Outwitting History

Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky is a book about the author's efforts to rescue a large number of books in the Yiddish language from destruction.

According to the book, at age 23 Lansky read that thousands of the few remaining Yiddish books in North America were being discarded by the children of the books' original Yiddish-speaking owners. The books meant nothing to many of those who had inherited them, as they had no knowledge of Yiddish. Thousands of volumes were thus being consigned to dumpsters and a whole literature was in danger of being lost. Lansky felt compelled to preserve the language, and issued a public appeal for unwanted Yiddish books. He received a very large number of responses and set out, with a team of volunteers, to retrieve and store the remaining Yiddish books.

Today, Aaron Lansky is the president of the Yiddish Book Center, which holds more than 1 million Yiddish books. In 1985 he received a MacArthur Fellowship for his efforts in saving Yiddish books.

Outwitting History won the 2005 Massachusetts Book Award.

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