American history: the incarceration of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. With a new preface, a new epilogue, and expanded recommended readings, Roger Daniels’s...

In 1932, Benno Weiser was studying medicine in Vienna. During a brawl he rescued a fellow Jewish student by cracking the skull of a huge Nazi with two outsized metal keys, while some thirty Nazis watched. He considers this event his rite of passage — proving to himself that “Jews are no cowards.”...

Honorable Justice: The Life of Oliver Wendell Holmes by Sheldon Novick (with a new preface by the author; 178,000 words, 25 illustrations) Oliver Wendell Holmes is widely regarded as America’s greatest judge. Generations of law students have been and continue to be inspired by his passionate...