The Book Rescuer: How a Mensch from Massachusetts Saved Yiddish Literature for Generations to Come by Sue Macy

From New York Times Best Illus­trat­ed Book artist Sta­cy Innerst and author Sue Macy comes a sto­ry of one man’s hero­ic effort to save the world’s Yid­dish books. Over the last forty years, Aaron Lan­sky has jumped into dump­sters, rum­maged around musty base­ments, and crawled through cramped attics. He did all of this in pur­suit of a par­tic­u­lar kind of trea­sure and he’s found plen­ty. Lansky’s trea­sure was any book writ­ten Yid­dish, the lan­guage of gen­er­a­tions of Euro­pean Jews. When he start­ed look­ing for Yid­dish books, experts esti­mat­ed there might be about 70,000 still in existence. 

Told in a folk­loric voice reminiscent of Patri­cia Polac­co, this sto­ry celebrates the pow­er of an individual to pre­serve his­to­ry and cul­ture while explor­ing time­ly themes of iden­ti­ty and immigration.

Hardcover book 2019