Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky

While an undergraduate at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, Aaron Lansky took a course about the Holocaust and became interested in the sociological study of Jews. He found a professor at UMass who taught him Yiddish and this resulted in his first hand experience of how difficult it is to find Yiddish books to read. Thus began a career of scooping up Yiddish books from all over the world and storing them at the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst. Outwitting History is Lansky's memoir of starting that now-flourishing institution. It is told straight-forwardly with lots of amusing anecdotes. Lansky's descriptions of the elderly Jews he meets in book collecting brings alive Yiddish life and culture which is disappearing in today's world. His enthusiasm for the subject is contagious, and this makes Outwitting History a wonderful book to read.