Fascinating story. Interesting, witty and very touching.

I love reading about modern hunts for lost treasures and this book did not disappoint. It educated me, a 13th gen WASP, on some of the historical perspective and culture of Jewish and Yiddish life. Some of it was a bit hard to grasp for me towards the end, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t well written. Highly recommend for anyone who loves books or wants to learn more about Jewish and Yiddish life.

Thank you William and Angela for lending the book! I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was unassuming and unpretentious, but it was a book of importance. Aaron Lansky is a wonderful story teller and his book is proof that real life makes for wonderful reading. Poignant and funny at the same time. Upbeat and just a joy to read!

Interesting but could have been better as a long magazine article rather than a book.

I learned so much about Yiddish history, culture and vocabulary from this entertaining book. In fact, it blew my mind by explaining in a quite satisfying way why it is that I've always yearned for a closer connection to my Jewish heritage but have always felt completely dissatisfied with every Jewish organization and experience I've ever tried to interact with. Yiddish vs Hebrew, the cultural vs the religious, the feminine vs the masculine... May G-d bless and keep the Yiddish Book Project!

I liked this a lot. You get a mix of Jewish history and personal, funny, and heartbreaking anecdotes from an older generation of Jews, all mixed into a memoir base like cookie dough chunks in a Ben & Jerry's ice cream (meaning the chunks are actually generous enough to get one in every bite). Plus, there's a lot about what it takes to start and sustain a nonprofit organization, which my mother, who also works for a Jewish nonprofit, has conditioned me to appreciate. It's well written and funny, and because I switched to the audiobook in order to multitask I can also tell you the audio narrator has a wonderful Old Jewish Man voice that really brings to life all the people Aaron Lansky meets throughout the book. Highly recommend in either format.

I would put it right up there with "Three Cups of Tea". I recommend it to everyone. It is beautiful and entertaining and heart-breaking all in one. Of interest, when Aaron Lansky started out his "mission" to rescue Yiddish books, experts believed there were no more than 70,000 Yiddish books left in the world. Proved them wrong by a huge margin! Unbelievable. Aaron Lansky (Outwitting History) and Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea) have shown us the power of one.

An extraordinary account by the founder of the Yiddush Book Center in Amherst Mass. From moldy basements to fishing books from dumpsters to a Major foundation that has saved an entire literature from extinction, Aaron Lansky has done an amazing job.

You can find this in the Marin Libraries.

Amazing story of the long peopled road to making Yiddish the first 100% digitized language! A fascinating read... one of the many vivid images that stays with me is 5 year old Arlo Guthrie, blond curls bouncing, rolling on the floor crying "ofn mein pipik" or some such phrase, being tickled by his Grandmother's neighbor, come to keep him entertained...

This is non-fiction at its best. This is an interesting story in the hands of a master storyteller, who is also a solid writer with a sense of humanity toward his/her fellow beings and who is an impassioned disciple of his/her topic.

A good friend sent me this book and when I started reading it, I laughed out loud. Aaron Lanksy starts his book by describing a incident when he had to climb into a dumpster to save books. I never quite did that, but I spent many years schlepping faculty book collections back to the library and trying to find good homes for good books. (What truly amazes me is that after 6 years of retirement, I am once again schlepping books – this time books about the Pacific Northwest – it must be part of my star sign.)

Lanksy, though has a bigger and wonderful goal. In the 1980’s he became aware that Yiddish books were being thrown away as the last Yiddish speaking generation ages and died, and their children didn’t know what to do with these beloved but white elephant book collections. The book is both the story of his attempt to track down and save these books, but also the story of the near death and hopeful re-birth of Yiddish culture. Lanksy is a MacArthur scholar and he obviously was ahead of his time with his creative approach to saving a culture and its artifacts – wonderful digitization projects, distribution projects, and international outreach. The book is written in a very folksy, adventuresome tone which gets a bit old after a while, and I was very ready for his more solemn expositions, especially near the end of the book, when he talks about the relationship of culture and language and the importance of diversity in our lives. Easy and fun and worthwhile reading. And a BIG Thank You to Diana for thinking of me (and knowing me so well)

Dear Aaron Lanksy, I cried only a million times. Loved it! And THANK YOU for saving all those Yiddish books so that future generations of Jews and non-Jews can learn and appreciate Yiddish history and culture.

This weekend or next I'm definitely heading over to the National Yiddish Book Center. I'm so lucky to work on the same campus. Funny thing, at the time I bought the book I didn't realize that it was about the founding of the Yiddish Book Center. Happy coincidence!

Love, O.C.